The Soft

We're all so goddamned special aren't we? Everyone I know is an artist, a musician, a philosopher, a writer, an actor, a director, a dancer, and sometimes all of these things at once. Myself included. I'm probably the worst offender of all. It'd be a real shame if we didn't share our unique and profound minds with the world, if we didn't "express ourselves" (probably one of the most vile phrases in the language). I'm not sure, but I suspect that real art isn't about self-expression at all and that self-expression is basically a form of masturbation.

And what will happen to us? Some will be ground up and packaged and earn a lot of money making advertisements. Some will live in once-grand Victorian mansions furnished with soggy old couches and grimacing bookshelves, blocks from the colleges where we teach. Others will vomit up our creativity in the morning with last night's beer and go wait tables. Some will frequent coffee houses and grow so fat in the head with smarm and knowledge that we will barely fit through the holes of our turtlenecks. A handful of us might actually have something brilliant and original to say, and will be completely miserable for it.

I don't know if I could live any other way.

The Porpoise

She danced like a porpoise and her skin was rubbery and smooth and hard and wet like a porpoise's. She took my hand and pulled me out to the floor where she danced twice as fast as everyone else, throwing her head back, wiggling her legs, putting her hands in her hair in a move that looked like it had been choreographed for a six year old by her mother during rehearsals for Star Search.

I was delighted by her style and tried to take her hand but our rhythms were too different and the puzzle pieces of our knees and thighs and crotches would not fit together.

I leaned in. "You dance like a maniac," I said, "I like it."

I did like it, but I was apologetically uninterested in her.

My own style of dancing is a hybrid of Michael Jackson bopping around to "Rockin' Robin" and Bruce Springsteen clodhopping like Frankenstein in the "Dancing in the Dark" video. I can't dance without snapping my fingers or clapping my hands or thumping the bassline against my chest. I usually end up alone on the floor at the end of the night, cutting back and forth through the crowd like a shark looking for the last beautiful wounded girl.

At the end of the night the porpoise girl pulled me out to the front of the club where it was quiet.

"Since I'm probably never going to see you again," she said, sounding like the preamble to the declaration of a crush. I scrambled to figure out how I would gently put her down. "...I just want you to know that you can feel free to contact me if you ever want to get coffee or anything."

"Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, sure," I was relieved. She had been in one of my classes and I was very fond of her as a person, I just didn't want to have to be cruel. I don't think anybody does.

Communion

Everybody else in the yard sings Don’t Stop Believin’
though they don’t know the words.

They are looking for the magic.
We are all looking for the magic.

Some find it through drugs, or religion,
some through art, some
sports or music.
Some through love.

Wings aflutter, alone or together,
we are all beating
our way up to God.

The Summer air is charged
with static electricity
or maybe it’s streaming
through my veins.
Touch ignites my skin.

I can never tell if the spark
comes from me or the girl.
I guess we made it together.

A flower petal drops into
my glass of water and
I drink it up.

Up to My Ass in Daisies

I first saw Rita at a bohemian coffee shop where a mutual friend was performing a magic show. She had a blond, beehive hairdo, eyes that could read every thought you were trying to hide and lips soft and plump as strawberry taffy. I drunkenly searched the Facebook guest list for her later that night and recognized her by the honeycomb on top of her head. I sent her a message and, to my surprise, she gave me her phone number. I called many times, but never got past the voicemail. "Hi, this is Rita, leave a message." I memorized the timber of her voice, the little girl panicking over whether she should get the raspberry sorbet or the peanut butter brickle. I was in love with her for a few weeks but gradually gave up on the idea that she was going to save my life.

Six months later I was in an arty dive bar (the kind where you can't tell the difference between the scruffy hipsters wearing the carefully frayed 200 dollar jeans and ironic trucker hats and the scruffy people who are actually poor wearing frayed jeans and trucker hats) when I saw her for the second time.

"Oh shit," I said to my friend Oscar, "I think I know that girl."

"Which?" he stood on his toes and craned his neck.

Oscar is, as he is proud to admit, a huge smartass. He goes by the creed "It's better to be a smartass than a dumbass," although I would argue that this isn't always true, that sometimes your mouth can get you into situations that your body can't get you safely out of.

"With the hair," I indicated.

"Go talk to her."

He pushed me out onto the dance floor and I dawdled over to her, half nodding my head to the music, which was nearly unlistenable. There was a band onstage playing noise rock with a golf club, a filing cabinet and an electronic sample of frogs croaking.

She was swirling her drink around with a blue straw. I tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around I was taken aback to see how much more beautiful she was in person.

"Hey!" She said and gave me a hug as if we were old friends.

"You have more freckles than I imagined," I said.

"Thanks," She said, smiling.

Our conversation was going well and she traveled with me to a booth by the pool table where Oscar and I were playing against two lesbians. We were down five balls and I got up to hit a difficult bank shot. I am a fair pool player at best, but I sunk it right in the pocket. Rita held up her drink and raised her eyebrow at me. I sunk another one across the table into the corner pocket, cutting it gingerly and putting the english on it necessary to keep the cue from going into the opposite pocket. I didn't look at Rita, as I was "in the zone" and I knew how cool I looked and I wanted to show her how casual I was about the whole thing. I sank another one in the side pocket and slicked my hair back like Tom Cruise in "The Color of Money." I could see out of the corner of my eye that Oscar had sat next to Rita, and I figured that they were probably talking about what a great guy I was.

After hitting it in the side pocket I left the cue in a bad position and my only shot was an attempt at the corner which I had to jump over a stripe to make. I slid the cue smoothly between my fingers and chipped briskly at the point where the ball met the felt. It jumped, arched over the edge of the table and clacked against the concrete floor. One of the lesbians caught it and her friend handed her a cue. I shrugged my shoulders as she set the ball back down on the table. I sat next to Oscar and tapped him on the shoulder but he didn't turn around. He was gesturing aggressively at Rita.

"That's bullshit," he said belligerently, "You're full of shit."

Alarmed, I butted my way between them.

"What's bullshit?" I said. "What're you talking about?"

"You know this girl?" he said, pointing at her with his beer.

"Yeah. Sort of." I smiled at her. She was searching the room for her friends.

"She doesn't believe in relationships."

"What do you mean?"

"She doesn't believe that a man and a woman, or two woman, or two men should be in a monogamous or open relationship. Ever."

"Why's that?" I said. Oscar started to answer. I cut him off. "I'm asking her. It's your shot." I handed him the cue. He pounded the rubber end softly on the floor. I tried to catch her attention. "I think that's really interesting. Why do you believe that?"

She espoused a lazy explanation of her philosophy. "I just think that you should experience everything and committing to another person like that really limits what you can experience. It's like you're betrothed to that one person."

Betrothed. I remembered how, when I used to correspond with her on Facebook, her messages were grammatically fairly incoherent, but she would throw in a five dollar word every once in a while, one she had clearly learned from a "Word-A-Day" calendar or the like.

"Mutual romantic love is the ultimate thing you can experience in this universe," Oscar yelled, cutting her short. She smiled curtly.

"It's your turn, Oscar." I tried to push him off the seat.

"You can be in love," she said. "I didn't say you couldn't fall in love."

"How're you going to fall in love with someone if you're not in a relationship with them?" Oscar said. I leaned so far off the seat trying to see around him that I almost fell off. I was in disbelief. He was murdering my chances with this girl. He knew how lonely and pathetic I was and he was killing me.

"I fall in love all the time," she said. "Love is transitory. It's not something you're meant to hold onto. It flows."

He mimed jerking off, "Give me a fuckin' break."

She stood up. "I'm gonna go find my friends. 'Bye Pete." She waved a small wave to me while looking around the room and walked away.

I took Oscar by the shoulder. "What the fuck are you doing?"

He went to hit a shot. "That chick was fucking crazy."

"So what? She's gorgeous. You just killed my chances with her."

Oscar rammed a ball off the rail and missed the side pocket. "You never had a chance. You heard her. She doesn't believe in relationships."

I could see her across the room standing in a loose circle with her friends. They were all wearing colorful summer dresses and when they went out the front door I felt like beating Oscar to death with the thick end of the pool cue. Why would he torpedo me like that? He had a girlfriend. He wasn't trying to meet girls, but he was the only friend I had who liked to go out. I went out with him three nights a week, salivating at every attractive girl in every bar we went to, too timid to approach them. We usually ended each night drunkenly barking into the speaker at McDonald's and pathetically nibbling at McChicken sandwiches. I didn't want to end up at the drive-thru that night.

I walked over to the door. I pushed it open, surprised by how cool the air was for June. Rita and her friends were trying to hail a cab. I ran to her and grabbed her by the elbow.

"Hey, Rita," I said, "I just wanted to apologize for my friend. He's kind of an asshole when he's drunk."

"It's fine, don't worry about it," She looked completely unconcerned about Oscar's opinions on anything. She got into the cab and it pulled away.

"You ready to fucking go, man?" Oscar appeared behind me, lighting a cigarette.

"Let's go get a fucking McChicken sandwich," I said, and we went home in Oscar's parent's mini-van.