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Explanations follow.
1. The missing bowling trophy and 25th Anniversary Playboy magazine.
2. Calling my uncle “Silverback.”
3. Spoiled egg salad.
4. Wearing those miserable goth boots.
5. The gag shoelaces from the novelty shop.
6. Inventing the color “bleen.”
1. They were in my rec room, and then they were gone. They belonged to my father. I was in Hershey watching Santana and you let yourself in. While there, you drank the last Pepsi out of the fridge in the garage.
2. My uncle is a little bit on the older side. Big and burly, and his hair is almost completely gray. You must have thought he resembled a primate.
3. The mayonnaise was months past its expiration date. I was violently ill for two days because it was 2 AM and you didn’t want to run to the 7-11 around the corner to buy fresh mayo.
4. Full-calf, black leather round steel-toe boots. Forever these have been associated with those who read poorly conceived science fiction novels and attend local Renaissance Festivals with enough frequency, enthusiasm and vigor to have their own established characters. Yours was Barebones, the Village Blacksmith, even though you know little to nothing about metalworking.
5. They broke right before my most recent job interview. I had to tuck the long end into my shoe to avoid embarrassment. Nevertheless, the shoe slipped off my heel as the Human Resources director was walking me up the stairs.
6. Even though turquoise and teal already exist, you went overboard and did this. The cute name is unnecessary. The color also has no practical aesthetic applications. The lady on the customer relations phone line at Binney-Smith, the Crayola company, barely restrained her laughter when you told her about it. You cried. You could tell. But she was right.
Two years ago, I weighed a lot. I wasn¹t husky, big-boned, hefty, or chubby, I was fat. My stomach stuck an estimated 5 inches over my waistline, I could pinch great handfuls of flesh at my sides, and my friends had dubbed my pectorals "man boobs." I stood 5 feet 10 inches and my frame carried ninety extra pounds of weight. I spent most of my adolescent and adult years living the fat life. Two years ago, my girlfriend and my family doctor cajoled me into joining this group, Fat Fighters. At the time, I weighed 275 pounds.
I
I had gone in to Dr. Phelps' office to get antibiotics for a head cold, and
the doc kindly told me I looked like the frontrunner for his "Youngest
Patient To Die of A Heart Attack Award." Dr. Phelps practices a pretty blunt
bedside manner. He ordered me to either go on a diet and quit smoking, or find
a new doctor. The store's HMO covers Dr. Phelps one hundred percent, no
co-pay, so I decided to ask Amanda which habit to work on first. Amanda
figured that since you usually gain weight when you quit smoking, and since
we lived together, and she smoked, it would be a good idea to try and lose
weight first. I agreed, and promised to start walking and watching what I
eat, but Amanda demanded that I join some sort of support group to help me
out. The closest I had ever gotten to therapy before was buying a "Habits
of Organized People" book at Barnes and Noble, and sitting in a room with a
bunch of slobs like me didn¹t seem very appealing. Amanda responded in the
same manner as Dr. Phelps - find a group or find a new apartment.
Amanda and I were eating dinner the next night when she brought up Fat
Fighters. As I worked on my third hamburger, Amanda told me about this
group she had heard about from some sales rep in the lighting fixture
department of the construction supply company she worked for as a
receptionist.
"Tom, this guy Dave lost forty pounds in something like four months!"
"What did he do, cut his leg off?"
"He says it's a really great program. They give you tons of support and
teach you how to eat right. Tom, you have to try it out."
I looked up from my plate and saw Amanda's blue eyes. I had always
wondered how a girl with chestnut brown hair could get blue eyes, but she
still looked pretty. That Thursday night, I followed Amanda's directions to
a glassy, schizophrenically angled corporate center. A back-lit glass sign
announced I had pulled into the Shady Hollow Corporate Center, but offered
no revelations as to the location of Fat Fighters.
I parked my gold Toyota Camry in the closest spot I could find and shuffled
into the glass lobby of the building. I considered myself a defeated man
for here. I looked at the building directory and found that Fat Fighters
set up shop on the second floor.
A moment later, I found out that Fat Fighters occupied the entire second
floor. I skulked out of the elevator into a room with some terrible shade
of Executive Mauve on the walls, and a bristly carpet in a color I
recognized as Bureaucratic Tan. On either side of the elevator,
receptionists' desks with high fronts that matched the carpet created a
gauntlet I would have to pass through. Behind each of these desks, trim
ladies in their fifties hunkered in the foxhole created by their high,
faux-wood desks. I sauntered over to the one of the light, trying to appear
as if I knew what I were doing.
"Hello sir, are you new here at Fat Fighters?" the trim receptionist asked
me.
"Yeah, I guess I am," I stared at the desk immediately in front of me to
avoid fat-to-skinny eye contact.
The receptionist slid a clipboard with a registration sheet into my field of
vision. I provided all the standard information. In addition, I filled out
blanks requesting my height, weight, and age. I felt as if I were at the
DMV. I handed the clipboard back to the receptionist, who looked it over
and asked me for eighteen dollars.
An awkward scene played itself out as I first struggled to pry open my
strained back pocket, then broke a sweat as I tugged my wallet through the
too thin space between my bulbous ass and my jeans. After I paid, the
receptionist handed me a little plastic shopping bag filled with pamphlets.
At least for eighteen dollars, Fat Fighters provided a bag made from the
thicker kind of plastic they used at the Gap, not the annoyingly crinkley
plastic bag they give out at the 7-11.
"OK Tom, if you¹ll head through that door right ahead of you, you¹re ready
to begin your weight loss journey!"
I headed into the next room, where another fit, friendly, older lady
weighed me. I insisted on leaving my shoes on; I have a paranoia about how
my feet smell. After I stepped onto the scale, she asked me to pull my Fat
Fighters Weight Loss Journal out of my bag. I handed it to her and she
noted "276" and the date under Week One. I blushed when I realized I had
written "265" on my registration form. The scale attendant told me to head
into the classroom, the meeting was scheduled to start in about twenty
minutes.
I walked through the door the scale attendant had gestured to, a
conference room decorated in the same corporate color scheme as the hallway
the receptionists guarded. On the wall, posters displayed full figured
models who smiled as they guided broccoli stalks towards their mouths or ran
through a field with the inevitable golden retriever. Each poster was
emblazoned with "You Can Do It! And Fat Fighters Can Help!" in an overly
cheerful font. I sat in one of the mauve plastic contour chairs and waited
for the meeting to start.
Over the next twenty minutes, about thirty other people staked out a
seat in one of the other plastic chairs. They ranged from obese to normal,
but nobody made the "skinny" cut. I became increasingly uncomfortable as I
realized, out of only three men in the room, I was both the youngest and the
fattest. I started sweating again. A skinny woman confidently bounded to
the front of the room and cheerfully introduced herself as Jenny, the group
leader.
For the next half hour, I learned about the importance of drinking
forty-eight ounces of water a day in order to maintain healthy weight loss.
I hate drinking water, I prefer to go thirsty if I can't wrangle a beverage
with some sort of flavor. After Jenny handed out some awful pink ribbons to
people that had lost weight, I stayed with four other new members, all
women, to learn about the Fat Fighters program. I picked up the program
without any brain strain: every type of food has a certain point value per
serving, each person gets a certain amount of points every day based on
their weight. The mandatory forty-eight ounces of water and twenty minutes
of exercise rounded out the Fat Fighters regimen.
I chain smoked on the half an hour drive home, partly excited that I
might actually lose weight, and partly ashamed that I was buying into all of
this false perkiness. People had, for the most part, stopped making jokes
about my weight, but when I thought of the jokes my friends had made in high
school, my cheeks started to burn. I had a ten year reunion coming up in
September, and maybe by then I could show them all something.
For the next week, I emulated every aspect of the Fat Fighters program.
Amanda helped out by packing lunches for me to take into the store, and by
joining me on a twenty minute walk around the apartment complex every night.
One night, as we were taking our walk, Amanda began to joke about this new
habit.
"You know, we could buy some bright white Reeboks, start calling this our
"evening constitutional," and move into a retirement home!"
"Very funny, smart ass, you're the reason I¹m out here in the first place."
"If you don't lose weight after this week, I'll let you off the hook and you
won't have to go anymore."
The next Thursday I rushed through the credit card routine and all but
bounded over to the scale attendant.
"You've had an excellent first week, Tom! Nine pounds, good for you!"
I almost shat myself. Still in shock, I hurried into the meeting to learn
more about how to be a Fat Fighter. Jenny told us all about setting short
term goals in order to reach our target weight, and made sure we all felt
especially proud of our commitment to weight loss. I beamed during the
group applause for everyone that had lost weight.
After the meeting, Jenny introduced me to my weight loss support buddy,
Melissa. Melissa was one of the skinnies that sat in a group towards the
back of the meeting, separating themselves like the A-crowd in a high school
cafeteria. Her looks reminded me of the sort of woman meant for a fling.
She wore her strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a bun, and had the hint
of a tan that good make-up gives a woman. Melissa had enough curves to be
sexy, but not nearly enough to come to a Fat Fighters meeting. My eyes
weaseled a quick glance at her coltish, black stockinged legs.
"Nice to meet you Tom, how much did you lose this week?"
"Nine pounds."
"Jesus! You¹re not bulimic, are you? You know, if you're puking, you'll
lose more teeth than pounds."
This comment took me by surprise, but Melissa's assuaging smile let me
in on her joke. I smiled back and assured her I wasn¹t bulimic.
"Good, I don't need a head case on my hands. Here¹s my card with my
home number written on the back. If you have any questions, or need any
help, call me, I¹m there to encourage you."
I thanked her, and asked why she attended Fat Fighters at her weight.
She snorted and told me that two years ago, she was almost double the weight
she was now. I wondered where all the extra skin had gone, but managed to
keep my mouth shut. Melissa told me that she felt obligated to help new
members as a support buddy because she owed so much to Fat Fighters.
Melissa pulled some pictures out of her oversized maroon wallet. All three
pictures showed eerily similar obese, bespectacled men.
"These guys aren¹t fat anymore, thanks in part to me."
I congratulated her and started to make my exit.
"Let me know when you've taken twenty pounds off, I¹ll take you out to
lunch."
I thanked Melissa again and rushed home to tell Amanda how much I had lost.
Amanda threw her arms around me when I told her about the nine pounds.
She kept her arms draped around my neck as I related Jenny's advice about
short terms, but stiffened a little bit when I told her about Melissa.
Amanda pulled away from me, remarked that it seemed a little weird for a
skinny woman to hang around Fat Fighters, and retreated into the kitchen to
make a snack of rice cakes and cranberry juice.
II
Over the next month, I managed to shed twenty eight pounds off of my
overburdened frame. The weight seemed to be sliding off of me, and I began
to pine for the Thursday night Fat Fighters meetings. I craved new ways to
help lose weight, and wrote down every tip Jenny offered. I called Dr.
Phelps to tell him about my success, and he wryly remarked that I might live
to collect Social Security after all.
Melissa, as promised, took me out to lunch the Friday after I had hit the
twenty pound mark. The restaurant, the New Leaf, was a combination juice
bar, trendy sandwich shop, and narcissist magnet. Trendy cartoon artwork
hung on the walls, and new-age synthesized Muzak piped through the already
noisy restaurant. The lunch rush at the New Leaf consisted of young, trendy
professionals with a penchant for vegetarianism and day-trading. I felt
scrubby in my Blockbuster shirt and Dockers. Melissa grabbed me by the
elbow and apologized for being late, and a moment later the flaky hostess
sat us at a window table.
"I hate this place, but it's easy to order something on the program here,"
Melissa stated. "Try the Portabello Club, it almost tastes like real food."
I took her suggestion and ordered the Club and an unsweetened iced tea. She
ordered the same and we began to make small talk about our jobs. I told her
about my life as a Blockbuster Video manager, and she related stories from
her career as a paralegal. It relieved me to find out that, despite the
high class business attire I had seen Melissa in every week at Fat Fighters,
she and I were close to one another on the economic scale. She asked me
about my family, and I told her about my Mom and Dad and brother who lived
out near State College, and about Amanda. I told her the small world story
of Amanda and I going to the same high school in central Pennsylvania, and
how we didn't meet until we had both moved to Lancaster.
"She's going to be a lucky girl, you're a very handsome man underneath
all that lard."
"Um, yeah, I love her a lot. She's always been there for me, for the
last seven years."
I couldn't figure out if this last remark had been a compliment, an
insult, or a motivating statement. Then I felt Melissa¹s toes slide up and
down my left thigh. I looked down in time to see my other self twitch under
the table. I also saw Melissa sliding her left foot back into her shoe.
"Listen," I managed to stammer "It's really flattering for you to, you know,
but I¹ve been dating Melis--Amanda for almost seven years."
Melissa responded by asking me if I had gone to college. Panic slowly
loosened the rubber bands around my lungs, and the moment passed. We spent
the rest of the meal talking about Fat Fighters and pretending Melissa's
foot had never left her patent leather pump. She told me about how Fat
Fighters had helped her to find the self-esteem she had never had in life,
and about how she couldn¹t bring herself to leave Fat Fighters. Melissa
said watching her support buddies lose weight and gain respect gave her a
chance to give back to the program that had given her a second chance at
life.
"So you do all of this support work for free?"
"Not exactly, I sort of work on commission. Fat Fighters pays me a certain
amount of money depending on how much weight my buddy loses."
"Sounds like a good deal, but did you ever have anyone that wasn't able to
lose the weight?"
"Once, this horrible depressed housewife whose kids had left for
college. She didn't need me, she needed psychoanalysis or Prozac. That¹s
why I like to work with guys, they stay more motivated."
In the parking lot, I thanked Melissa for lunch and for supporting me
through my first month of Fat Fighters. She hugged me before walking to
her blue Honda.
"By the way, I'll blow you when you lose fifty pounds!" She called over her
shoulder. I stared at her as she got into her car and drove away. I
couldn't believe this! For the first time in never, a woman had made not
one, but two passes at me. I congratulated myself for losing enough weight
to appear attractive. On the way back to work, I was lost in a
self-absorbed daze, smoking a cigarette and convincing myself that I could
handle jogging around the apartment complex that night.
Amanda stayed home. I tried to jog around the complex, and ended up
throwing up most of my forty eight regulated ounces of water in some bushes
beside the complex swimming pool I had never used. Fifteen minutes later,
this development didn't faze me in the least. I stood in front of the
bathroom mirror with bloodshot eyes and watery drool on the collar of my
sweatshirt and declared "You're going to make it, buddy!" I started giggling
as I peeled my gray sweatsuit off and jumped into the shower.
Later, Amanda rolled over to my side of the bed. "Am I going to have to
start worrying about other girls now that you're getting so skinny?"
I whiplashed my head around and managed to stop my heart from breaking my
ribs when I saw Amanda's smile. I mumbled something about how much I loved
her, and how she had been the one to stick with me through the literal thick
and thin. That night, I had a dream about buying a pair of Levi's with a 32
inch waist.
I started pushing the bounds of how much I could avoid Melissa without
seeming rude. I smiled at her before the Fat Fighters meetings, but made no
motion to say more than hi to her after the meetings. I latched on to a
group of three middle age women with pillow butts and sat with them at each
meeting, talking about what movies I liked and if I really cared whether or
not kids rented the Youth Restricted Viewing choices. Melissa either didn't
notice or didn't care about my distance, she just smiled and waved each
week.
III
My weight loss slowed down as my metabolism caught up with my svelte new
lifestyle, but I still managed to drop between three and four pounds a week.
Most of my waking hours were spent either congratulating myself or figuring
out how to lose more weight. It became a sort of addiction, counting out
points, measuring out water, sticking carrot sticks into baggies. I felt
like some sort of New-Age drug dealer. I didn't mind, I weighed 227 pounds,
and had officially downgraded myself from fat to chubby. I was making love
to Amanda like a champ, considering it was aerobic exercise, three or four
nights a week. I felt like I commanded new respect among the high school
kids and college dropouts I lorded over at the store. Most importantly, I
had removed one "X" from my shirt size, a feat I had not been able to
accomplish since I was twenty.
As the weeks and the weight flew by, I kept thinking about what Melissa had
said to me in the parking lot of the New Leaf. In my office at the store,
surrounded by promo posters for Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater movies, I
would stare at the perforated ceiling tiles and fantasize about making love
to Melissa. In my favorite fantasy, Melissa would pull me into one of the
scale booths at Fat Fighters, then proceed to slide her tongue down my
diminishing torso and into my nether regions. After a few minutes of
happily visualizing sex with Melissa, however, I began to wonder what I
would really do when I lost fifty pounds. On the one hand, I found Melissa
desirable and felt that I owed her for finding me attractive. Amanda
wouldn¹t find out if I covered my tracks well. The third phase of thinking
about Melissa occurred when I realized that she had probably just been
making a joke, upon which I dismissed the whole idea of an affair with her.
The third week of May, I received my fifth pink "I LOST TEN POUNDS WITH FAT
FIGHTERS!" ribbon at my Wednesday night meeting. This one would hang on the
fridge with the other four, carefully guarding my low-fat mayonnaise and
Healthy Choice Turkey Cutlets. After the meeting, I was talking with the
pillow-butt gang when Melissa slinked over to me and whispered in my ear.
"Meet me at your car in ten minutes."
She strolled out of the conference room without making eye contact. I gave
her time to get into the elevator, and then dashed into the mauve hallway
down to the men's room. This was it. I had always expected that Melissa and
I would carefully plan our rendezvous out. Now I was faced with a dilemma:
remain faithful to my girlfriend of seven years, or receive oral sex from
the only other woman with a confirmed attraction to me. My bloated ego
decided that I deserved a sexy wildcat like Melissa, I had worked hard to
become attractive to girls of her caliber. I checked my breath and my
scent, stared at my watch for six minutes, then headed out to my Camry to
begin the only affair I have ever had.
IV
For the first time in my life, I woke up in someone else's bed and didn¹t
remember where I was. I heard a shower running somewhere. I jackknifed the
upper half of my body out of the blankets and looked around. Melissa¹s
bedroom was efficiently neat, the only clutter consisting of our clothing
from the night before. Posters featuring the same smiling, full-figured
women that adorned the Fat-Fighters conference room decorated the room. I
smiled when I realized what I had done--I felt slutty, and it felt good.
Then I remembered that I had a girlfriend, and started to lose my shit. I
broke out into a cold sweat, my ribs started to cave in on my lungs, and I
bolted out of bed, groping for my pants. I heard the shower shut off.
"Hey skinny, could you come in here for a second? And grab the towel out on
the chair." I saw a blue beach towel with gray dolphins draped over a
rocking chair sitting in the corner of the bedroom. I grabbed the towel,
swallowed the gorge rising in my throat, and opened the bathroom door.
Melissa stood on tiptoes, wiping the steam off of her bathroom mirror.
Her calves were muscular and sexy. She flipped on the boudoir lights over
the mirror, then turned to face me. Our naked bodies stood nine inches from
one another, but I hadn't been less turned on in my life. She noticed the
panic.
"Someone expecting you at home last night?" I could tell she had started
to toy with me.
"I really have to get out of here, last night was a huge mistake. I--I
don't mean it that way, but Amanda and I ha--"
"You didn't seem to think about that much last night when you followed me
home. Seems like the little head has been thinking for the big one."
"I think you're really great, really sexy, but I¹ve never been in this
position before. I'll call you, ok?"
"I could care less if you call or not. You know where to find me,
Thursday nights, remember? There's more when you drop another twenty-five."
"I'll call, promise, I gotta go."
I debated kissing her on the cheek, but she had turned her back and
started rooting through one of the wooden drawers underneath the sink. I
went back to the bedroom and threw clothes on in a panic. 6:45 am. Shit,
Amanda wouldn't have to leave for work for another hour. As I headed out to
the car, I debated what to tell her, starting spinning webs in my head.
Drinking? She wouldn't buy it, beer cost too many Food Points. My best
excuse had been eradicated by my new lifestyle. I couldn't lie well enough
to tell a story about some emergency. The truth seemed to be my only
option. I felt like my chest cavity were filled with slime from a drain
pipe.
I stopped for a pack of cigarettes on the way home. I debated never
going back, just stopping by a real estate office before I had to be at work
at three, finding a new place, and never seeing any of my stuff again. I
could leave my job, head back to State College tonight, live with my
parents. Losing my possessions seemed a fair trade-off for not having to
face up to what I had done. She'd track me down, though, you can't throw
away seven years. For a moment, I raged at Melissa's dismissal of the whole
situation. For the first time since the New Leaf, I realized that Melissa
may have been motivated by her commission rather than me.
I pulled up to my--our--townhouse, and slid into my numbered parking
space. When I had first moved in with Amanda, I needed to use the parking
space number to figure out in which one of the identical units I lived. I
unlocked the door, and walked into a recovering fat man¹s nightmare. Gallon
ice cream containers, three of them, sat on the dining room table, creamy
vanilla rivulets of melting rocky road strewn with peanut boulders ran
across the glass table top. A bag of Doritos lay strewn across the kitchen
floor, and three empty two liter bottles of Coke had fallen across the stove
top. I snuck back to the bedroom I had shared with Amanda until last night.
She slept on top of the covers, her body perpendicular to the pillows
that rested against the headboard. She was wearing a navy Penn State
sweatshirt of mine, green cotton bikini briefs, and white socks. In the
horrifying instant before she woke up, I noticed a zit on her leg right
below the elastic band of her panties.
She rolled over and moaned the sort of moan you hear coming out of third
world women mourning their dead.
"Where were youuuuuu?" She bleated out. I looked at the floor.
"I lost another three and a half last night, over fifty pounds now."
This was the best I could do. My head started spinning, the guilt made me
lightheaded. I sat on the edge of the still-made bed, my back to my
bereaved, betrayed, soon to be ex-girlfriend.
"I slept at Melissa's house." It sounded so innocent, I didn't know
where to take it from there. "I guess we need to talk."
"Fuck you! Thick and thin--fuck you, Tom! What happened while you were
sleeping at Melissa's house? Fuck you!"
I surprised myself by making eye contact with her, I didn't need to say
it. Her red, ruined eyes made me say it.
"I slept with her, I'm sorry."
"Get out."
I couldn't tell if she meant get out of the bedroom or get out of the
house. I went out to the living room, brushed potato chips off one of the
couch cushions and sat down. Fourteen minutes later, she came out.
She leaned against the post that formed the corner between the living
room and the kitchen. I looked at her, waiting for her decree.
"I don't know what to do, I never thought this would happen. I owe it
to myself to leave, but I can't right now. I'm too used to this. Seven
years. I live here. I can't kick you out, you're part of the apartment. I
don't have energy. I don't know what to do. I called in sick, told work I
need the week off, I'm taking vacation days. Ross isn¹t happy about it.
I¹m going to go to Debbie's. I¹ll call."
She went back into the bedroom. I sat on the couch, and looked out the
sliding glass doors onto our four feet of deck. Twenty six minutes later,
Amanda walked out of the front door with a suitcase. We didn't say goodbye.
I looked at my watch. I took a deep breath and calculated that I had
six hours before I had to go to work. I walked into the kitchen, grabbed an
economy sized white trash bag and started throwing away the remains of
Amanda's binge. When everything was clean, I made a frozen dinner and sat
at the breakfast bar, scraping Pasta Primavera out of the black plastic dish
and staring at my hands.
Later, I picked up the black cordless phone from the receiver hanging on
the kitchen wall. I pulled the card Melissa had given me out of my wallet,
which now rested comfortable in the back pocket of my rumpled khakis. I
dialed her phone number, knowing she wasn't there. I got Melissa's machine
on the fourth ring. I hated these messages, the one where the owner of the
machine doesn't have the courage to state his or her name, and cops out by
rattling off their seven digits.
"Melissa, it's Tom. You're not going to hear from me again. I told
Amanda. I'm not interested in seeing you again. Goodbye."
I felt a little better having taken the first step to making things
right in my life. The pride I had taken in my moral corruptness that
morning had given way to nauseous guilt and the sort of self pity that keeps
you on the verge of tears at all times. I had ruined the one constant in my
life, my relationship. I showered, pulled on my blue knit Blockbuster polo
shirt, and went into the store two hours early.
Amanda didn't call me until Wednesday night, five days after she left.
She asked me to meet her at a bar, Phillip's, after I got off work.
Phillip's was the cookie cutter neighborhood bar, complete with the
obligatory draft beers (Miller Light, Budweiser, Coors Light, Yeungling
Lager), the jukebox with two versions of "Freebird," and the electronic dart
board. Amanda and I sat at a table against the wood paneled wall and got
drunk as we rehashed what had happened. Over the next hour, I told her that
I had made a terrible mistake, and my judgement had been clouded by the fact
that no one had ever wanted me before. Amanda reminded me that she had
always wanted me, and that she felt taken for granted. I kept telling her I
would do anything to fix this mess, and she said in a voice that hinted at
tears that she didn't know what to say. I stopped drinking after my second
mug because light beer was two points a glass, and I didn't want to go over
my limit. We went back and forth as I sipped on club soda and Amanda got
hammered on Seabreezes. Amanda followed me back to the apartment, with her
too drunk to drive and me too guilty to confront her about it. We had quiet
sex. I told her I loved her. She said she would call, and drove back to
Debbie's. I lay in bed and thought about how big the bed seemed, and what I
would have to eat tomorrow.
We repeated this scenario for eleven days. Some nights Amanda drank
Seabreezes, sometimes Captain and Cokes. The same conversation as the first
night started within ten minutes of our arrival at Phillip's. Sometimes I
brought it up, sometimes Amanda did. I always switched to club soda after
my fourth beer. She never stayed at the apartment, and I never asked her to
stay. I kept going to Fat Fighters and dropped another eight and three
quarter pounds. I avoided Melissa at the meetings, and she didn't attempt
to make eye contact. I waited for her to play the part of "scorned woman,"
but it looked like she had given up on me. I wondered if that night
actually happened. I weighed 217 pounds. I bought size 34 Docker Khakis.
My stomach caved in when I lay on my back. I could jog two miles without
stopping.
Two weeks after Amanda left, she called me told me to meet at the
apartment after work. Inside the front door, her suitcase sat beside the
coat rack neither of us had ever used. I walked into the open hallway where
five rooms of our apartment collided. Amanda was sitting on the couch. A
value meal from McDonald¹s sat on a plate on the coffee table, framed by two
candles and a plastic squeeze bottle of Heinz Ketchup. The Big Mac and
french fries seemed out of place on the floral pattern dinnerware my parents
had given us last Christmas. My mom had made the pointed remark that china
would have made a more appropriate wedding gift.
"Hi. Sorry I wasn¹t here sooner. Jake's drawer was thirty bucks short,
and it took me forever to figure it out."
"I'm moving back in, I figured out a way that I can deal with you after
all of this."
"How? Tell me, I'll do it."
"Get fat again."
"What?"
"I want you to get fat again. You were mine then, girls weren't a
threat. That bitch Melissa--I got her number off of the address book on the
computer the day after I left. You were at work. I called and
re-established my territory, let her know who she was dealing with. She
said she was doing it for the money, but I didn't believe her."
I tried to picture Amanda menacing Melissa on the phone. I conjured a
sit-com image of the diagonally split screen, each of them being catty to
the other. Forceful, aggressive Melissa taking an earload of threats from
the laid back, down-to-earth Amanda. Unbelievable, yet it seemed to explain
why Melissa had never confronted me after that morning. She probably hadn't
even cared.
"So after I did that, I thought about what had happened, and where it
came from. I need to know, have you always been looking for someone else?"
"No, not at all, I--I love you."
"Then it must be the weight. When you were fat, you were happy to have
me. You wanted me. I liked you that way, even physically, I know it sounds
gross. You were sexy when you were big. But more importantly, you were
safe. Now I can¹t trust you--I can't trust them. I don't want other women
to consider you. If you want me back, you're going to sit here and eat this
meal, and keep eating like you used to, and never try to lose weight again."
My mouth opened, but the only sound to come out lay somewhere between a
grunt and a sigh, the getting-kicked-in-the-balls noise. I stood there,
thinking of what I had accomplished. I had dropped 58 pounds in a little
over four months. I believed in myself, I had discipline. I liked mirrors.
I didn't have a girlfriend. She hated the new me. I needed time to process
the ultimatum. Amanda knew what was coming.
"You need to decide now. If I'm important to you, you¹ll eat this. If
you don't, then you need to leave tonight. I'm staying here, you moved into
my apartment. I signed the lease."
I looked down at my shoes, I could do that now. I remembered lying in
bed last night, crying and looking at my collapsed stomach over the now
gentle rise of my chest. I remembered how empty the bed had seemed for the
past few weeks and how I debated going over to Debbie's and persuading
Amanda to move back in. I missed the constancy of our relationship. The
fact that I did the laundry and Amanda cleaned the bathroom. Going out to
dinner every Friday night at Damon's. The competition between us over who
could score the best Valentine's, Christmas, or birthday present for the
other. Seven years. Amanda loved me.
I thought about the high school girls that flirted with me at the checkout
counter last week. I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, bending my chin
towards my chest without creating a flap of flesh between the two. I felt
Melissa's foot in my lap. I imagined going to the beach without wearing a
shirt. I looked at the food on the table. I couldn't remember what it would
taste like. Three months until my tenth reunion. I could be at my target
weight by then. I loved myself.
I walked over to the coffee table, pulled the plastic Coors Lite bottle
opener that held my multitude of keys from my pocket, and clumsily slid my
key to the apartment through the space between two small metal rings. I
bent over, laid the key on the table, and walked through the convergence of
rooms, and out the front door.
I only saw Amanda twice after that. Two days after I left, I picked up
my clothing and appliances in a U-Haul pick-up truck. Three months later, I
ran into her at our tenth reunion. Amanda had a new boyfriend, taller than
me, and chubbier. I weighed 181 pounds.
Dear WAIT! ADVICE,
I am single, attractive woman living in New York City. You would think that in a city of 7 million, I would be able to find a heterosexual male to date. My last three boyfriends have left me for other men, and all of my best friends are gay males. What is wrong with me?
Sincerely,
Fag-Hag Forever
Dear Ms. Hag,
WAIT! Before condemning yourself to eternal "hagdom," step back and review your lifestyle for a moment: have you met your last few beaus in spinning class or on the Stairmaster? Maybe it was at that classy little bar with the fabulous lamps? The shoe section at Prada?
Analyze yourself closely and see if you are fulfilling some bizarre Freudian nightmare. If that is not the case (which for most of us it is not) your problem is this: location, location, location. Short of moving to Alaska or visiting prisons, you need to start frequenting some manly-man locations. Start attending local sports events. Trade in your favorite bar in the Village for something near Wall Street or the financial district. Steer clear of the Stairmaster and kickboxing class and start lifting freeweights -- or better yet, join a sports league or hiking club.
And WAIT -- buy some batteries for your vibrator. These lifestyle changes don't happen overnight.
5. Born in Neptune's icy methane ocean.
4. Once bowled a 300 game in only nine frames.
3. Friend of Colonel Mustard.
2. I bought him an Oreo Blizzard(tm) frozen dessert from Dairy Queen during that rough patch when the boss turned him down for that raise, the transmission failed, and the pregnancy scare.
1. Hairy ears.
Colophon
Rhinosplode was born, appropriately, at a side table in Crazy Shirley's. It was the last stop on a St. Patrick's Day 2000 jaunt that took us all around Lancaster, PA, in the company of Peter and Tim's landlord. After too many drinks, we got to talking about how we should make a website for all the stupid nonsense we'd been producing and planning.
The first version of Rhinosplode was a Geocities page. A few months later, however, we decided we ought to register our own domain, and Rhinosplode.com was born.
In the summer of 2002, the debonair Internet tycoon Zeus Moscow bought Rhinosplode for an undisclosed amount.
The team
Team Rhinosplode originally consisted of Peter, Will, Tim, and Jeff. Since then, others have come onboard. The core remains the original four, plus some other shady characters. Poke around the site and the BBS for a few minutes and you'll find Caitlin, Bryan, Zubair, Kenny, and others.
Mr. Moscow has the final say on anything his team creates or implements; however, he is a benevolent man (and, we hear, great in the sack).
Geekery
As per directive from Zeus Moscow, Rhinosplode is currently being updated to conform to XHTML 1.0 standards.
At the moment, it uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for all formatting and layout functionality. If things look weird on your computer, please get a new browser. It's not our fault.
Now that Rhinosplode is powered by MovableType, Doug's done the lion's share of the layout and template work.
Hosting
Handled by Eric, whose name is not Roy.
Submissions
Yes, please. We welcome submissions of original prose, poetry, drama, and art. Until we move to our new host, we are unable to accept audio or video files. This policy will change, however. In the meantime, please send your submissions to Cap'n Submissions, who will be more than happy to look at what you have to offer.
If you want to be awesome, please include a 200px x 200px picture that you feel represents yourself (ex: a self-portrait or ironic 80s pop-culture reference), as well as a short (2-3 sentences) bio. The reasons for this will become clearer with the launch of Rhinosplode Remix. Expect great things.
Team Whiff
Team Whiff is Guy.
Whorgasbord
Whorgasbord is both a predecessor and a descendent of Rhinosplode. Unravel the mystery at their site.
I knew I should’ve worn a tux and picked up a Scottish accent. The waitresses at this pool hall/bar/airplane hangar place are dressed like extras in a James Bond movie. Their black minidresses cling to perfect Cosmo-approved bodies, thigh-high boots probably hiding guns or stilettos or syringes full of some dire poison to inject into Mr. Bond just when he finds the Evil Mastermind’s hidden Crater Base from which he can launch a satellite to take over everyone’s brains and turn them into his zombies. But these waitresses pay us no such attention as we sit at a round table, me and Alex and Haley, trying to catch one’s eye so that we can order beers. We’re all twenty-one now and anxious to prove it.
Alex, who has taken to banging the salt and pepper shakers on our table in an almost completely arhythmical fashion, suddenly stops. Yo, Ray, check her out, he says to me.
Which one? I ask.
On your six.
I turn around. She looks like all of the other waitresses at this place. Trim, athletic body. Creamy white skin. Legs to die or murder for. The front of her minidress brimming with the potential for bouncy fun. She catches me staring at me and glares back. For some reason I feel the urge to wink and lip my lips. Who do I think I am, Ron Jeremy or something? I turn away.
Don’t stare, asshole, Alex advises. She’ll think you’re creepy.
Haley is having a hard time not giggling. She calls us pathetic. And she’s right. I mean, at least I’m pathetic. Twenty-one years old and nothing to show for it. I don’t have a girlfriend, never really had one. Unless, of course, you count Maggie, an exchange student from Scotland back in eleventh grade who decided that I was the one who should show her a good American time. That worked out great, let me tell you. I had just gotten my driver’s license and didn’t have a car yet, so I borrowed my mom’s minivan and took Maggie to see this band the Shivering Pines at the teen rec center down in Fairfield. Well, first of all, I got terribly lost, which wasn’t so bad, since I was lost in the not-even-remotely-dangerous-save-a-freak-deer-accident wilds of Fairfield, sitting in a comfy mommyvan with a rather fetching lassie whose accent was driving me absolutely mad. But then when we got there it turned out that those bastards in the Pines had cancelled their show--the drummer had to stay home and watch his little sister or some shit--so we were just hanging around in the parking lot and to make a long story short Maggie left with this dude who had actually won the junior caber-toss in the Connecticut Highland Games. I guess Maggie doesn’t count after all. I still can’t hear bagpipes without being overcome by a wave of soul-crushing sadness.
I’m starting to get the kind of headache I always get in bars, a potent cocktail of fatigue, hunger, and cranked up Southern rock (the song on now sounds suspiciously like Molly Hatchet) reducing my brain to mush. For some reason we never go out before eleven at night. I know that I shouldn’t go out during the week, since I work at CVS from eight to four every day, but my job is so mind-numbingly, shit-eatingly horrible, I feel like I deserve a drink and a chance to unwind with my nocturnal friends, so I go out late at night and nap when I get home from work. As far as I can tell, I’ve been hired to back up the idiots who make up the bulk of the payroll. I’m all for equal opportunity and everything, but if your job description includes alphabetizing photo envelopes and you don’t know your alphabet, maybe you should look into a new line of work. Also, since I have the best motor control of anyone there, I get the unimaginable pleasure of unloading 200-box shipments off the dirty once-white CVS delivery truck that comes in from Woonsockett, Rhode Island every afternoon. Haley’s been spending her days this summer volunteering at soup kitchens and places like that and babysits three or four evenings a week. It is a source of constant mystery how Alex has any money, since he spends like a sailor on leave and has yet to hold any sort of job for more than a couple of days.
The truth of the matter is that I could probably get another job but I don’t. I mean, I look at the help-wanted section at the back of the Westport News every week before flipping to the police reports (to see if anyone I know got arrested) and obituaries (to see if any of my old teachers died), but I kind of like having a crappy job to complain about. It’s like being in one of those Gen-X slacker movies--I’m the somewhat intellectual and overly cynical guy who works at the crappy store, never gets laid, and listens to his music too loud. It’s amazing who you see in CVS in a given day. We get rich businessmen coming in to pick up a newspaper and some Band-aids, twelve-year-old kids trying to buy cigarettes (I revel in carding people, since I’ve had so much trouble growing respectable facial hair), agitated women buying home-pregnancy test kits, scummy dirty guys who just seem to want someone to talk to, and every other imaginable kind of person that would live and/or work in coastal Connecticut.
One of the bar’s cloned waitresses comes over to take our orders. With a feeling of relief I notice that she is not the same one I was just leering at. Not that it matters, I suppose, since these young ladies are obviously going be leer targets, what with the minidresses and go-go boots and all. If you work at this sort of a place, you should know what you’re in for. Nonetheless, I need to stop being such an asshole sometimes. That or start frequenting the sort of bars that have big hairy trucker guys as bartenders.
What do we want, guys? I ask my companions. Light? Dark?
I look at Alex, who says nothing, since he doesn’t know jack about beer. Last time we let him buy he ordered up a frosty pitcher of NattyBo, which is the closest I’ve ever come to drinking urine. Alex learned everything he knows about drinking from attending the parties of the five or six fraternities who wanted him as a brother. I guess there’s just something about a fairly clueless kid with lots of disposable income that makes those august institutions figuratively cream their metaphorical shorts. Alex and I have been friends since kindergarten. I met him when he and this kid Mark decided that I would be a good person to push down the two stairs that led from the cubby closet to the main kindergarten classroom. They pushed me, waited until I stopped crying, and asked me if I’d be their friend. I thought that it sounded like a pretty good idea, and the three of us were inseparable until Mark moved to Guam with his recently-remarried dad, who sailed submarines for the Navy and who we all thought was the coolest dad in the world. Mr. Davidson always brought Mark cool presents when he came back from training: t-shirts with the name of his current sub, Navy baseball caps, empty bullet casings. My dad was, and still is, a tax attorney. I’m still kind of bitter about it.
Porter okay by you guys? I ask.
Sounds fine, says Haley.
Alex doesn’t care.
I order us a pitcher of their finest porter, which has become my drink of choice. I’ve decided that if I’m going to be an artistic type, I really ought to learn to drink. My first project was to develop a taste for dark beer. Next on my checklist is bourbon. So we sit and wait for the comely alewife to bring us our pitcher of liquid courage. I’m hungry and beginning to think that we should have ordered nachos but it’s too late, she’s gone into that mysterious back area to pull our porter. That strikes me as a good euphemism for something, but I’m not sure what exactly. Plus I hate ordering junk food from hot women, as I get this feeling that they’re laughing at me: hey, look at that chubby kid ordering more grease, yeah, that’ll get him into my pants.
Andrea brings our drinks and we drink them and talk. The conversation is, as always, about stupid stuff: who we ran into today (I always see the most random people: guys we haven’t seen since middle school buying cigarettes, former neighbors, teachers, known criminals), whether anything exciting is going on the next weekend (it isn’t), things like that. And then, when the drinks have been drunk, we play pool. We have never been to this place and don’t realize that some regulars have tables that they expect to play at, and after some conversation with a rather large and rather uncouth gentleman whose lucky table we have apparently jinxed in some way, we leave.
As usual, I’m driving tonight. This is because I feel that since I have a steady job, I can afford to buy gas. Haley’s babysitting jobs can’t last forever, so she conserves gas whenever possible, and Alex never bothered to learn how to drive. So that leaves me and Steely Dan (named after the same vibrator in Naked Lunch as the band, whom I had never heard of until Haley pointed it out), the early-80s Volvo wagon, which I bought used the summer after I graduated high school. My car doesn’t do too well above fifty miles per hour and the stereo sucks but it’s still a car. There’s just something about having a car to call my own that makes me feel good. I just revel in the feel of the open suburban road. It’s not much, really--around here, when you go west, young man, you wind up in Stamford, or, if you’re up for a real odyssey, the Bronx--but you can go a lot farther in a car than on a bike. So I drive, and I get my Kerouac on, and I feel like some sort of poet or something, but in reality I’m just this kid who should be at home getting some sleep before heading off to his crap-ass job tomorrow morning.
As we pull out of the parking lot, I turn the stereo on. My James Brown tape is in there. We all love James Brown, and even though we are all very white, we try to grunt and scream along with him. It’s a good thing that Mr. Brown can’t hear us butchering his wonderful songs. We’re some jive-ass honkies, that’s for sure. Say it loud, we’re suburbanites and we’re proud. I’m the hardest-working man at CVS #245. My hot pants make me sure of myself. And, of course, I feel nice like sugar and spice.
We bounce along the road, then I realize that I don’t know where we are headed. So I ask Haley and Alex.
Let’s go to Haley’s house, Alex says.
Let’s not. I don’t want to deal with my parents, she says. Haley never wants to deal with her parents. Dr. and Mrs. Miller are two of the nicest people I know. Whenever we go to Haley’s house, though, she gets annoyed because we’d rather hang out with her parents than talk to her. Goodwife Miller is some sort of international crossword puzzle champ and bakes some rather delicious oatmeal cookies whenever she knows we’re coming over, though since we’re all in college now we just drop in unannounced, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone except Haley’s little sister. Dr. Miller works in New York at a lab that’s trying to come up with a treatment for this rare form of liver cancer. The Miller house is full of neat antiques of the sort that stay in old down-home families for generations and their house always smells good, like cinammon and a woodburning stove, which I don’t think they have.
Well, we can’t go to my house, Alex says, we were just there last night. We don’t have any Doritos left. Doritos are very important to Alex, who has, by far, the best house for hanging out, but I think his folks are starting to get annoyed. We go there all the time. Alex’s parents are completely loaded and as far as anyone knows, neither of them work or anything. And all of his grandparents and the like are alive, so that rules out inheritance. It’s absolutely befuddling.
Good point, Haley says. Ray?
Yes'm? I say.
Your house?
You know that we can’t ever go to my house. Everyone’ll be asleep over there, it’s almost midnight. Let’s go to The Beach.
Since I’m really into the idea of pattern and structure when I write, here’s the little bit about my house. In this town of ostentacious new construction on every available lot, what the locals call McMansions, our vintage late-40s colonial is decidedly old-school and modest. It’s roomy and homey and always sort of a mess, since my folks both work and none of us kids ever feel like cleaning. The problem with my house is that there’s really no good room for hanging out when people are trying to sleep, since the vaguely finished basement tends to be damp and is home to a colony of hostile crickets and the living room is right under my parents’ bedroom.
Alex and Haley profess that they are down with this going to The Beach, so I steer my vehicle thataway. The Beach (capital letters ARE pronounced, thank you very much) is a small patch of sand along the Long Island sound, tucked away behind some woods about a half a mile from my house. What we do is park at my house and walk on the path we made through the woods in elementary school. Ten minutes later, we’re at The Beach, alone. The woods keep our noise from disturbing anyone in the neighborhood. The three of us have been going to The Beach for as long as we’ve been hanging out together.
I think that I should say at this point that I do have other friends aside from Alex and Haley, but I consider them auxiliary, friends to whom I become close when the three of us have a fight or something. We three belong a much larger group, middle- and high-school misfits who grew up and stayed together. In middle school, we were the boys who couldn’t shave but tried, the girls who were so much taller than everyone else. In high school, we never went to the popular kids’ keg parties or ever got laid. All of the guys, I remember, claimed to have girlfriends in Canada that they had met in summer camp years ago and had been carrying on long distance relationships with.
We drive on into the summer night and James Brown gets up offa his thang, and the JBs lay it down and get on up, and a couple of minutes later, we are parked in my driveway. I open the trunk and take out the sandy blanket we’ve been taking to The Beach since we realized that sand is a very scratchy substance. This blanket has been with me, and with my friends, every summer for years. It smells like a July night and being young and spilled beer. I could spread the blanket out anywhere and feel like I’m at home in the summer. I briefly considered bringing it to school with me but a vision of being called Linus for four years convinced me otherwise.
I guess I’m getting old because while standing up after getting out the blanket, something in my back goes pop. Shit, I say, trying to play it off. Haley calls me an old man, even though I’m the youngest one present. I suggest that she might like to fellate me. She ignores me and starts walking down the path with Alex.
I take a couple of quick steps and catch up with them. We walk in silence for a few minutes, through our suburban Forest Primeval, hearing the dull roar of I-95 traffic and MetroNorth trains and the occasional conversation of the slightly older and rich on their screened-in porches, behind McMansions and a gas station and a sad, lonely convenience store that inconveniently closes at 8 p.m. each night, through a slightly swampy field, and then we’re at The Beach. The Beach hasn’t changed physically, unless you count the new parking lot and the repairs they did on the concession stand, but it seems smaller now, less special, less secret. Whereas I’m bigger, still at the same level of specialness, and chock full of secrets.
The dried seaweed is more of a nuisance than an attraction now. It’s easy to be cynical about a stretch of shoreline that is just a hair’s breadth away from being closed to humans for environmental reasons. I think I have looked at every grain of sand on it. There’s a rather elaborate wooden playground here that I have spent way too much time on. Back in the day I think everyone in town worked on building the thing except the people who live right along The Beach, who complained that a wonderful and safe wooden structure crawling with delighted children would spoil their view of the polluted Long Island Sound and destroy the value of their property. Back in high school, when we started hanging out at The Beach at night, we played this mutant form of Freeze Tag here, leaping off the highest spires and trying hard not to land in the sand. I’m frankly surprised that nobody got seriously hurt and that we only got cited for trespassing once. The playground officially closes at sundown and The Beach is usually crawling with Westport’s Finest. In a low-crime kind of town, even the fuzz get to hang out by the shore.
I spread the blanket out and we sit down on it. As always, Haley sits in the middle, with me on the right edge and Alex on the left. I don’t know why this is. I guess since she’s the only girl we’re being chivalric and letting her not get sand down her pants. We sit and talk of silly things for a while. I try out the new joke I heard from Rick at work this morning. Rick is about seventy years old, the very model of a dirty old man. The joke he told me this morning, which I tell Haley and Alex tonight, ends with so the one in the middle must be Willie Nelson. It’s a lot funnier when you hear the whole thing, though it never really is funny at all. The one in the middle here is not Willie Nelson, it’s Haley, and she elbows me in the stomach for telling such a sexist joke. Alex, meanwhile, is about to piss himself from laughing so hard.
We all lie down on our backs, which is the most comfortable way to be on a blanket on sand. The sky is clear, though it is hard to see too many stars because of the light pollution from downtown. Even at night, when all of the trendy stores are closed, it is bright as day on Main Street. In the winter you can almost forget that Main Street has become a horrible outpost of sweatshop-enabled stores and rich yahoos trying to cross the street against traffic as if they have the right to do whatever they want because they drive a Lexus SUV. In the winter as you go Nanooking along Main Street in the snow it’s like being in a Norman Rockwell painting if you don’t look at the awnings. Main Street in the summer, though, is the worst. The Summer People take over. Native Westporters are bad enough. But in June and July and August the town becomes a corny summer resort with outdoor art shows where you can, for five hundred dollars, buy a painting of a dog with frighteningly bulgy eyes or ugly crystal jewelry or God knows what else and get down to smooth jazz (the bad kind) and generally want to slit your wrists. In the summer, the only place to be is The Beach, and then only late at night, when the summer people have gone home or wherever they go.
My head is chock-full of words that I somehow arrange into a sentence, a question, in an attempt to start a conversation: Hey, you guys ever feel like we’re outgrowing this?
Dude, we’re only twenty-one, says Alex.
I know, but on the way over here I was thinking about this. I mean, here we are, we’ve been doing this for years, and now we’re doing it again, and what happens when we move away or something and we can’t get to The Beach or see each other all the time? I mean, I’m not like needy or anything--pre-emptive, so Alex doesn’t call me a bitch--but I think I’d miss this.
I would, too, says Haley. This is our thing, this is what we do.
That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? says Alex. Remember those movies we used to watch as kids, the ones where the teenagers and college kids would like live these interesting lives and seem so grown up? I remember when I was eight all I wanted was to be twenty and go driving around town and go to parties and stuff. What happened?
We are all silent and I think about what it would be like to be a character in a John Hughes film. The rather weak waves lap against the shore and some cars drive by, probably high school kids out for a joyride, screaming Wooooooo! out the windows of their dads’ cars. A breeze picks up a piece of grayish paper and sends it skittering down the sand, another drifter on the shore of the Long Island Sound, unattractive and unwanted, until it eventually will decompose or choke a seagull.
The blanket is a little small for three adults and I can feel Haley’s warmth through my clothes and hers. As she tells a story about being cut off by some asshole driving down Route 1 at lunchtime, I wonder what it would be like to be her boyfriend. I’ve always thought she was pretty--not a supermodel or anything, but her eyes are so bright and green and she always looks like she’s about to smile. She recently gave up on the idea of growing her brown hair into dreads so it’s all chopped up and messy. I had a crush on her all through high school. I always used to worry that she knew how I felt about her. I wondered if she felt the same way about me, and I used to get insanely jealous whenever she and Alex did something together and I couldn’t join because I was stuck working or watching my little brother or they just forgot to tell me where they were going. Because if Haley were forced to choose between Alex and myself, I’d think she’d choose him. Chicks don’t dig guys like me, the sensitive artistic responsible types, they like big easy-going meathead types like Alex. But then we all went away to college--Alex to Rutgers, Haley to U of Oklahoma, and me to Union, way the hell up in Schenectady. During the school year we stay in touch via e-mail. Alex tells me every few days that he’s fallen in love with some new girl. I think he’s gone through (literally and figuratively) nearly every girl at Rutgers; fortunately for him, he gets credit for chorus and will be able to graduate a semester early. Haley has dated a few guys, guys who live in weird Midwestern states like Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri, guys named Jim who know a bit too much about operating tractors and removing cow goiters
About a week after showing up at school, I e-mailed Haley and told her everything. It took me an hour to write it and I still wasn’t done, but it was getting so long that I didn’t think she’d ever read it. The subject line was Ulysses. I have this theory about Ulysses that only a dozen people have ever read it. Alex claims to have read it three times, but he also believed me when I told him it was ghost-written by Hemingway. Anyway, Haley wrote back that she was flattered, but didn’t really feel the same way about me, and hopefully I would get over it. I was so glad that she didn’t get insulted or threatened or anything that the rejection didn’t hurt at all. Deep down inside, I tell myself whenever I get like this, I was hoping she’d say no so that I could have a good reason to move on.
So we talk, and we talk, and we talk some more. It’s been about an hour and I’m starting to get cold. Summer days and evenings are usually hot and muggy as all hell, but late nights are chilly and damp. Such is life in coastal New England. The weather always pretty much sucks. There are a bunch of us who often try to play Ultimate Frisbee at this elementary school in the late afternoon, before dinner, but we never can play for too long before we all want to pass out. Last week, were playing disc and Alex was going out for a long pass. I tomahawked the disc to him, he dove for it, and disappeared. Nobody knew where he went. He was just gone. Anyway, as it turns out, he had fallen into some sort of shallow hole that nobody had ever seen before, the grass in the hole having grown so that it was about the same level as the rough grass near the woods there. I guess it wasn’t such a funny story, after all. You had to have been there.
Man, it’s cold out here, I say.
So? Haley asks.
Just saying, I say.
True, she says.
Anyone else ready to leave? I say.
Neither of them are, they tell me. I’m outvoted. So we stay. The talk turns to the stupid things each of us have done while drunk. Alex tells a story I’ve never heard before--a bit of a surprise, actually, since Alex is one of those people who tell the same stories over and over again, either forgetting or not giving a damn that everyone knows them by heart. Anyway, it seems that he had gone out with some of his friends from school on his twenty-first birthday. After drinking a lot, he decided that he had to piss. So he went to the bathroom, but after draining the proverbial monster, buttoned his pants but left his boys hanging out the fly. For some reason this seemed like a good idea to him at the time. And so he nonchalantly walked back to his table to rejoin his friends, who were laughing hysterically. A waitress saw him and dropped her tray, sending curly fries and nachos into the lap of a nearby customer. The manager saw everything and kicked them out, word got around (I guess there are bar conventions or something, Alex isn’t very clear on this), and that’s how Alex and his posse wound up being permanently banned from every sports bar in central Jersey.
Haley says, That’s nothing. Check this out. It was freshman year and for some reason a bunch of the guys on my floor decided that it would be a good idea to moon people. Whatever. Boys. Anyway, so I’m in my room writing a paper and I hear a knock at the door. This whole night people had been knocking on my door asking me for stupid things. So I look through the peephole to see if it’s anyone worth talking to. As it turns out, there’s a big hairy ass right outside. One of the guys had apparently decided to knock on peoples’ doors, drop his pants, and moon whoever was inside as soon as they opened the door. I was getting really sick of this kid, anyway, and I was stressed out about this paper, and I really don’t know what came over me, but I grabbed my hairspray and my lighter, opened the door, and made a flamethrower. Have you ever smelled burnt ass before?
Alex is still convulsing with laughter as I tell them that I don’t have any stories that are nearly that good. A couple of months into my freshman year, I was overtaken by this crushing wave of, I don’t know, world-weariness or something. I decided then and there I wasn’t going to get sucked in. I stopped hanging out so much with the other kids on my floor. And the first couple of months of college were pretty calm compared to the shit that started going down after. But I missed out on all of that, since I was trying so hard to be the Mature and Serious Guy Down the Hall. I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong, but I think that my college experience has been very different from everyone else’s. I don’t bother going out to frat parties to try to get laid, though I realize now I should’ve so I wouldn’t be complaining so much. The couple of times that I did go I thought they were dirty and loud and boring. The girls with their little backpacks and tight clothes looked like they were trying so hard to--to what? I don’t know, but it seemed a little sad to me. The guys had all taken off their shirts and were dancing on these sort of shelves that line the dance floor at this one house, the one where my freshman year RA is (was, now) a brother, where we all went the first night of school, my whole hall, sort of a bonding thing. The whole thing was like a junior-high school dance, but with a bit more dope. And it wasn’t in a school cafeteria.
Being a self-proclaimed Party Snob had its advantages. I’m now going into my senior year near the top of my class, which, if I’m to believe my dad, will lead to my getting some sort of lucrative job offer, if that’s what I want. I also started spending time with some students I would never have gotten to know. As a college freshman I was hanging out with this clique of juniors who drank wine and wore black and played free-jazz records in the living rooms of their apartments. And when one of them, a slight, shaven-headed fellow named Ike, asked me to join his band, I agreed before I remembered that I didn’t play any instruments. And that’s how I wound up as the tambourine-playing back-up singer in Schenectady’s first and only Velvet Underground tribute act. So I feel kind of left out when Alex and Haley start talking about parties, about their current pursuits, all of that. It’s like I can’t relate to that anymore. I wish I could. Now that Ike and his friends have graduated I’ve started hanging out with a different group of people, most of whom I’d never have associated with when I first arrived on campus. I’m determined to get the Full College Experience.
Haley and Alex decide that they’re finally ready to go, and we three walk back to my car. I shake out the blanket, fold it, and put it in the trunk. Haley gets into the passenger seat, Alex sprawls across the back, and I ease the Steely Dan into the southern New England night. Down Route 1 we go, past upscale womens clothing stores, the stores that drove away all the local drugstores and bookstores and hardware stores and corner groceries and everything that once was wonderful about coastal Connecticut when you’re ten and have a few dollars to spend out because these mall outlets could afford the skyrocketing rent. Past the metal sculpture whose name I keep forgetting--three open triangles entwined on a huge stone pedestal--that I think is wonderful, even though everyone else I know hates it. The only other cars out this late belong to the local police department and to people like us, young folks without the sense to be in bed already. A car drives by without headlights, some drunk asshole thinking that he’s being stealthy or something. Fortunately there are streetlights so that he can’t sneak up on anyone.
Haley lives about a mile down the road from me; Alex lives clear on the other side of town, up by Coleytown Middle, up where I always get lost. I always drop him off first so that I don’t have to drive all the way back alone. We don’t speak on the way home. Everything has been said. I remove James Brown, who seems too excited for the end of a late night. My favorite late night tape is Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Something about the mellow modality on there make me ready for bed but doesn’t put me to sleep. It breathes, somehow, calms me. So out with James, in with Miles, and then we’re at Alex’s house. I’m telling him goodnight, and Haley’s telling him goodnight, and he opens his front door (which is never locked--my parents, who grew up in the Bronx, think his parents are crazy) and goes inside, and it’s just Haley and I. I both love and hate being alone with her. I keep expecting her to say something about my e-mail from freshman year, but she never has. I wonder if she’s forgotten it. I hope she has. We listen to Miles in silence. This is the tape I copied from my dad’s vinyl back in my sophomore year of high school and it sounds crackly and warm and makes me feel kind of classy. I taped it for Haley, too. I told her I had a feeling she’d like it. I was right. So What is on. Miles’s solo stops and Coltrane’s begins. It’s beautiful.
At this hour everything is beautiful. Driving is like floating. It’s like the car is on autopilot, guided by Bill Evans’ piano and Trane’s transcendent sax runs and Miles’ understated Harmon-muted lines. Going up and down hills, I feel weightless and the yellow lines in the middle of the road stretch on forever, fading into eternity at the limit of my high beams’ range. The road disappears into what I always thought of as the deep woods, now just the last undeveloped tract of land in town. It’s the Forest Primeval and we are borne through on waves of sound--the lazy strains of So What, the crackling record noises forever preserved on Maxell audiotape, the engine, the tires thumping over cracks in the road, the rattling of the back seatbelt buckles against the windows.
Haley is staring out her window into the forest, one hand grasping the little handle (ostensibly for hanging clothes upon) over her window, the other playing absently with a clump of hair that’s slightly longer than the others by her left ear. She is beatific, majestic, a whole slew of ics. She stares out the window at the passing houses. The car isn’t moving, the world is. I used to have this theory that the world was really a huge sheet of plastic or something that moved beneath cars, which just stayed in place. This was before I understood what gravity was all about. Gravity is a bitch; it kills little kids’ dreams. It guarantees that they can’t fly when they jump from high places.
I guess I’ve been staring a little too intently at my passenger and night-time guardo camino because she turns and gives me a funny look. I make like I’ve been scanning the road for deer like the Driver’s Ed guy said we should do, but she’s not fooled. There are an awful lot of deer around recently, though. They apparently got trapped between I-95 and the Merritt Parkway a few decades ago and the population has exploded. Most of their predators are pretty much extinct in these parts. There are a couple of coyotes in town that I’ve seen and I could’ve sworn I saw a bobcat when I was about 12, but those three hunting beasties stand no chance of doing anything about the deer population. So anyway my eyes are now firmly focused on the road, the broken lane lines flashing by like painted laser fire, and then I feel
Warmth on my right knee.
About the size of a hand.
I can’t look.
I look.
I look down and see a slender hand on my leg and quickly look up again before I drive off the road. The hand stays there, motionless, for an eternal few seconds, then pats my leg in a friendly manner. I look over at Haley. She smiles, parts her lips, leans in close, and points out that we’re just about at her house. By the time I try to stammer something out, we’re in her driveway, she gives me a quick peck on the cheek, releases her seatbelt, opens the door, and steps out.
Wait, Haley, I call.
A thousand scenarios run through my head. I’m going to tell her everything again. I’m going to ask her to dinner the following night. I’m going to silently make love to her in the passenger seat of this ancient Swedish road beast. I’m going to continue living like this, with my unrequited love hanging over me like a black cloud in a cartoon that rains only on the bad guy. But I’m the good guy. I’m the hero of this damn story and things will work out for me. This I know. I am the master of my own destiny and the author of the bad fiction that is my life. I direct a movie; my eyes are the only camera, and the shoot will never end. These are things she should know. But she’s already scampered up her driveway, found the spare key, and let herself into her house. I’m left alone with Miles, the night, and the road. I drive on, Steely Dan sputtering, into the summer night.