so i got accepted to grad school on friday. two of them, including spu, my top choice of the schools i applied to. so, that's what i'll be up to come march. i'd like to sit and speculate about how life will look for me and stuff, but i'm too excited, almost ditzy, with the freshness of it: everything is so dope; this smirk on my face won't go away. (i am chilling at the club in my b-boy stance; i have my hoodie pulled up, and my cock in my pants. i'm fresh. i'm fresh.) you know that feeling? it is very nearly a spontaneity-loving, break-into-song type of thing. but, here in my own post-ironic idaho, we prefer things to be a little more subdued, so we break-into-smirk.
with nothing else really to add, i'll instead include some clips from the personal statement i wrote for the spu application -
***
Not until later, when I was talking to my friend Brian, did I realize how lame it sounded. He asked me to repeat myself. “She said it was a ‘two-week break,’” I said again. “During that time we will not talk or write or see each other. No contact at all.”
Brian nodded. “A two-week break.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You realize what that is. It’s a trial breakup.”
And he was right. As he almost always is when it comes to matters of my life, my best and oldest friend was right. My girlfriend had decided to give me a two-week-long opportunity to sit quietly and reflect on how much she meant to me before she ended things between us. Following that morning coffee session with Brian, what I decided to do was to switch things up. Nearly every aspect of my life felt stale or incomplete or both. At the age of 25, making significant life change is an undertaking that is drastic at the same time that it is completely plausible; as such, I decided to move, to remove myself from the distractions I found irresistible. I’d had the relative good fortune to be advanced to the telecommuting team at Amazon.com, and, after confirming that I could live anywhere in the 206 area code and still dial into the server, I spread out a map of Seattle and looked to see how far away I could get. The next morning I took the ferry to Vashon Island to look for a place to live.
For most of my college career, writing had been a latent interest. At the end of my junior year, I enrolled in a creative writing class because A) it seemed cultured, B) it sounded easy, and C) I had a tremendous crush on the professor. But I took to the work. The task of writing down my thoughts instead of my reaction to the thoughts of others presented a unique puzzle, one that was entirely different from any sort of problem solving I had engaged in. During an office visit my professor drew a comparison between the first story I’d written and the lyrics of Beck. At the time, Beck resided just below Johnny Cash and above Paul Simon in the uppermost reaches of the Artists Who Sing Directly To Me pantheon, and by the time I left her office I had decided to dedicate my life to writing (or craft, as I immediately began to call it). But I had little idea what I was doing, and I was lost the moment the semester ended and I no longer had due dates to push against.
In the years following college I had small adventures in beautiful places and was compelled to write about them only at times that were inconvenient. When my girlfriend enacted the trial breakup I had only recently voiced (to Brian, naturally) the concern that maybe I liked saying I was a writer more than actually being a writer. Above all else, my move to the rolling greens and blues of Vashon Island was about quieting my life and myself enough to figure out whether or not I had a native impulse to write things down. Whether or not I had any chops.
Speaking of chops, the first place I felt immediately at home on Vashon was a diner that served the most amazing pork. I would work for a few hours, take a walk, and then drive down to the Stray Dog diner to eat and write a scene, often a more-interesting version of something that had very nearly been interesting all on its own. This was a terrifically leisurely mode in which to operate, and it suited me. I began to write letters to old friends that I never had any intention to send. It was for the sake of knowing my audience that I began each session with the words Dear Brian or Dear Whomever, and followed this by relating imagined nights and adventures and conversations we might have shared.
Around this time I struck up a friendship with the Alternative music editor at Amazon.com and, after a minimum of pleading, got my first paid writing work as a freelance music editor. He said to me, “You know jack for music but you do know how to write,” and placed me as an editor in the “Miscellaneous” genre. It was a terribly fun thing, to receive a CD in the mail, listen to it a couple of times, and then write down my 250-word reaction to it. My life was more slow and measured and salient than it had ever been when, on the evening of the summer solstice, I took my brand-new skateboard to bomb the hill behind my house, fell, and landed on my head.
...In these last years, both my creative and freelance writing endeavors have developed in fits and starts. Professionally this has a lot to do with my not being a particularly avid salesman. I have found that sustaining my fiction pursuits calls for a bull-headedness that is not entirely dissimilar: A writing routine requires the savvy of a cold-call salesman, a willingness to dial my own number each morning and blindly assure myself that, Yes, this will be worth it. And, like any salesman, some sales periods have been kinder to me than others. This quarter I am responding well to my own sales pitches, and consequently confidence is high. While it is impossible to trace my recent progress as a writer as cleanly as I would chart out sales results, I am able to say that my ability to navigate the language, and my love for the fiction form, have grown with a strength that I cannot immediately account for.
...By moving to Vashon I had slowed my life as much as I could, and in so doing found that some of the things I liked in theory – long walks, Russian literature, naps – I also liked in practice. Among those, writing was foremost for the way it transitioned from interest to passion so easily – almost without my noticing. The word “passion” has been rather dulled by use, I think; generally I think of it as either as an overstated affinity (I had a neighbor who was “passionate” about making soup) or as something that is pursued with fiery eyes and a tightly set jaw. For me, neither description fits. My passion for writing, though, can only truly be described as just that, a passion. How the creative process works is a mystery to me, but I know that if I show up at the same time each day, then pretty regularly it will work. Writing is a passion, but also it is a kind of faith: What I believe to be true is far more than what I am able to explain. Whenever I close my notebook and come back from a moment of having lost myself in the writing process, I do so with a mind that is tranquil and an eye that is curious. That wants to look at the world.
22 October 2005
11 October 2005
the way kathy lee needed regis, that’s the way i need jesus.
“as men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so their creeds are a disease of the intellect.”
- Ralph-to-tha-Waldo Emerson
= I like this for so many reasons. and, as with any idea for which I can devise more than one reason, I shall eschew (it’s a vindictive avoidance, not a cocktail nut) the paragraph form in favor of a list =
a) the notion of creed as disease is fascinating to me. i mean, the bad creeds are obviously bad, but deigning the whole thing as systemic badness flies in the face of how I think about creed: a creed is a rallying cry (a gnarly mel gibson shouting “FREEDOM!” as he gets skewered) or it is a way to sum up an impractical ideology (by the people, for the people) . but when I stop, drop, and think, it occurs to me that Creed always seemed nice because Creed is always surrounded by more obviously disease-like clichés and sayisms. nobody will ever try and elevate when it rains it pours or apples and oranges or i’m only giving you this blowjob if you pay my rent to the level of creed because such sayings are too situational and too pesky; a creed must sound good ‘round the clock, not just when it’s sucky outside or is the first of the month. if I’m to think of creed as disease, cliché and truism must be less harmful, like pink eye. or a rash. crabs, at worst.
b) I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really believed them when they told me that if I persist in calling my fries french, then the terrorists win.
c) song as creed: jesus loves me is one of the v. first songs you learn in sunday school, and it is, along with amazing grace, the most persistent – the last to leave your mind as you walk away. (the melody has been pleasantly re-worked since my boyhood days, and even now, as a sunday school teacher myself, it is the praise song that gives me the most immediate access to my heart.) but it is more than just declaration. jesus loves me, this i know: these words are re-assurance, they are reminder; but also they are creed – they tell me what I already know full well. and I am glad to hear it.
d) I heard this quote in an interview with harold bloom, who followed it with the staunch qualification of emerson as his prophet. he’s not one of mine, but maybe he will become so someday. I’ve always liked him. but the idea of a prophet seems incongruous with the idea of prayer as disease, or at least as a disease that is separate from a need. a prophet speaks truths that are eternal, truths that dangle their feet in spacetime before going off for lunch and then setting down someplace else. like unnecessary personification, a prophet’ truth tells illustratively of what has yet to come while being evocative in the present. like emerson. and like prayer.
e) to be clear, when I say prayer I mean good prayer; a prayer that has its own life, in the sense that it is to somehow aware that its destination is the omni-auditory ear of a presence that is unknowable. I don’t think of “dear god! dear god please let there be an empty parking space right in front of the building” as a prayer so much as a flailing cry, a bladder-filled scream through the peephole of You Will Open This Door Right Now! those don’t count. only occasionally do I know what does count; and I’m crappy at keeping track of it, but I know it when I say it. and I just don’t think of it as a disease of the will. an offering of the will, perhaps.
f) but maybe offering, as it pertains to willful cessation, is not that different from disease. I mean it is, clearly, but equally clear is that when I string together words like “pertains to willful cessation,” I have almost no idea what I actually think. so I don’t think I have this figured out, yet. hm.
- Ralph-to-tha-Waldo Emerson
= I like this for so many reasons. and, as with any idea for which I can devise more than one reason, I shall eschew (it’s a vindictive avoidance, not a cocktail nut) the paragraph form in favor of a list =
a) the notion of creed as disease is fascinating to me. i mean, the bad creeds are obviously bad, but deigning the whole thing as systemic badness flies in the face of how I think about creed: a creed is a rallying cry (a gnarly mel gibson shouting “FREEDOM!” as he gets skewered) or it is a way to sum up an impractical ideology (by the people, for the people) . but when I stop, drop, and think, it occurs to me that Creed always seemed nice because Creed is always surrounded by more obviously disease-like clichés and sayisms. nobody will ever try and elevate when it rains it pours or apples and oranges or i’m only giving you this blowjob if you pay my rent to the level of creed because such sayings are too situational and too pesky; a creed must sound good ‘round the clock, not just when it’s sucky outside or is the first of the month. if I’m to think of creed as disease, cliché and truism must be less harmful, like pink eye. or a rash. crabs, at worst.
b) I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really believed them when they told me that if I persist in calling my fries french, then the terrorists win.
c) song as creed: jesus loves me is one of the v. first songs you learn in sunday school, and it is, along with amazing grace, the most persistent – the last to leave your mind as you walk away. (the melody has been pleasantly re-worked since my boyhood days, and even now, as a sunday school teacher myself, it is the praise song that gives me the most immediate access to my heart.) but it is more than just declaration. jesus loves me, this i know: these words are re-assurance, they are reminder; but also they are creed – they tell me what I already know full well. and I am glad to hear it.
d) I heard this quote in an interview with harold bloom, who followed it with the staunch qualification of emerson as his prophet. he’s not one of mine, but maybe he will become so someday. I’ve always liked him. but the idea of a prophet seems incongruous with the idea of prayer as disease, or at least as a disease that is separate from a need. a prophet speaks truths that are eternal, truths that dangle their feet in spacetime before going off for lunch and then setting down someplace else. like unnecessary personification, a prophet’ truth tells illustratively of what has yet to come while being evocative in the present. like emerson. and like prayer.
e) to be clear, when I say prayer I mean good prayer; a prayer that has its own life, in the sense that it is to somehow aware that its destination is the omni-auditory ear of a presence that is unknowable. I don’t think of “dear god! dear god please let there be an empty parking space right in front of the building” as a prayer so much as a flailing cry, a bladder-filled scream through the peephole of You Will Open This Door Right Now! those don’t count. only occasionally do I know what does count; and I’m crappy at keeping track of it, but I know it when I say it. and I just don’t think of it as a disease of the will. an offering of the will, perhaps.
f) but maybe offering, as it pertains to willful cessation, is not that different from disease. I mean it is, clearly, but equally clear is that when I string together words like “pertains to willful cessation,” I have almost no idea what I actually think. so I don’t think I have this figured out, yet. hm.
02 October 2005
Learning to Like Our Deal.
My wife and I were having problems. Not the kind that are talked out, or even talked of – rather, the kind of problems where, when we look at each other, it is plain that we both would prefer to be looking at something else. The wall, maybe, or the sink, if it is not full of dishes. At any rate, the passion was gone. That’s how she phrased it, one night, during one of our rare verbal outbursts. "The passion is gone!" she declared with a jabbing finger. "The love between us has grown stale."
I responded that I did not like it when she got "Fresh" with me, which was a witty and fresh thing to say, doubly so because her irrationality had set in as we were deciding what to order for dinner. She had thrown the menus to the floor and huffed that I “always have to over-qualify everything!” Well, I’m sorry. Sorry that I fail to find remote geographical justice in the fact that there can be tons of Canadian bacon on a pizza, but they throw a few piddling slices of canned pineapple on there and suddenly the whole pizza is “Hawaiian?” It’s a nonsense arrangement. Canada is always being forgotten.
Lois was right, though: The passion was gone. Inasmuch as the passion was ever there, was ever not-gone between two people who had agreed to hasten their wedding when the Mother-of-the-Bride’s gout went into unexpected remission.
She told her sister about the Pizza Incident without telling me that she had told her, which was smart, actually, because her sister is an unconscionable snoop and I cannot. Tolerate. Her. And sure enough: Just three days after the PI, we received a call from a self-described “Interactional Sufficiency Counselor” by the name of Professor Ford Spink. Not a “telephone" call, mind you. This was an old-fashioned, “here-I-am-at-your-doorstep, don’t-mind-if-I-push-my-way-into-your-sitting-room" call. His face glistened with oil and his thick, wild mustache evoked the facial stylings of a close-minded walrus. Before he had said a word I knew he was an associate of Lois’s sister, probably someone she had met at the local Lyon’s Club. He sat us down on either side of him and got straight to the business of pitching us on his Program, which promised to “restore an acceptable level of intimacy” to our relationship. I looked at Ford Spink, then past him at Lois, who had an appallingly congenial look on her face. But then he began to lay out the details of the Program, many of which were about doing the sex more often. Or, more accurately, thinking about doing more of the sex. This appealed to me, so I allowed him to continue without riposte.
The most intriguing element of the Program was a series of step-by-step guides he gave to each of us: Mine were under the heading “His Wild Behaviors” and the ones for Lois were called “Her Dark Places.” Ford was quite persuasive, and, after clarifying that he would accept payment in installments, we agreed to his conditionally-guaranteed 20-day Program to bring “something not unlike affection” back into our lives. We walked Professor Spink out to his Vespa, and, filled with the optimism that comes as you embark on something new and risky, we went straight to our separate bedrooms and spent the night devising ways to enjoy each other.
Not wanting to rush things, we had decided that our first foray into Project Learning to Like Our Deal (PLLOD) would happen two days hence. Steps 1, 2, and 3 fell under the heading “Choose the Other’s Adventure,” and involved composing a series of multiple-choice lists from which the other would select whichever choice they most fancied. At the agreed-upon time, we convened in the sitting room. I moved the furniture and arranged some couch pillows on the floor while Lois lit a votive candle and some incense she had purchased from the Target. When we were settled we looked at each other with apprehension. This was a slightly different sort of apprehension than I was used to, though – it was concerned with what she might say rather than if she might say something.
“Ready?” we asked at once, then traded lists and took up our pens. The directions for each of our lists were the same, and read as follows. Pet names are the centerpiece of establishing a viable connection between Man and Woman. Choose one of the following 5 options, created by your partner, which will be the nickname for your genitalia for the duration of Phase 1 of the Program. Trust is yet to be established at this early stage. Therefore, once the choices have been made (in silence), this task is complete. The next is to address in turn the other’s genitalia genially. Following introductions, you may ask if it would like to be engaged in some way, perhaps even fondled. Only after the re-naming has taken hold is this task complete.
We would not make it to Step Three that night.
For my Penis Nickname, Louis had given me the following choices:
1. Skewer Stick
2. Biscotti
3. Drain Rooter
4. Rolling Pin
5. Warner
I was disheartened. None of these choices were remotely acceptable: While Lois's shining attribute was her skill in navigating the kitchen, it was expressly not my domain, and the notion of applying any of those choices to my bedfellow was grimace-worthy. "Rolling Pin" had momentarily appealed to me – what with it being round and dense and thick – but it brought on the image of Lois in her apple-red apron, humming to herself as she applied an even coating of flour to my penis. "Drain Rooter" had an element of vigorous expulsion, but it conjured a visual of long, thin tubing covered in thick wiry hairs that was hardly appealing. Desperate to participate, I lightly sketched a question mark next to it. Perhaps the venture could be saved: I, at least, had invented for her a range of vaginal nicknames with nuance and specific evocative power.
But when I looked up I could see her straining. When at last she started to write something, her knuckles quickly grew white around her red #3 pencil and she began to scribble frantically. She stopped and looked up at me, her eyes ablaze. Her lips had disappeared into her mouth. I gazed back at her evenly, with a calm I might call "Zen-like" if "Zen" were not a word for hippies. We stared at each other for quite some time, an uncomfortable lack of space between our faces. A steady curl of rank incense smoke curled up from its home on the floor next to us. Lois had told me earlier that, at the store, she had had trouble choosing; apparently she had decided to go with the "Dirty Beach" scent. At last I spoke.
"Do you want to say something?"
She shook her head, but then held up her list to me, the paper trembling violently in her clenched fist. "What," she said, "what are these?"
"They are the choices for your vagina," I replied in a mistakenly optimistic tone.
The paper shook even more as she extended it toward me, mere inches from my face. The page was covered with the tiny random-seeming scribbles of her pencil, but beneath those lay the choices I had given her:
1. Foxhole
2. Little Bighorn
3. Operation Iron Triangle
4. Dakota's Canyon
5. Fort Sumter
Lois's whole body was shaking with emotion, but this coolness, this Zen-without-the-pussiness calm had taken hold of me. "I like 'Operation Iron Triangle'," I said. "Although admittedly much of that is because "OIT" is a fun acronym. And you know how I love a good acronym. 'Dakota's Canyon' is probably my favorite. It has the most power."
"It's a fucking canyon!" she screamed.
My voice softened in response. "Yes. And it does reference essentially the same thing as 'Little Bighorn', I realize," I said. "But it implies the broader range of Cheyenne stomping grounds, which gives it more metaphorical oomph."
"I know what it is!" yelled Lois. "I can't help but know! You never shut up about those stupid sad Western Indian battles that no one cares about!"
This struck me to the core. "Only two of the five are Native American battle references. 'Sumter', you should know, is Civil War, and OIT is Vietnam. And what about 'Foxhole'? It has 'fox' right there in it, and 'fox' is supposedly a sexy word."
"Hole is not! And if I have to tell you,” she said as she sucked in a frantic breath, “if I have to tell you that 'hole' is not a word i want associated with my girl-part –"
But I cut her off, my Zen-ness evaporated. "You want to tell me about 'Skewer Stick' then? You want to explain to me 'Biscotti' or 'Rolling Pin' or how all of your choices relegate my man parts to your beloved goddamned kitchen?" Lois recoiled, literally – she drew her knees to her chest and looked at the floor.
"What about 'Warner'?" she asked, her tone unexpectedly meek. "You like the name Warner.”
"I do," I answered. "It took me some years, but I have grown a certain fondness for it. And I'm glad I did, seeing as how it's my middle name." She looked at me, then, and I would swear that in that second she saw what I saw. She looked very tired.
Simultaneously we began to stand and without thinking I offered her my palm; we pulled each other to our feet. Lois sniffled; I drew a long, deep breath through my nose, which I do when I get emotional. We looked at each other a second more, then started to move away to our usual bedrooms. But Louis could not stop herself; she reached out and touched my shoulder:
“'Foxhole'? Really? The best name you could give my wetty-wet is the place you go to hide from bombs?”
I said, "You left me only with 'Warner.' And it is already a name I have. So what about that."
“I can’t stand the thought of it,” she said. The distance between us was miniscule. We stood there for some time, our eyes leveled, unchanging. I could not recall ever having been part of a literal stand-off, and for the first time it occurred to me that I would be quite good at it. Never mind the “stand-on” or the “stand-around” – the stand-off I could do.
But then her grip tightened around my arm and she pulled me towards her. Her hips pressed into mine, just slightly, but with a suggestion that was almost foreign. I froze, stunned. It felt good and I was stunned.
"Goodnight, Warner," she cooed. My pelvis retracted from hers in an instant. Was her sass deliberate or just willfully ignorant?
Either way, I would get off the last shot. "Goodnight, Operation Iron Triangle," I said. “I’ll see you in the foxhole at oh-five hundred.” With that I turned away, and with a little faux-goosestep I began to march down the hall.
“See you then,” she called after me, “Make sure your skewer stick is polished, Private!”
“Plenty of room for it in the foxhole!” I kept marching.
I responded that I did not like it when she got "Fresh" with me, which was a witty and fresh thing to say, doubly so because her irrationality had set in as we were deciding what to order for dinner. She had thrown the menus to the floor and huffed that I “always have to over-qualify everything!” Well, I’m sorry. Sorry that I fail to find remote geographical justice in the fact that there can be tons of Canadian bacon on a pizza, but they throw a few piddling slices of canned pineapple on there and suddenly the whole pizza is “Hawaiian?” It’s a nonsense arrangement. Canada is always being forgotten.
Lois was right, though: The passion was gone. Inasmuch as the passion was ever there, was ever not-gone between two people who had agreed to hasten their wedding when the Mother-of-the-Bride’s gout went into unexpected remission.
She told her sister about the Pizza Incident without telling me that she had told her, which was smart, actually, because her sister is an unconscionable snoop and I cannot. Tolerate. Her. And sure enough: Just three days after the PI, we received a call from a self-described “Interactional Sufficiency Counselor” by the name of Professor Ford Spink. Not a “telephone" call, mind you. This was an old-fashioned, “here-I-am-at-your-doorstep, don’t-mind-if-I-push-my-way-into-your-sitting-room" call. His face glistened with oil and his thick, wild mustache evoked the facial stylings of a close-minded walrus. Before he had said a word I knew he was an associate of Lois’s sister, probably someone she had met at the local Lyon’s Club. He sat us down on either side of him and got straight to the business of pitching us on his Program, which promised to “restore an acceptable level of intimacy” to our relationship. I looked at Ford Spink, then past him at Lois, who had an appallingly congenial look on her face. But then he began to lay out the details of the Program, many of which were about doing the sex more often. Or, more accurately, thinking about doing more of the sex. This appealed to me, so I allowed him to continue without riposte.
The most intriguing element of the Program was a series of step-by-step guides he gave to each of us: Mine were under the heading “His Wild Behaviors” and the ones for Lois were called “Her Dark Places.” Ford was quite persuasive, and, after clarifying that he would accept payment in installments, we agreed to his conditionally-guaranteed 20-day Program to bring “something not unlike affection” back into our lives. We walked Professor Spink out to his Vespa, and, filled with the optimism that comes as you embark on something new and risky, we went straight to our separate bedrooms and spent the night devising ways to enjoy each other.
Not wanting to rush things, we had decided that our first foray into Project Learning to Like Our Deal (PLLOD) would happen two days hence. Steps 1, 2, and 3 fell under the heading “Choose the Other’s Adventure,” and involved composing a series of multiple-choice lists from which the other would select whichever choice they most fancied. At the agreed-upon time, we convened in the sitting room. I moved the furniture and arranged some couch pillows on the floor while Lois lit a votive candle and some incense she had purchased from the Target. When we were settled we looked at each other with apprehension. This was a slightly different sort of apprehension than I was used to, though – it was concerned with what she might say rather than if she might say something.
“Ready?” we asked at once, then traded lists and took up our pens. The directions for each of our lists were the same, and read as follows. Pet names are the centerpiece of establishing a viable connection between Man and Woman. Choose one of the following 5 options, created by your partner, which will be the nickname for your genitalia for the duration of Phase 1 of the Program. Trust is yet to be established at this early stage. Therefore, once the choices have been made (in silence), this task is complete. The next is to address in turn the other’s genitalia genially. Following introductions, you may ask if it would like to be engaged in some way, perhaps even fondled. Only after the re-naming has taken hold is this task complete.
We would not make it to Step Three that night.
For my Penis Nickname, Louis had given me the following choices:
1. Skewer Stick
2. Biscotti
3. Drain Rooter
4. Rolling Pin
5. Warner
I was disheartened. None of these choices were remotely acceptable: While Lois's shining attribute was her skill in navigating the kitchen, it was expressly not my domain, and the notion of applying any of those choices to my bedfellow was grimace-worthy. "Rolling Pin" had momentarily appealed to me – what with it being round and dense and thick – but it brought on the image of Lois in her apple-red apron, humming to herself as she applied an even coating of flour to my penis. "Drain Rooter" had an element of vigorous expulsion, but it conjured a visual of long, thin tubing covered in thick wiry hairs that was hardly appealing. Desperate to participate, I lightly sketched a question mark next to it. Perhaps the venture could be saved: I, at least, had invented for her a range of vaginal nicknames with nuance and specific evocative power.
But when I looked up I could see her straining. When at last she started to write something, her knuckles quickly grew white around her red #3 pencil and she began to scribble frantically. She stopped and looked up at me, her eyes ablaze. Her lips had disappeared into her mouth. I gazed back at her evenly, with a calm I might call "Zen-like" if "Zen" were not a word for hippies. We stared at each other for quite some time, an uncomfortable lack of space between our faces. A steady curl of rank incense smoke curled up from its home on the floor next to us. Lois had told me earlier that, at the store, she had had trouble choosing; apparently she had decided to go with the "Dirty Beach" scent. At last I spoke.
"Do you want to say something?"
She shook her head, but then held up her list to me, the paper trembling violently in her clenched fist. "What," she said, "what are these?"
"They are the choices for your vagina," I replied in a mistakenly optimistic tone.
The paper shook even more as she extended it toward me, mere inches from my face. The page was covered with the tiny random-seeming scribbles of her pencil, but beneath those lay the choices I had given her:
1. Foxhole
2. Little Bighorn
3. Operation Iron Triangle
4. Dakota's Canyon
5. Fort Sumter
Lois's whole body was shaking with emotion, but this coolness, this Zen-without-the-pussiness calm had taken hold of me. "I like 'Operation Iron Triangle'," I said. "Although admittedly much of that is because "OIT" is a fun acronym. And you know how I love a good acronym. 'Dakota's Canyon' is probably my favorite. It has the most power."
"It's a fucking canyon!" she screamed.
My voice softened in response. "Yes. And it does reference essentially the same thing as 'Little Bighorn', I realize," I said. "But it implies the broader range of Cheyenne stomping grounds, which gives it more metaphorical oomph."
"I know what it is!" yelled Lois. "I can't help but know! You never shut up about those stupid sad Western Indian battles that no one cares about!"
This struck me to the core. "Only two of the five are Native American battle references. 'Sumter', you should know, is Civil War, and OIT is Vietnam. And what about 'Foxhole'? It has 'fox' right there in it, and 'fox' is supposedly a sexy word."
"Hole is not! And if I have to tell you,” she said as she sucked in a frantic breath, “if I have to tell you that 'hole' is not a word i want associated with my girl-part –"
But I cut her off, my Zen-ness evaporated. "You want to tell me about 'Skewer Stick' then? You want to explain to me 'Biscotti' or 'Rolling Pin' or how all of your choices relegate my man parts to your beloved goddamned kitchen?" Lois recoiled, literally – she drew her knees to her chest and looked at the floor.
"What about 'Warner'?" she asked, her tone unexpectedly meek. "You like the name Warner.”
"I do," I answered. "It took me some years, but I have grown a certain fondness for it. And I'm glad I did, seeing as how it's my middle name." She looked at me, then, and I would swear that in that second she saw what I saw. She looked very tired.
Simultaneously we began to stand and without thinking I offered her my palm; we pulled each other to our feet. Lois sniffled; I drew a long, deep breath through my nose, which I do when I get emotional. We looked at each other a second more, then started to move away to our usual bedrooms. But Louis could not stop herself; she reached out and touched my shoulder:
“'Foxhole'? Really? The best name you could give my wetty-wet is the place you go to hide from bombs?”
I said, "You left me only with 'Warner.' And it is already a name I have. So what about that."
“I can’t stand the thought of it,” she said. The distance between us was miniscule. We stood there for some time, our eyes leveled, unchanging. I could not recall ever having been part of a literal stand-off, and for the first time it occurred to me that I would be quite good at it. Never mind the “stand-on” or the “stand-around” – the stand-off I could do.
But then her grip tightened around my arm and she pulled me towards her. Her hips pressed into mine, just slightly, but with a suggestion that was almost foreign. I froze, stunned. It felt good and I was stunned.
"Goodnight, Warner," she cooed. My pelvis retracted from hers in an instant. Was her sass deliberate or just willfully ignorant?
Either way, I would get off the last shot. "Goodnight, Operation Iron Triangle," I said. “I’ll see you in the foxhole at oh-five hundred.” With that I turned away, and with a little faux-goosestep I began to march down the hall.
“See you then,” she called after me, “Make sure your skewer stick is polished, Private!”
“Plenty of room for it in the foxhole!” I kept marching.
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