F1

a novel in progress by Jason Pettus

Copyright 1997, Jason Pettus.


"I feel like I've known you for a long time. It's weird."
"We have known each other for a long time."
"It's true. Since we've both spent a long time thinking about that book, we have many things in common. It's so easy to talk with you."

It was while I was reading this passage in Banana Yoshimoto's book N.P. that I met Karen. It's always struck me as odd -- the exact passage I was on at the exact time that I met her very much describes the exact reasons we ended up together. There was a certain point in my youth where I believed in fate and therefore, if the incident happened then, I would have embraced the causal connection that threw us together. Later, when I was older but not yet as old as I am now, I stopped believing in fate and would have therefore dismissed the circumstances. Now I am an adult -- a young one, twenty-nine, but still old enough that I must force myself to think of myself in adult terms -- and the entire full experience I since have had with Karen has left me simultaneously believing in everything and believing in nothing. So, I don't know now how to explain the story that brought us together.
Maybe it would be easier just to describe it. Listen:
Karen and I ran into each other. Literally. I was walking briskly down Chicago Avenue, late for work one Thursday morning, and I had my nose firmly buried in my book as I rushed. My friends always told me I would get in trouble for doing this, but I always assumed that everyone else on the sidewalk would notice my absent-mindedness and take pains to stay out of my way.
What I had never counted on was someone else as engrossed in a book as me, walking down the same sidewalk but in the exact opposite direction. And... pow. I know, it sounds like the beginning of one of those cornball romantic comedies from the 1950's, starring Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant. Believe me, the actual circumstances weren't nearly as romantic. One imagines running into someone as a terribly fun idea -- the tangling of limbs, the flying of books to the sidewalk, laughs and apologies and mutual bending down to retrieve fallen books, a glance of the eyes which leads to a stare of the eyes which leads to Spencer getting the girl, losing the girl, and getting the girl back in the span of two hours and a bag of popcorn.
The truth of the matter is that if one puts oneself in a position where one is reading a book while walking and liable to run into someone, one is usually hunched over one's book and is physically leading with one's forehead. Which Karen and I were both doing. And which, subsequently, was exactly where we collided when our bodies met on that Chicago sidewalk.
Now, it's a long story, but I just happen to know that when I'm walking at a fast clip, I am tooling at about four miles an hour. Since I have ended up being around Karen quite a bit since that day, I also know that she walks about as fast as me. And now a question: have you ever been struck in the forehead by something rather strong at a cumulative force of eight miles an hour? It hurts. It hurts a lot.
I went sprawling onto the sidewalk, bright spots of color suddenly filling my vision. Pain went shooting through my head, pain so real and solid that you could have grasped it with your hand. I continued lying on the sidewalk, physically unable to do anything else but fixate on the pain.
After a few seconds I regained my vision, and I suppose she did too. I heard someone near me yell, "Motherfuck!" and sit up into my field of vision. And she was beautiful. My God, as if this wasn't already the most embarrassing incident of my entire adult life. She had brownish hair, about nape-length, straight with a little curl at the ends. She was wearing jeans, an olive shaker sweater and a man's vintage brown overcoat. And eyes like... I don't know what. Giant sparkling eyes, colored steel-blue like the paint of a fighter plane. Currently staring at me with a look of death in them.
"Why don't you watch where the fuck you're going!" she yelled at me, clutching her forehead.
"Gah," was all I could muster, clutching my own forehead. Do you know how it is, right after a minor accident full of immediate pain? You've just slammed a car door on your finger or pierced your skin with a pencil and the pain is so overwhelming, so intense, that even when your friend sincerely wants to help, when they touch you on the shoulder and gingerly ask, "God, are you all right?" you still let loose with a blue string of curse words and insults directed at them. You feel bad about it later, of course, and you apologize to your friend, but the rush of taboo that initially issues from your mouth is practically unavoidable.
"Why don't you watch where the fuck you're going!" I yelled. "Jeezis!" I put my head between my legs, still gripping my forehead, as if I held it tightly enough I could magically make the pain go away, like a faith healer.
We just sat there on the sidewalk for what must have been thirty seconds, panting quietly and not saying anything. Finally I heard a meek voice say, "Sorry. I didn't mean to yell. It's my fault."
"No," I said with a sigh. "It's my fault. I was walking down the street reading a book, it's completely stupid of me..."
"Oh," she said. "So was I." I peeked up through my knees at her and saw her looking at me, and we finally had a moment of conspiratorial glee at what had happened. Even though I was still in a fair amount of pain, I suddenly felt a great relief that I was not the only person in the world guilty of committing the crime of getting sucked into a book. I also realized how totally appropriate it was that the two of us had both learned our lessons by running into each other, as opposed to stumbling into a group of tourists all staring straight up into the sky or a crazy person. She must have had the same thought at the same time, because we both suddenly laughed together without even rehearsing.
"Are you okay?" I said.
"No." She delicately touched her forehead. "My head really hurts."
"Yeah, me too." I realized at that moment that our conversation about our accident was officially over, that we would have to move onto another subject if we wanted to continue talking. But I was mortally embarrassed and didn't want to give off the impression that I was now trying to hit on her after giving her a minor concussion. Even though, really, that's exactly what I wanted to do. Instead, I decided to just grab my book and get going before I dug myself even further into this hole.
I looked down to get my belongings, and two visions of my pink and purple colored paperback swimmed in front of my eyes. It occurred to me that I had banged my head a lot harder than I had thought, and I closed my eyes and rubbed them to clear my vision. When I opened them again, two copies of N.P. presented themselves to me in sharp clarity.
"Hey," I said.
"What," she said with a tired sound in her voice.
I pointed at the sidewalk. "We're reading the same book."
She looked down at where I was pointing and didn't say anything. After a moment, she uttered with a low, spooky-sounding voice, "That's... really... weird."
"Yeah."
"Shit," she said, and then, "Shit. I'm late." She swooped up in front of me in a blur of color, grabbed one of the books and started rushing off.
"Hey..." It took me a second to realize what was happening, and then it struck me that this woman was just about to leave my life forever, without me even as much as knowing her name. "Wait..." I yelled.
She turned around and walked backwards, talking to me. "I'm sorry. I'll get fired if I'm late again!" She walked off quickly, but shouted over her shoulder once more. "Hope you feel better! I'm sorry again!" And then she was gone.
Well. And that was that, I supposed. I stood up, brushed myself off, grabbed my book and started heading back to work myself. It happens, you know? In Chicago, it happens all the time -- you clunk heads with someone and then you are off again. It's just how it is in a big city. If you don't like it, move. I, however, love Chicago and am not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. So, I learn to deal with it. I clunk heads and then I'm off again. And the gears of the world keep clanking.

-- x --

It's redundant to say that she grabbed the wrong copy of N.P. With such a strange means of meeting each other, the chances that the strangeness would continue are almost a sure thing. I had no distinguishing features in my copy of the book, no bookmark, no postcards, no half-ripped pricetag, so it took me a bit to realize that I had her copy. But while I was at lunch, I was flipping the book closed and noticed something on the inside front cover. It was this, written in large block print with a blue ballpoint pen:

SOME GIRLS
HULA
CANCER
KITCHEN
CONSIDER
ATLAS
IDIOT?

A mystery!
I love mysteries like this -- a discarded note at a supermarket, a thrown-away love letter in an alley, random writings in the margins of a just-purchased used book. I delight in reading these snippets of other peoples' lives, then attempting to extrapolate the rest of the story from my own head. I don't know why I get such great pleasure from these random droppings, but I just do.
I looked over our mystery girl's musings once again. A poem, perhaps? A strange, terse word-association game? A list of words that describe her ex-boyfriend? Her current boyfriend? Her girlfriend?
I ran my finger over the slight inverted grooves the ballpoint pen had made. How strange to own a little piece of this woman who had so recently ran in and out of my life. Not knowing then, of course, that I would end up spending quite a bit of time with Karen, I marveled at the sense of intimacy I felt about having a stranger's private writings intermingled now with my personal library. The whole thing added a bright spot to my day, and I spent the rest of my work hours with a bounce to my step, feeling somehow closer to this woman who I assumed I would never see again.

-- x --

I had developed quite a shiner by the time I got to my friend Brian's apartment that night, and it obviously showed.
"Jesus Christ, Andy!" he yelled as soon as he opened the door. "What the hell happened to you?"
"I got hit in the head by a beautiful woman," I said, walking in.
"Well, of course you did," he said, taking the six-pack of beer from my hand and walking into the kitchen. While he was unsorting the bottles, relocating them to the refrigerator and opening up two for us, I quickly related the saga to him. He took a malicious delight in the story, and at the end he laughed and remarked, "And you have no idea who this girl is?"
"No clue," I responded.
"Hmm. The unknown quantity." He paused. "Hmm." He picked up his beer and walked into the living room, and I followed like a lost puppy. Brian sat on the couch and started doodling into a notebook, and I looked over his shoulder.

F1

"Eff-one?" I asked.
"Female One," he said, tapping the page. "The unknown quantity."
I should explain before I go on that Brian is a scientist. He has this strange, morally-shifty job with a private environmental company. His company gets hired by big corporate chemical giants to come and check the soil and water beside their plants and make certain that they are living up to government regulations. Since the money for the tests is coming from the chemical companies themselves, the temptation for us to speculate on his ethical standing is great. For his part, Brian swears up and down that he has never taken a bribe or even been offered one. Of course, he also admits that the level of importance he has at the company is akin to the french-fry guy at McDonald's, so it wouldn't even be worth it to try to bribe him. As far as he know, his data is being completely falsified by his higher-ups once they get ahold of it. However, they are paying him about twice as much as any other job he could get without a doctoral degree, which he has no desire to get whatsoever. Yet another dilemna about being young in the 1990's, I suppose. Like we need another.
But all this is entirely beside my point, which is: As long as I've known Brian, and undoubtedly for a long time before I knew him, he has always looked at life in analytical terms. Life, to Brian, is not chaotic, not random. It couldn't be, or his entire world would come crashing down around him.
Life, to Brian, is a series of equations, tightly controlled formulae, one for every subject you can imagine. And the process of living a good life, to him, isn't some silly thing like Obeying the Ten Commandments or Being One with Tao -- it's discovering the equation and then attempting to solve for X. Finding the answer to the equation. And taking this analogy a little further, Brian also believes that the ultimate quest for humanity is not the Search for God or the Meaning of Life, but rather, the Grand Equation, the one formula that will explain All Of This. The day he finds this formula, Brian says, is the day he can die.
Sometimes this trait in Brian is annoying, but more frequently it is simply amusing, especially if you take care not to buy into his story but just sit back and enjoy it. Brian's a great party favor -- you stick him in the corner, ply him with liquor, and then mention, "Hey, Brian, why don't you show us that equation that proves the existence of God?" And he'll do it! It really is an amazing thing to watch.
The other nice thing about Brian is that he realizes how strange this trait is, and has quite a humorous sense of self-deprecation about it. For example: A favorite phrase of his, after someone remarks how analytical he is, is, "And you know, you can't spell 'analytical' without 'anal.'"
"Okay," Brian continued (in the present tense), "so what are we solving for here? The identity of the woman, right?"
"Uh, yeah. I guess."

F1 = I

"So... first, you need to have another encounter with her..."

F1 + E = I

"...the probabilities of which can be multiplied by the number of times you repeat your exact path between your el stop and work..."

F1 + (E x R) = I

"...of course, you'll have to ask her her name..."

F1 + (E x R) + A = I

"...but in a non-threatening way..."

F1 + (E x R) + A = I
NT
"...divide the whole thing by kismet..."

F1 + (E x R) + A = I
NT
K


"...and you got it. The girl's identity."
I looked at the page. "That's an awfully big K."
"These things are all a part of the scientific process," he said, leaning back. "K is part of every equation. It's just usually unwritten. Scientists like to think that they have utter control over their laboratory environment. We like to imagine that we have absolute precision over all aspects of our experiments. But kismet is the nasty little cousin our entire community keeps locked in the basement."
"Why, Brian," I said, taking a drink, "I believe this is the closest I've ever heard you get to admitting that life has any kind of random element."
"Oh, kismet's not random, not at all," he said. "It's very deliberate. Very calculating. It's just that we as humans have no control over it whatsoever."
"Who does?"
"Not who. How. The Force. The Being. The... energy, created by all of us, all living creatures. We all make kismet. We just have no individual control over which direction it takes." He got up. "Another beer?" I noticed that my bottle was only half-empty (or is that half-full?) but I nodded for another anyway.
"Oh, hey," Brian yelled from the kitchen. "Don't forget we got Jane's show to go to tomorrow."
"Oh yeah, Jane! Have you seen any of it yet?"
"I saw the pieces I posed for, a coupla weeks ago." Brian walked back into the room with two bottles. "I look sexy."
"Well, of course you do," I said, taking a bottle.
Brian looked down at the paper again, then murmured, "I guess we really don't need to write the K." He flipped the pencil over and started erasing.

F1 + (E x R) + A = I
NT

"It is a silent K, after all." He looked up at me and shrugged, and I didn't really know what an appropriate response would be, so I simply shrugged back.

-- x --

There are some nights when I come home, close the door, turn on my television or stereo and start to make myself a late dinner, and it's a nice feeling. There are other nights when I execute the exact same actions but it's a not-so-nice feeling. That night after Brian's house was one of those not-so-nice nights.
Now, don't get me wrong. The nice feeling and the not-so-nice feeling aren't wildly different from each other; I am not constantly in a state of either joyful abandon or suicidal depression. Being in my home in the evening with the door closed is just generally a warm, slightly secure feeling, all nights of the week. It's just that sometimes I am struck with a vague thought somewhat along the lines of "Ah, it's so nice to be home by myself tonight," while other nights (like that night) I'm struck with another vague thought of "Ah, I wish someone was spending the evening here in my apartment with me tonight."
I grabbed my plate of food, pushed a pile of papers and magazines across my table and made room for dinner. My table, as well as the rest of my apartment, is in a perpetual state of "bachelor cleanliness," as my mom calls it. In other words, there's nothing lying about that can rot, but that's about as far as my neatness gets. My mom always giggles and sighs when she sees my apartment, because she claims that this is the state my dad's apartment was perpetually in until she came along and "saved him."
For some reason, this statement from my mom always elicits a strange emotion of discomfort in me. I think my mom likes it because she can dream of the woman who is giving to eventually come in and save me. I, however, see it in slightly more cynical terms. I see it that my dad was damn lucky to meet a woman who would swoop in and save him, while my own odds of it happening are at best even with dad's and quite possibly much worse.
I looked across my table at the other empty chair, idly daydreamed about bringing another plate and setting it down in front of her, our unknown quantity, our F1. I daydreamed about us sitting, laughing, eating, listening to my CD player quietly and playing with the candle set between us. I gave a little sigh as I daydreamed of us leaving the empty dishes on the table for now so as to tend to more pressing matters in the other room.
Is this psychotic of me to do? I wonder that sometimes, I really do. I'll join right in with my friends in condemning someone for confessing out loud that they do indeed have these daydreams. We scoff and declare how psychotic it is to have domestic fantasies about someone you don't even know. Sexual fantasies? That's fine. That's what strangers are there for. But domestic fantasies? Yuck. Psycho.
Yet I continue to do it, even as I publicly condemn it. Now, does this mean that all of my friends are doing it too and we are just all too ashamed to admit it, much like when the topic of masturbation is brought up amongst a group of fifteen year old boys? Or am I really aberrant? Do I deserve the 'psychotic' label that's been branded on me?
Oh, but the entire conversation is moot anyway. The fact of the matter was that I was sitting there eating alone, and on that particular night it was a not-so-nice feeling.

-- x --

Jane is so cool. She's this photographer who takes all these pictures that at first glance seem rather whimsical but then on further inspection actually reveal themselves to be quite sinister and troubling. Jane can't afford to hire professional models, so she always asks us, her circle of friends, to pose for her when the time rolls around for a new project. I wasn't a model for this show, but when I saw the photo of myself in the last show she had, it left me with this strange mix of pride, awe and embarrassment in my throat.
Even though I am not artistic at all, I have somehow managed to cultivate a circle of friends of whom I would all consider incredible artists themselves. Painters and writers and musicians... oh my. It's odd, when you stop and think about it. Someone once suggested that I do it because I'm jealous of their abilities. But that doesn't make sense, does it? If I was jealous of their creative drive, why would I hang around them? Perhaps it's just me who sees it that way.
I admit that I think it would be great if I had the ability to create great works, things that move people and inspire them in a way that my friends' things do. But I don't get angry over the fact that I don't have that ability. When I dabbled in the arts during college and realized that I am simply no good at any of them, I didn't try to force myself into the round hole. The way I see it, every human on the planet was born with an innate, inherent talent in something, at least one specific thing. And a lot of our troubles in the world today, I believe, is caused by three conflicts concerning this theory of mine. One, some peoples' attempts to force themselves to have a talent in something that they simply don't. Two, some peoples' reactions of fear and envy towards people who have the talent they desire. And three, society's general refusal to recognize the inherent importance of most people's born talent, instead just taking a handful of talents (the talent to make money, the talent to hit a ball with a piece of wood, the talent to win fights) and placing those at the top of the ladder and letting all those other wonderful talents out there in the world (the talent to get two people to go from hating each other to liking each other, the talent to cook a good meal, the talent to never get lost no matter where they are) fall by the wayside.
Fortunately for me, I know what my talent is, and also fortunately for me, it's something that I can indeed make a living doing. My talent is this: I have the ability to take a mass of words that someone else has written, and edit it so that it is better than when they started. I have a way of being able to look at an article or a story and immediately grasp what the author is really trying to say. Then with a series of slashes, lines, swoops and curlicues, I can trim that article or story. I can streamline it, so that the inherent beauty of that person's talent comes shining through.
And how does this talent manifest itself into a way for me to pay the rent on my pleasant but small and occasionally lonely one bedroom apartment in the quiet neighborhood of Andersonville on the glorious city of Chicago's northside? Well, I am an associate editor for the magazine JADA. And what is JADA? Ah, well, JADA is the Journal of the American Dental Association, nationally headquartered in good old Chicago, Illinois, at the north tip of the Magnificent Mile, overlooking the Water Tower, the John Hancock building and the new Museum of Contemporary Art. I edit articles written by dentists on a variety of subjects, ranging from detailed reports on new techniques to ethical questions about AIDS testing to political rants against HMO's. Occasionally my boss will send me several unsolicited manuscripts and have me read them and choose the one best fit for publication. Sometimes when it gets really busy, I will revert back to the type of work I had to do in my early twenties, right after school, things like proofreading classified ads and writing short yet witty titles to the letters to the editor. On rare occasions something very random will happen: a dentist will write a mystery novel or a documentary will be made about the history of dental quacks. Since I am known around the office as the "artsy" one, I am usually assigned to write a review of these strange mixes of dentistry and popular culture. It gives me great pleasure, but it happens so rarely that I react to it like I do when I occasionally get my quarter back from a phone call I've made -- a nice moment of Žlan, but nothing to count on. Mostly, I edit.
My friends simply cannot understand my job. They think it must be hideously tedious to spend eight hours a day condensing and refining stories about amalgams and reconstructive surgery and new filling techniques. But to me, it is the process of editing that is a joy, not necessarily the subject matter. It is getting that god-awful mess in the mail from some doctor in Ft. Collins, Colorado, that nonetheless has that spark of understanding and clarity buried in the middle of it. It is shaping and chipping and sanding that mess until it becomes the sparkling gem it was always meant to be, one that can sit in the sun and shine and bedazzle all that come in contact with it. Wait, I can describe this better. I will liken it to this rather strange toy I used to have as a child back in the early 1970's, in the age of Shrinky-Dinks and Colorforms. If you don't remember this particular toy, let me take a moment to describe it to you:
Some factory would make a small statue out of some hard material, usually in the form of one of the characters from The Flintstones. Then the factory would surround the statue with a softer material of the same color, until it took the shape of a large cube, presumably an uncarved block. The entire package would come to you complete with a miniature hammer and miniature chisel, and you, the eager seven-year old sculptor, would "chip away" at the softer material until "creating" the statue inside. It really was an ingenious toy for a child -- a perfect and elegant combination of simplicity, artistic process, rational thought and pure physical joy. But, like every great toy from my childhood, some mother in Arizona left their child unattended, thinking that the toy could be an adequate substitute for an adult, and the child ended up blinding their little brother or giving themselves third-degree burns or popping a piece of the toy into their mouth and choking themselves to death, and the product was yanked off the market. And now we have GameBoys, which now really do have the capacity to substitute for adults. But I digress.
This is how I see my job. I sculpt. I refine. That gemstone of a Fred Flintstone is there inside that uncarved block of laserprinted pages. It is my job to chisel away until I get to it. I'm good at what I do, realizing of course that I can always get better and slowly but surely am getting better. And that is why I see my job at JADA not tedious at all, but actually rather exciting.
But my goodness, I certainly have wandered away from my story, haven't I? Well, I guess this is all part of The Story. If you are to understand what happened between Karen and me, I guess you need to know not only Karen's story and our story, but something about me as well, or else you won't know how I changed or why it was significant. What I meant is that I have strayed far, far away from my linear story, my real-time encounters, the events you can point to a calendar and say, "Yes, that happened there." Where was I? Oh, yes:
Jane is so cool.
For some reason I have yet to understand, I have always felt it of great importance to be as big a patron of the arts as I can be. Not only is it a duty, not only am I being a good citizen and a good human by doing so, but I also receive a simple and sincere pleasure from it. Therefore, I am unusually educated and literate about all things fine-art, much more so than the average corporate worker that I encounter. Like I said, I'm known as the "artsy" one at work.
Almost all my friends are artists. I own several pieces of all their works. I spend an alarmingly large percentage of my salary on tickets for plays and performances and recitals and concerts and shows and movies and whatnot. And since my greatest pleasure in artistic patronage comes from reading, I have somehow amassed a library of staggering proportions for a twenty-nine year old to have, an amount of books that is perpetually threatening to take over my apartment and which shocks even myself on the rare occasions that I take a step back and look at it in a large-term view.
Part of this patronage is in the form of our Friday night ritual, the art gallery crawl through the canals of River North or the loud sidewalks of Wicker Park, to appreciate, support, and marvel at the static work of our friends' capable hands, to drink just a bit too much free wine, and usually to retire later to a smoky dark bar with cheap imported beer and the mandatory Chicago tradition of too-loud songs on the ever-present jukebox.
"Here," Brian said, handing me a glass of the red.
"Brian, does it ever occur to you that maybe we all drink just a wee too much?"
"Shut up and drink your wine."
"Yes, dad." We walked around and looked at the pieces, let the energy and the noise of the crowd take us over.
"Look," I said. "Here's you." I laughed. "Oh yeah, you were right. You're sexy." Brian, in the photo, was dressed like a schoolboy and was lying in the middle of a road, crying, next to an overturned bicycle. There was a group of other men standing over him, also dressed like schoolboys, acting like they were about to beat him up.
"Well," Brian said, gesturing at the photo with his glass, "a certain sort of sexiness. A kinda..." He shrugged. "Bohemian sexiness..."
"Shut up and drink your wine," I laughed.
"She asked me what my most lasting childhood trauma was," Brian continued. "And this was it..."
My world suddenly went dark, as I felt the warmth and sweatiness of a hand over my eyes. A body leaned up against my back and murmured into my ear, "I love you. I love you, I love you..."
I smiled. "Great show, Jane." I entered the world of light again, and turned around to face her, all five foot two, blonde-haired mass of her.
"You really like it?" Jane said, nervously.
"Oh yeah. Well, of course. I love all your stuff."
"You just say that 'cause you're my friend."
"Does it matter?"
She smiled. "How's the wine?"
I looked into my glass. "Fine..."
"Was there enough left?"
"Yeah..."
"What about the music?" She looked up at the speakers and frowned. "Is it too loud?"
"No..."
"Is it good music?" She wrinkled her nose. "I made a mix tape for the opening and I was really happy with it at the time, but now I think it may be too guitar-driven..."
Brian and I both laughed, and Jane shot us a glare. "What!"
"Oh, Jane... Jane, you gotta calm down."
"I know, I know. I just always get..."
"You always get this way, you know that?"
"...this way, I know, I'm sorry. I just get so..." Jane wriggled her hands around like she was flicking water off of them. "Oh, I just get so... neurotic at these things! God!" She wrung her hands together. "I'll be fine. I just want it to be over. The guy from N.A.M.E. Gallery just talked to me..."
"Oh..." Brian and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows.
"...and they're finally interested, thank God. So I may, possibly, like, just, possibly, finally have a show there next spring..."
"The grant couldnt've hurt," I said.
"You're telling me," she said. "I mean, what kinda world we living in now, where winning an actual grant pulls more weight than whatever shows you've had?"
"Welcome to the '90s," Brian said, holding out his glass.
"Goodbye Julian Schnabel," Jane said, clinking her glass to his. "Hello New Deal."
"Hello affordable art, finally," I laughed, clinking my glass to theirs. Jane laughed with me and then finally noticed my forehead. "Jesus, Andy, what happened to you?"
"Andy knocked a girl over!" Brian yelled, then told the story in truncated form. Jane just shook her head and said, "You goof."
"Yeah," I said sheepishly.
"Look, guys," Jane said, "Please tell me you're going out with me tonight after the opening. Pleasepleaseplease. Don't make me beg."
"Too late," Brian said.
"We're buying the beer," I said.
Jane beamed. "That's what I like to hear!" Without another word, she ran off.
Brian looked at me. "We're buying the beer?"
I smirked and started walking again. "I'm buying the beer..."
"That's what I like to hear!"
We walked into the next room and I heard Brian say, "Hey, check that out. That girl's got the same... oh shit..." I looked in the direction Brian was looking and was confronted with a mirror-image of my bruised forehead. Wow, that's strange...
Oh shit.
"Eff-one," Brian said. "Holy shit, that's eff-one, isn't it!"
"Yeah..." My head was fairly spinning. Twice? In forty-eight hours? This was unprecedented. Well, no, actually, this had happened to me before, but it is so rare, and never with someone that has been the topic of such an amount of discussion. She was standing with a group of women, also holding a wine glass, participating in what looked like a pretty lively discussion. I walked over, grabbed her elbow and let loose with a completely overzealous "Hi!"
Karen jerked her head at me, looked at me for a second while her brain went 'whirr-whirr' and then proceeded to get a look of horror on her face. "Oh God," she uttered.
It hadn't really occurred to me that she might not have been too pleased to see me again. After all, I was the one smitten with her. It wouldn't necessarily hold true in the opposite direction -- indeed, in most cases, it doesn't. I felt immediately self-conscious and full of shame.
"Oh God," she uttered again, then laid her hand gently against the side of my face. Two womens' hands on my face tonight. It was almost too much. "Look at what I've done to you!"
A-ha. I smiled. "It doesn't hurt as much as it looks," I lied. "Besides, look what I did to you."
She touched her own forehead. "Maybe," she said, "we can agree to a term of 'mutual fault.'"
"Agreed." We looked at each other for another second or two, and then from me, "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Andy." I held out my hand.
"Karen." She didn't so much grasp my hand as slip her hand into mine. It was this incredibly intimate, warm gesture, full of grace.
"You didn't get fired, did you?" I asked.
"Hmm? Oh... no. No problems."
"What do you do, anyway?"
"What do I do. Hmm." She looked into space. "That's a very good question." She shifted her weight to one foot. "I... walk on the beach. I ride my bike. I cook Thai food. Occasionally I travel. I read a lot of books. And, as little as possible, I sling coffee and make enough money to pay my bills."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to ask such a generalistic question..."
"I know what you meant. I just, God..." She exhaled. "I just hate defining my entire self to someone new with 'I work at a coffeehouse.' It's so pathetic."
"Oh... no," I said, overzealous again. "It's not pathetic. I got a lot of friends doing that, or waiting tables or telemarketing..."
"I get asked that all the time, you know?" she said, taking a drink. "I suppose it's necessary, these innocuous defining questions. We can't just walk up to a stranger and say, 'So, what's your life story?' So, we invent these questions. First it was 'What high school do you go to?' then 'What's your major?' and now it's gotten to 'What do you do?'"
"I never really thought about it like that before."
She slightly shook her head. "I'm not trying to be difficult, really. I'm just in the habit of questioning all stimulus in my life right now. 'What do you do?' implies a career, and I don't have a career or even an inkling of one. So I guess the right answer is 'I live,' but that sounds incredibly pretentious, don't you think?"
I looked at her for a moment and just started laughing. "What?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said, of course knowing the whole time -- I was laughing because it was such an incredibly overwrought, overanalyzed answer to such a simple question -- and so exactly like all of my friends. No wonder she ended up at this gallery.
"So," she said, "What do you do?"
"Hmm. Let me try to answer in your terms." I looked up at the ceiling. "I cook too. Mostly seafood. I... uh, watch a lot of PBS. I listen to local bands. I drink more than I think I should. I edit articles for a medical journal. And, um... I read a lot too. Oh..." I reached around to the back of my waistband, where I always have a book safely tucked away. "I have your copy of N.P." I presented the book to her.
"Oh. I didn't even know I had the wrong copy."
I flipped the front cover open and showed her her handwriting, and she said, "Oh yeah..."
"What does this mean?" I asked. "I've been trying to figure it out all day."
"Oh..." She smiled in a slightly modest, self-deprecating way. "I'm sorta known in my circle of friends as the one who reads a lot..."
"So am I."
"...and so my friends ask me to recommend books to them. I was just putting a list together for one of them." She put her finger on the cover and started going down the list. "Some Girls, Kristin McCloy. Hula, Lisa Shea. Tropic of Cancer. Kitchen..."
"Banana Yoshimoto," I interrupted.
"Yeah. Are you a Banana fan, by the way? Or was N.P. an experiment for you?"
"No, no. I own all her books."
She smiled and I had the sudden thought that I had just passed a test. She continued, "Consider This Home, Greg Bills. Atlas Shrugged. And maybe The Idiot, but I'm not sure." She shrugged.
"Well," I said, "why don't you take your copy with you?"
"Oh, but I don't have your book with me..."
"How 'bout I give you my phone number and I'll get it from you next week?" Praise the Lord! I had an in!
"Yeah, okay. Thanks," she said, taking the book out of my hand. "You know, I really am sorry I yelled at you last week. I don't usually do that. I was just mad at myself."
"Yeah, well..." I started to say, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry," Brian said, emerging into view. "Andy, can I steal you for a second? Jane wants you to meet someone."
"Oh..." Fuck! "Yeah, sure." I turned to Karen. "Okay, well, I'll find you in a bit and give you my number."
"Okay." She smiled and waved at me and mouthed the word "bye" and then started walking off before we could. We turned in the opposite direction.
"Exchanging phone numbers?" Brian said.
"To get my book back," I replied.
"Well, well."
"Karen. That's her name. She works at a coffeehouse."
"Looks like we're gonna hafta rewrite the equation. Andy, this is Lee. He owns the gallery."
"Hey," a guy said to me, shaking hands. He looked about the same age as me, and the same height, six-footish, with short black hair, a goatee, and wearing this strange smoking jacket. "I'm glad you could make it."
"I wouldn't miss one of Jane's shows."
"So, Jane tells me you're a collector."
Oh, I see now. I laughed. "Well, I try. Nothing big yet, but I do like collecting local stuff." This was essentially true, but with one white lie. I make $37,000 a year at the ADA, a little less than some of my peers but certainly much, much more than any of my friends, which is why I was always the one buying the beer on nights like this. I don't get this salary because of any kind of special merit or talent, but simply because, unlike most of my friends, I knew what I wanted to do when I was twenty-two, and therefore have been working in the industry since, a total of seven years now. And one of the natural by-products of this is a slow, steady rise in pay. Go figure.
However, unlike most of my professional peers, I have decided to use my money for the purposes of good instead of evil. Everytime I get the urge to buy a bread machine or a stereo television or other unnecessary piece of runaway consumerism, I instead run out and pick up one of my friends' pieces, or buy a subscription to a local theater company, or have one of my patented binges at a used bookstore. It's just... better that way. It's the only way I can describe it.
Lee was starting to get into his pitch. "...It's a small gallery right now, but we got written up in The Reader last month, and I really think we're going places..."
"Well," I said, "you took a chance on Jane and that's all that matters to me. Go ahead and put me down for the piece with the schoolboys and the bike."
"I'm getting out the red dot as we speak," he said, smiling.
"Do you have a card? Maybe I could come by sometime and take a look at the artists you represent..."
"Sure," he said, producing a card out of thin air like a slight-of-hand magician.
"I'm sorry. Can you excuse me? I've got to catch someone before they leave."
"Sure, sure," Lee said. "Just give me a call next week and we'll set something up."
"Yeah, okay." I pocketed the card and took off in search of Karen again.
The one white lie, I should mention, is that I do have a big piece in my collection, exactly one, my pride and joy, an original signed Diane Arbus photograph. It's one from her series of autistic children in Halloween costumes, the ones she took right before she killed herself. I was at some cheesy print gallery on Michigan Avenue one spring Saturday, and found it in the back, marked at $1700. I couldn't possibly think of why they would be selling a genuine Arbus silver print for such a ridiculously low price, so I made them agree to an independent authentication before I bought it. But... it checked out. Maybe they didn't realize what they had. Perhaps it was more of Brian's kismet deal. In any case, I bit the bullet, wrote one of the largest single checks I've ever written, and now it's the last thing I see every night before I go to sleep. Wondrous.
I was wrapped up in recollecting this incident in my mind when I realized that I had reached the back of the gallery without seeing Karen. Absent-minded. I walked back through to the front. Hmm. I poked my head out to the front sidewalk. Uh-oh. I walked through to the back again, just to make sure. Oh shit.
I spied the girls Karen had been talking to. "Excuse me," I said, butting into their circle. "Have you all seen Karen?"
"Karen?"
"The girl with the..." I pointed at my forehead.
"Oh! She had to leave."
"God. You're kidding me." I shook my head. "You don't know how I can get ahold of her, do you? She has something of mine."
The women murmured amongst themselves, whispers of "Do you know who she was?" "No... isn't she a friend of Bob?" "No, I don't think so..." "Who was she here with?"
I held up my hand. "Okay, thanks," I said.
"Sorry!" the group sing-sang in unison.
I went and found Brian. "She's gone!" I barked at him.
"Who? Eva Peron!"
"No! Karen," I said, but Brian was running with the Evita reference now, putting his arm around my shoulder and singing "Don't Cry for me Argentina."
"Stop," I said, shrugging his arm off of me. "Eff-one. She's disappeared again."
"I thought you said she works at a coffeehouse."
"Yeah..."
"Fine. Then be a stalker until you find her."
"Yeah, but it's the Magnificent Mile. There's, like, ten, twelve coffeehouses in the radius."
"Well, it's still better odds than you had coming into here tonight, right?"
"Yeah, but..." Oh, but she was so close! "Yeah," I said, dejected.
"Oh, look at our poor Andy!" He put his arm around me again. "Don't cry for me, dear kismet," he sang, "for I never really left you..."

-- x --

We ended up at Estelle's that night, which I pretty much expected, Estelle's being across the street from the gallery we were at. Estelle's is a local artists' hangout for the very simple reasons that all of Chicago's local artists' hangouts are: 1) It's in Wicker Park; 2) They have AC/DC on their jukebox; 3) They have an open-mike poetry night once a week; and 4) Beers on Friday nights are a buck a draw, which will pretty much get an artist to go anywhere.
"Look at you," Brian said to me, across a small, pockmarked table. "I mean, just look at ya, Andy. That's what always amazes me."
"What?" I said worriedly, looking down at myself.
"We're surrounded by all these freaky artist types and bikers and shit," Brian said, gesturing out at the sea of leather jackets and shaved heads and nose rings. "And there you sit in your little Gap-mother's-wet-dream outfit." I looked down at my white button down shirt, tan chinos and black oxfords. Brian continued, "Man, I would just be so self-conscious dressed like that. You're truly amazing."
I looked at myself again. "Great," I said. "Now I'm self-conscious."
"I didn't mean that at all..."
"Do you think everyone here thinks I'm a yuppie? You know, that's I'm slumming on the weekend? Oh God!"
"What do you care?"
I paused. "This is true."
"so here's what I was saying before..." Jane said, fading into earshot with a new pitcher of beer, our umpteenth pitcher of the night. "The show. Great. Tonight. Great." She attempted to pour us beers, spilled a bunch on the table. "It's great, you know? I'm doing what I wanna do, I'm in charge of my life, I'm leading this very empowered female lifestyle..."
"But..." Brian said.
"But. God, guys. I'm so lonely. You know? I just get home some nights and it's so..." Jane slapped the table hard, hard enough to jiggle the plastic cups and spill more beer. "...so fucking empty and quiet in my house that I just can't fucking stand it! GOD!" She picked up her cup, drank, then pointed at Brian and me while holding it. "You know what I did? I almost started going back to church again, just for a..." She slumped her shoulders. "Just for a change of fuckin' pace."
Brian and I burst into laughter. Brian said in an imitation of Jane's voice, "Father forgive me 'cause I fuckin' sinned..."
I picked up the ball. "I said three fuckin' Hail Marys! Hey, padre, where's the goddamned smoking section?"
Jane slapped us on the shoulders. "You guys! I'm serious! Haven't you ever thought about going back to church?"
"Hell no," Brian said.
"I never stopped going," I said with a look of deadpan seriousness.
Jane yelled, "You are such a liar!"
"Just seeing how drunk you are," I said.
"Very," Jane said.
"Say it again, sister," I yelled. "Shout it to the heavens!"
"Speaking of which..." Brian said, standing up and heading to the bathroom.
"You see what I'm saying, don't you, Andy?" Jane leaned in and grabbed my leg, pretty high up, truth be told. "I can't talk to my girlfriends about all this. It isn't considered appropriate around them to bitch about wanting a man. But God, you see what I'm saying, right?" She turned her head so her profile was to me, and said in a quiet voice, "I mean, I'm twenty-seven, for Chrissakes. I'm two years older than my mom when she had me!"
I looked down at the hand still on my leg. "Jane," I said.
"Yeah." She looked back at me.
"Come home with me tonight."
She looked at me. "What?"
I couldn't hold the gaze anymore, so I looked down. "Okay, I know it's the liquor talking, but you're right. Why should we both have to go home to empty apartments tonight? It's stupid. We deserve more than that. I'm drunk, yes, I know. Just..." I looked back up at her. "Just... come back with me tonight. We'll have a sleepover. We'll watch Star Trek!" This made Jane laugh and I continued. "It'll be fun. I've got some clothes you can wear. Let's just not go home to empty apartments tonight."
Jane didn't say anything for a moment, then sighed, slipped her hand off my leg and said, "Oh Andy. God..." She shook her head, then stopped and looked at me again. Finally she asked, "Would we... fuck?"
Zing. Instant erection.
"Maybe. Maybe not," I said. "Your call."
"Oh Andy." She smiled. "Would you really have sex with me?"
"You kidding me?" Speechless, I simply pointed at her breasts, hoping that would answer the question.
"Oh, that's so sweet of you! You're such a good friend..." she started, then switched gears. "...oh, oh, no, wait a minute. You're just saying you'd sleep with me to make me feel better..."
"No, no, really! I would really, very much like to have sex with you!" Unfortunately, what this sentence would sound like out loud didn't occur to me until after I had said it, and we just sat there in awkward silence for a bit.
Brian eventually came back and looked at us. "Turn that frown upside down," he said drolly, sitting down.
"A toast," Jane said, lifting her glass. "To my two best friends." She looked at me.
"To Jane's work eventually hanging in MOMA," Brian said.
"To finding God," I finished, looking back at Jane.
"Here, here."

-- x --

Is it needless to say that Jane and I ended up having sex? Maybe it is; but just for the sake of clarity, let me state that Jane and I did indeed do the terrible deed.
It's funny, because we had originally decided that we weren't going to have sex. With our brains frozen and without speaking of the matter, Jane and I shared a cab from Wicker Park over to the east side of the city, where we picked up the red line train. We clickety-clacked our way up the northside, and when we got to her stop, the doors opened and then they closed and there Jane still sat and that was really all that needed to be said.
We arrived at my place and we did indeed watch Star Trek. Jane wore one of my t-shirts and a pair of boxers, and the whole thing really did take on an air of a junior-high sleepover. We sat around on my bed and laughed and played CDs and ate peanuts and talked about how we thought her show went and her career goals as an artist and our dating histories and lots of other this's and that's that one discusses at four in the morning. And eventually we drifted off to sleep in each other's arms, and it was very warm and safe and I was completely satisfied.
Now you may be with me on this or you may not, but for me personally, I find that after I've spent a stint of time sleeping by myself, I can never fully get a good night's sleep that first night that I do sleep with someone else again. It's like my body is fully conscious of a person lying next to me, even as my brain is off in its own little world, devising simple and elegant fantasies and making my eyes move very rapidly.
It's not so much that I'm asleep and then awake, asleep then awake; it's more like a constant slippery shift between the conscious and unconscious state, all night long. You'll sort of see the hazy outlines of your bedroom, you'll roll on your side, the clock will say some ungodly hour, and you'll think, 'Okay, now am I awake right now, or am I dreaming this?' But before you can even answer, you've slipped back into sleep and the question is postponed for another hour or so. Like I said, you may have experienced this turbulence of which I speak. Or you may sleep like a baby, at all times. I envy you.
So. One of these times that I 'awoke,' that is, slipped into a hazy half-consciousness, I found a very delicate, very beautiful fist wrapped around my fully-erect penis, gently tugging and stroking it. Now, if Jane or I had either been fully awake, I really don't think anything would have happened. But in this mish-mash of consciousness we were both in, I don't think I need to tell you that anything can happen, and does.
I rolled over and slipped my hand between her legs, gently rubbing her vagina through the combed cotton of the boxer shorts. Soon we had lost the shorts and were quickly engaging in t-shirt sex. I should explain that I have made up my own list of words describing sexual acts, based not on what position one may be in, but rather on the emotional state during the act, the events that lead up to the act, and the amount of effort put into the act itself.
T-shirt sex is that sex you have right at the beginning of the day, the act that begins with two half-conscious bodies rolling for each other before either is awake. It's not exactly lustful, but it's not an altogether unspiritual union of man and woman to coincide with yet another dawn breaking. It gets its name from the fact that you are both still too asleep to take all your clothes off, so you end up doing it with your t-shirts on. The top half of your two bodies is soft cotton rubbing against each other, a very homey and secure feeling, like a warm embrace. The bottom half, however, is complete nudity, and the slapping of bare skin onto bare skin, the warmth of the other's thighs, and the stickiness of body fluids is undeniably erotic. But the bottom half doesn't even seem completely real, since the only thing you can see is the clothed top half of your partner. So you consider that you might still be dreaming, and the two of you continue. All in all, an extremely pleasant way to wake up.
It is needless to say that we both fully woke up by the time we were fully into it, but by that point the slippery and unending thrust of rod into hole, finger into glove, seemed really, really, really, really really too good of a thing to stop. So, I cradled her head with my hands, Jane placed her hands onto my bottom or sometimes under my t-shirt up onto my back, we sometimes lightly kissed, sometimes closed our eyes, and we continued our silent thrusting to the point where we were both ready to start the new day. As soon as we reached that point, of course, we promptly fell back asleep.
When I awoke again, several hours later, I noticed that Jane had put her underwear back on, so I did the same. This time we were finally ready to wake up for good, and we slowly did, rolling around, playing some music, smoking cigarettes. I finally decided to get up and get the day started, but when I began to rise, Jane suddenly said, "Wait," reached over and put me in a full-body embrace. This was understandable. The strange thing about having sex with a friend is that once the event is over, you go back to this odd platonic level once again, where it's no longer appropriate to reach over and kiss them, stroke their hair, etcetera. As long as you're in the bed the morning of said event, these transgressions are still possible. Therefore, the temptation to put off the breaking of intimacy, to just let it last just a little bit longer, is great. I admit that all I also wanted to do was lie in bed with Jane all that afternoon, perhaps even have sex again, fully lucid this time. But Jane always has had more courage than me in letting her feelings be known. We lied there in bed, holding each other, rubbing our hands over each others' bodies, for another fifteen or twenty minutes, until we finally got up.
Hungover, hungry and tired, I suggested that we go down to the corner diner for some breakfast, and she agreed. We sat in a booth, smoked a lot, rubbed our eyes and yawned occasionally, talked innocuous small talk over plates of biscuits, gravy, bacon, hashbrowns. While we were talking, I privately mulled over the feat I had just pulled off. Frankly speaking, I was amazed with myself. I never do this sort of thing -- I admit that I've gotten pretty good at the flirtation part of courtship, the witty banter, the innocent and not-so-innocent sexual innuendoes that pass between two people attracted to each other. But when it comes to the actual proposition, that catalyst that moves the energy level from potential to kinetic, I am horrid. There is just some overwhelming level of fear that prevents me from moving to that next step. It is like a huge wall of some gelatin-like substance that stands between me and her, one that lets me pass if I move slowly and deliberately, but immediately repels me if I attempt to jerk too quickly through it.
This is what made my bold, drunken proposition to Jane so amazing to me. I had suddenly broken through the wall without so much as a dislocated shoulder. And what's more, she had accepted! The chances in my life of both these things happening in one night are so astronomical, it might as well have been a biblical prophecy coming true.
And that was pretty much the story of Jane and I having sex, save one postscript later that night, potentially a major one or minor one, depending on how you view it. My phone rang about midnight that night, at a time that I was again dropping in and out of a dozing state, a result of the lack of sleep from the night before. "H‡llo," I said into my receiver with a European accent, my latest means of amusing myself on the phone.
"Hi," Jane said. She had a quiet, intimate, 'lovers only' sound to her voice.
"Hey," I said, enthusiasm building in my voice.
"How's it going?"
"Pretty good. Did you get any sleep today?"
"Yeah," she said. "As soon as I got home I kinda collapsed."
"Yeah," I said, laughing. "Me too. I caught another three hours this afternoon."
We sat in silence for a moment, when Jane said, "Andy."
"Yeah?"
"I just wanna..." A pause. "I just wanna make sure I've got everything straight. We..." Another pause. "We did have sex this morning, right?"
"Uh... yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
"Okay. That's what I thought." A pause. "Well." A long pause. "Well, I'll let you get to sleep..."
"Jane," I quickly said.
"Mm-hmm?"
Now it was my turn to pause. Finally I laughed quietly and said, "This sure is weird, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I heard her say, a sigh of relief apparent in her voice.
"Look, I know I'm probably setting myself up for a fall here, you know, I'm kinda nervous about telling you this, but... for the sake of clearing the air, let me just say that I'm glad you came over. I had a good time."
"Oh thank God, Andy." Jane's neurotic ease was back with full force. "Jeezis, I've been sitting in my apartment all day wondering if you had just invited me over 'cause you had been drunk and then you woke up sober and regretted ever doing it..."
I laughed. "That's funny. I was thinking the same thing about you." I paused. "You know, Jane, there was a certain point in my life when I couldn't have this discussion. I'm glad I'm becoming a grown-up."
"Yeah," she said, "but if we were really grown-ups, there'd probably be no reason to even be having this discussion." I had no response to this because, frankly, she was right, and we sat for about five seconds in silence. Finally Jane continued, "You wanna go shopping with me next week?"
"Shopping shopping or secret shopping?"
"Secret shopping."
"Yeah, okay."
More pause, and then from Jane, "My thinking is that we probably shouldn't mention any of this to Brian."
"Um... yeah. That's probably for the best."
"Well... okay. Good night."
"Good night."
"Andy."
"Yeah."
"I had a good time too."
I smiled. "Thanks."
"Later."
"Bye."
And that, as they say, was that.

-- x --

Kismet was to remain my constant companion that week, in that I ran in to Karen again before I was even able to begin my coffeehouse stakeout. We encountered each other on the el the next Wednesday. Usually this would be cause for celebration -- I absolutely love having conversations on the el. There are so few American cities that have an effective light rail system -- New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, although there must be more, right? The el was a big selling point when I was deciding where to move after college. There's just something so sophisticated and so urban about riding around a city on a train, and never mind that the el is old and rickety and makes a really loud noise when it rumbles down the track --- that just adds to its mystique. As a result, I tend to be at my best on the el -- I am charming, urbane, a great wit and quite intellectual.
Unfortunately, the night I ran into Karen on the train was during an evening rush hour, which is one of the not-so-nice things about rapid transit. If you have never lived in a really large city before, like me before Chicago, it's difficult to appreciate the full implications of a term like "pedestrian traffic jam." But, believe me, in a place like Chicago, it is very real, in a way more real than the "automobile traffic jams" that I'm sure exist, but are nothing more than theoretical to those of us who don't live in the suburbs.
If you ever want to test your fledgling theory about being phobic about crowds, might I suggest getting on an el at 5:10 pm on any weekday? It is theorized that approximately four million people work in the greater downtown Chicago area each day, and about ninety percent of them try to get home at the same time, between 5:00 and 5:30 pm. You can throw any idea about "personal space bubbles" out the window -- you're lucky if you get a two minute gap during the entire affair when your whole body isn't being rubbed up against another. It would be a highly-charged, erotic experience, if not for the fact that these are not the type of people you ever really envisioned yourself rubbing against in your freetime. Pissed-off middle-aged executives; tired Hispanic housewives; umbrellas poking you in the ribs; dog-eared Wall Street Journal pages flirting with your eyelashes; a dozen fists wrapping themselves around a metal pole inside the train car for support, like that childhood game of fisting your way up a baseball bat to see who goes first.
Again, this wouldn't have been a bad thing at all with concerns to Karen, if not for the fact that she was on the opposite side of the train, so far away that I couldn't have possibly gotten within shouting range of her. My entire being just slumped when I randomly spied her over by the other exit doors. I was now sentient of her awareness. She was not sentient of mine. Great. This was just... great.
I committed a totally irrational and rather silly act, which was to stare at her and attempt to psychically signal to her that I was on board. "Over here," I thought, trying to send the statement out like a laser beam to where she stood. "Right over here. I'm right over here."
I'm not going to be so foolish as to say that my little experiment in projection worked, but in any case Karen did eventually look around at her surroundings and we made eye contact. The recognition was immediate, and she smiled, waved and mouthed a "hi" at me.
"Hi," I mouthed back, then held my hands up like an unfolding book. "My book," I mouthed.
She looked confused, so I ran my finger over my other palm, acting like I was scanning text. "BOOK," I mouthed with exaggerated simplicity.
I saw her lips form an exaggerated "Oh," then she rolled her eyes and nodded her head 'yes.' She made a sign like she was holding a phone to her ear, pointed at herself, then looked at me questioningly.
Call her? "Phone..." I signed, then "You?"
"Yes," she mouthed, then held up an "OK" sign. The doors opened at Fullerton and she stepped off.
Wait. No, oh no, wait, Karen, I don't have your phone number! God! I was going to kill this woman! She went walking by my position and I reached out and banged on the Plexiglas. I held the "phone" up to my ear, shrugged my shoulders and starting punching buttons like crazy.
I got to see her mouth the word 'shit' before the train started slowly pulling out of the station. She started walking alongside me, furiously flashing numbers at me with her fingers. Six... eight... oh... three... seven... six... and then she was gone.
680-376. Six what? Jeezis. This girl was going to be the death of me yet.

-- x --

680-3761.
"Hello?"
"Hi. Could I talk to Karen?"
"Sorry. You must have the wrong number."
"Oh. Sorry." Click.
680-3762.
"Hi. You've reached Tom's pager. Please leave a..." Click.
680-3763.
"Yeah."
"Hi, could I talk to Karen?"
"Who?"
"Karen."
"Who is this, man!"
"I... uh..."
"Shit, there ain't no Karen here!"
"Sorry." Click.
680-3764.
"Hello?"
"Hi, could I talk to Karen?"
"Sure. Just a second."
Pause.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Karen. It's Andy."
Pause. "Hi. How's it going?"
"Fine, fine. Sorry about the mix-up on the el..."
"Who is this?"
"Andy. You have my book. We just ran into each other..."
"I'm... sorry. I think you have the wrong Karen."
"Oh... sorry." A laugh from me. "Well, it was nice talking to you."
A laugh from her. "Good luck." Click.
680-3765.
A female voice. "Hi. You've reached 680-3765. We're not home right now. Please leave a message and we'll get back to you." Beep.
"Um... hi. My name is Andy. I'm trying to reach a woman named Karen who has one of my books. I, uh, only got the first six digits of her phone number, so I'm going down the list of ten possible numbers and trying to track her down. Uh, if this is Karen's number, please call me back at 271-7490. And if this isn't Karen, then... um, sorry. Ha-ha. Boy, I feel a little stupid. Uh, bye." Click.
680-3766.
"H—la."
Click.
680-3767.
"Hello."
"Hi, could I speak to Karen?"
"Speaking."
"Is this the Karen that I knocked over on Chicago Avenue last week?"
A laugh. "Andy."
Thank God. "Thank God," I said. "This is the seventh number I tried."
"I'm so sorry. I'm completely spaced-out these days."
"That's okay."
"I'm really sorry I disappeared Friday. Something came up and I literally had to run out of the gallery. I noticed that you were friends with the artist, so I was going to track you down that way..."
"Well... no blood, no foul, right? What brought you to the gallery, anyway?"
"Oh, I don't know. I like stopping in galleries on Friday nights. A way to unwind. It's better than sitting around a happy hour, getting drunk with a bunch of depressed corporates, right?"
I laughed. "That's for sure."
"So... how are you?"
"Fine, just fine. How have you been?"
A pause. "Things could be better, but... okay. Yeah, I guess things are okay."
Pause. "So, what took you away from the gallery Friday?"
"Personal business." Silence.
"Oh. Okay."
Silence.
"So," I started, "when would be a good time to get my book?"
"Oh, right. Well... I could bring it with me to work this week. I work at Coffee Chicago at North and Wells. You know where that is?"
"Yeah."
"I work... wait..." A shuffling of papers. "I work Friday, noon to eight. Can you stop by then?"
"Sure. I'll come by after work, about 5:30, okay?"
"Okay."
Gusto, Andy, gusto. "Um, I'm going to some galleries again this Friday. Would you like to... come with me? After work?"
"Well... actually, I'm really busy these days..."
"Ohokaythat'sfine..."
"But maybe. I just can't promise anything."
"Yeah, well, that's fine. If you're busy it's no big deal..."
Silence.
"So," she said, "you edit articles for a medical journal, huh?"
"Yeah, the American Dental Association."
"Oh, isn't that that building down by the MCA with the really scary-looking sculpture?"
I laughed. "Yeah, that's the one. That sculpture's a big inside joke there. It was supposed to be a big, loving, early-'60s contemporary thing, but time hasn't been too kind for its interpretation, has it?"
"Well, it's supposed to be a husband and wife bending over and protecting their child, right?"
"Yeah."
"Shit. Well, everytime I walk by that thing, it just looks like two vultures to me, swooping in for the kill."
I laughed.
"Although," she said, "that metaphor's not quite right, I guess. Vultures feast on the already-dead, don't they?"
"Don't vultures also attack the sick and wounded?"
"Yeah. Um. I don't know, actually. But would vultures attack the sick? Wouldn't they then get sick themselves?"
"Maybe they don't know any better."
"Yeah, but instinct..."
"Yeah, that's true. But what kind of sick are we talking about? If a vulture eats a gazelle with the flu, does the vulture then get the flu?"
Karen laughed slightly. "No, I was thinking more like if a gazelle had worms or parasites, wouldn't the vulture get the worms and die too?"
"Oh, yeah. I didn't think of that."
A pause, and then from Karen. "Listen to us."
I paused, then laughed. "How did we get on this subject?"
"I don't know. It's nice." I heard her switch her receiver to her other ear. "Not the subject matter, just these random, tenuous connections to subject changes." She paused. "Everything in my life is so weighty these days. It's nice to be sitting here, having a silly little conversation with you."
"Well, thanks," I said in a voice of exaggerated offensiveness.
She laughed. "You know what I mean." She paused. "However, I do have to leave now."
"Oh. Okay."
"Well, I'll see you Friday, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay. Hey, Karen."
"Yeah?"
"Whatever it is, don't let it get the better of you. Nothing's worth letting it take over your life."
I swear I could hear her smile over the phone. "You very well might be right. I'll see you later."
"All right. Bye."
Click.

-- x --

There is a certain term in literature that my friend Greg once told me about at a party. It's called dysphasia, and it's the term for the phenomenon by which you repeatedly write the same word down, over and over, or say the same word out loud, over and over, so many times in a row that eventually the word loses all meaning to you. It becomes a strange, arcane mass of penstrokes or guttural phrases to your eyes or ears, to the point that it ceases to even b e recognized by your brain as English anymore.
Greg was telling me that dysphasia is being used as a cornerstone of a whole new theory about learning. He says that certain scientists are now theorizing that the human mind can repeat things to itself so much, so intensely, that it actually makes itself forget things. It's not just a simple matter of scrambling your brains, like had been thought -- these people say that too much rote memorization will actually, physically make you temporarily forget information you just knew, for a period of five to fifteen seconds. It's an infinitely interesting subject to me. I think about dysphasia a lot.

VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE VULTURE
"You slept with her?!"
Sorry, Jane.
"Wait, wait wait," Brian said, picking up his beer. "Did you sleep with her, or did you... sleep with her?" I just looked at him and raised my eyebrows, and Brian let loose with a loud "OOHHH!" He jumped up. "I can't believe this! I can't BELIEVE THIS! You... slept... with the unconquerable Jane Adalein!" He just looked at me for a moment, big smile on his face, then came over, took my hand in between the two of his, pumped my arm gloriously and exclaimed, "My hero! My HERO!"
"Stop, stop. God, Brian, I wish I never told you..."
"Was there ever any doubt that you would eventually tell me?"
"Well, yeah. I told Jane I wouldn't tell you..."
"What?" Brian stopped. "Why wouldn't Jane want me to know?"
"Well, you know... our friendship... it's kinda on a circular level. I think she was afraid that this information would sorta tip the balance of power..."
"Well, of course it does!" Brian came and sat on the couch with me. "But for the better, Andy! For the better!" He laughed out loud, and then said, "So... how was it?"
"Oh God..."
"No no no, you cannot just spring this information on me and the omit the details. Come on, spill."
I sighed and relayed the plotline to him, editing out all the emotions, feelings and the like. Hey, we're two heterosexual men -- storyline is all we're looking for in tales of sex. I'm not saying that we're insensitive brutes -- it's just that there is a certain line that male friends simply do not cross over in their friendship, certain things that are best saved for lovers, females, and gay male friends.
"Wow," he said, "I just can-not believe it."
"Are we okay with this?" I asked nervously.
"Oh, hell yeah. Well... it's no secret that I'd love to sleep with Jane. But if I can't, there's no one else in the world I'd like to see get the privilege than you."
I just shook my head and said, "Well, of course."
"So wait a minute. So, on top of all this, you also have a date with eff-one Friday night?"
"Not a date," I said, holding up my hands. "Just getting my book back."
"But then you guys are going out."
"Maybe. Extremely tenuous maybe."
"What's her deal, anyway? Karen, right?"
"Yeah, Karen. I don't know. She says weighty things are happening in her life, but she acts like she doesn't want to talk about them."
"You think she likes you?"
I just shrugged. "We had the strangest phone conversation. It was like she didn't want to talk to me, but did anyway, just because... well, I don't know."
"Hmm." Brian wiggled his foot. "So how does this affect you and Jane?"
"Affect what? There is no me and Jane."
"Oh Andy." Brian stared, then repeated, "Oh Andy!"
"What! It was a one-time event. A pay-per-view special. I have good money that says it'll never happen again."
"How can you dismiss Jane like that?"
"Dismiss her?" I cried. "There's nothing in the world I'd love more than to date Jane! You think there's a chance in hell Jane wants to date me? Come on. If you were Jane, would you wanna date me?"
Brian looked at me for a moment, then laughed. "Hell no. I guess you're right."
"Exactly." I looked out into space. "I know I'm right." I sighed. "Wish I wasn't, but..." I shrugged. "You know."
"Yeah, I know." Brian clapped my shoulder. "Yeah. I know all right."

-- x --

Ring, ring, ring went my phone. "Hello?"
"Hi. Is this... Andy?"
"Yes."
"Hi. You don't know me. I'm Mary. I'm 680-3765."
"I'm sorry. I'm not following."
"You left a message on our machine the other night. You were looking for a girl named Karen..."
"Ooh, ooh yes. I remember. I found her. 3767."
"Oh, good. That's what I was calling about. My roommate and I got home late that night, and we were just so tickled by your message. You sounded so sweet and lost. We were just curious about whether you succeeded."
"Yeah. Perseverance paid off."
"How was it that you only got six digits of her phone number, anyway?"
"Oh, it's a long story," I said, then proceeded to tell her.
"Well yay for you. Jeez, this is exciting! Nothing exciting like this ever happens to me."
"Well..." I had no response to this.
"Well," Mary said, "don't wanna barge in anymore. I was just curious."
"Um..." I paused. "Thanks for calling?"
"Thanks for telling! I'll see you later."
"Yeah, uh, okay. Bye."
"Bye." Click.
Random happenings in a random town.

-- x --

There are approximately six point four million citizens of the grand city of Chicago right now, 1997. Of these, it is fairly safe to assume that about half of them are females. Or conversely, if you're a woman, you could say that about half of them are males. Tomato, tomahto.
You literally cannot get away from human beings in Chicago. They are there, in droves, no matter where you go. Why, on a typical, normal day, I probably have chance encounters with a hundred new people who I have never seen before, many of them beautiful women. It is this way for everyone I know. So, the question begs to asked: How is it that neither I nor almost any of my friends can seem to get into a relationship? How is it that neither I nor almost any of my friends can seem to get laid more than about once a year? In a city of three point two million potential mates, why has our rallying cry become "Why can't I ever meet anyone?"
This very question has become the focus of obsessive discussion amongst my circle of friends, and indeed, is one of the three subject matters you can bring up in Chicago and instantly be guaranteed a conversation (the other two, of course, being the weather and Richard Daley). The answer is a varied and complex one, but here are some of the details we've been able to hammer out.
First, the very nature of sex has changed for us. Gone are the happy days of our late teens and early twenties, where the only justification you needed to sleep with someone was that "Well, they'll sleep with me!" The salad days, I like to think of it.
Unfortunately, the salad days occurred before the horrendous break-ups; before the times where it took you months, if not years, to get over someone; before the almost-moving-in-togethers and almost-taking-a-vacation-togethers and almost-marryings that always collapsed upon themselves into mountains of flame that could be seen miles away.
I don't want to presume to speak everything for my friends, so I'll switch to the singular first person here. For me, personally, I have gone through way too many of these experiences between my salad days and now to want to rush into it again. A few hours of sweat, muscle pulls and exchange of fluids no longer seems worth it if the partner in question turns out to be psychotic, or neurotic, or finishing grad school in two months to move to Texas, or has questions about whether they seriously want to be dating men versus women, or owns cats that they love more than humans, or can't stand the type of music I love, or is dead-set to living in Lincoln Park, or any one of a thousand, ten thousand, one million things that can make a relationship fail. Especially when I consider the relative ease and non-committal nature of masturbation.
As a result, I am on a constant search for a 'perfect' mate, a person who lacks any of the thousand most glaring signs of relationship trouble. My mate must pass a rigid set of criteria I have designed in my head before I can even consider a relationship with them. Because -- let's admit it -- the end of a relationship hurts. It hurts very badly -- probably the worst and most intense pain that I experience on a semi-regular basis.
So.
Second. If I am on the lookout for the perfect mate, you can bet that everyone else out there is on a similar quest. And now, a riddle. Question: What is the one thing harder than finding a person who meets your impossibly-detailed list of criteria? Answer: Finally finding that person and then simultaneously meeting all of their impossibly-detailed criteria, all in the span of time between being introduced and exchanging phone numbers before parting ways. Whew.
When my friends and I wail, "Why can't I ever meet anyone?", what we are really asking is, "Why can't I ever meet anyone who I consider perfect, and who will consider me perfect, and who I can immediately start dating without ever having a fight or a conflict and we live happily-ever-after-amen?"
I am told that it is not this way among all societal sets of my generation, although I find it a bit hard to believe. I am told that there are entire groups of young people who enact the process of finding a mate much the same way as my grandparents' generation did it: they go out, they find someone they are reasonably attracted to, who seems reasonably nice and reasonably free of mentally-unstable traits, and they just jump in. They go out and get married, or impregnate their mate, or have their mate impregnate them and they put faith in the idea that they will eventually grow to deeply love this other person and to forgive them their transgressions. I am told that one of three eventual fates await these couples, much like my grandparents -- one, they do indeed grow to deeply love each other. Two, they find that the experiment failed, they get a divorce that has the potential to be quick and painless or the most godawful mess they've ever experienced, and then they are ready to repeat the whole process. Or three, the experiment still fails, but for one reason or another -- fear, loyalty, ennui -- they decide to stay together and lead lives of misery and hatred and illicit affairs in cheap motel rooms that get turned into television movies-of-the-week starring one or more of the cast members of the immensely popular show "Melrose Place." Sometimes I am jealous of this theoretical group of people, although I state again that I find it a bit hard to believe that they exist.
Unfortunately, the option of "jumping in" is not available to me and my circle of friends. Ours is the world of self-perfectionism and nearly lethal overanalysis. Ours is the world of happy childhoods, where we were told so many times in our formative years that "we can attain anything we set our minds to," that we have become foolish enough to believe it. Or, ours is the world of traumatic childhoods, environments of such pain and misery that we have been taught that "the only person in life we can trust is ourselves," which again, we are foolish enough to believe. Ours is the world where personal happiness, personal empowerment and personal success has been raised to such a high, holy level, that it is simply gauche to entertain such a concept as "compromise for the sake of the one you love."
However... and this is a big however. We are still human beings, and our drive to procreate is a built-in, biological one. Think about it -- if your body didn't make sex and intimacy the greatest living thing you could possibly do, would you ever go through all the hassle that you currently go through to have it? If we weren't built with this instinctual desire to fuck, the entire human race would die out in a matter of a generation (oh, but what a peaceful, stress-free thirty years it would be!)
My circle of friends and I are no exception. Even as we spend a year forsaking all potential mates and watching them forsake us, we still grow crazy from the physical lack of intimacy in our lives. As a result, we do foolish things; we commit simple errors. We ask out complete strangers. We drunkenly sleep with our best friends. We relentlessly pursue women that heretofore haven't given the slightest indication that they are interested in us.
I would ask for your forgiveness, but I am positive that you are guilty of the same mistakes. Maybe we should all agree to a societal "mutual fault," like Karen and I did at the art gallery. Or perhaps I am totally off-base -- perhaps my friends and I are the only ones out there having difficulties finding relationships. Perhaps it's because we're all nerds and we are all difficult to love.
How does Karen fit into all this? I'm not quite sure -- I knew that Karen was beautiful and that she intrigued me and that everything she did or said opened up yet another mystery to me, which I find hopelessly attractive. How it might pan out was an unknown to me. How does Jane fit into all this? No mystery there -- I believe that Jane is a goddess, and it was a privilege and an honor to share the intimate, secret curve of her inner thighs for one night of my life. But, Jane being a goddess and all, I was sure that that was where it ended. I had been able to help Jane celebrate the success of her show, and that was all she had desired form me. That's okay -- I perfectly understand. It doesn't hurt my feelings. Besides, Jane's not perfect. She's more than okay, but there would be problems if we tried to date, I'm sure. And again, I mention that I was positive that Jane had no desire to date, so the entire question was moot.
Oh, but I seem to be constantly forgetting, aren't I, that I am trying to tell a story here. I keep slipping into these rather uninteresting bits of self-examination and monologue, when what I am trying to convey is a passing in time, a series of events that happened to me. Well, I'll try to get back on track.
You obviously know that Karen and I did end up spending a lot of time together -- I mentioned that at the very beginning of my story. Well, this so far has been the story of the first seven days. The week was filled with random and exciting events, so many that I have felt compelled to retell them to you. Believe me, it doesn't hold a candle to the second week.















MARCH 1997

S M T W R F S

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31



5:17 pm. And all is not exactly well.
"Excuse me," I said to the boy with the scraggly goatee and perfect hair. "Is... Karen here?"
"Uh..." The boy looked around. "No." He looked around again. "Uh, she was here. Where is she?" He walked into the back room. "Karen?" I heard him call. "Karen?" He came back out and shrugged. "She's gone."
Fan-fuckin-tastic.
"Hey." The boy touched the shoulder of another coworker, a tall, spectacularly beautiful woman with skin so incredibly dark that you actually could call her Ôblack' without feeling guilty.
"Where's Karen?" the boy said.
"She's at the bank," the girl said, not stopping her busy routine of frothing and frothing. "She'll be back in ten."
"She'll be back in ten," the boy said to me with a big smile on his face, apparently relieved that the confusion in his life was over and that things were now back to normal.
"Well..." I paused. "Well, I guess I'll have a cup of coffee."
I took my mugful of perfectly plain, perfectly simple black house coffee (of which I have an irrationally fierce pride about, go figure), slinked back to the smoking section, pulled out my pack, pulled out my lighter, pulled out my book (Life After God, Douglas Coupland), sat back and mulled for a bit.
Is it pointless by now, 1997, to spend time musing on the details of coffee, coffeehouse culture and its tribal impact on contemporary American life? Well, of course it is. Instead, I will muse on why it is pointless to muse on coffee -- the reason being the one particular thing in American society that perhaps makes me angrier than any other subject. And that would be:

THE CO-OPTING OF MY LIFESTYLE BY THE MASS MEDIA FOR FUN AND PROFIT.

There exists in American history two very distinct ways for society to interact with the artistic underground. These come in competing waves which usually last from five to ten years, which slowly metamorphs into the other wave as the tide of public mood slowly switches from conservative to liberal and back to conservative and back to liberal. It's not just the arts that are affected -- this shift in societal mindset affects everything, from the clothes we wear to who we elect as President. But the person currently in the White House has nothing to do with my anger over coffeehouses, so I'll go back to the arts.
There are times in American history where the underground is truly the underground, and the people who are aboveground want nothing to do with it. They are busy with their aboveground activities and making money and raising families and blah blah blah, and an entire culture begins to spring forth, lurking in the shadows and diligently creating for no recognition nor reward.
Then... there are times in American history where everyone wants to be in the underground. Our entire society goes through a period of questioning in their lives. Turmoil erupts in the country, politically, socially, physically. People are desperate to be on the cutting edge, while at the same time lacking any of the mindset, attitude, or priorities that make the cutting-edge people cutting-edge to being with. To paraphrase our dear friend Mr. Coupland -- "Their hair is still long, but boy does it smell fantastic."
Scheisters can smell an opportunity here. When the idle, lazy, uneducated, lots-of-spendable-income middle class decide suddenly that they want to be "with it," they start spending some serious money. And let me tell you, sister, they won't stop spending it until they've finally achieved that elusive Ôunderground' status they were seeking, until they finish their quest, they answer all the questions in their life and calmness spreads across the nation. Then they are happy and satiated, they put a Republican in the White House, and the whole process starts all over again.
So where do the scheisters go when they need a Ôstarting point,' a truly underground culture which they can then reconstruct, iconisize, and Disneyfy? Easy answer, really. They go to my friends.

THE CO-OPTING OF MY LIFESTYLE BY THE MASS MEDIA FOR FUN AND PROFIT.

There's a small possibility that you are hearing my story sometime in the future, perhaps so far in the future that the 1990's are a quaint footnote in history. Perhaps the Ô90s are to you what the 1950's are to me -- the land of black-and-white television, Leave It To Beaver, bomb shelters, flat-tops, and Jack Kerouac. And... hmm, well, that's about it.
Now obviously, I don't have the ability to predict which icons of my current mass media will survive into your world. I don't know which will click and thrive, and which will fall by the wayside. A small quiz:

SEINFELD
E.R.
THE SIMPSONS
NYPD BLUE
FRIENDS
THE SINGLE GUY
SUDDENLY SUSAN
ROSEANNE
THE X-FILES
THE DREW CAREY SHOW

These were the ten most popular television shows for the time period I'm writing of -- March, 1997. Now, the quiz: You are hearing my story in March, 2017 -- twenty years later. Which of these ten shows have you even heard of? Which of these ten shows are beloved by you, that you watch as a re-run at two in the morning and laugh not only at the jokes, but also at the general cheesiness, simplicity, and datedness of it all?
We like to think that the best of our generation will survive and thrive and move on to become our mark in history, the artifact which will define our entire generation to another. But, really, if you grew up in the Ô70s, how happy can you be that The Brady Bunch has become your cultural icon? How do I know that all ten of these shows I mention are now completely forgotten, and that my society, my youth of the Ô90s is now represented by one of those sappy, inane Friday night family sitcoms with the adorable children and the sugar-sweetness that makes you want to throw up? Culture is a fleeting thing, no matter what anyone says. Conventional wisdom tells us that we have reached an age of such obsessive data gathering that it will be physically impossible for future Americans to forget the past... our past. But this simply isn't true. The same week that Leave It To Beaver was the number ten most popular show in the United States, there were nine other shows more popular. I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them. There were many more Beat writers than the five or six that immediately come to mind. They got published. They had fans. Who are they? Who knows?
But, as always, I have strayed far, far away from my point, which is that I just wanted to give you a sprinkling of what our pop culture was like in the mid-1990's. When I stop and think about it, I truly am amazed. Listen:
The underground is almost at a point of saturation. The members of the number one band in the country have pink hair, rings in their noses and tattoos on their necks. Number one -- as in, millions of fourteen year old girls adore them. Kids on farms have ritual scars and ride skateboards. A drag queen has his own talk show. Pornographic models are television stars and game show hosts. Criminals have their own TV show. Really! It consists of nothing but videotape of criminals being apprehended and arrested. Real criminals! They get paid hundreds of dollars for giving their permission to have their face shown!
It's suddenly become cool to be a nerd. Computer geeks are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to basically replicate what they were doing in their parents' basement when they were seventeen and couldn't get a date to save their lives. Creators of fantasy-oriented role playing games are multi-millionaires. Bill Gates owns his own television station, for Chrissakes.
And coffeehouses. God, the coffeehouses. A couple of years ago, some boob in Seattle got a bright idea -- "Hey, the kids seem to like hanging out at salons. They seem to like loitering and drinking coffee and discussing the weighty issues of the day. Say... wait a minute. I could bring a salon to every town in America and make millions!" Except... except. Except he insisted that they all be non-smoking. Except that loitering is discouraged. Except all his places are clean and well-lit and the employees wear nametags. Except why get a crappy cup of coffee when you can spend four bucks and get something with chocolate and cinnamon and nutmeg and whipped milk and ice and yum yum? The salon has been Disneyfied, which of course sits with the middle-class just fine -- now they too can be cutting-edge.
Now, I like going to coffeehouses, always have. I like going and loitering and smoking a lot of cigarettes and talking with my friends. But can I even admit to liking it anymore? No, of course not. My original behavior has been co-opted by the mass media and exploited so thoroughly that is now clichŽ for me to partake in the original behavior that made it clichŽ in the first place. "Coffeehouses? Please. That's so... passŽ." And they wonder why I'm so anxious for a Republican to get back in the White House.
Think about this one for a moment -- the number one, two, and three most popular television shows in the country right now -- literally -- are about groups of cynical young friends who hang around coffeehouses, whine about their jobs and never get laid. Talk about co-opting my lifestyle! Now, does this mean that my entire existence is rapidly becoming passŽ, all in a matter of...
"Earth to Andy?"
I looked up quickly. Karen. "Oh... hi."
"You okay?"
"Mmm... yeah. Sorry. Off in my own little world."
"Ah. Well." She put two books on my table. "Here you go."
I looked. One was my copy of N.P. The other was Geek Love, a reportedly great book by Katherine Dunn that, amazingly enough, I had yet to read. I picked it up. "What's this?" I asked.
"It's a gift," she said, "for being so patient with me."
I smiled and pushed the book towards her. "Really, I couldn't accept this..."
"Yes you can. I bought it used. And it would make me feel much better."
"Well..." I shrugged, blushed slightly. "Well, okay. Thanks."
"Sure."
"So..." I said, pausing. "Did you find out if you were free tonight?"
Karen looked at her watch. "Um, yeah, sure, I guess. Just for a little bit, until about ten o'clock, and then I'm busy again."
"Okay."
"Some galleries, you said?"
"Yeah."
"Well. Why don't you meet me back here about eight, and I'll be ready to go."
"Um, okay. Bye."
"Bye."

-- x --

Some more writing from Karen, this time on the inside of Geek Love:

THIS BOOK PRESENTED IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE UNPLEASANT INITIAL MEETING OF ANDY AND KAREN, MARCH 6, 1997. HOPEFULLY CIRCUMSTANCES WILL BECOME MORE PLEASANT WITH THE PASSING OF TIME. THEY USUALLY DO, DON'T THEY?

KAREN.

Hmm.

-- x --

"Well," Karen said, walking down the sidewalk. "That was fun."
"Um... yeah. I guess." I had picked wrong, very wrong -- we had ended up at a pretty stuffy gallery with a lot of really pretentious patrons and not very good work and bottles of spring water being served instead of wine. "Actually..." I continued, "I... didn't think the show... was all that great."
"Really?" Karen glanced at me, then looked at the sidewalk and smiled to herself as we continued walking. "Neither did I." She grabbed my elbow. "What about that one guy?" she said. "That big fat bald guy that kept going on and on about how involved he was in the scene in the early Ô60s?"
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. The crowd really wasn't my cup of tea."
"It was like they were all there to be seen by everyone else. Nobody was even looking at the pieces."
"Did you notice that too?" I turned to her. "Were we stuck in an episode of The Twilight Zone or what?"
"It was like a television-movie version of an art gallery, I swear," Karen said, also excited now. "It was like... like we had stumbled into a Danielle Steele novel or something!"
We both laughed and Karen went back to walking, so I followed. "It's good to go out sometimes and spend an evening with someone you don't know," she said. "It can be very refreshing."
"I agree."
"Well." Karen stopped in front of a stairway leading down into the earth. "This is me."
"Oh." I paused. "Well..."
"I had a good time tonight," she said, "despite the... well, you know..." She laughed. "It actually made the whole thing more fun."
"I'm glad," I said. "Say, Karen, anyway, what are you doing now?"
"Oh, I'm... uh, I'm going to this thing. Over in my neighborhood."
"Is it invitation only? Or could... I go?"
"Oh..." Karen stopped talking, looked out into space for a moment. "Well, yeah, sure, I guess you could go. But I really don't think you'd enjoy it much..."
"Why? What is it?"
"Well..." She looked me in the eyes. "Actually... church. I'm going to church."
"Oh."
"Does that bother you?"
"Uh... no, no. Church. Hmm. Actually, it's kinda cool."
"No it's not."
"Well, it's just..." I was at a loss for words, but I didn't want to seem it. "It's just... just... well, it's unusual, that's all." I paused. "Church, huh? Boy, I didn't expect you to say that..."
"Okay," she said, starting to take the stairs. "Well, I'll see you later..."
"Wait," I said. "Am I still invited?"
"Hmm?" She turned back to me. "Well, if you really wanna go..."
"Well," I shrugged, then prepared to go into The Big Lie. "You know, all my friends are out already doing their thing. Really... I didn't have any plans after this. I was just going to go home. So... um, sure. Yeah, I'd like to go."
"Well..." Karen got a look of confused satisfaction on her face. "Well then. Let's get going."

-- x --

We ended up at a building near Division and Ashland, a place that looked like a storefront except with heavy curtains hanging over the windows.
"Do you speak Spanish?" Karen said, opening the door.
"Uh... no. Why?" But as soon as I walked in the door, I figured the answer out myself. Thirty dark, Latino heads all turned to us at once. Oh. Oh wow.
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)" said one large older woman in the corner, and then several middle-aged women came at Karen, hugging and kissing her and all talking at once. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)"
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)" Karen said, hugging back. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)"
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)" one of the women said.
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)," Karen said.
The women all looked troubled, and one took Karen's hand. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)?" the woman asked.
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)," Karen said, smiling at her. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)..." She smiled and lifted her voice, "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)!"
The women all laughed and clapped hands. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)!"
I couldn't follow a single word of this, so I just stood there, my arms folded across my chest, feeling a little stupid. Karen saw me and gestured. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)."
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)?"
"No, no," Karen laughed. "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)."
"Andy," one of the women said, smiling and taking my hand. "It is... good... to join us," she said in broken English.
I smiled and shook her hand, laughing nervously. I whispered to Karen, "Am I being converted?"
Karen laughed and put her hand on the woman's shoulder. "Visit, se–ora. No join. Visit."
"Ah." The woman laughed. "It is good... to visit us."
"Gracias," I said.
The women all laughed. "Karen," they said, "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)?"
"(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)," she said, taking my hand and leading me to a seat. Once we had sat down, Karen leaned in close to me and whispered into my ear, "Sorry. I should've warned you about this upfront."
"Uh..." I paused, then I laughed. "Well, it's a lot of stimuli to digest at once."
"We're not expected to participate, so don't worry about any of that." She took my hand again and talked even more quietly. "Look, really, are you okay with this? It's just sinking in now what I've done to you. If you wanna book you're not gonna offend me."
"Oh... no," I said, shrugging, flexing my fingers around hers. "Any new experience is a good one, right? No, it's fine." In truth, I was scared fairly shitless, but do you think I'm going to say this to Karen? Every minute with this woman was opening another mystery, and I was starting to hopelessly fall for it, and fall for her. You think I'm going anywhere?
The room was small, very small, and was lit on all four sides via hundreds of candles placed in long rows. Up in the front was a small pulpit covered with bongos and tambourines and other noisemakers, which were soon being taken up by a bevy of men. Finally a man wearing robes stood up in front of the crowd and said, "(SPANISH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)." And that's when all hell broke loose.
I can honestly say that I have never been to a church service that even remotely resembled this one. There was no sermon or preaching that I could detect; no church bulletin, no offering plate. As far as I could tell, the service consisted of nothing but drumming. Lots of drumming. And singing. And chanting. And... dancing. Lots... of dancing.
Now, I think I'm secure enough in my own maturity and in touch enough with my xenophobia to be able to honestly make this next statement and have you know that it reflects simply my physical shock and not any racial prejudice: I FREAKED OUT when the dancing started. I just wasn't prepared for it. The drums had been going at full-speed for ten or fifteen minutes, and I had just started getting into it, leaning back and enjoying the tribal spirit of it all and reflecting how little exposure I had gotten to stuff like this by being raised in a white, middle-class suburb and thinking how great it was that I was now old enough and mature enough be able to appreciate it, when all of a sudden the woman next to me screamed, "Madre de Dios!" at the top of her lungs, jumped out of her chair and started writhing in the aisle.
"My God!" I yelled, and looked around me. "Is this..." I started to say to Karen, then stopped. "Is she okay?"
"She's fine, Andy. She's fine."
"What the hell is she doing? Is she speaking in tongues?"
Karen rolled her eyes. "No. She's just worshiping. It's how they do it. It's their version of singing hymns." Sure enough, as Karen was telling me this, other people were standing, and soon there were a good dozen in the aisle, jumping and waving their hands in the air and shouting terse Spanish phrases to the heavens.
"It really is a fascinating story, the history of..." Karen started to say to me, leaning in and grabbing hold of my arm. As soon as she made contact, however, she stopped. "Andy," she said. "Andy, your muscles are all locked up!"
"I..."
She reached in between me and the back of my chair with the flat of her hand, running it up and down my spine. "You're as tense as a wound-up coil, Andy. You gotta calm down."
"I... just... just... oh shit..." I was freaking out. The smallness of the room and the heat of the candles and the noise of the drums and the energy of the dancers just all hit me at once, in a very overwhelming way. I started hyperventilating, which gave me a sort of mini-out-of-body experience. Suddenly I was in a meeting hall in Brazil or Honduras, a place with no electricity and no air conditioning, a place haunted by spirits and held up by a religious devotion that has lasted hundreds and hundreds of years. Suddenly I was surrounded by the natives, possessed by the ghosts of their dead relatives, grieving and celebrating their lives simultaneously. And I was the expatriate, the interloper, the dirty pale monster come to conquer their world. I was trapped.
"Andy," I heard a voice call to me. "Andy, slow down. Breathe... slowly. You're hyperventilating." I turned to look at Karen, but the sudden onslaught of extra oxygen made everything too bright and made the image of Karen sparkle in my eyes.
"They're just dancing," Karen was saying to me from a long way off. She looked over my shoulder and muttered, "Fuck." She raised her eyebrows. "They're just dancing, Andy! They're people you see all the time! On the el! At the stores!" She paused. "Look, Andy, look. See, it's easy." Karen stood up and walked into the aisle, and now she was doing it, she was dancing with the same ease and precision that the native were doing it. Oh shit. Oh shit, Karen's a native! Oh fuck! It's all a trap! I gotta get the fuck outta here!
I stood up, dizzy from the hyperventilating, and tried to walk my way back to the door, but the only way there was through the aisle, and now I was in it, right in the middle of the festivities, pressed tight all around me by sweaty men and women, jumping, yelling, waving, I was thrown into a panic attack and I pushed my way to the door, flung myself against it, felt the sudden rush of the cold Chicago spring night, and started running down the sidewalk as fast as I could.
It only took a few seconds out of the environment for me to come back to my senses, and I suddenly stopped running mid-gait. I just stood there and wondered what had just happened. Then I heard someone behind me yell, "Andy!" I turned around and saw Karen running towards me. As soon as she got to me, she threw herself on me, embracing me fiercely. "I'm sorry. Andy, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."
I hugged her back, and then rather unexpectedly and without knowing why, I burst into tears. "Oh God," I sobbed, then let loose with a torrent of crying, holding her the whole time and her gently stroking my hair and saying, "I'm sorry, Andy, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking..."
The crying only lasted ten or twenty seconds, like a sudden burst of sneezing, and then I was fine again, but still shaken. "Karen," I said, letting go of her and wiping my nose on my hand. "Oh shit." I took several deep breaths, bent over and put my hands on my knees. "Oh shit, Karen. I'm... so sorry. I have no idea what came over me..."
"I do," she said, reaching over and putting one hand on my shoulder and rubbing my back with the other hand. "I just didn't think about it. I'm so stupid..."
"God, Karen," I said, still bent over, breathing heavily. "How can I ever apologize for my behavior?"
"Andy." She tugged on my shoulder and I stood up. She stared into my eyes intensely. "Your reaction was normal. I'm at fault. I forgot how people get when..." She stopped and sighed. "Come on," she said, interlocking her arm into mine and pulling me.
"Where are we going?"
"Back to my place until you can calm down," she said. "And until I can explain. It's the least I can do."

-- x --

"God, Karen, it was the strangest... oh, thanks." I took the cup of tea being offered to me. "It was the strangest thing." I relayed the entire out-of-body experience to her. "It was just so intense."
"Of course," she said. "It's supposed to be. It's intense for them, too. It's intense for me."
"It was like I had suddenly been transported to another country."
"Andy, let me ask you something." She took a drink of her tea, frowned, squeezed a little more honey into it. "Have you ever traveled abroad?"
"No."
"It can be a very unsettling experience. Being amongst people who consider all of your customs as... well, foreign, can leave you feeling extremely ungrounded." She looked back at her door. "I mean, they're all first-generation immigrants. They feel like that all the time here. So, they attempt to reconstruct at least one part of their old lives here, just for the sake of feeling a little more grounded. For this group, it's their faith." She paused and looked back at me. "It's difficult for me to explain Latin American religion to someone who's never been there. It's a lot more... personal? Yeah, I guess you could say that." She stopped, gathered her thoughts. "Religion down there is a lot more essential than here. It's tied in closely with the local politics and social standings. It's much more... primal. They're really into trying to directly communicate with God in their services."
Karen stood up with her tea and walked over to an immense bookshelf. "I took another friend to a service once. I totally forgot. She had the exact same reaction as you. That group..." She paused. "They recreate the Latino tribal experience so efficiently that, in a way, you really are transported into their world. Thus, your out-of-body experience." She turned around and looked at me. "I tend to forget that since I grew up in that environment, I'm perfectly used to it. It's intense for me too, but in a good way. It reminds me of childhood. But first immersion for Westerners can be..." She stopped and pointed at me with her open hand. "Well," she finished.
"Karen," I said, putting down my tea and cradling my head in my hands. "You've got me so confused. You were raised in a tribe? You're Latino? I'm not following."
Karen smiled and moved to the couch with me. "Cliff's Notes version. I'm a missionary brat."
"A what?"
"It's like an Army brat, but with missionaries for parents. I grew up roaming from settlement to settlement. I didn't live in a permanent house for the first time until I was fifteen."
"What? Are you serious?"
She nodded her head.
"Wow..." I said. "Wow." I paused. "Wow."
She smiled. ÔYep. There's the reaction I'm used to."
"What religion were your parents?"
"Non-denominational Christian. They were sponsored by a specific church."
"And they just... they just went around Latin America and were missionaries?"
"All over the world, actually," she said, leaning back and getting into the story. "Africa, Eastern Europe, even some work in the U.S." She took a drink. "But I grew up in Latin America. We were there exclusively from my birth until I was eight."
"You were born there?"
"El Salvador."
"Wow! This is truly amazing."
She laughed. "I had an unusual childhood, I admit."
"Yeah," I snorted. "So that's why their services are so comforting to you."
"Exactly. My entire youth was spent in these tiny villages, tiny churches. As far as I knew, this was the way the whole world was."
"So, this is your faith. It's very powerful."
"Actually..." She scrunched up her face. "It's not exactly my faith. I've been an atheist about... well, almost ten years now."
I just stared at her. "You're kidding."
She took a drink. "Nope."
"You have to be kidding. Your entire childhood was spent reinforcing your faith..."
"Yeah, well... I don't know what to tell you. Childhood faith isn't the same as adult."
"So why are you still going to church?"
She exhaled sharply. "See, now we're going into the long version, which I didn't want to do, Ôcause to tell you the truth, I'm really tired and need to get to bed soon."
"Oh. Okay..."
"Cliff's Notes. I'm going through a big of a crisis right now. Over my faith. I'm beginning to realize that my atheism is a reaction and not a proaction..." She sighed, then murmured, "Here we go..." She spoke up. "The reason we left Latin America was because of this strange incident. It was... man. It was... it was this strange incident and just very intense and has had a long, lasting effect on me. And I've never really dealt with it and I'm realizing that a lot of my decisions as an adult are in actuality a reaction to not dealing with this issue. And now I'm realizing that some of these decisions are self-destructive and I'll never be able to change them until I deal with this. So..." She paused and took a drink. "So I'm trying to deal with it. And part of that is attending services again."
"So what's the incident?" I asked.
Karen shook her head. "It'd take all night. And I don't have all night." She stood up and started for my jacket.
"Oh," I said. "Oh. Am I leaving?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm exhausted."
"When am I going to see you again?" Anxiety was settling in as I reached the door. "When are we going out again?"
"Uh..." Karen laughed nervously. "Um, Andy." Uh-oh. "I might be wrong, so forgive me if I am. But the way you carry yourself around me, the way you talk to me, it makes me feel like you're interested in me romantically."
"Oh, uh... well... yeah. I guess."
"I can't." She laid her hand on my arm. "I'm sorry. I know rejection's a hard thing to hear, but better now than later." She paused. "Look, I like you. You seem to be a good person. And maybe in other circumstances, something might have happened. But... I just can't now. I'm just dealing with so many issues. I don't have enough time or energy to commit to anything, and no one else should have to be subjected to what I'm going through. I'm sorry."
"But..." She opened the door and I continued talking. "We could hang out. We could just be friends..."
"I don't think that'd be a good idea."
"But..." I looked out at the hallway. "But the long version..."
"Tell you what..." she said, gently pushing me out the door. "Come by the coffeehouse sometime, and I promise I'll sit down and tell you the whole thing."
"But, but..." I was now standing in the hallway. "But the incident! You gotta tell me something! I'm dying here!"
She sighed, then pointed an accusing finger at me. "If I tell you, do you promise not to ask any questions about it tonight?"
"I promise."
She stared at me for another moment, then said, "Okay. Cliff's Notes. In one of the villages, I was mistaken for a Messiah figure. We had to leave because the villagers started worshiping me."
"Wh-!"
She held the finger up again. "Ah-ah," she said, then suddenly reached out and gave me a long, full kiss on the lips. "Thanks for taking me to the gallery tonight."
"B-!"
"I'm... sorry again about the church. Good night."
"Wa..."
Click.
Oh. Oh man. Oh man. Too flabbergasted to speak, I just walked down the stairs. Oh man oh man oh man!

-- x --

"Oh man!" Jane yelled. It occurs to me that I spend a really large percentage of my life retelling stories of my past events in order to catch my friends up.
"And then she closed the door?" Jane continued.
"Yeah."
"Wow." She paused. "How Ôbout that, huh?"
"You're telling me."
It was Saturday. Jane and I were shopping. Not shopping shopping, but secret shopping.
"I..." Jane started to say, then stopped, then laughed. "I really have nothing to say. For once in my life, Andy, you have left me completely speechless."
I laughed, which I am wont to do around Jane a lot. It's not so much that Jane tells a lot of jokes; it's just that there is something about her entire demeanor, the rhythm of her speech, her inflections, that is so humorous and wonderful and charming. Each and every one of my male friends and I, all of us, are each in love with Jane, precisely because of things like that. And poor Jane doesn't even know. And when you try to tell her, she refuses to believe you.
"Where are we going?" I asked her. "What's the first stop?"
"Let's see..." Jane pulled a notebook out of her pocket, scanned through a list of stores. "That's over there, and that's over... oh, way over there." She flipped the notebook shut. "Borders," she said with satisfaction.
"Yay! Borders!" I said, flashing the victory sign. I know, I'm supposed to hate Borders Books. They are owned by K-Mart, after all, and K-Mart does have this nasty habit of banning books and albums from their stores at the drop of a hat. And they are a big corporate place. And all the money disappears from the local economy when you buy there. And they did fight against their employees going union.
But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you! I am a mere mortal! And Borders has, like, a billion books in their store! I'm weak! I can't help it! I can spend hours, literally hours and hours, doing nothing but loitering in a Borders, reading books on any subject I can name. Not to mention that it's the only corporate store I have even been to that actually hires knowledgeable, helpful sales staff. Yay, Borders!
Jane opened the door for me and bowed as I entered; I did the same for her with the inner door, and we were on our way. Okay, so here's how it works: Jane goes to a pre-designated store and carefully pays attention. She notices how clean the place is. She notices if the employees have on their nametags. She notices how fast the line is moving, if there is one. She shops around. She notices if the merchandise is neat. She notices if there are any shortages. She acts confused. She asks questions. She notices how the employee acts. She notices if the employee knows the answer. She notices if the employee smiles. She gets ready to buy an item. Then she stops. She does something slightly annoying, something that a million customers do everyday. Nothing outrageous, nothing really terrible. Sometimes she'll ask the employee to call another store about something. Sometimes she'll have them check inventory for something. Sometimes she'll say, "I thought I saw somewhere that this was on sale. Didn't I see that somewhere?" She watches the employee. She notices if they cringe, or get smart, or act like it's too much trouble to help her. She notices if they still stay friendly. Then she buys her item, she leaves, she ducks around a corner, and writes everything she noticed on a report. She then gives the report to her boss, who is turn gives it to the store manager, who was the one who hired them in the first place to do this. And that, my friend, is secret shopping.
In return for this, Jane gets ten dollars an hour. In addition, she gets a ten dollar allowance per store for purchasing, for which she is reimbursed and gets to keep the merchandise she bought. All in all, not a bad way to make a living, except that the hours are not so hot -- she averages maybe only twenty hours a week with it. But between that, her other job at a theater box-office, her grant and her art sales, she manages to eke out a living.
"Check it out," Jane said, pointing at a pile of john Grisham books that had spilled into an aisle.
"Oh, but look at all the customers," I countered. "The staff is swamped."
"Exactly," Jane said. "Which is what I get to put in my report. ÔStaff overworked.' Sometimes it's nice to have this job. Hi," she said to a balding man with clunky glasses working the information desk.
"Hello," the man said. "Can I help you?"
Jane slipped her arm around me and said, "We're looking for relationship books."
"Yes. Self-help? Humor? Religious context?"
"Actually..." Jane leaned in. "More like... you know... sex books."
"Ah." The man cleared his throat. "I see. Follow me." He took us down a floor and into a corner. "Achieving better orgasms," he said, pointing by shelf. "Holistic approaches. Erotic massages. Picture books. Next shelf here is all love and intimacy."
"Thank you so much," Jane said sweetly as the man walked away.
"What are you doing?" I said, shaking my head.
"Shopping," she said, pulling out one of the larger picture books and opening it. "So what's going to happen with you and Karen? My God." She pointed at one of the pictures. "Have you ever done that?"
I looked down. Holy Mother of god. "Is that a photograph?"
"Um... yeah, I think."
"They must've airbrushed the crane that's holding that woman out in the air like that."
"Hmm." Jane turned the book sideways.
"I don't think I could do that without internal hemorraghing," I said.
Jane turned the page. "Hmm. Look at that. Usually these books never show any hardcore stuff." I looked down at a photo of a big ol' blowjob.
"Jane," I said, covering the picture with my hand. "For God's sake, you're embarrassing me." I took the book from her hands and closed it.
"I thought you said you like looking at pornography."
"I do, but not with a woman in the middle of public."
"You're no fun," she said, picking up a picture-free book, entitled The One Hour Orgasm. She held it up to her face, smiled, wiggled her eyebrows and started scanning. I, getting weaker at the knees by the minute, simply sighed and sat down on the floor.
"So?" she asked again. "What are you gonna do about Karen?"
"What can I do? Karen doesn't want to date and that's that, isn't it?"
"No! That isn't that! That is never that! Wow," she said, finding something interesting in the book. "Have you ever found a woman's G-spot?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"When I was nineteen I found this spot on my girlfriend that she liked, but we were never sure if it was the real G-spot, of if it was just that I was pushing against her bladder. Anyway, I heard once the G-spot was made up to sell more books. Why? Have you found your G-spot?"
"Yeah," Jane said. "Unfortunately, it's on my earlobe." She shut the book. "Anyway. If Karen really was uninterested in you, she woulda never invited you to that church, she wouldnt've brought you home, and she sure wouldnt've kissed you."
"So you're pretty sure something's there?"
"Well, yeah. When a woman does stuff like that, there's almost always something there. Women aren't stupid. They generally know what they're doing. Now, that doesn't mean you can take advantage of the situation and BE A JERK!" She punched me in the arm.
"Ow!" I yelled.
"Sorry," Jane said. "Past life regression therapy." She picked up a book called Loving Yourself: Better Sex Through Masturbation. She immediately started laughing. "The title of my autobiography," Jane said, flipping through it.
"But you're saying if she kissed me then there's at least something there."
"Yeah, of course."
"Does that apply to what happened between you and me?"
"Oh. Uh..." She froze.
Long pause, then from me. "Oh. Sorry. I've embarrassed you..."
"No, no..." she said. "It's just... do you wanna hear this?"
Hmm. This was turning intriguing. "Sure. I can take the truth."
"Well. Well... okay, so I was really drunk when... that... happened, and I was acting a little compulsively that night, but... but you know. I'd never sleep with someone, no matter how drunk I was, unless... you know... unless something was there..." Her voice trailed off as she continued staring at the shelf. After a few seconds she turned to me. "Are you really that clueless?"
I put my hands in the air and said simply, "I'm a gu
Jane laughed and held my hand. "Marry me, okay?" she asked.
"Sure, I'll marry you. We'll have the ceremony in the woods, and we'll both be barefoot, and all your bridesmaids will wear crowns of maple leaves."
"Ah," she said, putting her head on my chest. "That'll be nice. No, wait," she said, standing up again. "Forget it. My mom'll hate you."
"Why?"
"She hates everyone." She put her arm around my waist. "Just... be my boyfriend today, okay? Let's pretend for one fucking day out of our lives that we're normal."
"Whatever you say, honeybunch." I kissed her on the forehead.
"Thanks, sweetie." She grabbed the One Hour Orgasm book and headed to the counter. "Homework!" she yelled. "You wanna be my boyfriend, you better get cracking!"

-- x --

"So," Brian said, carrying the pitcher of beer back to the table. "Here's the question of the hour. What are your religious beliefs?" We were at the Hopleaf, a homey sort of bar up in my neighborhood.
"Lapsed Catholic," Jane said, taking the pitcher out of his hands.
"Lapsed Baptist," I said, holding out my glass.
"Lapsed Methodist!" Brian yelled, holding his hand up like he was getting sworn in.
"Hey," I said. "Didja ever hear the joke about the Baptist preacher and Methodist preacher who were fishing buddies..."
"Don't even go there."
"What's the punchline?" Jane asked, filling my glass.
"ÔOkay, everyone... three cheers for the Baptists!"
"Ha! Ha-ha-ha!" Jane laughed and laughed.
Brian shot her a look. "You're much drunker than I thought you were."
"You're much thinker than I drunk you was," Jane responded.
"What?"
"Huh?"
"What."
"What?"
"STOP!" I yelled. They both looked at me and then we sat in silence.
"I never really think about religion much anymore," I finally said. "It just never really comes up."
"Oh, come now," Brian said. "The requestioning of faith is a hallmark of the thirty crisis. And you're twenty-nine."
"Okay, okay. I do think about it sometimes, all right?"
"When did you lapse?'
"Oh..." I paused. "Fifteen, sixteen, I guess. I just decided that God didn't have a lot to offer me. And I was sick of the piousness of Christianity."
"Now," Brian said, "has it ever occurred to you that you made this decision at the same age that you thought that Violent Femmes was the greatest band in the history of music?"
"Yeah!" Jane chimed in. "Or that Clockwork Orange was the greatest movie in the history of cinema?"
"When did this conversation turn into the Inquisition!" I yelled. "At what point did I lose control?"
"I'm just trying to get you to think about this," Brian said.
"Well, stop!"
"Why are you getting so defensive?"
"I'M NOT GETTING DEFENSIVE!" I screamed. "I think about religion all the time, okay? Is that what you wanna hear? I'm turning thirty next year and I'm beginning to believe that my entire lack of faith for the last ten years is a giant sham! I've got a million questions and no answers, okay? GOD! Leave it alone!"
The two of them were quiet for a long time, then Jane said, "Well, why didn't you just say that in the first place?"
"It's... embarrassing," I sheepishly said. "It's very adolescent to be questioning your faith."
"Oh, bullshit," Jane sputtered. "Didn't I just say last week that I was thinking of going to church again?"
"What, you were serious?"
"Yes, I was serious. God almighty, does everything I say in life have to be construed as a joke?"
"It's just... you know..." Brian was floundering. "You know... mass, you know..."
"Hey, mass can be an extremely powerful, incredibly personal moment of... of..." Jane paused. "Oh, who are we kidding? Catholicism sucks." All three of us burst into laughter and she continued. "But it's what I was raised on, and that has to count for something, right? After all, religion's just a structure for us achieving a sense of security. And what's more secure than warm, nostalgic remembrances of childhood?"
"Yeah, but how does that gel with our adult sense of reason and secular tendencies?"
"It doesn't," Brian said. "That's why we're all lapsed."
"What do you believe in, Brian?"
"You know what I believe."
"Ah, yes. Our dear friend kismet."
"Ah yes indeed, my dear friend. Call it what you will. It is known by a thousand names and no name. A non-gender, non-deity, non-reflecting force of energy that surrounds all of us and all of existence and makes things flow in a certain, rational order."
"This sounds suspiciously like a Star Wars movie," Jane said.
"Which was stolen from a real school of thought," Brian shot back. "Not to mention every other godamn thing in those movies..."
"He has issues with George Lucas," I gently whispered to Jane.
"Let's not speak of it," Brian said testily. "My point is that just because I reject my middle-class, middle-America, white suburban idea of a higher power, this... entity that presumably looks like a human and acts like a human and has emotions and will actually do things out of pettiness and scorn, just because I reject that doesn't mean I have to reject all religious thought. The world did not begin and end with Christianity, no matter what Ohio wants to tell ya."
"You know what you sound like?" Jane said. "You sound like one of those geeks who study Tai-Chi and change their name to something unpronounceable."
"You're really starting to piss me off, Jane," Brian said.
"Enough, enough," I said, covering my face with my hands. "This entire conversation's giving me a fucking headache. God, why can't we just get together and talk about beer or Quintan Tarrantino films like every other circle of friends?"
"What would be the point?" Jane said. She stood up and launched into one of our well-rehearsed inside jokes. "I gotta go to the Ôloo."
Brian continued the joke. "Go to the who?"
"Go to the Ôloo!"
"Whew," I finished.
She kissed Brian on the cheek. "Sorry I pissed you off." She looked at me, clapped me on the shoulder. "You too." She walked off.
I watched her leave, and when she looked like she was out of earshot, I turned quickly to Brian. "Okay, quick," I said, "Before she gets back I need your advice on something."
"Shoot."
"Okay, so we're out secret shopping today and Jane starts looking through sex books..."
"...Uh huh... wait, what?"
"She starts looking through sex books! And she buys me one, called The One Hour Orgasm..."
"...whoa..."
"Yeah, and then she says... she says she woulda never slept with me if there hadn't been something there already..."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"I don't know! That's why I'm asking you! I mean, she's pushing me to ask out Karen again, I mean really hard today, but she's buying me sex books and telling me something's there. Something. What's something?"
"Well, you could proposition her again and run the risk of pissing her off... or you could ignore her and miss out on perhaps the single greatest relationship of your life and piss her off anyway..."
"Exactly. So what should I do?"
"Andy," Brian said, then he bugged his eyes out, grabbed my lapels and shook me, yelling, "ANDY! ANDY! ANDY!" He stopped shaking me and said, "What... makes... you... think... I know ANY more about women than you do!!" He let go of my jacket. "For the love of Pete, I don't have the faintest clue what you should do."
"Augh!" I yelled.
"Look, the best advice I can give you is that if she's trying to get you to ask out eff-one, it probably means that she's not interested in you. I mean, Jane's neurotic, but she can't possibly be as masochistic as you and I are, and that's why the last season of Welcome Back Kotter sucked less than the last season of Happy Days!"
Jane slid into the booth, and I was forced to carry on the fictional conversation. "Yeah, but the last season of Happy Days was just an extrapolation of the natural storyline. Fonzie's a teacher, Joanie loves Chachi, etcetera. But Welcome Back Kotter, they're just making shit up left and right. Mr. Kotter's having twins, Barbarino's working in a hospital, they bring in some new Sweathog from the south who's really good looking. It's a complete sham."
"Bringing in a new, good-looking character is a glorious benchmark in bad television! What are you talking about? It wouldn't be a last season unless they brought in someone new who's either good-looking or adorable! Diff'rent Strokes! Facts of Life! Laverne and Shirley! Even Brady Bunch, for fuck's sake! He looked at Jane and shrugged, as if to say, "I rest my case!"
"Ah," Jane said, picking up the pitcher. "Good to see things have gotten back to normal."

-- x --

Okay, now the first time it happened, it was because I propositioned her. I can understand this. It flows with my rational thoughts about the world. It was unlikely, yes, it was preposterous that it would succeed, but nonetheless, it followed a certain chain of logical events. I asked her sleep with me. She came over. We emotionally bonded, and then we physically bonded. Now, the second time... well, to this day I still don't understand how the second time happened.
The Hopleaf closed for the night about three o'clock and we decided that instead of heading to the only places still open -- giant overcrowded danceclubs with half-naked nineteen-year olds and coked-up frat boys -- we would instead just call it a night. I escorted Jane down to the el stop in my neighborhood and we were just standing there making small talk and deciding when we were next going to get together, and then all of a sudden we were... kissing. We were kissing! No proposition, no awkward silences, no fleeting moments of self-doubt right before the act. Without any warning, we just simply had our tongues stuck in each other's mouths and we were pawing at the other's clothes, and then Jane had me by the belt and was dragging me towards the turnstile, saying, "Come on," and I was simply saying "okay" and digging fare out of my pocket.
In my life, I really have no choice but to simultaneously applaud and curse the original discovery, centuries ago, that alcohol was indeed an intoxicating substance to humans. After all, alcohol has afforded me, many times, a greater ease of movement and scope than ever would have been possible in a sober state. A strong argument can be made that, if I had never gotten drunk that first time when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I would have never lowered my fear to the point where I could actually ask out a woman and discover how much easier it was than I had thought -- ergo, liquor is the reason why I now can get laid, albeit a tertial reason.
At the same time, however, alcohol has also been the impetus behind some of the stupidest actions I have ever perpetrated, some of the most idiotic blunders ever made, really, by the American male in general. There are things which, when sober, seem so logically like the most blockheaded thing you could ever do, which nontheless seem strangely romantic and debonair while sloshed. Lines are delivered that, when sober, you could hear even in a sitcom and still think, "What the fuck were they thinking?" Incidents are perpetrated under the influence that leave me ashamed and mortally embarrassed, years and years after the fact.
So. There is my moral dilemma, if it can be called one.
Do I applaud the sweet libation or curse it with regards to Jane's and my second coupling? A little of both, I suppose. It's a bit obvious to state that it would have never happened without alcohol, so I guess you can put one check in the "GOOD" box. But, Ôdoing it' again while drunk brought me no closer to resolving the mystery of how Jane felt about me emotionally. Actually, it further confused the situation -- was I now becoming her Ôfuck buddy'? Was I becoming labeled in her head as someone she could grab and get sweaty with everytime she got horny? Well, that's not what I wanted at all! Who wants to be a piece of meat? Put two checks in the "BAD" box.
Oh, but I got the chance to have sex again with Jane. Ten checks in the "GOOD" box.
Another thing about alcohol and sex -- it affords you the possibility of swinging wildly between acts of extreme silliness and extreme eroticism. The silliness was perpetrated on the el itself, in that Jane and I... oh God, I can't believe I'm telling you this. This is so embarrassing. Jane and I made out the entire time we were on the el, oblivious to the other passengers staring, pointing and giggling at us. "BAD" box. In fact, at one point I actually whispered into Jane's ear, "So, your G-spot's on your earlobe, huh?"
"Not here," she whispered, kissing me. "Not here."
I went ahead and bit her earlobe, and Jane literally slunk in her seat a good four or five inches. "God," she exhaled, "Fuck. Fuck. Stop. STOP!" She slapped me in the chest, and I happily stored away this magical piece of information into the "Jane" file.
Jane lives in Boystown, one of the oldest and most preeminent gay neighborhoods in Chicago. Normally this is a good thing and I highly encourage Jane to stay in the neighborhood, in that it is relatively safe, the property values do nothing but improve with time, and the place is curiously void of drunken, chauvanistic, date-raping frat boys. Go figure. However, it's not such a great thing to be in a gay neighborhood when you are a drunk heterosexual couple currently attempting to simultaneously walk, kiss, and get into each other's pants. This can be verified by the consistent shouts of "GET A ROOM, YA BREEDERS!" and "IT'S A GODDAMNED SHAME IS WHAT IT IS!" and "YA DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING, BETTY!" We, however, being trashed, took it in the good-natured way it was meant, and soon we were adding Ôlaughing' to the list of concurrent actions we were trying to commit at the same time.
Jane and I had Ôpillow' sex that night. This particular piece of my personal sexual vernacular is named after, and dedicated to, a specific incident in my past between me and an ex-girlfriend, a wonderful woman who happened to be particularly proficient in bed. We dated only a short while, but it was a doozy of a time. Listen:
You may be drunk, or you may not. The important part is that it is late at night and the hours previous to the act have been spent in a highly charged sexual atmosphere. Perhaps you and your friends have been discussing past sexual escapades all evening. Maybe you and him/her have been playing footsies all night and not-so-innocently brushing against each other in simple yet erotic ways. Or, I don't know, let's say the two of you have spent the entire afternoon looking through sex books together.
In any case, your hormones have been churning and grinding in your pants all night. Your jeans suddenly become uncomfortably tight. Your bra starts screaming to be taken off. And by the time the two of you finally get to a secure place where a door can be locked and privacy ensured, things explode. You are doing things you only see in softly-focused movies starring Tom Cruise. You are pushing their hips up against the front door! You are unzipping their pants with your teeth! A Kenny Loggins ballad is playing in the background! You are committing any of a thousand sins that would be mortally embarrassing to recount later to a stranger or see yourself do on a videotape, but at the time climb the heights of ecstasy.
Now, Ôpillow' sex is not the most over-the-top kind of sex you can have. That would be Ômedicine cabinet' sex. That's the kind of sex that reaches such an incredible point of kinkiness that you actually stop in the middle of it so that you can hurriedly rummage through your medicine cabinet, or the bottom drawer of your dresser, to find an implement to aid in the ecstasy -- lotions, lubricants, sturdy scarves, certain electric toys of a manner we shan't get into. ÔPillow' sex comes close, though. Pillow sex is the full erotic experience that two utterly naked humans can get. There are, of course, distinct levels within the Ôpillow' sex realm, but if you happen to reach the upper levels, you find yourself doing things you've never done before, things that you reflect upon later and say to yourself, "Wow, did I really do that? Yeah, I guess I did. Well... hooray for me!" New positions are tried. Certain appendages are cautiously inserted into certain orifices heretofore considered off-limits by common standards of decency. Certainly, much much sweat and various other bodily fluids are involved. You find yourself both willingly giving and receiving various archetypical sexual roles in elaborate yet unspoken erotic games. In short... it is hot, sweaty, sticky, kinky sex. Hooray for you!
And now, the specific incident mentioned earlier that inspired the moniker Ôpillow' sex. A play in two acts:
ACT I. Once, on a particular night of pillow sex, I found myself in a position whereby my ex-girlfriend was spread-eagled across the width of the bed, her stomach pressed against the mattress. I, of course, was also spread-eagled on top of her, every inch of our communal flesh touching each other, currently commencing in ÔThe Bumping of the Nasties,' as the more juvenile of you refer to it. I noticed that our pieces were not exactly living up right -- a slight problem in geometry and angles, like a missed shot in billiards. So, without interrupting the lovemaking, I simply grabbed the pillow her head was resting on, I slid it down the length of her naked pressed body, and propped it underneath her hips. Thus, we were now in perfect alignment, and ready to begin the Grand Unification.
ACT II. Years later, after things between me and said ex-girlfriend went from ugly to cautious to friendly to sexual again, ugly again, cautious again and friendly again, we spent an evening getting drunk and discussing sexual topics. What can I say? It's just the way we were. It usually got us in trouble, and we paid the price later. Mark one thousand checks in the "BAD" box. The topic of Ômasturbation and fantasy' had come up, and my ex-girlfriend blurted out the following statement to me (I put it in boldface type to underscore its importance):

"You know, I shouldn't be telling you this. But when I masturbate, I mean really masturbate and wanna have a really good orgasm, I always think back to that time where you slid that pillow all the way down my body and stuck it under my ass. Ooh boy, that always does the trick. That might possibly be the singlemost erotic experience of my entire life."

I have, needless to say, retold this story many times. Indeed, my friends are sick of this story and have banned me from ever retelling it again in their company. Why do I retell it so often? Well, I don't know if women react this way, but I can let you in on a little secret from the world of men, one you may or may not already know. If you have occasion to have a male ex-partner and for some strange reason you need to boost their ego -- they are depressed or you're trying to get on their good side or whatever -- there is no better way to do it than to confess that you still currently masturbate and achieve orgasms based on something they did to you in the past. Believe me, an admission like this will have them worshiping you until the day they die.
Oh, and a small sidenote: telling them that they have the largest penis you've ever seen will achieve the same effect. Don't believe otherwise, no matter what he tells you.
So. Jane and I did end up having pillow sex that night, but for the sake of trying to wrap up this rather self-indulgent recapping of my sexual exploits, I will skip the details. Regardless, it can be said that new positions were tried, bodily fluids were exchanged, and certain unorthodox orifices were employed. This is what made the next morning even more awkward than the first time. Then, it could at least be rationalized that the other had been half-asleep, neither had really known exactly what was going on, and it had just sort of happened. No rationalization of this kind could be made now. We had both knowingly and willingly committed a variety of sins, for a duration of a good two hours before finally collapsing naked into blissful sleep, of which we were now awakening from, still naked, ten hours later. Something... I mean something needed to be said.
"Jane," I said.
Jane put down the book of old Bloom County cartoons she had been lightly perusing. "Hmm."
Now, I wanted the next thing out of my mouth to be:
DO YOU LIKE ME?
But as long as I never forced her to actually say Ôno,' I could still pretend that the answer was Ôyes' and never be proven wrong.
"Jane, you were telling me yesterday I should ask out Karen again."
"Yeah."
"Did you mean that?"
A pause. "Absolutely. She's giving off very clear signals. I don't think you should pass that up yet."
"But..." A pause. "But what about what's going on between us?"
She scrunched up her face. "Ah." She turned on her side and looked at me, one of her breasts poking out from the blanket. "You really wouldn't want to date me, would you?"
"Well..."
OF COURSE I WOULD.
"Uh... well..."
I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE
"I... suppose not..."
Jane shook her head. "God, it'd just be too strange. We'd never be able to date. We'd kill each other. You know? We know each other too well. It'd be, like, the beginning of our relationship would be like the two year mark in a normal one. We already know all the annoying habits of each other. And one day you'd put on one of those stupid Dr. Who videotapes of yours..."
"Hey!"
"See? Or I'd play one of my Cowboy Junkies albums exactly one too many times, and the next thing you know, one of us is having to dig a hole in the backyard to hide the body." She put her head on my chest. "I value your friendship too much, Andy. It's one of the only things that keeps me sane in this fuckin' city. I can't lose that."
I put my arm around her. "Okay." I paused. "I guess you're right."
"Hey, I don't want you to misunderstand this, so let me try to word it correctly." She paused for a bit. "I've really, really enjoyed sleeping with you. It was very..." She laughed. "Well, it was very."
"Uh-huh."
"But I'm not so sure it's such a good idea that we do it anymore. You know. Once, that was okay. It was random and fun and we could blow it off. But twice. Things are starting to feel a little... strange, you know?"
"Yeah."
"A little intense."
"Yeah."
"But this isn't a rejection, okay? I'm not... it's just the circumstances, okay? It's just... getting a little strange, is all. But I'm not rejecting you, okay?"
SURE YOU ARE.
"Okay."
"Okay." She exhaled, said "okay" to herself, and curled her body up against mine. "But the sex was fine. It was just... well, it was just fine."
"All right."
We lied that way for a bit, the silence heavy in the room, until Jane said, "Well." And then more silence, and then, "Well. I guess we should get up and at Ôem."
"Yeah. Okay." Now it was my turn to roll and put her in a full-body embrace. Unlike last time, however, we were both naked now, and despite what I wanted to happen, I could feel my penis start to gather its own momentum. Jane could obviously detect this also, and her hips started to gyrate oh-so-imperceptibly. Another ten minutes of this, and we were again making out, groping at body parts and unconsciously moving ourselves into a missionary position.
"Well..." Jane said in between kisses and pants for air. "One more time..." She grasped my penis and started guiding it. "...couldn't hurt... I guess.... once more couldn't, uhh, hurt..."
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH MESSIAH
UNWRITTEN SCENE GOES HERE

-- x --

After the gallery, I stopped by the coffeehouse to find Karen. Of course, she wasn't there. I was just going to sit for a bit and loiter and read a little, but before I knew it I had taken out my notebook and was writing.

Karen:

I sat for a few minutes and looked at this.

Hi.

Yep. I'm getting real far in this. I tapped my pen against my teeth for about ten minutes, then let loose with a torrent of words.

I wanted to make sure you weren't still worrying about that church. No permanent damage was done, I assure you. Actually, the incident had some good repercussions as well -- it sparked a discussion between my friends and I about our current religious beliefs, and we realized that we were all going through a bit of a crisis right now. Albeit probably not as intense as yours.
I do understand why you like going there. The whole time I was there, I felt incredibly close to the spiritual realm, much more so than any of those old Baptist services I went to as a child and which originally led me to stray away from religion. It occurs to me that prime requisite of any faith that might bring me Ôback into the fold' is that it must fill me with some kind of passion. I've spent too much of my adult life being an overanalyzer to go back to blind, unrequited faith. The struggle continues, I suppose.
So why am I telling you all this?

I stopped. I knew why I was telling her all this -- you know, too. The question was, did I want to tell her?

I guess because I want you to know that I understand your struggle. The last time we spoke, you said that no one should have to be subjected to what you're going through. But we all are subjected to it anyway. We all go through the struggle, no matter what that struggle is.

Okay. Did I want to go through with this? It's a valid question to ask. Was the heat of the moment letting my emotions get away from me? Or is this something well-thought-out?

I think you should reconsider your thoughts on dating right now. I don't think you should let your fear of complicating someone else's life interfere with a clear attraction to someone.

Whoo, boy. Did I write that? I looked it over. A little strong, yes. But really, what do I have to lose at this point?

I can't guarantee that something between you and I would happen. But I think the chance should at least be made. I don't think a date or two would kill either one of us, and like I said, I think I understand what you're going through right now, so you wouldn't have to worry about springing anything strange on me.

I sat and smoked a cigarette and read over what I'd written, almost threw it away, then thought better of it.

So, anyway. That's it. I hope you think over all this and decide to go out at least once. Sorry to throw all this on you like this. My number's 271-7490. I hope to hear from you.

Andy.

I read the whole thing again, ripped it out of my notebook and folded it, wrote "KAREN" in large block letters on the outside, and went up to the counter.
"Could you make sure Karen gets this next time she comes in?"
"Sure thing," said the same boy with the goatee and perfect hair from Friday night.
"Okay... thanks." I went back, packed up my stuff and headed out. Hmm. Well, that was that, I guess.

-- x --

Of the few actual relationships I have been in since the age of sixteen or so, I can't think of a single one that started in the "normal" way. By "normal," I mean in the manner you see in movies or novels or generally think of in American society -- you meet someone, you are attracted, you make small talk. You ask them out. You go out on an innocuous first date, a movie or dinner or possibly both, perhaps with a small kiss at the end. You go out on a second date, something a little more daring, something with a little more free time to be filled with your witty banter. This continues slowly, each meeting generally becoming more and more intimate, until you find yourself turning down date opportunities with other people, you are introducing your friends to this new person, and people are starting to think of you as a pair.
No, it's safe to say that this has never happened to me. Really, knowing everything that you do about my life at this point, would you expect any aspect of it with regards to women to be normal? Actually, this entire conversation is akin to the one earlier about young people and how they meet -- I am constantly told that it is done this way all the time throughout society, yet I have not a single friend who has dated in a "normal" way. A mass conspiracy to make all of us feel like weirdos? Or is it simply that we are a bunch of weirdos?
My relationships seem to just sort of... happen. I'm not sure how to describe it much better than that. I go from barely knowing someone to dating them, suddenly, without even being able to pick a moment in time and say, "Yes. This is when it happened." There are no formal dates in my life; no awkward chatter, no nervous and expectant sexual innuendo; none of this waiting around the phone, wondering if they're going to call or if I should call. For me, we are first meeting ech other, then sleeping with each other, usually within a matter of days. And for all of you out there that have suddenly gotten very jealous, who are ready to stone me because my relationships get sexual so quickly, let me remind you that I get laid about once a year. All is not peaches and cream. All is not Peaches and Herb, for that matter.
People tell me all the time that I should try "casual dating." Casual dating? What is that? The entire concept is so obtuse that I don't even begin to grasp it. I am told that it involves "friendy intimacy," whatever that is.
"You just don't need to get so serious so quickly," they tell me. "Why can't you just go out and do things with people and have a fun time and be casual? Why do you have to jump in and get so emotional right when you meet?"
Well, there's nothing wrong with what they say. There are plenty of times that I just go out and do things with people and live a fun time and am casual. But let's call a spade a spade -- that actvity is called friendship. I have no problems with having friends -- indeed, I have several of them, and their friendships are important to me.
But if I meet someone that I am attracted to, who I have a great desire to spend time with and be intimate in every sense of the word... well, what's the point of beating around the bush? Either they are feeling the same way about me and we are wasting time by playing this little Ôcasual dating' game, or they don't feel this way about me and we are again wasting time, for an entirely different reason.
"Maybe they kind of like you," these people say, "and they need to spend some more time with you and get to know you before they can start romantically liking you." Ha. Yet another theoretical discussion that has yet to be practically proven to me. In fact, the opposite is uaully true -- the more someone gets to know me, usually it's the less they wish to date me. And me to them. Case in point -- Jane and me. She was right when she said that we know each other too well to date. In my opinion, part of successfully dating is having that mystery between you... or at the very least, not knowing their annoying habits. These discoveries can only occur successfully if they coincide with the growing intimacy and feelings of love you are developing for the person. It's the only thing that can successfully counteract the annoyance you feel and keep the relationship together. Because, let's face it -- if you don't love someone, there's no way you're going to be able to deal with their eating crackers in bed, or whistling along with the stereo, or whatever delightful habit they have that makes your spine knot and your fingernails curl.
This is why I do things like this letter to Karen. Get it out there and get it out of the way, I say. Let's not dawdle, people. If you wish to get involved, let's commence with it. If not, well, it was nice meeting you. Next! At this point in the conversation, my friends will usually cry, "AAHH!," lift their hands in resignation and dismiss me with a "Oh, you'll never learn." But what do they know? None of them are dating either.
Of course, when it's late at night and I'm lying alone in my bed, staring at my ceiling and wishing so sincerely that I could sleep, I do think about this a lot. I wonder if it's because of my dating habits that I'm only getting laid about once a year and not getting into any relationships. The answer is, of course, yes, quite probably. But there's nothing I can do about it. I am, if nothing else, a creature of both my genetics and my environment, and currently they are both working against my favor. It is these nights when I feel the overpowering crush of doom, the unshakeable belief that I will never date again, I will never find a mate, and that I will die a lonely, bitter old man who lives at the end of the block and won't give the kids' balls back and turns his lights off on Halloween night.
But I don't feel like this every night, and even when I do, I usually feel much better the next morning. And let's not forget our old friend, the drive to procreate. So... the struggle continues. I write letters like the one I did to Karen. I continue to go to the bars and flirt and ask people out. I really, really didn't expect my little gambit with regards to Karen to work, but I felt better simply knowing that I had made the attempt. After all, it's not the goal which is important, but the road taken to get there. Right? I guess. It's what I tell myself, anyway.

-- x --

Ring.
Hmm. What.
Ring.
I glanced at the clock while picking up the receiver. 2:37 am. Great. "Hmm."
"Just promise me that if things start getting hairy you're not gonna freak out on me."
"Hmm. What."
"Just promise me that, okay?"
"What. Who is this."
"Karen."
I paused, rubbed my eyes. "Oh... hi. Karen. Um... God." I yawned. "How are you?"
"Drunk."
"...Oh." A pause. "Okay."
"I just want an understanding between us right now. I wanna acknowledgement from you that you're asking for this, okay? You claim you know what I'm going through, so if we get involved and things turn weird, I wanna promise from you that you're not gonna freak and be an asshole. Okay? You're asking for this."
I was still out of it. "You got my... letter?" I said.
"Yes, yes. Can you promise me this? ÔCause if you can't, this is where things between you and me end for good, right now. Can you promise you're not gonna become an asshole?"
I paused. "Yeah. Yeah, I promise."
"Okay, then. Meet me at Atomic Cafe, tomorrow at 9 pm." Click.
Gah. What the hell was going on? Where the hell is Atomic Cafe? There was a notebook next to my bed, and I was just able to write down "ATOMIC CAFE 9 PM" before crashing back into dreamland.

-- x --

Monday morning and back to the usual work schedule. My connection to the art world usually makes for weekends much more full of havoc than my co-workers', but for the sake of my sanity I try, at least, to make my work week quiet and full of boring ritual. I was currently sitting in my office, idly staring out my window down onto the Museum of Contemporary Art, awaiting my boss's edit notes on my edit notes for an upcoming article and lightly considering getting some other work done while I was waiting.
That's right, I said my office. Like with four walls and a door and a window, a desk in the middle and a phone and a personal computer, friends' artwork on the walls and a small photograph of Brian and Jane and me taped to my monitor. This particular accrouchement of my job provided no end of mirth for my friends, who were constantly laughing about my 'sellout to the Man' and cutting out 'Dilbert' cartoons for me to tape to my door.
What can I say? I like my office. I've spent half of my professional life -- no, make that more like three-quarters of my professional life -- in cubicles, terrible dirty things that are supposed to give the illusion of personal space and ownership, but that really only reinforce the fact that you have no privacy and that the company cares for you so little that they don't bother building the walls high enough so that people can't glance over them when they're walking by.
There are few perks in corporate America that I insist upon, for the reasons that I've described earlier. The office is one of them. I am occasionally guilty of asking for various petty things in my work environment -- I like to think that all of these things, in their absence, would leave me physically and emotionally worse-off than having them, and that I'm not just asking for them because I can. It's not a lot -- a door I can close, a window I can look out of, a chair that won't give me bedsores. A ergodynamic keyboard so that I don't get Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. A comprehensive health plan in case I get sick. Two weeks of vacation, so I won't get sick. And an agreement that I can smoke a cigarette at 10:30 every morning and 2:30 every afternoon without any reprecussions.
My phone started ringing and, frankly, I was glad for the interruption. "Andy Simpson," I said in an official voice into the receiver.
"Brian Wilkenson," said the voice back, in mock officialdom.
"Hey."
"Hey. Can you talk?"
"You bet. Bored outta my skull."
"Yet another day in the world of Andy."
"Hey, Brian," I said, "let me ask you something. Did you call me last night?"
"Um, not that I know of."
"Somebody called me in the middle of the night and I don't have the faintest clue who it was. But this morning I saw I had written 'Atomic Cafe 9 pm' in my notebook."
"Well, whaddya know," Brian said. "The owls are not what they seem."
"Who killed Laura Palmer?"
"ABC killed Laura Palmer, the bastards. So whaddya gonna do?"
"Show up to Atomic Cafe, I suppose, and look for someone recognizable. Uh, do you know where Atomic Cafe is?"
Brian laughed. "Never let it be said that Andy Simpson is not with it." He laughed again. "It's up by Loyola University. A couple blocks from the el stop, I think."
"Okay. So... were you calling for something, or just saying hi?"
"Oh! Yeah. I wanted to find out what you were wearing to the wedding."
"Oh shit! The wedding! I totally forgot!"
"I will assume this means you haven't bought a gift, either."
"No..."
"Well, they're registered at Marshall Field's, and Jane and I were planning on going shopping Wednesday. Why don't you join us?"
"Oh..." I paused. "Well, okay."
"What."
"Oh... nothing. Things between Jane and I are a little strange right now, that's all."
"With the sex thing and all," Brian said.
"Well..." I squinted, which I knew Brian couldn't see, but made me feel better anyway. "Well... we slept together again."
"WHAT!!!"
"Mm-hmm."
"My God, Andy, will you stop springing this stuff on me? Gently lead me into it next time, for the love of Pete."
"It doesn't matter anyway," I said. "She told me she doesn't want to sleep with me anymore, and now I just feel a little..." I exhaled. "I feel a little strange around her now, you know?"
"So you wanna go or not?"
"Uh... yeah. Yeah, I'll go. I can't go around avoiding Jane, right?"
"We'll have cawfee," Brian said in a faux-Long-Island accent. "We'll tawk."
"Okay."
"So what are you gonna wear?"
"Uh, my gray double-breasted, I guess. What about you?"
"Something along the same lines. I just wanted to make sure we were all coordinated."
A voice came from the doorway. "Andy." It was my boss.
"Gotta go," I said.
"Later," Brian said, hanging up before I could.
"I need you to go over all this stuff again," my boss said, walking into the office with a sheath of papers. "You're missing all kinds of errors."
"Oh." I took the pages, glanced at them. "Sorry. I'm a little spaced today."
"I don't know what you did last weekend," he said, walking out my door, "but you're still there." Boy, how right he was.

-- x --

I showed up at the Atomic Cafe at 9:02 pm, exactly where Brian said it was going to be. Before I could even get situated I saw Karen, and it was only then that the previous night's conversation came crashing back into memory. We made eye contact and waved, then I came over and sat down.
"Hi," I said, trying to match the energy level the crowded room was putting out.
"I don't know why you even put up with me," Karen said. "I'm really sorry about calling so late. For acting so strange."
"I'm just glad you called at all," I said.
"I'm... not sure about any of this," she said. "But I thought I'd give it a try. But that's why I'm acting like I am." She pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of her book. "Here."
"What's this?"
"It's a letter I wrote last night, after I read yours. Wait, don't read it here," she said, laying her hand on mine when I tried to open it. "What 'til you get home. I wrote it when I was drunk. It's a little embarrassing."
"Okay." I slipped it into my pocket.
"I hope you like poetry, but from what I know of you, I think you do."
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
"I'm reading some tonight."
"Hmm? Oh!" I thought she was saying she had written me a poem, but now it was starting to click. "There's an open-mike tonight," I said.
"Yes."
"Do you write a lot of poetry?"
"No," she said, then laughed. "And the little I write isn't very good. It's a cathartic process to me. Writing and reading it out loud helps me release it and get it out of my system."
"Ah. I see." Truth be told, I was kind of grimacing on the inside. I'm not a big fan of open mikes, for the very simple reason that I'm not a big fan of any open collection of amateur creative output -- because about ninety-five percent of it is absolute crap. And if it's not a roomful of my friends, like in college, I've found that I have a curiously low tolerance now for an evening of ninety-five percent crap. I know it's not very fair to the five percent who are good, but it's just how it is.
I passed the evening as well as I could, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, occasionally making quiet and snide remarks to Karen about people on stage. Eventually Karen's name got called, and she walked up to friendly applause, making me think that she was known to this crowd.
"Thank you," she said when she reached the microphone. "This is a new piece. It's about a person I recently met in my life. It's called 'Wham.'" She cleared her throat.
"WHAM!" she yelled suddenly at the top of her lungs. Startled, I jerked my coffee cup and splashed a dollop of it onto my pants.
"Collide!" she yelled again, then continued.

"Hit!
Knock.
Swear.
Bruise.
Hurt."

She paused.

"Meet.
Serrendipity.
Drink.
Talk.
Laugh.
Run."

She paused again.

"Meet.
Serrendipity.
Gesture.
Phone.
Talk.
Laugh.
Run."

Another pause.

"Meet.
Deliberate.
Read.
Visit.
Walk.
Talk.
Laugh.
Worship.
Sweat.
Yell.
Scream!
DANCE!
RUN!"

Another pause.

"Meet.
Drink.
Whisper.
Music.
Murmur.
Whisper.
Whisper.
Kiss."

Her voice was getting quieter and quieter now, as she continued.

"Kiss.
Hug.
Fondle.
Neck.
Chin.
Neck.
Breast."

Zing. She continued.

"Tongue.
Breast.
Breath.
Nipple.
Fingernails.
Back.
Groan.
Moan.
Couch.
Music.
Tongue."

She paused.

"Zipper.
Button.
Moan.
Tongue.
Cradle.
Bend.
Gasp.
Tear."

Another pause, and then she launched into a loud, rhythmical voice.

"BUCK.
FUCK.
DICK.
SUCK."

The crowd was suddenly overwhelmingly quiet. Not a head turned; not a foot wiggled.

"THRUST.
WET.
PRESS.
SWEAT."

She paused. Some guy at the next table was glancing at me, and I covered my eyes with my hand.

"HOT...
NUMB...
STRETCH...
COME."

She paused again, then went back to a quiet voice.

"Whisper.
Dress.
Push.
Run."

She ended in a whisper.

"Wham."

She looked at the audience for three or four seconds in silence, then simply said, "Thank you," and walked off the stage to the uproarious applause of the males in the crowd. She sat down at our table and took a drink of her coffee. "So," she said.
I tried to speak but discovered that I had suddenly turned into Porky Pig. "I -- ya, ya... I -- ya..."
"It's not very good," she said, staring at the talbe, and she was right, it wasn't very good -- it would never make it into any anthology. But for the life of me, I could have cared less.
We sat for just a few moments until Karen said, "You know what? That embarrassed me more than I thought it would. Can we get out of here?"
"Sure, sure." I picked up my stuff and we headed out.
When we reached the door, I held it open. "I'm sorry," she said, walking through.
"For what?" I said, walking through myself and closing it behind me.

-- x --

"I have a theory," Karen said, when we got on the el.
"Mm-hmm?"
"It's not original, or particularly complicated," she said. "I just happen to believe in it."
"What is it?" I asked.
She paused, then said, "I believe that the more a person is into literature, the harder it is for them to communicate with other humans." I tried to respond to this, but she interrupted. "You see what I mean? Written communication's still communication, but with a middleman. 'This is what I think.' Then I put it down in written form somehow, and I give it to someone and then they read it and then they know what I'm thinking. You see what I mean?"
"Yeah, I see that."
"I'm not saying it's particularly healthy, but there it is. And I think the more someone delves into this type of communication, the harder it is for them to give up the middleman and just directly communicate with someone else."
"Uh-huh."
"You see what I mean, right?"
I paused, then rested my hand over hers. "Yeah, I know what you mean." We sat in silence for awhile, until the train started slowing. "This is me," I said, standing up. "Coming with me?"
"Nah," she said, shaking her head and waving her hand at me. "I'm gonna go home."
"All right."
"Thanks for going out with me tonight."
"Sure." I got ready to go out the door, then turned back to her quickly and gave her a small kiss on the lips. "Don't worry about it, okay?" I said. She just rolled her eyes in response, and then I was off the train and she zooming quickly out of my eyeshot.
It wasn't until I had gotten home, watched a little TV, had a snack, read a little and climbed into bed that I remembered the letter. I got up, dug it out of my jacket, and sat down.

(FRENCH TEXT NOT TRANSLATED YET)

Now... I'm not sure if Karen simply doesn't understand that I speak no other languages besides English, or if she knows it and does these things anyway just to drive me crazy. In any cae, she was succeeding. I put down the useless letter, sighed, and attempted to go to sleep.

-- x --

"My God, my God," Brian said, scanning the freshly-printed dot matrix page. "I had no idea everything was so expensive."
"It's a bridal registry," Jane said, taking the sheet out of his hand and looking at it herself. "Of course it's expensive. That's the point."
"Yeah, but look at it, for God's sake." Brian pointed at a line. "Eight sets of forks, spoons and knives costs more than my rent."
"Well, whaddya expect? Haven't you ever seen a registry?"
"No, actually, I haven't."
Jane and I just stopped and looked at each other. Finally I said, "Haven't any of your friends ever gotten married before?"
"Sure," he said, "a whole slew of'em got married right after college. But I was twenty-two, man. I just bought 'em a bag of pot like everyone else."
"Well, of course you did," Jane said.
"Maybe we should pool our money together and get one gift," I said.
Jane winced. "Ooh, that's so cheesy! Yuck, let's not do that."
"Well, okay," Brian said, still looking at the list. "But that pretty much means we're going to be getting them three salt shakers..."
"Fuck!" Jane yelled in the middle of the sales floor, prompting several turns of the head. "Why the fuck did we get invited to this stupid fuckin' wedding! I hate weddings!"
"Well, they are friends of yours..."
"If they're getting married, they're no longer friends of mine. I mean, why are they getting married, anyway? The only reason people get married is to rub their friends' noses in it."
"Will you calm down?" I said. "Don't begrudge your friends just because they're ready to make the leap."
"Oh, you're one to talk," she snapped.
"And what the hell does that mean?"
"Forget it." She whipped the list out of Brian's hands and looked at it again. "This is all stuff I hate anyway," she said. "Silver and trinkets and knicknacks and shit, just a bunch of shit."
"Look," I said, angry now, "I'm sorry the idea of marriage threatens your delicate sensibilities. But don't take it out on us!"
"And I'm sorry that speaking of anything besides a one-night stand upsets you, but you better fuckin' deal with it!"
"Where did this come from!"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about!" Jane yelled.
"Hey, I'm not the one who kicked the other one out of bed, all right?"
Brian started walking. "I'm outta here..."
"WAIT!" Jane and I both shouted simultaneously. The three of us stood in the middle of Marshall Field's, looking at each other and letting the crowd make all the noise for us. Finally I held up my hands and said to Jane, "Let's... talk about this later, okay? Obviously we need to."
Jane looked at me, and I watched the anger on her face melt and become replaced with a slumping look. "Okay," she said quietly. "You're right. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," I said. "Just don't get mad about something I don't know anything about."
"Okay, well then," Brian said, stepping in between us. "Now that we've got our little Dysfunctional Moment of the Day out of the way, I think I've found a solution to our gift dilemna." He looked at the list. "You know, for the amount of money we're planning on spending here for a wine glass, we could go over to Reckless Records and buy, like, five used CDs apiece."
"Oh." I stopped. "Hey. I never thought of that."
"Are we all okay with this?" Brian looked at Jane in an exaggerated way.
"Yeah," she said. "That sounds fine."
"Well then... let's go," he said, gesturing at the door. We started walking and Brian muttered, "Christ, I wish you two had never slept together..." Jane and I looked at each other, and I think at that moment we were both in agreement with him.

-- x --

Well, it took three hours of sitting in Border's, slowly looking up words in a French disctionary, but I finally worked out a rough translation.

Do you know what one of my favorite experiences is? It is when sexual tension develops between you and someone else. It is when you want to sleep with someone and you know that they know, and they want to sleep with you and you are pretty sure of it, but you have not actually slept together. The actual fucking usually results in quite a bore, wouldn't you agree? Oh, it is pleasant and it does the things that sex is supposed to do. But the tension that floats in the air before, and the wild fantasies you (devise?) in your head alone at night, and the mental pictures you (devise?) of what they look like naked are what is exciting. These are the thoughts I am having, sitting on my couch, reading your letter.
English has the fewest distinct letters of almost any modern language, yet it is one of the most expansive languages used presently. There is a very good reason why America chose English for its (dominant?) language, presented with all the choices they could have picked. English matches the spirit of America overall -- newness, expansion, invention for the idea of invention. Young (intellectuals?) in America spend hours and hours trying to outdo each other, trying to invent the most complicated way to say the most simple concepts. You do not find this in other countries, because the language simply does not allow it. Something written in French two hundred years ago is still readable and still relevant. Something written in English two hundred years ago is so archaic that it is almost untranslatable. It sounds like an entirely different language, because it is -- English reinvents itself every year.
It is why I enjoy reading American literature so much -- it is delightful to see that, of six different ways to say something, the writer chose this particular way for this particular reason. It is so complex, and the choice of words mean as much as what is being said. However, it is because of this complexity that I hate writing in English. I have enough difficulties trying to figure out what to say, much less how to say it. It overwhelms me, which is why I write my letters in French. That, and I am drunk.
Maybe you are right. Maybe I should take a chance on you. I am scared, however. Part of my crisis involves driving someone away because of my crisis. I am not certain you understand the complexities in place or how far it extends into my everyday life. Part of it is that I really enjoy fucking, but for all the wrong reasons. It is difficult for me to say something like that to you, that I really desire to fuck you but I shouldn't because it is for the wrong reasons that I wish it. The reasons are (something like 'variable and complex') and I am not sure I can explain them in an adequate way. And if I don't, I then risk making you angry and driving you away, which adds to my crisis. Do you understand my (dilemna?)? Welcome to my world.
Well, enough. I am drunk and sleepy and going to bed. Good night. I think of the idea that I am in your dreams, and it makes me smile.

Karen.

And now I didn't know what to think. If I got it right, I think she was saying she wanted to... fuck me, but for the wrong reasons. What does that mean? I was titillated, yet slightly offended. I'm telling you, the more I found out about our mysterious eff-one, the more confused I got. I decided to just call her up.
"Hello?"
"Karen?"
"Speaking."
"Hi. It's Andy."
"Oh, hi." A pause. "Hi. I thought I'd scared you off."
"No. Sorry." I should mention, for your sake, that it was Thursday night that I was calling. "I didn't want to call until I had gotten your letter translated..."
"Oh yeah. Sorry 'bout that."
"That's okay. What you said makes sense, about writing in English."
"It's neurotic of me," she said.
"But also exotic."
She laughed. "You're much more complimentary than you need to be."
"However," I said, "I am confused. The whole... sex issue. I can't quite follow it."
I heard her sigh. "Yes. It's hard for me to express it right, and I'm afraid I'm going to offend you if I tell it wrong."
"Okay, well, I'm here now, so let's make the attempt. I promise to keep an open mind."
She paused. "Okay." She paused again. "I've had a lot of sex. With a lot of guys. More than I'm particularly proud of."
"Mm-hmm..."
"And I'm beginning to understand.. hmm... a big part of my religious upbringing, or now, I'm learning, a big part of my religious upbringing that made me happy and fulfilled was this sense of ritual. Do you have any ritual in your life, Andy?"
"Well... not religious ritual, per se."
"Any kind of ritual?"
"Well, the usual kind. Wash your hair, brush your teeth..."
"Exactly. And have you ever noticed how displaced your day feels when you miss out on one of your morning rituals?"
"Yeah, I guess, if you put it like that. I never really thought about it."
"Man, it's all I think about these days," she said. "Ritual, ritual. It was such a huge part of my childhood..."
"Okay."
"So, once I became an atheist, I lost all this sense of ritual I used to have. Except, I didn't realize it. I didn't realize at that point how much ritual was involved with my faith or that it held any importance to me. It's only in the last year that I've realized this."
"Okay."
"But, this whole time I've been missing ritual out of my life, I've really been missing it, without actually acknowledging it. So, I've been seeking out ritual without realizing that I was even seeking it out. I've been engaging in ritual practices without realizing that it was the ritual part of the activity that I was seeking."
"All right."
Karen paused. "You know, there was a point in my life where I thought I was simply an oversexed person. I just assumed that I had a highly-enlarged libido, because it seemed like I just couldn't get fucked enough."
Zing. "Uh, okay..."
"But I'm realizing now that that's all wrong. It's not the sex, really, so much that I like. It's the ritual, the ritual of the seduction, the ritual of the bedroom and the ritual of the undressing and all of that."
"Well." I paused. "Well, that makes sense. That's not offensive."
"Well, that's not the touchy part. The touchy part is that now I've met you, and I'm not sure what to think. I have such a huge inability to determine anything right now that I'm not sure if I want to fuck you for the ritual of it or if because you really are attractive."
"Oh..."
"Wait, wait, wait," she said, sighing. "This isn't coming out right at all. See, this is what I was afraid of. I don't mean to imply that you're unattractive. You are attractive. I definitely am sexually attracted to you. I just don't know if that means that I'm emotionally attracted to you, or if I just want to have sex with you. You see the difference, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm trying to break a cycle, you see? If I had met you six months ago, I would've simply gone home with you that night at the art gallery and fucked your brains out."
Gulp.
"But, see, it wouldnt've mattered if you had been a really abusive person. I would've gone home with you anyway. And I've been doing that way too much the last coupla years. And even if you were right for me, I woulda dumped you anyway, after the seduction was over. I wouldn't be able to resist going out and seeking the ritual of seduction again."
"Uh-huh."
"But yet I still find myself in that cycle. I kissed you that night you were over at my apartment... and you don't know how much I wanted you to stay, you really don't. And then I read that stupid poem at the open mike..."
"It wasn't stupid..."
"Oh yes it was. It was written with one purpose in mind, and that was to seduce you."
"It worked!"
"I know! I'm very good at it. But that's not what I want. If we hook up, I want to know it's because I truly am emotionally and spiritually attracted to you. Not because I want to simply fuck you and discard you."
"Okay."
"And... that's pretty much it. That's my explanation."
"Well, congratulations. I'm still not offended."
"Good. You know, I think this is the most I've ever told a man about my emotional state since I was maybe eighteen years old."
"Does it feel good?" I asked.
"Kind. Yeah, kinda."
"You know," I said. "I think it'd help if I finally heard the whole story about your childhood and you becoming an atheist and all that."
"Oh shit." She paused. "Not tonight, okay? I know I keep putting it off, but we keep talking so late at night. I promise, this weekend."
"Oh hey," I said, "that reminds me. I'd like to give you the lamest proposition in history."
"Yeah?"
"Would you like to be my date to a wedding Saturday?"
"You're kidding, right?" she said in a less-than-excited voice.
"I told you it was lame."
"Who's getting married?"
"You know Megan Leland?"
"The musician?"
"Yeah. Her and her boyfriend. He writes plays for Blue Goose theatre company..."
"Well..." she pondered.
"The whole Chicago art community's gonna be there."
"Well... okay. Why not."
"Maybe it'll be some good ritual for once," I laughed.
"Yeah, maybe."
"Well, I'll let you get to bed," I said.
"Okay. Call me tomorrow with the details."
"All right."
"I'm realy glad you understand what I'm talking about."
"Well," I said, "I don't exactly understand it. But I respect it. It sounds like you don't even exactly understand it at this point."
"Yeah," she said. "Good point."
"Well, I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"Okay. Sweet dreams."
"Goodnight." Click.
Since I was already in the mood for working things out on the phone, I made another call.
"Yallo."
"Jane."
"Oh." A pause. "Hi, Andy."
A long pause, and then from me, "You wanna talk about this?"
Another long pause, then Jand said, "When I said we shouldn't sleep together anymore, you could've at least put up some kind of token resistance."
"I thought you said you didn't want to sleep with me anymore because you meant it."
"I did mean it. I just woulda been nice for you to say you'd miss it or something."
"I will miss it," I said. "Jane, whaddya want me to say? I guessed wrong. I thought telling you that would complicate things further. I thought it wasn't what you wanted to hear."
"Really?" Jane paused. "Wow. I didn't know I was coming across so complex. I was sure I was being transparent."
"Jane, the wiley female," I laughed. "Of course you're coming off as complex. You're a woman. I'm a man. I don't have a clue what you're thinking."
"I always thought it was, you know, women women who could get away with that. You know, tall women with designer dresses and high heels..."
"Jane," I said, then paused. "Jane, I will miss sleeping with you. I wish this had all happened when we had first met. Then maybe there'd been a chance of us getting involved. I don't know how to say it any plainer than that."
"Well..." she said. "That's what I needed to hear. You know, you can be just as complex to me as I am to you." I heard her light up a cigarette. "God, Andy, ever since Sunday, I've had this sinking feeling that I'd been taken for some kind of ride..."
"Jane, you know I'd never do that to you..."
"No, Andy, I don't know that. I don't know that at all. I know Andy the friend wouldn't take me for a ride, but I don't know what the fuck Andy the lover would do." She paused, then exhaled into the receiver. "Shit. Since when did sex start leaving me more tense?"
"It always has, I think. Just before, we were so grateful to be getting it that we ignored the tension."
"Yeah, maybe." She paused. "I told you it wasn't a rejection. I think I just needed to hear that from you, too. I felt like you were relieved I broke it off."
"I wasn't relieved, Jane. No way. I'd love for us to still be together. I'd... love for us to be dating, to tell the truth."
"Yeah. I wouldn't mind that either."
"But, I mean, that's not going to be able to happen. But no, I wasn't relieved." I paused. "Besides, I thought you were lying. I thought it was a rejection and you were just trying to let me down easy."
"But I told you it wasn't a rejection. I couldnt've said it any simpler."
"I know. I just refused to believe you."
Jane paused. "We're the two most pathetic lovers in the history of the human race, you know that, Andy?"
"Ha! Ha-ha-ha!" The two of us sat and laughed on the phone for a good five or ten seconds.
"So we're square, Jane?"
"Yeah, yeah, we're square. I'm sorry I turned on you yesterday."
"I'm sorry I did the same. I just get fr ustrated sometimes. I feel like somehow I'm getting gypped out of something that could've happened between us that would've been very special. But I don't know who to blame. Kismet, I guess."
"Oh Andy..." Jane suddenly stopped. "Andy, you really feel that way?"
"Well... sure."
"Oh... fuck. Fuck, Andy, that's one of the most romantic things anyone's ever said to me! Fuck!"
"Are you crying?"
"Fuck you," she said, but I could tell she was. "God, Andy, why can't any of us live happily after ever?"
I had no response to this, so I just kept quiet.
"Oh well," Jane eventually said, sniffling and getting control of herself. "Someone's gotta dig the ditches, right?"
"Amen, sister."
Jane laughed. "I'll see you at the wedding Saturday, okay?"
"Okay."
She sniffed again. "Boy, am I glad you called. I thought I'd lost my best friend yesterday."
"You'll never do that."
She sniffed again. "Fuckin' estrogen. Whaddya gonna do?"
"Yeah."
"Well. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
I hung up, looked at the clock. 11:37 p.m. Hmm. Well, I guess it wasn't too late, and I was on a roll. I picked the phone up again and dialed a number.
"Hello."
"Hi. Is Mary there?"
"No, she's out right now. Can I take a message?"
"Are you her roommate?"
"Uh-huh."
"Oh, uh, hi. I have no idea if you're gonna remember me. My name's Andy. I called your machine last week by accident, looking for a woman named Karen, and you share the same first six digits as..."
"Oh, oh yes. Andy from the machine! How are you?"
"I'm good. Well, actually, I'm strange. That's why I'm calling. I've found myself in this kind of strange predicament. Well, not strange so much, but just unusual for me."
"Why, what is it?"
"Well... I think I have two women interested in me at once."
"Wow, a menage a trois?"
"No, oh no no, they don't know each other. As in competing interests."
"Oh. Oh my."
"Except that neither may be interested in me, too."
"You better tell the whole story."
"Okay," and I started to, but shortly into it I heard a door open and the women yelled, "Mary! Pick up the phone!"
"Who is it?"
"Andy!"
"Andy who?"
"Andy from the machine!"
I heard a click. "Andy from the machine! I didn't expect to hear from you!" So we got her caught up and then I finished the whole sordid story.
"Well," Mary said, "that's quite a pickle you've got yourself in."
"And so," I said, "I know this sounds really stupid, but I wanted some female advice but I don't have any female friends who aren't involved in this story somehow. So, I thought I'd call you and see if you or your roommate..."
"Girfriend, actually," Mary said.
"Partner, actually," the other woman said.
"I thought we had finally agreed on a term we both liked..."
"You know the word 'girlfriend' makes my blood curdle..."
"...Let's talk about this later, okay?"
"...Fine, fine. You were saying, Andy?"
I paused. "Um... I was hoping to get some advice from... you, on what I should do."
I heard two "hmm"s from the other end.
"Well... I think maybe Jane really is interested in you..." Mary started.
"...But that doesn't mean a whole lot," the other woman said. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
"Laura's right. Liking you does not a relationship necessarily make. There's a lot of complications..."
"And I just don't know about this Karen. I don't wanna slam her or anything, I'm sure she's fine..."
"...Yeah, but she's giving you repeated warnings on how screwed-up her mental condition is right now. Maybe you should heed that."
"Proceed with caution, Andy."
I said, "With which one?"
"Both. Uh, neither. Oh hell, I don't know any better than you."
"But you're lesbians!"
"You think that means we know any better than you how the female mind works?" They both broke into uproarious laughter at the same time, and Mary said, "Sorry we couldn't be more help."
"Yeah," I said dejectedly. "Okay. It's all right."
"Ooh, but you gotta call us next week and tell us what happened."
"What happened where?" I asked.
"The wedding! It's the first time they're gonna meet, right?"
The other woman made a sound like a cat into the receiver.
"Oh," I said, "You don't think they're gonna get in a fight or anything, do you?"
"Good lord, no. But Jane's gonna be pretty pissy when she sees Karen. Even if she's doesn't wanna date you. I guarantee you that."
"Remember the high school reunion last summer?"
"God, Mary, I thought you weren't gonna get out of there alive!"
"Well, ladies," I said, "thanks for the advice. I'll call you next week and let you know what happened."
"Okay, bye."
"Andy," Mary said, "Just give it at least one more week. Be casual. See what happens."
"Okay. Bye."
"Bye." Click.
One more week. Seven days. Yeah, I guess I could do that. After all, all the excitement happened this week. That level of energy couldn't continue like that for another seven days. Next week would probably be really boring and things would work themselves out nice and neat by themselves.
Yeah. Ha. Ha-ha-ha.















MARCH 1997

S M T W R F S

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

A little background information for you:
Despite the six point four million people, despite it being the third largest city in these United States, despite its prolificness and capacity for establishing a national reputation, Chicago's creative scene is in reality quite small. Now, I don't know if it is like this in New York or Los Angeles, because I've never lived in any of those places. But here in Chicago, there are really a very few number of people, all in key positions, that really make or break an artist. Once you become friends with a few of them -- say, a staff writer for one of the weekly papers, or the owner of one of the more prestigious art galleries, or a member of a band who has had a top 40 hit at least once in their lives -- then you are 'in like Flynn,' as they say, although to this day I still don't quite know who Flynn is and how he ever got in there in the first place. In any event, the creative community in Chicago tends to be a tight one, and everyone seems to know everyone else.
I receive my causal connection two ways -- first, I am friends with the actual creators and usually spend most of my free time with them. Second, since I am a patron, I know many of the organizational people in the scene, and have a good relationship with them. In any case, I can safely say that, without actually being a creative person myself, I do find myself in the circle.
I met Tom Benton the way I always meet people in the scene -- some casual introduction at some forgotten party that led to a small discussion, which was remembered at the next event in which we were introduced, which led to a longer discussion, which was remembered at the next event, so much so that no introduction was needed. And this goes on and on to the point where you suddenly find yourselves friends without precisely knowing how or why you had initially met. Tom is a playwright for a local theatre company, and his shows are generally well-liked; nothing too out-there fantastic, but an enjoyable evening, nonetheless.
It was through Tom that I met Megan Leland, who he was dating at the time we were introduced. Megan is a musician, and it's fairly safe to say that her work is out-there fantastic. She's known more for her compositions than her individual playing -- she conducts a big band every week at a local jazzclub, and her Monday evenings have become a sort of cult phenomenom in town.
Megan was ready to put her first album together at the time I met her, and she was looking for investors. So, seeing a chance to make a small profit while also doing a good deed at the same time, I chipped in. Because of this, I started meeting with Megan on a semi-regular basis. And because of this, I have ended up becoming fairly good acquaintances with the couple. Not chummy-chummy, but let's say that more than one bottle of wine has been uncorked in my prescence.
Megan's album was incredible, by the way. And I was mentioned in the liner notes!
Megan and Tom have been dating forever, which by our standards, of course, works out to three or four years. I think they met while working on a musical together... or they already knew each other but the musical got them dating. Well, that doesn't matter. My point is that they are a perfect couple. They sincerely seem to love and cherish each other, and they never even seem to fight, at any time. Half the time it is very inspirational, and makes me feel like there's hope for me yet to find my own mate. The other half of the time, of course, it is incredibly annoying and simply makes us all want to throw up. Then again, most eveything in life provokes this duality in me.
So.
Megan and Tom decided to tie the knot, which sent our community reeling. No one in their late-twenties gets married! No one in the art scene gets married! And believe me, no one in the art scene and in their late-twenties gets married -- it's just unheard of! It was hard to understand this strange piece of creme paper we were all holding in our hands. Was this a joke? Was this some sort of clever invitation to Tom's new play?
But no, it was real. And the community didn't quite know how to react to it. The overwhelmingly consentual mindset seemed to be, "Aw, I really liked that couple. It's too bad they're getting married. Now they're gonna have to break up in about two years." Marriage is a strange conspiracy in the eyes of my friends and I. It seems so... oh, beaugoise, I suppose. So suburban. And my, so ripe for failure. Has there ever been a marriage in the history of time that's worked out? Either the couple divorce or they get so attached to the idea of being together that they grow old and eventually reach a point where they wouldn't be able to function without the other, whether or not they love this person anymore or even like them. The only specific marriages in my life that have ever seemed to work, really work, were a couple of gay friends I know. But hell, that's not even recognized as legal in this country, so what does that say?
Still... we supposed if any marriage could theoretically work, it would be Megan's and Tom's. I can't adequately describe how sickly sweet their relationship is, except to say that it is at once heartening and disgusting at the same time. Besides, we were all curious to attend this... "wedding," as they called it. For most of us, it would be the first wedding we had attended since our early twenties, when a whole gaggle of our friends went running at full speed from the college commencement to the altar, wetting their pants the whole way out of fear of being alone the rest of their lives. They're all divorced now, by the way.
Okay. So are we all up to date now? All right. On with the wedding!

-- x --

"Nice church," Jane said, gawking at the ceiling as we walked in.
"What religion are they, anyway?" I asked.
"Umm..." Brian and Jane looked at each other, than shrugged. "We're in a Methodist church," Brian offered.
An usher came up to us. "Friends of the bride or groom?" he asked in a friendly manner. We just all looked at each other again, and Brian put his hands to his head and said, "So many questions!" bugging out his eyes.
Jane said, "The cooler people'll be sitting on the bride's side, I bet."
"Okay, groom it is!" Brian yelled, pushing us forward.
"I'm gonna wait out here for Karen," I said, and the two shrugged me off as they went in.
Hmm. What religion were they, anyway? How does that even work anymore? If, say, Jane and I were to get married, where would it happen? Neither I nor Jane nor my parents nor Jane's mom and new husband nor Jane's dad and new girlfriend are particularly religious, and none of us, as far as I know, have a church where anyone would recognize us, much less we could call home. Love in the '90s, I suppose. Perhaps we'd get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator.
The door to the church opened, and in blew Karen. She had on an old-fashioned dress and her cheeks were rosy from an apparent rush to the church, and she really did invoke once again the image of those cornball romantic comedies from the 1950's I'm so fond of referring to. I felt like breaking into a showtune.
She spied me and smiled. "Hi," she said, walking over. "Sorry I'm late."
I looked at my watch. "You're early, actually," I said.
"Well," she said, "whatever. Are your friends inside already?"
"Yeah. You wanna go in?"
"Sure, yeah."
We found Brian and Jane inside and scooted in next to them. "Karen," I said, starting to sit, "this is Brian."
"Hi," he said, offering his hand.
"Nice to meet you," Karen said, shaking.
"We met before, at the art gallery," Brian said. "Actually, we didn't get introduced, but we... uh, met. Well, we didn't actually talk. I'm going to shut up now."
"And this is Jane," I said, rolling my eyes at Brian.
"Hi," Jane said, staying in her seat.
"Hello. That was your show when we all met, wasn't it?"
"Yeah."
"I was really impressed. You have a real professionalism that goes beyond a lot of artists in your class."
"Oh... well, thanks."
We all sat in silence for a few seconds, until Brian spoke up. "Star alert," he said quietly. "Smashing Pumpkins, row six."
I think I mentioned before that the Chicago arts community was fairly small and fairly tight. Still, though, I must admit that I get a certain childish thrill out of stargazing, even though as a Chicagoan I am told that I should not be like that. I am supposed to be jaded and world-weary and impossible to get excited...
"Oh dude, it is Smashing Pumpkins," I said excitedly.
"You think they'll be at the reception?" Brian continued in his conspiratorial voice.
"Maybe they're playing at the reception!" I said.
"Oh," Karen said. "I'd imagine that Megan's orchestra would play at the reception. Wouldn't you think?" She turned to us.
"Oh, yeah," Brian said dejectedly, then suddenly brightenend up. "Andy," he said, grabbing my arm. "Let's make a pact to get drunk at the reception and talk to Smashing Pumpkins!"
I laughed. "Fine, fine," I said, "what are we going to say?"
Jane suddenly piped in. "'Hey, aren't you Smashing Pumpkins? Your last album sucked!'"
Brian was into it now. "Can I rub my hand over your bald head, Billy? Please?"
I kept looking around the room. "Isn't that Liz Phair?"
"Where?"
"At, um... row ten... four people from the edge..."
Brian gazed. "No, that's not... Liz Phair, is it?"
"I think it is!"
"Her hair's too long."
"It could grow, Brian. Those things happen, you know."
"Whatever happened to her new album, anyway?"
"Oh, she got pregnant or something, or something weird happened..."
"Well," Jane said, "I don't know if that's Liz Phair... or could I care..." She shook her head at me. "I swear to God, Andy, you get crushes on the stupidest people... but, anyway, I know that that..." She gestured at a man with her head, "...is Ethan Thomas."
"The author?"
"Yep. Megan's really good friends with him and I spent a whole evening with him once at a dinner party."
"Hmm." We all looked, and I said, "I thought no one knew where he was. Didn't he, like, disappear into Europe or something?"
"That's what I heard," Karen said.
"I dunno," Jane said, "but that's him. I'd recognize him anywhere."
"Was he nice? Did you get to talk to him?"
Jane just shrugged and curled her lips, accidentally looking like Elvis.
Brian started fidgeting in his seat. "Man, when's this thing gonna get started? I hate weddings."
"Should I have brought some toys with me for you?" I said in a fatherly voice to him.
"Yeah, yeah! You got any paper? You wanna play dots, like in church when you were a kid?"
I laughed, and Jane got a far-away look in her eyes. "I always used to cry at weddings," she said.
"Tell me about it," Brian said off-handedly, pulling a hymnal out of the little shelf in front of us.
"Not like that!" she said, slapping his arm. "I mean cry cry. Weddings are so beautiful. The bride looks so... oh, you know."
Brian gave me a look, his lips wide open, his tongue lolling out, one eye closed in a psychotic wink. Jane gave him a hard elbow in the ribs, which turned the face into a grimace of pain.
"Look," Jane said, exasperated. "I know my femininity is completely hidden to you guys so much that you won't even admit it, but I am a girl under here. I know you don't believe me, but I do enjoy some of that girly stuff sometimes."
"I don't believe it," Brian said.
"Oh, I do," I said.
"Well of course you do, Andy, 'cause..." Brian started to say, and then there was an uncomfortable silence. Karen gave Brian a look, and he tried to sheepishly finish up his sentence. "...'cause... Andy... always sees the feminine side of women." He nodded his head as if this is what he meant the whole time, then slunk a little lower in his seat.
"I bet you went to prom, didn't you, Jane?" I asked.
"Of course I did. Why, didn't you?"
"Hell no. My friends and I held a political boycott of prom."
"Yeah, you couldn't get a date," Brian said.
"No, no, that's not it at all," I said, angrily. "Look, at my high school, you had to spend hundreds of dollars to go to prom. Tuxedo, flowers, limo, dinner, hotel, and, like, forty dollar prom tickets, it was fucking ridiculous..."
"Andy couldn't get a date to prom!" Jane squealed.
"No! Fuck you guys! I could've gotten a date to prom if I had wanted to go!"
"Oh, hmmph, yeah, okay," the two said, covering their laughter with throat-clearings.
"You believe me, Karen, right?" I turned to her. She just sort of shrugged and didn't say anything, and I turned back to the WonderTwins. "Man, fuck you guys."
"God, I looked so good in my prom dress," Jane said, back to fond remembrance mode again. "I'll never look that good again in my life."
"You still have it?"
"Nah. My mom sold it for five dollars." Jane paused, then sighed. "Every time I see green taffodila, I still yell at her."
I noticed that Karen was being unusually quiet, and I turned to her. "Are you okay?" I asked.
"Sure, fine."
"Not a fan of weddings?" Brian piped in.
"Actually," Karen said, "I was engaged once."
"Oh yeah?" Brian said. "I guess the wedding didn't go through, from the sounds of it."
"Yeah. I cancelled the wedding four days before the ceremony."
And then we all just sat there, not saying anything.
After thirty seconds or so, the music abruptly changed, got much louder, and everyone started standing and looking backwards. We jumped up too.
"If you had just said something," I whispered into Karen's ear, "I would've understood."
She smiled and looked at me. "It was a long time ago," she said. "It doesn't really bother me anymore. It's just that weddings get me thinking about it."
"Ah."
A blur of white appeared from the back, and then Megan started coming down the aisle, shrouded in lace or whatever it is they make wedding dresses out of.
"Oh!" Jane said, grabbing my arm. "Look at her!"
"Yep," I said. "That's Megan, all right."
"God, Andy, where's your sense of romance?"
"Give it a rest, Jane."
"She looks like a million fuckin' bucks," Jane said.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Brian retorted. "You're in a House of God, you know."
"Better that than a House of Blues," I said.




 

 



this website copyright scars publications and design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.



this page was downloaded to your computer