WARNING!! There’s not much silence, but there is a lot of PROFANITY in this episode.
Even though Danielle and I had issues, there were a lot of things we didn’t talk about. We never talked about her spiking my drinks and getting me drunk at the Halloween party. We never talked about me being an asshole when I was drunk at the Halloween party and the rude things I had said. We never talked about me paying all of Danielle’s bills when she made a lot of money (maybe more than me). We never talked about when Danielle blurted out “Love ya!” one night, or why she never repeated it (or why I never said it back). I never asked her why she was talking to Linda, Kirk’s girlfriend (though she probably wouldn’t be his girlfriend for much longer now). I was enjoying our relationship (or whatever it was) too much to risk it by talking about these things.
But all issues have to be resolved sometime, one way or another.
We were eating lunch early Sunday afternoon at a Mexican restaurant with a football game on all of its televisions. Despite Danielle’s reluctance, we needed to discuss what to do for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I usually flew home for at least one of the holidays but had delayed making flight plans because I wasn’t sure what to do with Danielle. We didn’t have the type of relationship that I thought of as permanent, and I didn’t want it to end early because I scared her off with family talk, but I also didn’t want to insult her by not inviting her to meet my family. I was proud that Danielle was my girlfriend. I wanted her to meet my family. But it wasn’t something worth pushing too hard.
Danielle was in librarian mode, with her hair pulled back, thick glasses on, a kind of drab blouse buttoned up most of the way, and my/her/our copy of Pride and Prejudice set on the booth table for everybody to see. A couple our age sat near us side-by-side in a booth. Danielle and I were opposite each other, face-to-face.
“What does that mean?” I asked Danielle, directing my eyes to the nearby couple.
Since the couple was slightly behind Danielle, she casually accidentally knocked her copy of Pride and Prejudice onto the floor, leaned sideways over to pick it up, and casually accidentally glanced at them.
When she sat back up, she said, “Maybe they don’t want to watch each other eat.”
“Do you think that’s weird?” I asked. “Or is it weird that we sit face to face?”
“You’re a careful eater,” she said.
“So…, “ I began, searching for a smooth transition and failing. “I need to know what to do about Thanksgiving. No pressure.”
She fiddled with Pride and Prejudice for a couple seconds before she said, “I’m not sure meeting family is a good idea.”
“My dad would like to meet you,” I said eagerly. “I’d really like my brothers to meet you too.”
Danielle grinned. “Are you trying to show me off?”
“Damn right I am!” I said.
She hesitated. “Maybe,” she said slowly.
“The football t-shirts,” I said. The way she had said “Maybe” was really a reluctant yes. “Definitely wear the football t-shirts.”
We were discussing possible flight dates and how to minimize her financial loss from not working when she looked up at something behind me and said, “Fuck.”
I turned (not so casually accidentally) and saw a tall lean guy walking directly toward us. I repositioned myself for a better look, but before I could, he already was standing directly over us at our booth. If Danielle’s expression hadn’t changed so suddenly, I wouldn’t have given this guy a second glance. He was tall and thin with slicked or gelled short auburn hair. He had taken long strides, and when he stood over us, his arms stayed at his side with his hands in his jacket pocket.
“Danielle?” he said quietly.
“Vin,” Danielle muttered, eyes shifting from him to me.
“What the fuck?” he said, his voice clear but quiet. Customers at other tables wouldn’t be able to hear what he was saying. “I didn’t recognize you.”
Vin sat down without permission next to Danielle, and she surprised me by scooting over.
“Who’s this?” he asked, looking at me.
“Jimmy,” she said, staring at her plate.
I was about to offer my hand and introduce myself, but he kept talking.
“This is the guy you’re fucking?”
Danielle looked down at her plate and said nothing. I decided not to introduce myself.
“And what’s this?” Vin picked up Pride and Prejudice, flipped through it, and snorted a laugh. “This doesn’t even have any pictures.”
Danielle’s face went blank. I couldn’t believe how this guy was talking, and I couldn’t get any sense of what her sudden silence meant. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I kept quiet too. This Vin guy was rude, but nobody around us heard what was going on, so even though he was disturbing us, he wasn’t really causing a scene.
“Your glasses? This book? I can’t believe people buy that shit.” He held up the Jane Austen book and looked at me. “You know she’s not reading that, right?”
I was raised to be a polite person, and the problem with that was sometimes I wasn’t prepared to deal with rude people quickly. I’ve always tended to back off and let the rude person do what he or she wanted until I got pushed too far. I had my limits, but my limits and Danielle’s limits weren’t the same. I’d always tried to deal with rude people politely, but rude people either didn’t pick up on subtle hints or they didn’t care.
“This is kind of a bad time, Vin,” I said. “We were talking about something important.”
“I bet,” he said, waving the book around. “This isn’t who she is. I bet you don’t know shit about her.”
“Vin… don’t,” Danielle said.
“What?” Vin said. “Tell him about you? Why wouldn’t you want me to tell him about you?”
Even with her glasses on and her face down, I could see her eyes were red. I had seen her with red eyes a couple times, but I had never seen her this withdrawn.
“You believe that shit?” Vin said to me. “All the year’s I’ve known her, and she doesn’t want to talk to me. And the fucked up part is that I never did anything wrong.”
“We were in the middle of something,” I said.
“Danielle’s always in the middle of something,” Vin said. “And it’s always fucked up.”
“I…I need to use the lady’s room,” Danielle said, finally looking up. “Mel-Vin, would you please scoot over?”
“Don’t call me that again, bitch.”
I expected Danielle to say something harsh back, but instead she said very quietly, “Sooooorrrry.”
Then she fluttered her eyelashes at him and said, “Would you please move over, Mar-Vin?”
“Bitch, talk to me like that again, and I’ll knock those glasses off your face.”
“Hey!” I said. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I was going to do something.
“It’s okay,” Danielle said, her grin starting to form, but it was shaky. “This is how we talk to each other, my friends… that you wanted to meet.”
“Yeah, that’s how we talk to each other,” Vin said.
Vin shifted over and let Danielle out of the booth. I stood up and was about to tell her that we could just leave, that we didn’t have to put up with this Vin guy, but before I could say anything, she said, “I think you should talk to Vin. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
As she turned toward the restrooms, I tried to find something, some kind of expression in her face, but I got nothing. I had no clue what she was about to do or what she expected me to do (except talk to this Vin guy). I didn’t know if she just needed a few minutes to pull herself together. I didn’t know if she expected me to handle Vin myself and get him to leave before she returned. For all I knew, she was going to pass the restroom and leave the restaurant altogether (I wouldn’t have blamed her!). All that I knew is that I had been befuddled and useless while Vin was verbally mistreating her. I had sat there and let her take it.
And now she was walking away. There was no hug. There was no kiss. Danielle just wandered off, leaving me to talk to Vin all by myself.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: A Lack of Subtlety .
And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.
This book might not be a surprise, but the second choice will SHOCK you!!! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Maybe it’s arrogant to suggest that a great book be rewritten. For one thing, it’s not going to happen. A great book is never going to be rewritten, so making the suggestion is a waste of time. Plus, a great book is usually written by a great author, and I’ve never written a great book, so therefore I probably have no business suggesting that a great book be rewritten. Those are both fair points.
However, some great books have qualities that make them tough for me to read. I know these criticisms are more of a reflection of me as a reader than on the authors who wrote the great books. But sometimes I wish a great book could be rewritten just to help me enjoy it more (or make it easier for me to read).
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
I’m not going to complain about the length. I’ve done that before, and others have too. My problem is the Russian names. For some reason, I have a tough time keeping track of Russian names. Epics with American or English names are difficult enough for me to follow. But Russian names give me a headache, except for Vladimir Putin. I don’t care for him too much, but I like his name. If War and Peace were to be rewritten, maybe the translator could start by Americanizing all the names.
Before he died, I was hoping Tom Clancy would do his own rewrite of War and Peace in his Clancyesque style. Pierre Bezhukov could have been renamed Peter Ryan. Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky would be renamed Prince Andy Brewer. The characters would still be Russian, but the names would be Americanized to help someone like me keep up. Every weapon from the early 19th century could be described with intricate detail. A bunch of ironically dismissive comments about the growing United States could have been made by both French and Russian characters. The book could have been called Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace by Tom Clancy. I might have been able to read that, but I wouldn’t have bragged about it afterward. Maybe somebody else can do it now.
I don’t really want an abridged version of War and Peace because that would just be a shorter version with the same Russian names that give me a headache (maybe the headache wouldn’t hurt so much). I can read long books (I currently choose not to). I used to read long books. If there had been an Americanized version of War and Peace when I read long books, I might have finished it.
The Fault in our Stars by John Green
DISCLAIMER: I haven’t finished this book yet, but I’m reading it now and plan on finishing it.
I’m not sure The Fault in our Stars is a great book, but it has a lot of really passionate fans, and to them it’s a great book, and I can understand why. For a YA book (if you agree with that classification), it’s pretty deep, and its emotional scenes are intense. Some of the dialogue and narration is very… I’m not sure what the word for it is. Trying too hard to be clever?
I know lots of teenagers (most of them are smart with pretty good vocabularies), but nobody I know (even adults) talk like characters in this book. Some readers love this book for that. I find it distracting. In its defense, some scenes are emotionally difficult to read, and the distracting style made it easier to detach myself from the characters, making the emotionally difficult scenes easier for me to read, but I’m not sure that was the author’s intent.
Also, I’m probably not the author’s intended audience. I’m almost 50, and the book was written for an audience slightly younger than that.
Maybe John Green could write an old fart’s version of The Fault in our Stars, but if he did, I’d probably cry when I read it, and I don’t like to cry when I read. Maybe John Green did me a favor. Still, I’d kind of like a different version with the same characters where I didn’t feel like they were trying so hard. But that’s probably not going to happen, so I’ll finish the version that I have.
*****
I’ve struggled with a lot of books in my life, but I wasn’t interested in them enough to want a rewrite. Asking for a rewrite is a sign of respect. I really want to enjoy every aspect of these books that I want to read, but there’s something keeping me from doing that. With that in mind, what great book do you think could use a rewrite? What kept you from enjoying the great book that you’d like to be rewritten? What do you think of my choices? Or is this just a bad topic? It happens sometimes.
It’s never good to see your girlfriend dancing with another guy. The girlfriend and the guy dancing might say it’s harmless, but it really shouldn’t happen. However, I knew that’s what I was going to see. I knew it. I had just pissed off Danielle, and she was vindictive. She even told me she was vindictive when we first met, and I had witnessed it (toward other people) a couple times. I had just embarrassed her, and I was sure calling me an asshole in front of Kirk and a few other guys wasn’t going to be the end of it. Nothing good was going to come from this. But I had to see anyway.
Danielle was on the other side of the high-ceilinged, open living room, dancing with Jerome to the song “Scary Monsters,” and my first impulse was to rush across the room and belt him. Yeah, Jerome was the host and had always been nice to me, but he also knew that Danielle was my girlfriend, and guys don’t hit on girlfriends, at least not when the boyfriend is in the house. That was a lack of respect.
I was tempted to punch him out, but even in my sluggish condition, I remembered that I punched like a girl, and he was a few inches taller and he was broader and he could probably kick my ass even when I was having a good day, and even if he couldn’t, he could hire a lawyer to sue the hell out of me if I accidentally hurt him. I’d rather lose a fight than get sued.
I shook my head and held back. I watched Danielle dance wildly in her Jane Austen Victorian style dress. Between us were a bunch of women in slutty costumes (nurses, vampires, French maids, etc.) and a bunch of guys in half-assed costumes trying to dance with them . The room was dark with some strobe light action, so my view wasn’t the best, but I could see enough. I had never seen Danielle dance before. We’d been living together for a couple weeks, and she danced for a living (a different kind of dancing), and yet I’d never seen her like this. I could have watched her all night, except I was pissed off she was with another guy.
Then I noticed that the look on Danielle’s face was vacant. Even from where I stood, I could see that she didn’t make any eye contact with Jerome. It looked like he was trying to impress her, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just liked to dance and do her own thing. She wasn’t dancing with Jerome. She was dancing next to Jerome. And suddenly, I wasn’t pissed off anymore, except at myself.
Danielle was having fun, and I was thinking that maybe it was good that I wasn’t out there with her. I would have been self-conscious. I would have been aware of people staring at me (even if they weren’t), and that would have carried over to her. She would have tried to compensate for my stiff dancing, and that would have made things worse.
But then I remembered I was dressed up as Frankenstein’s monster! If anybody had an excuse to be a stiff dancer, it was Frankenstein’s monster. Ugh! I had wasted an opportunity to be a stiff dancer without anybody thinking twice about it. It would have been fun. Halloween was the one time it was okay to be a stiff dancer, but I’d wasted the moment by being an asshole. It was too late now. I stood in the doorway and looked at the floor.
A few minutes later, I was wobbling to the restroom when I bumped into a guy with an eye patch for a costume. To me, nothing was more lame than a guy wearing an eye patch as a Halloween costume.
“Why the long face, Frankenstein?” the lame pirate said. “Hahahaha!”
“It’s not Frankenstein,” I said, deciding between arguing with a lame pirate and using the restroom. “It’s Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein was the scientist who created the…”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard it in the other room,” the pirate said, waving me off. He had been watching football with me earlier, and that annoyed me even more.
“Then get it right, you one-eyed mother… fu…” I grumbled behind his back.
After I used the facilities, I returned to the TV room and was relieved (not in a bathroom kind of way) that the pirate wasn’t there. I wanted to watch football and get myself calmed down and then smooth things over with Danielle before we left. She was just having harmless fun, and I was just going to make things worse by going in there like I was a stalker.
Just when I was relaxing (and maybe falling asleep), the pirate was in my face, waving a plastic toy bag of a kid’s monster mask in front of me.
“See? See?” the pirate said.
I shook my head and focused on the picture in the middle of the bag, a cartoon of the Frankenstein monster’s face and in giant gruesome letters “FRANKENSTEIN MASK.”
“It’s not Frankenstein’s monster,” the pirate said. “It’s Frankenstein.”
“The bag is wrong,” I said.
“The bag was made by professionals,” the pirate said. “The bag is never wrong.”
“The bag is wrong,” I said.
The pirate laughed bitterly and tossed the bag at me before walking away. “Whatever.”
The bag in my face and his “whatever” pissed me off and I rocketed (or stumbled) out my chair. I felt dizzy from getting up too quickly, but I still said, “It’s Frankenstein’s monster!”
“You talking shit to me?” the pirate said.
“It’s Frankenstein’s monster!” I said again.
“I’m tired of you talking shit about Frankenstein and your sack head.”
“It’s Frankenstein’s monster!”
“No one gives a shit!”
“Then say it the right way!” I yelled. My legs were wobbling, and I was seeing yellow dots, and the pirate either had two eye patches or there were two pirates. That wasn’t a good sign.
Suddenly Danielle was in front of me, pushing me back. “What are you arguing…?” but she couldn’t finish the question.
Kirk was in the room again too, looking at me strangely. People were peeking in from various doorways to see what was going on. Danielle’s mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything, and I realized that I was making a scene and it was embarrassing her. All this time I’d been worried about her behavior, and I was the one acting like an asshole, and even worse, I was being a loud asshole, and I couldn’t seem to stop.
“You need to calm down,” Danielle said, and took my hand.
I was about to say something about Frankenstein’s monster, but the pirate did it for me.
“How did Frankenstein get a hot girlfriend?”
Danielle rolled her eyes and turned on the pirate. “It’s Frankenstein’s monster!”
“Damn,” the pirate said. “Even the librarian’s talking shit to me.”
“I’m Jane Austen, douchebag.” And she held up her copies of Pride and Prejudice and Emma.
“Oh yeah?” the pirate said, looking her over. “Your glasses are an anachronism.”
“Your eye patch was made in China,” Danielle said.
“Your… you…” The pirate threw his arms up in frustration. “Dammit!” The pirate gave up and staggered out of the room.
I was about to laugh, but Danielle turned back to me, and I knew I’d better keep my mouth shut.
“What’s wrong, Jimmy?” Kirk asked, getting really close.
“He’s been an asshole all night,” Danielle said.
“Are you drunk?” Kirk asked. “You been drinkin’?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just… sleepy… and pissed off. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Shit!” Danielle said suddenly. Then she looked at the ceiling and blew out some air. “Shit! Shit!” Then she looked at Kirk. “I have to talk to you.”
They moved to a corner and spoke quietly and I couldn’t hear them over the music from the other room, and I wanted to hear what they were saying because I knew they were talking about me, but I was also aware that a lot of people were watching us now, and my inhibitions kicked in. Don’t cause a scene, I thought. Don’t make it worse. But I was also ticked off that Danielle was talking to Kirk instead of me. So I stood there stupidly and kept quiet.
“What?” Kirk said. Their voices were getting louder. Whatever Danielle said had made him irate.
“I thought he’d be funny,” she said.
“He turns into an asshole,” Kirk said. I was pretty sure he was talking about me.
“I didn’t know.”
“You can’t do that to people,” Kirk said. Whatever Danielle had done, it must have been bad, considering that Kirk rarely gave morality lectures (he usually needed them for his own poor behavior).
“I didn’t mean to… I didn’t…”
“You want to tell him?” Kirk asked Danielle. “Or do you want me to?”
Danielle hesitated, and then looked around at all the people in the room. She grabbed my hand and said, “We’re going home.”
“But I was just starting to have fun!” I exclaimed. I wasn’t having fun, but for some reason it felt good being belligerent.
“We’re leaving.”
“I wanna know what you two were talking about!”
Danielle sighed. “Fine,” she said, and her cheese-eating grin started to take shape. She put her arms around my neck, pulled me down, and just when I thought she was going to kiss me, she brushed her mouth against my cheek and then whispered, “When we get home, I’m going to…”
And she finished her sentence with a description of one of the most vulgar sexual acts I’d ever heard of.
“Okay,” I said. I no longer felt like being belligerent.
She took my hand, and we left without saying goodbye to anybody. We didn’t even thank the host.
“Next year,” Danielle said as we got into her car (she was driving), “go as Darth Vader.”
I’m not sure how I responded. I fell asleep (or passed out) on the way home.
*****
DISCLAIMER! I apologize for this being rushed. I felt like I had to get this Halloween party scene done before Halloween (even though I’m pretty sure that doesn’t matter to anybody else).
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Silent Treatment .
And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.
“Why are men horny all the time?” Danielle asked me in front of five other women.
We were in a side room at Jerome’s house during the Halloween party, and Danielle was the only one in the room (other than me) who wasn’t wearing some kind of slutty costume. There was a slutty vampire, a slutty nurse, a slutty cat, a slutty cow girl, and a slutty police officer. Danielle could have gone slut mode for Halloween and would have looked great, but instead she was Jane Austen, in a Victorian (I think) dress carrying my copies of Pride and Prejudice and Emma. With her hair up and thick black glasses on, Danielle looked like a cute librarian giving a book talk. In fact, she looked classy. I was proud that Danielle was my girlfriend. I was always proud when I had a girlfriend, but this was the first time I had been proud that a particular woman was my girlfriend.
Jerome’s house was a three story monolith 15 miles out of city limits where property was cheap and commuters willing to drive an hour each way could buy a few acres of land and design dream houses. A bunch of people in costumes stood and talked in a large open kitchen. A bunch of people in costumes danced in a living room darkened with strobe lights. Kids in costumes ran around outside in a vast backyard (but the swimming pool was blocked because it was too cold). A smaller room had a large screen TV with a football game on. A game room with a pool table, a ping-pong table, and a foosball table was upstairs, along with a bunch of unused bedrooms that stored cool stuff like guitars, swords, guns, and collectibles from all over the world.
Jerome, the host, was a few years older, single, and was an engineer of some kind talking about starting his own company. I made decent money for a guy out of college, but this guy was off the charts. I was lucky to be in his social circle. I only knew him because of Kirk, who introduced me to everybody he networked with. The other guests at the party were my acquaintances; they knew my name, occasionally talked to me on the phone, and personally invited me to all the get-togethers, but without Kirk, I wouldn’t have met any of them. I’m known as a pleasant guy, but I need an outgoing guy like Kirk to make me social. Even though I was quiet, I had short outbursts of humor, I’d bring stuff, and would help out around the parties. I might not have been social, but I could be friendly and useful.
I was concerned about how Danielle would react to Jerome. He was a few inches taller than me and could talk smooth. I knew Danielle was using me to pay her bills (that might not have been the only reason, but it was a big one), and I was okay with that. If that’s what Danielle wanted, I was a guy who could pay bills on a month-to-month basis, but Jerome was the kind of guy who could make bills go away for a long time. Even back then, I knew jealousy and paranoia weren’t good qualities in a boyfriend, but I also knew to be aware of what Jerome (or other guys) might say to Danielle.
After about 30 minutes of introducing Danielle and explaining my paper mache Frankenstein’s monster mask, I was talked out and sleepy and content to watch a football game in a side room with a large TV. A couple other quiet guys were there staring blankly, and one guy wearing a pirate’s eye patch was screaming because he actually cared about the game.
Danielle wandered from room to room talking to women and popping up where I could see her every few minutes. She brought me an iced soda (she knew I didn’t want anything alcohol-related) in a glass and kept me refilled every 15 minutes or so (even though I didn’t ask her to). I didn’t know what brand it was, but cola had never tasted that good before. I usually nursed my drinks in public, but I drained a few glasses, and Danielle kept bringing me refills between her conversations. Most of the time she talked to other women, but one guy tried to talk to her, offering his hand to shake, but she pointed at me, and the guy’s shoulders sank and he wandered off. I was proud.
The “Why are men horny?” question came as I had been checking up on Danielle. Danielle’s question wasn’t rhetorical in nature. She was asking me as an expert, and her audience eye-balled me because they expected an answer too. The first response I thought of was, “You just have that effect on men,” but I figured that would come across as vulgar rather than complimentary. My mind was fuzzy, and maybe because I wasn’t used to being up that late, but I wasn’t stupid.
“I like sex,” Danielle explained to her female costumed friends while I tried to gather my thoughts. “But I can do without it for a while. But guys, it’s non-stop. Why is that?”
She turned, put her hands on her hips, and looked me in the eye.
“Uh… I…” I stammered. “It’s biology,” I finally said. “It, you know, all accumulates and always comes back, so to speak. It never stops. If we don’t do anything about it, it makes us, um, well, it has to get dealt with one way or another.”
“What does that mean?” the woman in the slutty nurse costume asked.
“It means he beats off all the time,” Danielle said with her cheese-eating grin.
The women cackled loudly enough to make me cringe. When enough women get together, their giddy squealing can hurt a guy’s ears. Here, I had just provided a tasteful (maybe), scientific (not really) answer to Danielle’s inappropriate question, and they mocked me. Even in my annoyed state, I thought it was ironic that in a room full of slutty costumes, the woman in the Victorian garb was the vulgar one.
I shook my head and returned to watch the football game in Jerome’s living room. My eyelids were starting to get heavy, and I was thinking about closing them for a minute or two.
Just as I sat down, Kirk started talking to me. He was semi-drunk on the couch because his girlfriend Linda wore a Supergirl costume with a skirt all the way to her knees and a shirt that went all the way to her neck. Even Danielle’s Victorian dress displayed more cleavage. Kirk wasn’t going to get any that night, so he figured he might as well drink.
“What’s with all the noise in there?” he asked.
“Drunk women,” I said.
He nodded. “Cool Frankenstein mask.”
“Thanks, but it’s the Frankenstein monster, not Frankenstein. Frankenstein created the monster, and that’s why the technical term is Frankenstein’s monster.”
Kirk looked at me like I was a dick and said, “Cool mask.”
We watched football for 10 minutes, and I got sleepier and groggier. I tried to shake my head clear a couple times and thought about going to the bathroom or taking a walk outside (but not doing both at the same time). The song “Monster Mash” was playing in the other room for the fourth time when Danielle rushed in, grabbed my hand, and started to pull me up.
“I wanna dance,” she said.
Still groggy, I resisted. “I don’t like to dance,” I said. She should have known that.
“C’mon! Have some fun! You’re not having fun!” She continued to pull, and I continued to resist.
“I’m watching football.” I was annoyed because I was having fun even though she didn’t know it. I’ve never liked it when people told me I’m not having fun. I liked to be my own judge of whether or not I was having fun.
“Dance with me!” She was almost pleading.
“I said I don’t feel like it,” I stated.
Danielle stopped pulling, and her eyes narrowed. Then she threw my hand down back on my lap.
“Fine! Be an asshole!”
And she stormed out of the living room. People in other rooms peeked inside to see who the asshole was. Danielle had not used her quiet voice.
I was embarrassed. I knew I should have danced with her. I knew it. But I just couldn’t get myself to do it. My eyelids felt heavy, and my mind was slow, and “Monster Mash” was getting on my nerves, and Kirk, who didn’t know the difference between Frankenstein and the Frankenstein’s monster, was looking at me like I was the idiot in the room. I drank my soda. I guessed that since Danielle had just called me an asshole, she wasn’t going to bring me another one.
I glanced at Kirk, but now he pretended to have not seen the uncomfortable exchange. Still, he said, with his eyes directed toward the television, “You should have danced with her.”
“I pay all her bills,” I said.
He lifted his beer and said, “I hear that.” Then he burped.
A few minutes later Kirk said, “You know, she’s gonna start dancing without you.”
Ugh, I thought. Kirk was right. Danielle was drinking, there was loud music, I had just pissed her off in front of people, she hadn’t done anything crazy for a while, and there were a bunch of guys who would love to dance with her, guys that would love to get really close to a cute chick in thick glasses and get a feel for what was under that Victorian dress. Anger started to well up in me. I’d been stupid, and now she was probably going to start dancing crazy with another guy when I was the one who paid all her bills. That pissed me off, and the anger gave me my strength and I pushed myself up from the couch to find out what kind of mess my girlfriend was going to cause.
I didn’t know what I was about to walk into.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: The Party Scene.
And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The open letter has to be one of the least effective persuasive techniques around, but it’s pretty easy to do. Writing an open letter and posting it online is much easier than gathering a crowd of people to stop traffic or shout down a politician. But I’ve never heard of an open letter changing public policy.
A few days ago, a bunch of famous authors (most of whom I’ve never heard) signed an open letter to President Obama complaining about how standardized tests in the United States have made today’s kids hate reading. According to the letter (or the people who wrote it), the tests force teachers to teach to the test rather than encourage kids to love reading. I understand where these famous authors are coming from, but this open letter is not the way to go.
First of all, writing an open letter against standardized tests is not exactly taking a stand. Not many people like standardized tests. Teachers hate them. Students hate them. Even people who aren’t directly involved in public education hate the idea of having to take a standardized test. The only people who seem to like standardized tests are the standardized test makers and politicians. But the people who dislike standardized tests (which is everybody else) don’t dislike them enough to do more than write and sign an open letter. If you’re going to write an open letter, pick a topic that isn’t so safe.
Next, the open letter against standardized testing is really bland. With so many authors signing it, you’d think somebody would have found a way to make it interesting. Instead, it’s the kind of bland, uninspiring expository piece that ends up on standardized tests. With so many authors involved, one of them should have at least added a metaphor or a snarky comment. This is the kind of writing that makes authors look bad.
Plus, the authors assume that it’s the standardized tests that make kids hate reading. I’m not so sure. I went to school before standardized tests were common, and I remember a lot of teachers that made us hate reading by themselves. If a teacher uses a curriculum of The Yearling, A Separate Peace, and A Light in the Forest, then teachers don’t need standardized tests to make kids hate reading. I’m not saying the above novels are bad books. They’re probably very good. But when you’re forced to read them at school, you learn to hate reading.
Luckily, I had my own copy of Massage Parlor II when I was in junior high school, so I loved reading. Every guy in my junior high loved reading when they had my copy of Massage Parlor II. I did more to promote a love of reading in junior high than any open letter to President Obama could ever do.
The open letter to President Obama might be harmless, but with so many authors signing it, there had to be a way to make it interesting. I don’t like to be the kind of person who complains about a problem without offering a solution, so I have an idea.
If you absolutely must write an open letter, at least make it short and interesting. Write a quick inflammatory statement, and then get out. So here is my open form letter that can be used to anybody for any subject. In this case, the authors who are against standardized testing can fill in the blanks with (President Obama) and (standardized testing) and then (your name/somebody else’s name).
OPEN FORM LETTER TO ANYBODY
Dear ____________:
You suck! And so does anybody who supports ________________.
Sincerely/ Best wishes,
____________________
*****
It might not be perfect, but nobody will stop reading it before the end. It’s almost as precise as Ernest Hemingway’s six-word short story.
I’m not the kind of person who tells people they suck, and I don’t write open letters, so maybe my suggestion isn’t very good. What changes would you make to my open form letter? How do you make an open letter about standardized testing interesting? What do you think about standardized testing? What books did you have to read in school that made you hate or love reading? Have you ever written a short story that’s less than six words?
Even the dragon is getting tired of waiting for The Winds of Winter.
It doesn’t happen very often, where three of the biggest bestsellers in science fiction/fantasy, where three amazingly popular books (even series), have the same word in the title with the same grim meaning. Ender’s Game is about a video game (kind of) of death. The Hunger Games is about a reality show (kind of) of death. A Game of Thrones is about a race against death (Can the author finish the entire series before he dies?).
We readers get the idea. The “games” are dangerous, and characters get killed, and it’s not really a “game,” but c’mon! Can somebody grab a thesaurus? With so many “games,” and so many movies and TV series, I don’t have the time to read all the books and watch all the movies (Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire) and keep up with all the seasons of the HBO series, especially during football season. But I can start.
THE HUNGER GAMES
The good news about The Hunger Games is that Suzanne Collins kept it to three books. Any series that goes over three books usually has an author that doesn’t know where the books are going. The bad news is that The Hunger Games is better read as a single novel because the second book is too similar to the first book, and the third book is all over the place (in my opinion).
It’s probably not fair to complain about the last two books without a concrete reason. I felt an emotional impact in The Hunger Games that I didn’t feel in the other books. For example, when Katniss volunteered to take her sister’s place in the “Games,” I actually had to stop reading for a minute (Whoa!). I felt the emotional impact several times in The Hunger Games, but the other two books didn’t affect me the same way. Maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind as a reader when I read them, but I think a lot of it had to do with the author not taking her time with the books.
Sometimes authors write too many books too quickly, and that may have happened here.
ENDER’S GAME
Of the three books/series, Ender’s Game was the first book but the last to be turned into a movie orTV series. Every time I think Orson Scott Card is done with the series, he comes out with another Ender book. Ender’s Game already has two sets of sequels. That’s right. Two SETS of sequels. One is about Ender’s travels (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind) and one about what happens to other characters right after Ender’s Game (Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, and there have been more (and I think I accidentally read another one a couple years ago) since.
I read these before I established my own rules for reading (no more than three books per author or series). If I remember correctly, none of the books are bad, but they decline a bit as they go. And still, I kept reading them, so they must have been entertaining.
A GAME OF THRONES
These are the easiest books for me to write about because I haven’t read them. I started A Game of Thrones (or the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire), but then stopped when I realized that the series isn’t finished yet, and (from what I’ve heard) it’s probably gone on too long already. And if I’m going to follow my own rules for reading books, I may never go back and finish. I don’t read books over 500 pages long, and I don’t read more than three books from an author anymore, and I don’t read a series until it’s done.
A Game of Thrones might be (and probably is) great. From what I hear, I believe it at least has moments of greatness. But it’s long. And it’s not done yet.
*****
What about you? Which of these books (or series) have you read? Which of these movies (or TV series) have you seen? How would you compare the books with the movies? Am I wrong about Catching Fire and Mockinjay? Am I wrong not to read A Game of Thrones? Am I wrong about the Ender books? What else am I wrong about? Am I right about anything?
*****
While you’re waiting for The Winds of Winter, read…
Now only 99 cents on Amazon!
Talking about relationship problems can be risky. Even if it’s important to “share” your feelings with somebody you trust who isn’t directly involved, it can also backfire. A friend can tell another friend who tells another friend, and soon a bunch of juicy gossip is out of control. What was going on between Danielle and me was only between Danielle and me. If I told Kirk about what was going on between Danielle and me, he might (or probably would) tell his girlfriend Linda, and I’ve never believed in providing free entertainment for my circle of friends and acquaintances.
The problem (if it really was one) with Danielle had to do with money. A few days after I had paid for Danielle’s car repair, she left her car insurance bill on the coffee table on top of a stack of unread comic books. That wasn’t an accident. Insurance for a sports car in city limits wasn’t cheap, and I realized how much of Danielle’s life I was paying for. I paid for the rent, all the food, all the restaurants, and now I was paying car bills. I was pretty sure she made more money than I did. What did she use it for? Under normal circumstances, I’d never ask a girlfriend how she spent her own money, but now I was tempted.
I had mixed feelings about paying Danielle’s bills. As a girlfriend, Danielle had gone all out. She was everything a girlfriend could be to a guy like me. We lived in sin, and the sin was great. She never criticized me. Her temper hardly ever was directed at me. And when certain parts of a relationship are going great, it’s tough to rock the boat.
On the other hand, Kirk had been griping about Linda all evening. I was hanging out at Kirk’s apartment watching a weeknight football game, but it was tough to concentrate on the game with all his whining, and Kirk wasn’t normally a whiner. His apartment was well furnished for a single guy, but not as nice as mine (of course, his girlfriend didn’t steal furniture). I didn’t really want to be there because I knew I was going to be really tired the next day, but it was going to be a Friday, and if there was a day to be really tired at work, it was Friday.
“Three months,” Kirk complained as he drank a beer. “I’ve never waited three months.”
“This is why you have to stick to rules,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm that he probably didn’t notice. Kirk had a three-date rule, and if a woman hadn’t gone to a certain level of intimacy (or sexual activity) with him by then, he lost interest. I never agreed with his three-date rule, but it usually kept him content (though the women he had been involved with in the past probably didn’t feel the same way).
“Three months is a long time,” Kirk said.
I nodded and thought about Danielle . Even with a football game on, I thought about Danielle.
“Are you two coming to Jerome’s Halloween party?” Kirk asked. Jerome was the guy in our social group with the big house and the swimming pool and the huge backyard/patio. Even a quiet guy like me went to his parties because the food was always good and there was always a football game on.
“I’ll ask Danielle,” I said with some hesitation. Danielle worked Saturday nights, but Kirk thought she was happily unemployed, so I had to go along.
“Linda said Danielle was going to ask you.”
Now I had a real reason to hesitate. “Danielle talks to Linda?”
“I guess,” Kirk said. “Linda’s going as Supergirl.”
I was surprised about that. Linda didn’t strike me as the type to wear a slutty costume to a Halloween party, but women could be unpredictable, and maybe the costume would be tasteful (but that was doubtful). I also thought that if Kirk couldn’t get any after Linda wore a Supergirl costume to a Halloween party, then his situation was lost, but I kept that to myself as well.
The next day I asked Danielle (while she was getting ready for work) if she wanted to go to a Halloween party that one of my friends was throwing. I didn’t mention that Kirk had told me she was talking to Linda. I just pretended this was all new information to her. I didn’t think she’d want to go. The party was on a Saturday night, and Saturday was Danielle’s most profitable day of the week. Money was important to her, and I couldn’t see her missing a Saturday night.
“I’ll go as Jane Austen,” Danielle said. “I’ve got an old dress that looks like it’s from that time period, and I’ll put my hair up, and I’ll carry these around.” She held up my copies of Pride and Prejudice and Emma.
Jane Austen, I thought. I was stunned (in a positive way) that she was going to the party, but I was also disappointed in her choice of costume. Here I finally had a girlfriend who was built to be a slutty nurse, or a slutty French maid, or a slutty vampire, and she was going to cover herself up in a Victorian garment. Pervert guys would be lucky to see an ankle or a collarbone. It was disappointing, but, I had to admit, it was also a decent idea.
“I’m pretty sure you’ll be the only Jane Austen there,” I said. I usually went to Halloween parties as Darth Vader, but I had a back up idea. “I’ll go as Frankenstein’s monster.” I explained how I’d take a paper bag, and then cover it in paper mache, paint the top black for the monster’s hair, and then cut a space for my face. With a little paint and make up, I could be the monster without wearing an uncomfortable, smelly mask.
“You know,” I said, thinking aloud. “Mary Shelley lived in the same time period, kind of. You could go as Mary Shelley, and I would be the monster that she created, and that would make more sense from a literary standpoint.”
“I’m going as Jane Austen,” Danielle said. “And I wanna see you get drunk.”
I paused. We had never had this discussion.
“I don’t get drunk,” I said. “I tried it once in college, and… I’m not doing that again.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’m not ready to talk about it.”
“I can make you tell me,” she said, getting close and putting her hands on my waist. She was pretty good at getting secrets out of me.
“No,” I said. “This one, you can’t.”
“That bad?” Then she hesitated. “Did… somebody die?”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said. “It was embarrassing. And nobody here knows about it.”
That wasn’t true. Kirk had seen what had happened and had made me promise to never get drunk again. He’d also been a true friend and had never (as far as I knew) told anybody about what I had done the one time in my life when I’d gotten drunk. That’s the way I liked things. I wouldn’t tell Danielle about what I did when I was drunk, and I wouldn’t tell Kirk about what was going on between Danielle and me. I didn’t know if that made me dishonest in any way, or impersonal. It’s just that the fewer people who knew stuff about me, the lesser the odds of people I didn’t want to know stuff about me finding out. Kirk and Danielle were my friends (in different ways), but neither one needed to know everything about me. I wanted to keep it that way.
Everything seemed set. Danielle and I were going to the Halloween party over the weekend, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that something could go wrong. There would be a lot of people there with lots of loud music and lots of booze and lots of my friends there to witness it if Danielle got carried away and did anything weird, and a Jane Austen costume meant no mask, so if Danielle decided to do anything inappropriate (like watching guys pee) or illegal (like stealing furniture), everybody would know it was her.
I usually liked Halloween, but I was starting to get a bad feeling about this party.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Drunk at a Party.
And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here .
What does it mean if there’s a book award list, and you’ve never heard of any of the books? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m never surprised when I see awards lists with books I’ve never read. I read the kinds of books that don’t win awards. I read a lot of schlock, and schlock doesn’t usually win awards. If there were an award for best schlock, maybe I’d have read most of the books, but as far as I know, there is no award for schlock.
The list of 2013 National Book Award finalists was released recently, and I’m surprised because I’ve never even heard of any of the books on this awards list. I might not read/finish a lot of high brow literature, but I read ABOUT the high brow literature. I like to be able to at least pretend that I’ve read the high brow literature. I like to be able to understand what my intellectual friends are talking about when they discuss the high brow literature. I might not read it, but I usually know about it.
Here is a list of some of the fiction finalists I’d never heard of and don’t know anything about:
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
If I’m not familiar with the finalists in fiction, there’s no way I know anything about the poetry or young adult finalists. It’s okay. I’m sure nobody involved with any of these books has ever heard of Dysfunctional Literacy either.
Maybe it makes sense that I’ve never heard of any of the books on The National Book Award list. Before yesterday, I’d never heard of the National Book Awards either. A lot of book awards are named after a famous author. Maybe there was a famous author named National, and if that’s the case, I’ve never heard of him/her. Then it would really make sense that I’ve never heard of any of the books on a list named after an author I’ve never of.
Except now I just found out that the National Book Award is named after the National Book Foundation, which is something else I’ve never heard of. I was really hoping there was a famous author named National. That would be a cool last name. If I ever change my last name, maybe it would be to National. Jimmy National. I like that.
I really like reading about books. Sometimes reading about a book is better than actually reading the book. It saves me a lot of time, and it means that somebody else has already done the hard part (reading the book) for me. I like it when other people do my work for me. Now if I can find a job where somebody else has done my work for me, I’d be set. Unfortunately, I’m in a position where I do the hard work for other people (not physically hard work), so I don’t feel guilty about letting other people read books for me. It all evens out.
Now that I’ve read The National Book Award list, I have several new books that I’ll read about but probably not read. If I read enough about these books, I might even form an opinion about which book should win. Right now I’m pulling for the book written by Thomas Pynchon. At least I’ve heard of him.
Am I the only reader who has never heard of these books? If I am, which books have you heard of? Which of these books have you read? Would you honor them with any awards? Is there an award for schlock that I don’t know about? If you could change your last name, what would you change it to?
What do these two beat up copies have in common? I read them. I finished them. But did I enjoy them?
There are a lot of good reasons to NOT finish a long book. The most obvious reason is that long books are too long, but that might not be the best reason. Some long books have too much filler, unnecessary subplots, and may feel like they were written that way just for the sake of being long. Some long books are so wordy that the story could have been told in half the length without losing anything important. Other long books are so heavy in their hardcover form that they may be physically difficult to carry.
The problem with not finishing a long book is that I sometimes feel like I have to get defensive, as if there’s something wrong with me for not finishing it. I’m getting older and I don’t have time to read 500+ page books unless they’re truly awesome (when I say I don’t have time, I mean “spare time” not “time…” as in… you know…. mortality. I hope I have plenty of “time”).
The Guardian has a list of ten long books that are supposedly worth reading (The Ten Best Long Reads), but I’m unqualified to comment on the list because I haven’t read any of the books. The list was kind of British, and I’m kind of American. I have nothing against British books. I read British books, but I wasn’t familiar with some of these massive novels. Plus, most of the novels were fairly recent. When it comes to 500+ page books that are a chore to read, I think of the classics, not something that was published in my lifetime.
There are plenty of large books (or long reads) that I haven’t finished reading. I tried to read Colleen McCullough’s Rome series, but I didn’t finish any of them. I didn’t finish Sarum by Richard Rutherford (or Russka). I didn’t finish Atlas Shrugged. I didn’t finish War and Peace. I’ve never finished a James Michener novel (not even The Novel, and if I were ever going to finish a James Michener novel, it would have been The Novel). I didn’t read Roots or Gone with the Wind (but I watched them both on TV when I was a kid). I finished a couple Tom Clancy novels, but then I didn’t finish several others. Now I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t even try to read books that are 500+ pages anymore. That doesn’t mean I never will, but it won’t happen much.
A great long book doesn’t feel long. A great long book is one that the reader can enjoy without feeling like he/she is enduring it. It’s a book that the reader doesn’t want to end. It’s a rare feeling, to wish a 500+ page book would last longer (that’s another possible topic!). But it’s happened a few times:
WARNING! These are not the BEST LONG BOOKS EVER! These are just a few really (or maybe not really that) long books that I enjoyed.
The Stand by Stephen King: I read this decades ago and thought it was great. I haven’t reread it since, but I’m tempted to.
Watership Down by Richard Adams: Rabbits? Flippin’ rabbits? There’s no way this book should have been good, but it was!
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: I think this is almost the perfect action/adventure story. Hollywood made a great (but hard to find) movie in the 1970s, but has messed it up ever since.
The Bible by God : I’ve never read it from beginning to end, but I’ve read a lot of it, and I… uh… I… agh…I’m going to… uh… Even if I haven’t read the whole thing, I’m pretty sure it’s worth finishing, because anything written by God has got to be worth finishing.
*****
I know that there are a lot of readers and book lovers out there who have read and finished and enjoyed way more long books than I have, so… What long books did you actually enjoy reading?
When it came to personality types, Danielle was my opposite. I was a quiet guy who didn’t like to be noticed. If I could get through a day without talking to any of my co-workers, I considered myself successful. Danielle lived to be noticed. She wore provocative clothes. She talked loudly and said inappropriate things in public. Even when she put on her thick glasses and dressed conservatively on our dates, she still carried around a copy of Pride and Prejudice just to be sure everybody around us knew that she was reading it (or pretending to). And she drove an expensive sports car that got stares, especially when she stepped out of it.
But last evening the expensive sports car had broken down, and now I was taking Danielle to Main Street Automotive after work to pick it up. If she had heard about me accidentally talking (very briefly) to the guys at Nero’s the previous night, she didn’t mention it. I, in turn, hadn’t mentioned that (I was pretty sure) she had said “Love ya!” to me the previous night. I wasn’t sure if it had been a slip or something casual or even my imagination, but it was something I was going to listen out for again.
Despite a slight October chill, Danielle was wearing her football t-shirt and tight jean cut-offs. I had been expecting the glasses and something less exhibitionist, and I must have shown that with my face because Danielle said:
“They know me there.”
Main Street Automotive was on Main Street, but Main Street was halfway across the city and wasn’t even a main street anymore. The building had several garages in the back with an auto parts store in the front. Danielle led me through the front to the counters that connected the store with the garage. A couple burly guys in worn blue shirts and greasy jeans stood behind the counter while getting bossed around by a cranky old lady. I’ve always known that to avoid getting bossed around by a cranky old lady, you had to move around and at least pretend you were busy. These guys were just asking to be bossed around.
“Hi,” Danielle said cheerfully, waving to the guys at the counter. That might have been why the guys weren’t doing anything. “My car ready?”
They didn’t even ask what her name was. One guy nodded to the other, and he scurried into a back cubicle, and the old lady shuffled paperwork and yelled at somebody on the phone.
“You fixed it quick this time,” Danielle said as she leaned over the counter.
The guy’s eyes shifted from Danielle’s shirt to her face as he explained what had been wrong and what had been done. She said “Okay” and “Yeah” a lot, but I wondered if she understood anymore than I did. She pretended to. I thought maybe she did. She asked a couple questions that I didn’t understand, and the guy answered them, so maybe she really did know what he was talking about. I was being ignored, but I didn’t care because I was thinking, I had a hot chick girlfriend who might understand cars.
“Did you have any questions?” the guy asked, and I realized he was talking to me.
“I’m the driver,” I said, which was stupid, but I had been caught by surprise.
“I’m going to the ladies room,” Danielle said, and before I could say anything, she got really close, slipped her arms around my neck, drew me down just a little, and slopped a short, moist kiss on my lips. When she pulled back, there was a smacking sound, just loud enough for the guys at the counter to recognize it. As she retreated slowly, she maintained an oddly intense gaze that almost made my knees buckle. Even after two weeks of living in sin together, she could still dazzle me with the little things.
“Be back in a few,” she said softly, and strolled across the store to the back. I watched her. The two guys watched her. The old lady barking orders wasn’t watching her, but the two guys she was barking orders to weren’t paying attention, so she barked her orders even more loudly.
After Danielle disappeared, I turned to the two guys at the counter. I expected them to make some complimentary comment about Danielle. I was expecting at least a knowing look. Instead, I got paperwork. It was the bill for Danielle’s car repair, and the number was really big (even in 1992 dollars).
“What the hell?” I said.
The guy explained again what the problem had been, what they had done, what the parts had cost, and how much labor there had been. It was all probably lies, but Danielle had sworn these guys didn’t rip her off, and all I knew were tires, oil change, and battery.
“Does she know how much this is?” I asked.
The guys behind the counter studied me. I knew what they were thinking. I was the average guy with the hot chick who had just given me a tip of her tongue in public, and if she showed off like that in public, they knew what we were doing in private. And if a guy like me was lucky enough to have a hot chick girlfriend like that, the guy like me had better do what guys like me do best.
I took out my credit card. “I guess I’m more than the driver.”
The guy went through all the stuff that went into using credit cards. He pulled out the carbon copies and as I wrote my signature at the bottom of one receipt, I looked at the restroom area for a sign of Danielle.
“I have a question,” I said in a low voice. “My girlfriend, does she bring her car in a lot?”
The guy also checked out the restroom area before he answered. “A few times a year,” he said cautiously. “Those cars, they need a lot of maintenance.”
“Does she ever pay the bill herself?” I asked slowly. I knew that I might be better off not asking, but I did it anyway.
The guy looked at the paperwork and shook his head.
I could feel my shoulders deflating, but I went ahead and asked my final question.
“Is it always somebody different?”
The guy nodded. Then he glanced at the restroom area and said,” I don’t know if this makes a difference, but she’s been really nice today.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so he continued.
“She’s usually bitchy,” he said, then he put his hands up in apology.
“It’s okay,” I said. I’d seen that side of her, but it had never been directed at me.
We continued the credit card process, and I signed my name in a few more places, and somewhere along the way Danielle stepped out of the ladies room and started wandering around the tire displays. I glanced at Danielle, who was pretending to inspect the tires and compare prices. She had the same vacant expression when she was pretending to read Jane Austen books.
Once the credit card was back in my hands, Danielle was back at my side, softly brushing up against me.
“Everything okay?” she said.
I was still processing. The nature of our relationship had just been made obvious to me and everyone around us. Maybe I should have figured it out earlier. It made sense. It was the only explanation that made sense. I should have known right away that this was what it was about. I was disappointed but not mad. This wasn’t a disaster. I liked being around her (even when sin wasn’t involved). She seemed to like being around me.
“Good!” I said, slamming my wallet shut. “You want to see if your car starts this time?”
“It’ll start,” the guy behind the counter said.
Danielle grabbed my hand and led me to the front of the store where her car had been parked.
“You wanna race home? Your car against mine?”
“It wouldn’t be fair,” I said, which was true. Even if we switched cars, she’d win. I slowed down for yellow lights, and she plowed through them. “I’d only win if you got pulled over.”
And then I added with authority, “And I don’t want to pay for your traffic ticket.”
She let go of my hand but lingered in that six-inch area where I could almost feel her against me. Her cheese-eating grin was wide.
“I promise I will obey all traffic laws, officer.” Then she got into her car and rolled down the window. I waited for her parting words. What would she say? Last night she had said “Love ya!” after I’d dropped her off at work. I was kind of hoping she’d say it again, even though I knew she wouldn’t have meant it.
As she pulled out, she waved and stuck her head out the window just a little bit.
“See ya!”
I waved back and thought a little bit while I walked back to my own car. Danielle had just shown off our relationship in front of a group of people whom she barely knew and were complete strangers to me. She liked to show off. She was comfortable with it. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with what I had just realized about our relationship, but at least now I had a grasp of where I stood.
At least, I thought I did.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: The Halloween Costume .
And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.
