I Just Want My Pants Back Page 3

  Before I left, I quickly composed a short e-mail to Jane. It wasn’t every day you met a girl who invited you to fuck her in a kitchen appliance, and visions of my oven were dancing in my head. Besides, she had freed me from my celibate prison, so I wasn’t about to play coy and wait a couple days to write to her. It would have been hubris to go the aloof route.

  I was starting to get it down to a science, this first written contact. In fact, I had saved a few older e-mails that I had written to other girls, and I pretty much just needed to cherry-pick lines from those to make a nice opening message. It was bordering on lame, sure, but I was really only plagiarizing myself. I liked to think of it as recycling. It was good for the Earth. But this time I decided to be original; I thought up a subject (always the hardest part), “Freezer Burn?” and dashed it off.

  Hey Jane,

  It’s Jason. Remember me? President and founding member of the LiZee fan club? Last eve was really fun. Shall we hang out again sometime soon? I know of many other average bands…Hope today was swell.

  Hugs. Not drugs.

  Jason

  PS: I don’t often use the word “shall,” but I’m trying to impress you.

  I scanned it, added my cell-phone number to the bottom, and changed the “freezer burn” to “hiya” and the “hugs not drugs” to “bye” so I didn’t seem too much like a spaz. You just knew any e-mail you sent to a girl was immediately forwarded to at least one of her friends or office pals and deconstructed like a Shakespearean sonnet in an Advanced Elizabethan Poetry class. Usually the line above the forwarded e-mail would simply say, “I don’t know, is he weird?”

  I said good night to the computer, put it to sleep, and then escaped the office to the street. A souvlaki vendor was frying up mystery meat and onions right outside the building; it was the savory smell of freedom. The Post-it that Melinda had given me said the reading was at Ninth Street and Second Avenue, so I hurried off toward the 6 train. As I walked, I fired off a quick text to Stacey, “Hear u are looking for me!” Tina had made me quite curious.

  I emerged from the subway at Astor Place, starving. I grabbed a slice and crammed it into my eat hole as I headed toward Second Avenue. I got to the building, walked up three flights, and stepped into the loft. It was enormous, a wide-open space with large windows and very little furniture. As the door loudly creaked shut, twenty or so people sitting on folding chairs set up to resemble audience seating turned and looked at me. I smiled sheepishly and tiptoed over to an empty chair. Facing us, seated on one side of a table, were Melinda and four of her classmates.

  One man was reading intensely: “It’s easy for you to say! I can’t even remember our address—our fucking address, Ruth! Did you know I keep it written down on a slip of paper in my wallet? And I have another one in my shoe, in case I lose my wallet!”

  Melinda read, dryly, “Oh my God, what if you lose your shoes, though? Then what?”

  The man sighed. “Very funny, sweetheart. See, I already forgot how funny you are.”

  From what I roughly knew, Melinda’s play was about a famous composer whose Alzheimer’s was rapidly becoming debilitating. As the disease progressed, the symphony he was working on became his saving grace—the musical notes were written down, so he didn’t forget or get confused when he worked on it, the way he did in other aspects of his life. But as I watched, I started to realize where Melinda was taking the play; he was now beginning to forget how to read music. I’d walked in on the most tragic part.

  I looked around the room. People were rapt, sitting on the edges of their seats. A few were audibly sniffling. Everybody was rooting for the play to be great, everybody was open, sincere. It was almost too good, the way movies depicted old artsy New York, this reading, this makeshift theater in someone’s loft. I watched Melinda; she was so focused, furiously scribbling notes as people read their lines. Her lines, which she was showing to the world outside her workshop for the first time. She was oblivious to us, though, lost in her own creation. It was amazing to see her in her element, away from our little office world. God, what a joke compared to this. We were just tap-dancing at work, who cared, what difference did our efforts make? We were killing time for money. This was something else.

  About twenty minutes later, Melinda looked up. “Curtain.” Everyone began to applaud wildly and she smiled as she was hugged by the people who had read with her. I stood and whistled as loud as I could. I wanted to go over and congratulate her but it didn’t seem like my turn yet. Then, boom, the lights dimmed and someone hit the stereo. The Strokes blared; for some reason their music always made me feel like I was in Urban Outfitters about to try on an overpriced T-shirt.

  I took a deep breath and waded into the outer ring of the crowd around Melinda. I saw George first, a white guy with dreads who I knew through her. It was tough to pull off, the white-guy-with-dreads look; very few could do it. Only thing worse in that genre were the white girls on spring break in the Bahamas who got their hair beaded and then tragically forgot to put sunscreen where the hair was pulled apart.

  “Hey, man, that was great, huh?” I asked George, shaking his hand.

  “That, I think, is going to get bought.” He held up a Pyrex pipe and changed the subject. “Can I interest you in getting high?”

  And soon I was as stoned as a teen at the prom in 1978. I burned my throat a bit, so I left George and went to grab a beer out of the kitchen. It was crowded with folks smoking cigarettes and grabbing at some pita bread and cheese that was laid out on the stove. I reached into the fridge.

  “Hey, can you hand me a Stella?”

  I turned to see a girl with green eyes, a Joan-Jett-circa-“I Love Rock and Roll” haircut, and a polka-dot sweater. All curvy and shit. Like someone hand-packed her into her jeans. I passed her a beer. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled at me. “So, what’s your story? You friends with Jon?” She pulled a bottle opener/magnet off the fridge door, opened her beer, and then gave the opener to me. I fumbled with it a bit. I was higher than I wanted to be.

  “No, I’m friends with the playwright, Melinda. Well, not friends exactly, we work together, I can’t lie. Well, of course, I could lie—I’m actually quite an accomplished liar.” I picked at the label on my beer as I rolled on. “But I made a list of New Year’s resolutions, and right after ‘Get buns and abs of steel’ is ‘Be more truthful.’ My name is Jason.” I stuck out my hand.

  She shook it. “Carol.” Surprisingly firm grip. A little manly. “Nice opening monologue.”

  “Thanks, I, uh, took drama in college.” I tried a sip of the beer. Lukewarm. “I don’t really know who Jon is, actually.” I gestured to the apartment. “His place is awesome, though.”

  “He was the guy in the orange T-shirt who didn’t have too many lines. I used to work with him at this ad agency. But now I’m a VP web producer at match.com.” She smiled.

  “Wow, congratulations.”

  “Yeah. It’s a great place for me.” She blinked, and touched my arm. “So what do you do with Melinda?”

  I brought my beer to my lips, buying a second, contemplating my answer. It would be easy for me to latch onto Melinda’s life, say we’d worked together on a play in the Fringe Festival or something. I’d certainly strayed farther from the truth before. Last night, in fact. But for some reason I really didn’t feel like playing that game, the one wherein we made ourselves sound better than we actually were. And since I had just gotten laid as an orthodontist, I felt a certain desire to abstain from it. “Melinda and I work at a film casting place; I’m an assistant there.” I watched her for a reaction. “But there’s only four people, so I’m this close to being CEO.” I held up three fingers.

  She took a prolonged swallow of beer. Fuck, they can never hide it. “A casting assistant, huh?” She glanced down, I think at my shoes, then back to my face. “So like, do you want to be a producer or something?”

  She was already in Phase Two. My current credentials didn’t sound that
hot, so now she was sizing me up for “future potential.” Like I was a young racehorse or a piece of real estate in a gentrifying neighborhood. This exact sequence had happened to me more times than I cared to recall. It started with “Oh, this guy looks sort of interesting,” then went to “Oh, his job is kinda lame, though, but wait…maybe he has a plan,” to, if it hadn’t already ended with me immediately being dropped like a dirty diaper, “Wait, this one I can mold like a lump of clay into Perfect Boyfriend.”

  “Um, producer, I don’t know,” I shrugged, smiling. “Could be, I’m still sorting that out, to be honest. Or maybe an astronaut. I’m on the fence.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Tough choice.” Carol took another taste of her beer. Her eyes darted around the room. “They’re really different jobs.”

  I took her face in. Yeah, I didn’t have a shot in hell of ever kissing this girl. No “assistant” did. She was probably racing her friends to be first to both procreate and be made partner. “I make more money than you, AND my baby was born first—in your face!” It was all camouflaged under the stylish haircut. A friend of hers walked past and they started chatting; she was about to sail away. On cue, the wind blew.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to get back to my friends,” she said, touching my shoulder, patronizingly. “It was nice to meet you.” I watched her curvaceous body move as she negotiated her way out of the crowded kitchen. I guess you could say she had an hourglass figure. But time was running out.

  I consoled myself with a mouthful of beer. Maybe I was high but I felt like everyone in the kitchen was looking at me, so I shuffled back out into the main room and found a spot to sulk. VP, Jesus. It killed me, that crap. All of a sudden these people who two minutes ago were proud to rule the bong thought they were Gordon Gecko or something. What was I to her, a retarded busboy at Stuckey’s? I mean, I wasn’t some poet, some Utopian dreamer; it wasn’t like I wanted to live in 1967, abandon all material possessions, and give my children Native American names like Spirit Runner. I loved money and treasure as much as any pirate. These people who used their job titles just like maybe they had once used their major or their varsity letter or whatever to make themselves seem superior. Fuck ’em, I wasn’t buying it. I leaned against the wall and drained my beer. I had made an excellent argument to myself, but there was no way around it. A girl turning you down, thinking that who you were wasn’t good enough, hurt. It hurt every fucking time.

  Especially painful was the first time it happened, at Seth Strasser’s sixth-grade birthday party. We had just graduated from “Spin the Bottle” to “Run, Catch, and Kiss.” All adolescent kissing games cruelly seemed to have the rules built right into their names, rendering moot any “I don’t know how to play” excuses. The girls chased the boys under the June night sky, and Carol Kensington, a B-cupped beauty who was the inspiration behind many of my first locked-bathroom-door explorations, was closing in on me. I faked twisting an ankle, going down on the soft grass of Seth’s front yard, all the easier to be caught and kissed. But Carol passed me over. Literally. She hurdled me in desperate pursuit of James Lerner, the “hottest guy in school.” Well, until sophomore year, when it all went bad in an eruption of acne and an unfortunate attempt at a mustache. Carol’s running leap was followed rapid-fire by Lisa Beeman’s dainty hop and Mandy Tellman’s misjudging the jump entirely and landing on my hand. They dashed off as I sat there, examining the grass stains on my good 501s. What made the whole thing worse was that only a minute before, Seth, wide-eyed and out of breath, had grabbed me in front of the garage and announced like a pubescent Paul Revere, “The girls are Frenching, the girls are Frenching!”

  Wilco wafted through the speakers and I turned to see Melinda by the stereo. Nursing my minor wound, I straightened up, forced a smile, and headed over. “Author, author!” I yelled, giving her a hug. “That was phenomenal.”

  “Thank you so much for coming!” she said, hugging me back. “Oh, hey, sorry, I almost crushed you!” She bounced up and down on her toes. “Really, you liked it?”

  I nodded. “Loved it. I’ve never been more impressed, Mel. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that.”

  “Shut up, you could do it. You just make up stuff and type it.”

  “Sounds hard. Besides, I’ve been busy at JB’s—you’ll never guess what happened after you left!” I said, like an excited kindergartner.

  Over a few drinks I proceeded to tell her the story of the dancing little people, which somehow devolved into us calling them tiny dancers, which somehow devolved into our combing through Jon’s CD collection until we found Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume II, cranking up the stereo, and singing along to “Tiny Dancer” at the top of our lungs. It was kind of like that scene in Almost Famous, except they were rock gods on a tour bus and we were drunk idiots in an apartment. If I was someone else at the party, I would have hated us. But I was me. And I loved us. Hell, I was ready for an encore. Levon likes his money.

  I didn’t hang out much later after the sing-along. Melinda was the star and she had a lot of people to attend to. I was tired and a bit fucked up, and I didn’t really know many people there. I saw the VP girl flirting with some tall dude in khakis and figured it was a sign to call it a night.

  I headed home, stopping off on the way at my local bodega, Andy’s Deli. It was funny that it was “Andy’s,” as every person who worked there was of some kind of Indian or Bangladeshi descent. I said hello to the night guy, a twentysomething Indian immigrant who went by the name “Bobby” and had pretty much only seen me when I was drunk. Once again, I did not disappoint.

  “Bobby, good evening to you!” I said, reeling through the door and making my way toward the glass fridges in the back. He was behind the counter, looking through a magazine whose masthead read INTERNATIONAL ASS PARTY. He slapped it shut and slid it under the counter.

  “Hi, Boss! Why no girl tonight, where is your girlfriend?” Bobby had this great wide smile; he was always happy, even though he had to work such crap hours. I didn’t really know him and he didn’t really know me, but I was pretty sure we were best friends forever. I probably wasn’t the only late-night partier who thought that, though.

  I grabbed a Canada Dry ginger ale out of the fridge and a Whatchamacallit from the counter. I didn’t even know they were still making Whatchamacallits, but you had to admit: It may not have been a very good candy bar, but it had one hell of a name. And I decided to vote for it with my dollars.

  “Just this, my friend?” asked Bobby, ringing me up.

  “Yup. You know, I was just thinking. It’s funny. I’ve only ever seen you here at work. You’d think we would have bumped into each other on the street by now.” I handed him a fiver.

  “Someday, someday! You are drunk, yes?”

  “No. Never touch the stuff.” A smile snuck out of my nose, swiveled into place, and gave me away.

  He pointed at me and laughed. “Yes, yes you are! Most people who come in here after midnight are drunk. You are always nice, though. Some people are very bad. They smoke in store, they yell.” He gave me back a couple of bucks.

  “I’m sorry. People suck,” I said, shrugging as if I had just imparted some grand piece of wisdom. I backed out of the deli. “Have a good night, Bobby, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Boss.” Bobby smiled at me. “Do not vomit I hope!”

  I made my way up my three flights. I wondered how Melinda knew she wanted to be a playwright; it seemed like it must have been all she ever wanted to do. I wondered if the VP had found someone worthy—perhaps even scored an SVP—and was now contemplating a merger. I unlocked my door, washed my face, brushed my teeth, took three Advil, got into bed with my ginger ale and candy bar, and turned off the lights to be alone with my shame.

  I had just crumpled up the candy wrapper and thrown it onto the floor when I heard a text message come in. I was still sort of awake, so I shuffled over to the coffee table where I left the phone and checked it.

  u up? janey


  I scratched my head and smiled. The clock on the microwave read 12:47. Sure, I could be up.

  3

  Twenty minutes later I found myself in the women’s bathroom of Tom’s, some bar in Nolita, sharing a joint with Jane. She had been out for a while and had the slur to prove it. The second I walked in she dragged me by my hand to the ladies’ room, whispering, “C’mon handsome, let’s get high.” I was a bit taken aback at first—she was quite aggressive. She still wore the glasses but her hair was out from the pigtails and she looked pretty damn sexy in a short bright-blue skirt and a white wife-beater tank top. Her nipples, like the built-in thermometers in Perdue Oven Stuffer Roasters, were declaring, “Chicken’s ready!”

  Jane handed me the joint after taking a long pull, and before I could put it to my lips she put her mouth next to mine and blew the smoke in. It was a sexy move and Petey instantly improved his posture.

  “What’s your name again?” she, I hoped, joked.

  “Jason.” I sucked on the joint. “Some call me Adonis.”

  She giggled. “So who are you really, Jason? C’mon, you’re obviously not an orthodontist. What do you do in our city?”

  “I kiss girls in bathrooms.”

  We started to make out for a second, then she pulled away and squinted at me. “No, really, what do you do?” We stood a few feet from each other, in front of the sink. Someone pounded at the door, and we ignored it.

  “I work in casting, you know, for films and commercials and stuff.”

  “So, are you like a casting director?”

  “Kinda.” I scratched my nose. “Well, you know, I assist the director. And what about you? What exactly do you do?” I realized I had no idea.