We were hanging out one night in the upper west side of Manhattan after a big storm had just hit the northeast. I’d been in New York for a week, teaching some classes for a Massachusetts-based company I worked for at the time. I had only recently acquired the confidence and ease of those who travel frequently for work, and to have New York be the place where I’d get to show off my new road-warrior powers to an old friend was a priviledge.
The company had paid for dinner and the cabs and we’d enjoyed ourselves on the dime of others, as is the pleasure of those who travel for a living. I was chilling at her place before deciding it was too late to go across town to the lower east side, where my Best Western was situated next to all of those fish markets under the Brooklyn Bridge. We’d watched some stupid movie we’d both seen before, sharing the couch with each other’s feet on our laps.
“I have a question,” she said.
“Abraham Lincoln, 1861.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “It was a long shot anyway.”
“Oh, Ok…” she said, confounded. “Hey, why have we never hooked up?”
[...]
The question caught me by total surprise. Scarlet* was the kind of girl that you loved because there was no way to NOT love her - every boy in the world loved her, had always loved her, and knew no moment in their lives when they had not loved her. But I’m just cool like that.
“Because,” I told her, “you’re taller than me and you have a complex about shorter boys, even though I’m 6 feet even on a good hair day.”
“C’mon. Seriously,” she insisted. “Why have we never hooked up?”
“Since when would want to hook up with me?”
“Now, why should I answer your question when you haven’t seriously considered mine?”
“Fair enough,” I told her. “I guess you’re right. The logic’s all there: we’re perfect hook-ups for each other. We’re friends, we know each other well enough to know that we could never date, so a relationship is out of the question. I mean, frankly, Scarlet, I’m not sure who would kill who but one of us would be put underground.” She curled her lip at this and squinted her eyes just slightly.
“I’d end you so fast.”
“Baby, please,” I brushed her off. “I laugh at kittens like you. You can’t handle me.” She tossed her hair and laughed a beautiful laugh that made boys around the world cry at not being the cause of said laughter.
“But as far as approaching you from THAT angle…why have we not hooked up, indeed… well, let’s see. You’re so beautiful your name often comes up on star charts. Your sexiness and your swagger require more adjectives than I have in my lexicon and you’re so popular you beat boys away with a stick or else put them in the ground. You have to bury your phone under 4 sweaters in order for us to have a conversation.
“In contrast, I’m a bumbling traveler who can’t commit to either side of the extremes who wishes he could write like you and admires your zazz and creative drive to the point of fan-dom and if we weren’t friends I’d consider asking you for your autograph. And I hate asking for autographs.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Now my question.”
She sat up on the couch, leaned over to the coffee table and grabbed the remote control. She turned off the TV as the credits were ending, and then backhanded the remote onto the other couch as if it were her last hookup, disposable and now used. It was buried by other pillows only to be remembered and found the next Wednesday. Then she turned her shoulders to face me. My eyes dropped to her breasts behind that soft and thin-strapped stay-at-home top of hers; obviously no bra. My gaze floated back up to her pale blue eyes.
I’d always thought they lacked a depth I’d seen in other blue eyes. But right then, in that light, it occurred to me that it wasn’t that the depth wasn’t there; it’s that her eyes, windows into her soul, were closed off from the world and only showed the blue on the surface. And she controlled that.
“Yeah, I’d hook-up with you if we didn’t have anything better to do.”
“Scarlet, that’s the nicest mean-thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“What do you have to do tonight?” She said to me, slightly biting her lower lip. My lips curled too, and I was speechless.
She pulled herself down onto me by the shirt collar. As she gripped my shirt a button went flying somewhere by her brick wall under the tension she was releasing. The cold bricks of her apartment softened, their edges blurred as if by industrial sandpaper. The friction filled the apartment with a new kind of heat and inside it there was no telling who was in control of this situation.
–
After she finished with me, I only got one more glimpse of her eyes before she shoo-ed me out into the snow to fetch a cab.
Her eyes were a deep blue.
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It’s hit me. Finally. It hadn’t yet, until now.
I was in Brussels for the weekend with the Katies. We’d planned on going to the south of Holland for the weekend to see the deltas of Zeeland and stay at a town we had been told was “really nice.” Middelburg, we saw on the map, was way down there, so we got up early on Saturday and started driving south in my new company rental Ford Fiesta.
We though it was weird when stopped in Delft for a quick coffee stop and realized we were already halfway there.
“Wow,” Katie said, “this place is deceptively tiny.”
“No, no, it must be as the crow flies,” said other Katie. “It can’t be that small!”
We sipped our breakfast casually on that boat in the Delft canal, reasoning that we were ahead of schedule and could afford to take it easy. But even after driving through Gouda and about a dozen other little Dutch towns in that early September breeze, we had no idea what kind of strange we were dealing with. By 11 in the morning we’d already driven into Middelurg and seen it’s “nice” squares and churches and had been wholly underwhelmed by the dijks we’d seen along the drive.
“Are we sure we drove the right way to see the dijks?” Katie asked.
“There was low-lying land to our left and ocean to our right,” I said. “I don’t know where we could possibly have gone wrong.”
“Well, at least it’s really nice, isn’t it guys?” said other Katie. Which was true. But we couldn’t have been less interested in staying the entire afternoon there, let alone spending the night. We looked at each other for a bit while standing by the center square.
“We’re can’t be too far from Antwerp, right?” Katie offered.
“Yeah,” I said, considering the plan. “Or Bruge.”
“I’ve heard Bruge is nice,” Katie said.
“Yeah, but I wonder what Antwerp looks like,” said Katie. So we went to Antwerp.
–
But Belgium is a small place too and an hour later we had crossed the border without much ceremony. Once in Antwerp we exited the freeway following signs for “centrum” but landed in a nasty-looking part of town that reminded me of some ghetto in Moscow, even though I’ve never been there.
“I think it looks more like a ghetto in Warsaw,” Katie said, “but with more Turks.” Which was true. There were a shitload of Turks in that neighborhood.
When we found the center of Antwerp and sat for a beer it was still early. We gazed out at the grey facades, the trickling fountains and the scores of old people. The soft rain that was starting to come down didn’t help make the dreary main square of Antwerp any cheerier, even though it was “really nice.” But the beer was good.
After an hour Katie looked at me with a coy smile and said, “I wonder what Brussels looks like?” Other Katie tightened her lips and giggled and I knew I must’ve smiled too. So we continued to Brussels and after a fast night of Belgian beer and chocolate fondue pouring from fountains in the windows of chocolateries, we still managed to find a hostel in Brussels. Properly intoxicated and laughing our asses off constantly, we collapsed onto a couple of mattresses.
–
I had woken up with a Katie on either side of me, fully clothed and all limbs accounted for. With no imminent scandal and a ravenous hunger actively collapsing the structure of my stomach, I went downstairs to the free breakfast that that hostel offers. Also, I felt like reading some Ken Kesey, but having recently finished Sometimes a Great Notion I was willing to settle for The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test.
At the breakfast in the youth hostel the next morning a tall kid with darkish skin and long dreadlocks approached my seat by the corner window, wanting to know where I was from.
“Brazil,” I answered instinctively, a response I’d memorized and trained to come out seamlessly such as to offer no hint of American-ness. A traveler’s answer. No American here, Mr. Traveling-man. Don’t hate me just because I speak English.
Sad, but true these days.
“Are you traveling around Belgium?” He inquired with a Mediterranean tan and a traveler’s beard. Greek, from the sound of it, except for the dark skin and the dreadlocks. I paused and gave my answer some thought because I felt it coming out before I had actually said it:
“No, I live in Amsterdam.” The words hit me much harder than they hit him. I didn’t pay much attention to the typical discussion that must’ve followed.
I live in Amsterdam.
Sweet Jesus, life is good. So many languages. So much desire. So much love to have and to give. An education to be envied. Opportunity at every door and they are either unlocked or smashed open, but always available. An iron will to succeed that is unrivaled. Developed talent coming out my ears. And then…
A travel bug in Paris.
An infection in New Zealand, spread by southeast Asia and Australia.
A full blown epidemic in London and Geneva that lead straight to freedom and then Amsterdam.
And now: Europe at my fingertips.
How did I ever get this far?
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When the desert sands come a pounding on your door like a roommate who needs to use the bathroom, to whom will you look back and finally raise a finger? Will you blame Dick Cheney? George W.? Karl Rove? Reagan, maybe?
Will you look to Congress, who didn’t stand and fight — ever — even when the fight came to them and they were, for a second there, winning?
Will you look to the CEO’s of Halliburton, Blackwater, Sony, Walmart and others?
Will you wonder why then? Will you ask something? Will you go back and look at the mistakes, find out where they were made, why you didn’t see it or why it was kept from you? Will you fear it could happen again and want to prevent it? Will you hate, and will that change anything?
Or will you pause and turn around, look behind you and point at the stockholders, the board of directors, the voters…yourself, maybe?
Will you blame yourself? Could you?
Because this mess we’re all in - this budget deficit, this piss-poor educational system, this social security debacle, this health care nightmare, this 6-year “search” in Afghanistan, this shame in Iraq - this outrage in Iraq, this criminal behavior in all aspects of our very presence in Iraq - this scandal in the Justice department, this dark shadow on the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, FEMA and NASA…
It’s your fault.
It’s not George Tenet’s fault, it’s not Karl Rove’s, Alberto Gonzales’s, Scooter Libby’s, Michael Brown’s, Dennis Hastert’s, Mark Foley’s, Bill Clinton’s, Hillary Clinton’s, George H. W. Bush’s, George McGovern’s or Richard Nixon’s fault. It’s yours.
And it’s not just because you voted for this scum (not once but twice), or else didn’t vote all. It wouldn’t have made a difference; most people worth a damn know the 2000 election was flat-out stolen by greedy fingers with contempt for the country and a glimmer in their eyes that resembled dollar signs. And it’s not because you have a John Kerry or an Al Gore sticker on your car, or because you watched “An Inconvenient Truth” or “11th Hour”, or because you watch the Daily Show or the Colbert Report or have a subscription to the LA or NY Times, the SF Chronicle, the Boston Globe or the International Herald Tribune that you’re exempt from this rant.
You’re not. I’m talking to YOU, America.
Because you haven’t said anything. You’ve toted your dogs in your purses, you’ve wasted your nights watching horrible TV because it’s easy, and you’ve given the world more shit and despair than was your right because you could afford it. Land of the free, indeed. What a sham.
How long will you let it go unchallenged? For how long will the jugglers and the clowns have to fumble around doing tricks for you while they swipe your wallet, rape your sister and flood your house? How hard must they tickle you before you laugh? How long before the tickles become scratches and how long before the scratches bleed? How long before you hate? How long before you say something?
Figure it out, America. We are running out of time.
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Dear America,
I hope this finds you well, but from the sound of things reaching my ears this is not the case. The noise is relentless, it seems: cabinet members and loyal bushies resigning like there was a bonus in store for them (or maybe a private sector job with 6 times the salary), international blunders from foreign policy to economics to French cuisine when president Sarkozy visited Main only to get a hot dog or a hamburger, his choice.
Everywhere I go, people seem to hate you. And it’s not a mild dislike either — they really hate you.
I met a man in Paris on the metro recently. He was nice enough, willing to speak English though my guess is that his first language was something else, like Arabic or Farsi or something. He had a strange hat made of a long piece of cloth and he wouldn’t take it off, and he wore a vest, sort of like the one my father does when we go on vacation except that this guy’s vest was covered in string what what looked like red silly putty and candles. Weird. You should’ve seen his beard!
Anyway, he said he was going to the airport to do…something to the Americans there (the bus went over a bump just then and I didn’t catch what he said). I wonder if he meant that he was going to help people get cabs since he speaks a similar language to taxi drivers, but I doubt it. He said he was going to go meet someone named Ala. I don’t know if he found his friend…the airport there is crowded with Americans and that could make finding someone very difficult. I guess his friend would probably be wearing the same strange hat and would probably not look like most of the Americans there.
In any case, you should’ve heard this guy go off - he was really pissed-off at a lot of things about you. He kept going on about Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and a few other countries I don’t think you’ve heard of. I remember you had said that you don’t read or watch the news because it’s so unpleasant so you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but you might want to pay attention to this round. Just change the channel next time 24 is on and watch anything else. I think you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about.
He said you had been there, in this country he was talking about, or perhaps that you were there now. I can’t remember. Now, I know that doesn’t make sense since you’re still cushed up between Mexico and the scummier part of Canada, where you’ve always been. I must’ve misunderstood him over his friends who were chanting something I didn’t grasp. One of them was filming it though, so I might have made it onto a home video somewhere - in which case, hi Mom!
Ok, for now. You probably stopped reading many paragraphs ago. There’s more though, and you should look into it. Tell captain cuckoo bananas over there to wisen up and pay attention to the world, for your sake. You’ve been a good friend and I’d hate to see you worse than you are. Look around to Russia, to India, China, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Look to your friends also, and don’t try to screw them over because of some oil in some very harsh and terrible places. Or because of things like French fires. I mean, really. Listen and work with them. Grow up.
Most importantly, look in yourself and see what needs fixing, what needs replacing and what needs a good spring cleaning. Pay attention.
Foolishly hoping for the best, I remain,
Disillusioned Few
PS. You know that home video I mentioned earlier? They put it on TV! I didn’t catch the news segment it was on but I’m told it was on a network called Al-something. I was on TV! I’m famous!
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As the weekday afternoon wears on and out and down, I tend to either get deeper into the tangle of work, turning into a fury of category 5 productivity or else I get further and further from the goal. If the latter is the case, come 6 or 7 o’clock and I’m a mess of ambitious thoughts without a lick of intent.
Guess what kind of day today is?
I sit in my perfect apartment, more perfect than I had hoped for and the prize of a thousand recent conquests, waist deep in political articles I’m too worn out to discuss without sounding like a leftist socialist chimp from south Berkeley. I read Hero’s and Heroine’s blogs that inspire as much as they deflate and listen to a seemingly unending playlist of Bourne Identity-esque soundtracks I’m sure I never bought. With any luck the late afternoon will form that strange lighting effect that photographers love so much, where the clouds are thick enough to darken the sky more than normal while the sun, slowly approaching the horizon will light up their undersides creating vibrant greens on the trees, an unnaturally dark gray sky and eliminating all glare from my screen.
But it’ll probably just rain. Dammit.
In the meantime I let the Bourne soundtrack do its thing. I watch people walk by, some in a terrible hurry, others, not so much. I gaze at the boats that drift by on the canal outside my window and I dream up the possibilities.
“It’s only a matter of time,” I tell myself, “before you end up buying a boat.”
“What?” chastises another voice in my head. “You can’t buy a boat. That’s not part of the plan.”
“Shut up, voice. Wait, what plan?”
Mistake #1. Never egg on a voice in your head that’s not yours in some form and wasn’t invited. That’s like hearing a guy in the Red Light District hiss at you, whispering, “coke?” under his breath and you turn around and ask him where you can get a better deal. Not smart.
“What happened to retaining mobility and not carrying any anchors around?
I pause and think about this.
Mistake #2. Even if the voice was making sense, you send if off and think later. Don’t give it a chance to get deeper into your head. If possible, find out whose voice it is but don’t dilly dally.
–
But it was too late. I was already thinking like I needed to move to Zurich or something even though I still have 6 months on my least and I’d just moved to the city. Get a fucking grip, Pete.
The sad thing is that this voice knows me well. Girls who watch too much Sex in the City have a tendency to think that boys have this aversion to commitment — NOT TRUE. They (the boys you’ve dated) have an aversion to commitment towards YOU.
In fact, since this is most likely the only time I will ever mention Sex in the city — ever — let me dispel a few rumors that are somewhat related to what I imagine the show speaks to (I’ve lived with different girls over the last few years…they’ve all watched the show and one even denied it, but the bottom line is I’ve heard what they talk about, even if I’ve not watched the show:
1) Nice guys finish last.
- NOT TRUE - Nice guys finish dead last, sometimes they even die for no good reason. You ho’s should pay more attention to the ones that are salvageable. This brings me to the next point:
2) Girls want a bad boy that turns good for them.
- Unfortunately, true — but girls, this doesn’t make any sense and you can correct it. Do you realize how selfish and inconsiderate this feeling is? consider discussing the logic behind this because I promise you, I will not just laugh condescendingly the next time I hear a girl ask “why is it that all the guys I date turn out to be jerks?”. I will push you into a canal if I hear a friend of mine sputtering out this kind of horse-shit. The guys you date turn out to be jerks because you have bad aim. Just point your horny self at the guy not treating you like shit and you’ll find that you don’t have to put up with the “I’ll do my best to call you after the hockey game” routine. I thought you would’ve figured that one out by now.
3) Good looking women can waltz into a bar, point at a man and have mad sex with him to their heart’s content with no ties.
- TRUE — But I know you already knew this. I just can’t figure out why it doesn’t happen more often. Scared of rejection, maybe? Get over it.
4) You don’t have to move to NYC to become an amazing sex goddess who is the master of her domain and all the men around her
- TRUE — There is nothing in the NYC water that makes women the social equivalent of atomic bombs compared to men’s potential to be rocket scientists.Yes, the water in New York is fantastic, but that’s unrelated. There are plenty of lovely women out there. It’s just that more of you need to read Shallon’s Blog.
There’s more but I think this is plenty for now. I will quiz you on this next week, so study up, eh?
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