short story

Strip Poker with a Married Genius???

A guy I’m not going to date, screen name TheLoverPlus1, tagline Strip Poker with a Married Genius??? wrote a Why You Should Get To Know Me section so long, with such cracked out punctuation, that despite his friendly email and the provocative screen name/headline, I put off reading it for a week. I had to build up the energy.

It was as if this guy somehow transformed his frenetic self into a profile. As though he became the page. Just browsing it, you know it’d feel exactly the same talking to him. You’re exhausted already.

So…have fun:

First half (and I swear this is what/how he writes): he’s married and not leaving her. Not leaving her….They’re both totally cool with this, etc …. He’s happy. She’s happy…He has so many friends and love and honesty and support, etc….. Don’t expect him to leave her….if you love someone set them free…everyone is so different and unique… Yay everyone! …. Explaining how funny he finds the cropped nearly nude photos of himself, it’s crazy ….ha ha ha … funny!… can’t believe he’s put these images online to seduce the reader!!! …also let’s face it, isn’t that the point here??…seduction?? his headshot photo is professionally-taken….FYI… very successful, lucrative career… thriving, really. Very high I.Q. …. list of achievements …list….list… and so young! Can’t believe it himself.….he’s handsome, he is, see photos….he’s sexy… more sexy than the photos suggest, you’ll see…I.Q. did he mention? … it’s no joke, it’s high, he’s clever …. multifaceted interests… really talented… he has interests…more interests…also, a lot of his interests — he’s really good at them… clever, took all AP and honors classes….AP! ..smart. …

Then: his desire to have strip games (have strip games?)…his desire to have strip games put another way…his desire to have strip games put differently…his desire to have strip games repeated… interest in strip games explained… desire to have strip games justified… joke about strip games…ha ha ha!!!!…hilarious…just hilarious… request for proposals for new/other kinds of strip games… he hasn’t thought of everything!!!…you could have some good ideas too!!…. he’s open!!…in closing — his desire to have strip games.

What he’s most passionate about: Sex.uality.

He emailed me inquiring about my interest in strip games. My What I’m Looking For specifically states Single Men, but it would be out of character for him to read it, let alone take heed. Anyway, it’s possible he has the most accurate personality-to-profile conversion in existence. I feel like I know him already.

Me, alone, the stench of Pine-Sol, a mop, the idea of a dead cat.

I got home late, exhausted from a three-day business trip. I’d been looking forward to Thai take-out and watching whatever Netflix DVD was waiting for me, but instead, I spent the hours Pine-Soling everything in the house.

Luke the Cool Cat was dead.

He must have died a day or two before. I don’t know what of; I just know he was already old when I got him, one-eyed, torn up ears, half a tail. He was worn. Vanessa found him in Chinatown one night in the snow, or that was the story she told me the year before, the story that led me to the 6-train and up to the Bronx, into the shelter where she left him.

It’s just like Vanessa to spot a cat-in-need and take immediate action despite time and place and the length of her day. Just like her to believe she should be the one to find remedy; to research shelters late-night on some sketchy January street corner, frostbitten cat in hand. It was just like her to decide the best shelter in the city was the one furthest away from everything and everyone, including her and her mangy cat; and it just like her to immediately trek all the way up there.

Everyone Wants Kittens. That’s what she says. No one will adopt this sweet cat. Me, peering into this cat’s stale bin, the smell of urine overpowering, the disinfectant-gone-airborne stinging my eyes. Me, shaking my head.

He’s Got Character. She says.

Me, back on the 6-train, carrying a cat in a box, thinking about cat names.

I’d ended up naming him Luke. Luke, after Cool Hand Luke. Because this cat looked like he’d seen a few things in his time. Been in a few brawls, maybe eaten a boatload of eggs on a dare. Who knew. He seemed the type to find his own way. This time, right into my apartment.

Cool cat. Except for dying. Flies everywhere. Reminded me of, what was it?  – spontaneous generation – how a steak decays and maggots miraculously appear? The windows cracked open, but screened. I kept wondering where the flies came from.

It was dark and late and I was out of garbage bags. I took my very dead, very blown-up-rigor-mortising orange tabby, wrapped him in a towel, placed him in a cardboard box, and carried him down the building’s narrow stairs, placing the box outside the front door before running to the corner Bodega.

I returned a few minutes later with a box of twelve thick, large black garbage bags and a pack of cigarettes despite having quit months before. Here, on the porch, during an extended moment of confusion and disbelief. I realize the cat and box are gone. I realize: Not only did I let my cat die—I lost my dead cat.

I lost my dead cat.

Me, alone, the stench of Pine-Sol, a mop, the idea of a dead cat. The fact that I lost it.

And there’s this: I won’t die alone with my cat in a New York apartment like I’d always feared. Now, that’s something to work towards.

If I were a few years younger, I’d move back home to California. But I’m old enough to know I’d be bringing myself along.

 

This is making my hair fall out.

She showed up at her stylist’s shop with a bottle of product. She sat down, placed the bottle on his stand, and told her stylist very directly: “This is making my hair fall out.”

She wanted a different product that did exactly the same things, except not that. She had really loved it; the way it kept her hair in place, the way it wasn’t too heavy or oily and didn’t make her hair too stiff.  Her stylist sat down on his doctor-like stool and studied the ingredients on the back of the bottle. It felt like ages had passed when he finally looked up at her, held up the bottle, and said: “I don’t think this is the culprit; a lot of things can make your hair fall out.”  He began to list “a lot of things,” like diet and stress and the-change-of-seasons, continuing on as he cut her hair, with other-reason-after-possible-reason, until she was fully annoyed.

She had only recently learned about sulfate-whatevers and parabin-whatnots, words that she had seen on the packaging of products announcing they were “Free Of!” thus making suspect everything she’d used before, all her bottles now potential-carriers. Truthfully, she didn’t know much about it all, but the more her hair continued to fall out and the more she searched for a reason, the more she was convinced of this product’s guilt, a product she used often, and was not “free of” anything in particular.

Now, there she sat, watching her stylist trim the ends of the long brown hair that remained listening to his never-ending list.

They had not occurred to her, those other questions. The ones that led to other solutions. That required other actions. But of course, she thought, settling into the news.  If only it were all contained in one small bottle, so easily swapped for another. If only she could hold the problem and solution at once in the palm of her hand.

Bare-Knuckle Dating

It’s like the world is one big boxing ring and dating is like a match with infinity-bouts of infinity-rounds of infinity-minutes.

You don’t even know what fight you’re in. You just go from one to the next.

At some point you notice you’ve got a swollen right hand and a left fist you can barely close. The other guy is five for five, all KOs, and all you can think is: Keep ‘em off balance, win. Win and you can get out of the ring for good.

But the thing is: You’re not Sugar Ray Leonard, 1976, photos of the ones you love taped to your socks.

My journey has ended. My dream is fulfilled. This is bare-knuckle boxing. No one lifts the rope up for you when you enter the ring. And no one touches gloves with you before the fighting begins. There are no girls, increasingly less-dressed as the night advances, girls wearing platform heels, circling the ring, holding up cards that mark the moment. There’s no one to let you know where you are in the midst of it all, or to give you just a minute of rest. Instead, somehow when you arrive you’re in the middle of the ring and it’s the middle of the fight and you’re already a bit dazed.

The fact is, your ring work isn’t epic. You think I’ll probably kiss the canvas. You’re not even in shape, or not as in shape as the other guy. There are no weight classes; half the time he’s twice as big as you. There are no coaches or trainers; no one to help set the strategy or cheer you on. No one yelling Gloves up! Gloves UP! or What did we practice? Stay steady! when you’re feeling the pain.

There’s no cornerman waiting to offer you water, to reduce the swelling, to stop the inevitable bleeding. And there’s certainly not the third man in the ring to call out the long series of obvious and intentional fouls, the head-butts and low blows.

You can’t go the distance, and there’s no one there to throw in the towel.

Keep ‘em off balance, win.
I’m finished…I’ve fought my last fight.
My journey has ended.
My dream is fulfilled. – Sugar Ray Leonard, 1976