MONDAY
Kurt and Kustler's Mega Bookstore. Union Square. Dark and cold outside. Light and warm inside. I'm browsing, walking up and down each aisle. I turn and walk down another row of Fiction. Up ahead there sits a girl, on the carpet, back against a shelf and legs outstretched in front of her. Her gaze buried deep in a book that she holds open on her lap. Her green backpack sits beside her and it looks as though she probably bought it at some army surplus store. It has a rock band patch sewn onto it. The Ramones. She wears a pink, frilly skirt, almost childlike in nature, which is starkly contrasted by the black leather jacket that she also wears. Pretty face. Long brown hair. If there's a ballerina biker gang out there, she surely is their leader. I step over her legs. At the end of the aisle, two more girls, both in long identical gray winter coats, which, if combined, probably cost more than four years' worth of my college education. They're chatting loudly.
"We're seeing the movie. First day. Definitely."
"Definitely. But I want to read the book first."
"You will love it. It is hot. I mean red-hot. I mean have something battery-operated on hand hot."
"Are you serious?"
"Of course I am. It's the only book I ever finished. I want my own Christopher Black to come take me away... tall, dark, rich, sexy... he could whip the hell out of me, I wouldn't care." The other one laughs. "Come on, let's go get you your copy." And they make their move away from the actual literature and over toward the romance section.
"My inner-goddess is puking," she remarks, dryly. The cute one. The cute one sitting down in the frilly pink skirt with the Ramones patch on her army green backpack. She said it either to nobody in general or directly to me. Say something back, quick. Respond before the moment passes because then it will be gone and it will be too late and you won't be able to get it back, not without things getting all awkward, and then, eventually, you'll walk away, alone, hitting yourself, hard, with mental slaps and then you'll go home, alone, and start hitting yourself, hard, with actual slaps, and you'll drape a sheet over the kitchen table and sit under there like it's a tent, drinking Australian beer and crying all night, so say something now.
"Ha! Mine too." You idiot.
"So... you have an inner-goddess, huh? Hm. Good to know."
*****
Classic cut blue jeans. And a winter jacket straight out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, left open just enough to reveal the Star Wars tee shirt underneath. He's a doofus. Total doofus... but not an asshole. I can identify an asshole in a second and-a-half. Sometimes, in just a second. And he's not an asshole. And doofus trumps asshole.
*****
"Not into the whole "60 Secrets of Mr. Black" thing, huh?" I ask her.
"Oh, I read the book. I keep it in the bathroom now. As toilet paper."
"That bad, huh?"
"That bad." She's looking right at me now, her face no longer buried in her book. "Did you read it?"
"Uh, yeah actually. I did. My ex was into it. Like, really into it. Like, she wanted me to be Christopher Black."
"Was that her right there?" she asks, her head nodding in direction of where the expensive winter coat girls had just been chatting.
"Haha, no. Anyway, I read it, but, let's just say, it... I really didn't care for it either."
"Yeah, I'm not so sure you could have pulled off the Christopher Black thing for her anyhow. Not for nothing, but you don't really strike me as the Mr. Black type."
"Really? You don't see me starting up and managing my own multi-billion dollar company by the age of 25? Living on my own private tropical island inside a dark, enchanted gothic castle complete with a thousand foot sex dungeon? Whisking lovelorn women off their feet and away from their boring, mundane lives, back to said island to awaken their deeply buried, yet deeply passionate, erotic fantasies?"
"Judging by your dirt stained Nikes and the book of collected Spiderman comics you're holding in your hands... No. Not really." BAM. Got me good.
"Fair assessment," I said. I took a hit but I was still doing all right. I think. Keep it up. "But hey, that's fine by me."
"Oh, me too." She smiles at me. And then... she lowers her head and turns her attention back unto the book that lay squarely in her lap. Okay. Walk away. Fun time is over. It was nice while it lasted. Time to buy this Spiderman graphic novel and go home. Pick up some Australian beer along the way.
I begin to turn around, but suddenly, feeling the sharpest jab of courage I've felt since I was in fifth grade and rode a bicycle down a flight of stairs, I stop myself and say aloud, "Hey." She looks back up at me. "You wanna... maybe... get a cup of coffee? Or something?"
*****
I make him wait a whole ten seconds. I count them in my head.
"Yeah, okay," I finally answer.
*****
"To be honest, I found the book offensive. " I say, followed by a sip of my coffee. Ew, coffee. Gross. I don't even like coffee, but it seemed like just the right thing to suggest. You don't ask someone you just met if they want to go out for hotdogs and big pretzels. I should have ordered a hot chocolate though.
*****
"Ah, I see. Does the idea of whips and chains conflict with your strict Christian upbringing?" I ask him. That is the crucial question after all.
"Oh, no. It's not that," he answers.
Good.
"Pray tell then, what about it offends you?"
"Well... I mean, I'm sure there's probably a whole heck of a lot of problems with it content-wise, but, that's not my main point of contention with it. No, I find it offensive on a purely intellectual level. I mean, the lady who authored it... her writing skills range from... bizarrely atrocious to completely non-existent. You'd think that... you know... dealing with the particular subject matter that she's dealing with, you'd at least have an entertaining read on your hands, but... I've read lists of ingredients on the sides of cereal boxes that packed more of a punch.
So yes, it offends me. It offends me that someone with a 7th grade style prose, pumping out literary trash, is now shitting on a toilet of gold while real authors are starving to death in back alleys, slums and gutters."
I smile.
*****
She smiles. Bam! I got a smile from her. Pat on the back! No kitchen cry-tent for me tonight.
"True. It sucks as fiction, plain and simple," she responds. "But, unlike you, I do take a great deal of offense to the content itself."
"Yeah, how so?"
"Well." She pauses and bites her bottom lip, deep in thought. I wonder if she knows how sexy she looks doing that. "Let's say you were going to write a novel about... figure skating."
"Uh-huh."
"Would you research figure skating, get an understanding of what it takes to be a figure skater, maybe interview some figure skaters, understand their mindset, try on a pair of skates yourself and skate around a bit, and, at the very least, learn the names of the different figure skating maneuvers? Or, would you just wing it and make up everything based on a figure skating commercial you saw late on TV one night when you were half asleep? 'Jill got out on the ice and did a Squiggly-Wiggly that wowed all the judges!'"
"I don't get it."
"What I mean is, the woman who wrote it, Mary... What's-her-name. She really had no business writing it in the first place. Her portrayal of the BDSM lifestyle is wildly inaccurate. It is quite possible to possess multiple kinks and fetishes and to still lead a healthy, normal life. It is also quite possible for two people to engage in a dominant, submissive relationship that is both loving and meaningful. But you wouldn't know that from reading '60 Secrets.' Oh no. It's portrays kinkiness as some sort of ailment or mental disease. In the world of '60 Secrets,' to be kinky is to use your intoxicating power to coerce an insecure woman into sexually depraved fetish-play that borders on the non-consensual. Sticking thumbtacks into the back of her neck and choking her out during kitchen counter sex with a long tube of kielbasa?? Demanding she address him as her Mighty Sun God and having her sign a written contract that prohibits her from looking him in the eye?? That's not sexy. It's ridiculous. Christopher Black is not a dominant male. He's a complete and utter psychopath, detached from all humanity, with seemingly incurable mother issues. Perhaps Mary... gosh, what is her name?"
"Prudence."
"Right! Perhaps Mary Prudence should have actually done her research. Explored the BDSM lifestyle. Spoken to people involved in it. Experimented with some S&M and fetish play herself. But no. She just wrote a book about what she thought it might be like, and so, aside from grossly misinforming the general public, she's also helping to create a legion of young women whose predominant sexual fantasies now center around passively waiting for handsome rich degenerates to come and mentally and emotionally abuse them while simultaneously choking them out with a large assortment of dinner meats."
"I agree," I say boldly. She could have said anything at all and I would have said, "I agree." "Ketchup is better than mustard." "I agree." "Speedy Gonzalez would make a great pope." "I agree." Anything at all.
"I'm glad!" she responds, with a warm smile. Wow, that's a pretty smile.
"So you know a lot about, uh, that whole lifestyle, huh?" I ask.
"I know a lot about a lot of things," she shoots back quickly. She pauses for a moment, biting her lip again. "I think that, to be ignorant about the world around you, is to do yourself a major disservice."
We finish our coffees. Time to go in for kill.
"Well, I'd love to maybe meet up again. Discuss books, or whatever. Can I take you out for a drink some time? Like a drink-drink, not a coffee drink."
"Do you like to bowl?"
"Yeah, sure, it's all right."
"Well okay, then. You can take me bowling. This Saturday. At the Gutter Ball. In Brooklyn. Have you been?"
"No."
"I like it. They play punk rock over the speakers. Or, sometimes, they have live bands performing. You know, depending on the day you go. They serve cheap PBRs and there's none of that stupid neon-flashy light bowling, or whatever they call it. You know what I mean? What'doyoucallit?"
"Yeah, I think I know what you mean... it's uh... uh," I snapped my fingers with each "uh," searching for the right phrase and then found it. "Laser bowling!"
"Yes! Laser bowling! Yeah, I hate that shit."
SATURDAY
The place is pretty cool. Pretty hip. It's a large, divey kind of bar, complete with an old coin operated jukebox, dartboard, and pool table. You take a number from the girl up front, and when that number is displayed on the scoreboard style lights that hang above a framed and autographed picture of Joe Dimaggio, that means it's your turn to bowl. The lanes are in a large room over and they're old fashioned, no frills, retro lanes. You have to keep score yourself on a piece of paper and there's nary a laser in sight.
I sit at the counter, waiting for her to show. I look down at the piece of paper in my hand. It reads 92. The lights above Joltin' Joe read 75.
I go through a couple beers. And then... she enters. She's wearing snug fit, dark blue jeans and the same black leather she wore at the bookstore, her light brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Suddenly, it's like a dream is walking towards me. If this was a movie, time would slow down and all the noises around me, the clinking of glasses, the boisterous laughter and shouting and talking, it would gently recede, replaced instead, by some song by the Ronettes, or Shirelles.
"Hey you," she says with a smile, now by my side.
Be my, be my, be my little baby.
"Hey!" I stand and give her a kiss on the cheek. "I got us a number, we're number 92!" I point to the scoreboard lights.
"Great," she says. And we sit. And we talk. And we laugh. And we drink.
