Papaya and Poetic Memories

A dense layer of dark clouds hovered over Tokyo when his plane finally came to rest on the perfectly clean tarmac, newly washed by the light but determined drizzle that floated down upon the brightly lit buildings of the Japanese capital. Twelve hours ago he had left Chicago aboard the Boeing 747 that would carry him north of even the northern most point of Alaska. From the window of his seat at the very back of the plane he had watched the northern lights shimmer like a cascading kaleidoscope across the desolate white landscape of the Arctic. Twelve hours later, the pieces of paper that he had pulled out of his backpack on takeoff still starred back at him blankly from his meal tray. He had planned to use the flight to write a speech for the wedding, but what could he say about the best friend he had hardly seen in the past four years?

In college he had spent hours upon hours learning about Japan, its language, and its culture, yet this was the first time he had set foot in the Land of the Rising Sun. A few years ago he would have been enamored with Japanese culture and Japanese women. He could have even used the Japanese he had picked up in college. Now he could hardly remember the alphabet, much less read the flashing signs all about him. In some ways, it felt like this trip had come too late. Still, he was thrilled to have finally made it to Japan. He had ultimately come here not for himself but for Taro. For the next week, he would be staying at Taro’s apartment with his fiancée Amy and her good friend Cindy. He faintly remembered Cindy from Berkeley but wasn't sure he would recognize her. He was sure she would not recognize him.

He was sitting in the living room of Taro’s parents’ house room checking his email and drinking green tea when the girls walked in. He was surprised when Cindy introduced herself. It seemed as though she had not changed at all in the four years since they had last had a class together. He had never known her very well in college, but he hoped that would change during the next week. He did not think of much else; the long flight to Tokyo and the bus ride to Yokohama had left him totally spent. The only thing he wanted in that moment was a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.

By the time he woke up the next morning, the others were already back from the bakery. As he walked out of his room into the hallway of this quintessentially Japanese apartment, with its sliding paper doors and mat covered floors, he squinted at the sunlight that poured into the cozy living room from the windows that looked out onto the oriental-shingle covered rooftops of this quaint and verdant suburb of Yokohama. Taro, Amy, and Cindy were already sitting on the floor cross legged around the little table. As he sat down, they began to talk about their plan for the day while they breakfasted on the various pastries they had bought. He had a paper to finish and wanted to go to a coffee shop so he could do some work. Cindy needed to do some work too and offered to join him. Amy and Taro, not wanting to stay home alone, offered to come along as well. The foursome set out for the local Jonathan’s, a Japanese rendition of Denny’s.

He had been working furiously and had pounded out four pages in less than an hour. The table was covered in empty mugs from the all-you-can-drink coffee bar. Amy and Cindy were taking caffeine-induced bathroom trips every ten minutes. He wanted a moment just to be alone with Cindy but how could he get them away from Taro and Amy for just a few minutes?

“Do you smoke?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, yeah I do.”
“Cigarette break?”
“Sure, give me two minutes.”

A few minutes later, they stole away to a booth in the smoking section. He felt strangely glad to be alone with her and to talk to her. They stayed and talked long after their cigarettes were done and each of them indulged in the delight of taking a break that is just a little too long from work that needs to be done immediately. From across the room, Amy would occasionally shoot them a puzzled look, wondering why they would rather be by themselves.

He found Cindy surprisingly easy to talk to, intelligent and charmingly dorky. She reminded him oddly of Margaret Chang from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but he knew the association did not fit because Margaret was the girl Max had always taken for granted. Cindy on the other hand was not easily taken for granted. The long list of men who lingered about her life hoping for a chance made her comfortable with the notion that she could choose her romantic destiny. She was not used to being a second choice. He would later find out that the worst mistake he could make was to treat her like one.

She was growing on him in a way he had never experienced. He wondered if it was possible that she truly understood him. Like him, she had grown up very conscious of the value of money. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who had met as graduate students at Utah State through Mormon friends, Cindy had worked very hard to achieve her impressive position in life. Her quiet, under-stated confidence did not impose itself on others but prevented others from imposing their will on her. And the more he thought about her, the more interested he became in the most inane details of her life. He looked forward with increasing anticipation to their cigarette breaks, which were slowly becoming their own private ritual.

As the wedding approached, Cindy and he grew closer. Normally he could not let a person say ten words without interrupting, completely ignoring the person’s point, and quickly turning the conversation to himself or something he found interesting. But for the first time in his life, he had found a girl he just wanted to listen to and all he could think about was how to keep her talking. She told him about her relationship with her father, which he could have guessed was not particularly good because of the way she innocently befriended many men but never truly let any of them into her life. She was adamant about her independence. As the manager of her company’s New York office at 25, she had gained confidence in her own abilities while losing faith in those of her peers. At nine, her father had moved away for work; he did not return until she was sixteen. His absence during the most critical years of her life must have critically wounded her ability to allow herself to rely on any man. During that time she had grown to deeply love her mother. Papaya reminded Cindy of her mother, and it reminded her mother of drinking papaya shakes as a child in Taiwan. He understood that this simple detail was meaningful to her, and so it became incredibly significant to him. When her father finally moved back into their home, his strict demeanor made a jarring contrast to her mother’s laid back parenting. For Cindy it was difficult to decide whether she was unhappier when her father was away or when he had returned. His absence had left a void in her life that his presence could never fill.

After dinner Amy was raging silently at Taro. She had spent the day meeting her parents at their hotel in Tokyo and greeting her uncle and his wife at the airport. When she finally met up with Taro and their friends for dinner, she became ecstatic at the sight of him. She lit up as soon as she spotted him through the tens of thousands of Japanese faces standing in front of Shibuya station. But her joy was doused by his aloof indifference. Taro gave her a hug and a kiss, but his face was serious and he barely acknowledged Amy. The light died out of her eyes and the fatigue of the day that had temporarily disappeared at the sight of her lover suddenly came rushing back upon her shoulders, in her feet, in that spot behind her knees that always gets the most tired of all places but that no one ever talks about. All throughout dinner and even afterwards Taro continued to give more attention to everyone but her. By the time they got back to the little station in Yamate, the quiet suburban neighborhood of Yokohama where they were all staying, Amy was too angry to fight with him and too tired to stand being near him. It had taken all her energy to avoid causing a scene in front of their friends. As soon as they exited the train station, Cindy and she walked across the street before Taro and he could decide whether they would walk or take a cab home. When Taro called to her she pretended not to hear him, even though he called her name loudly and repeatedly, and even though the street separating them was barely wide enough for two compact Japanese cars to safely pass each other. The women took a cab. The men walked.

When Taro and he got back to the apartment, Amy had already taken a shower and he could sense that she had lost her edge. After the chaos of anger comes a numbing silence of confusion and exhaustion, a rare moment where the mind is devoid of thought and full of a quiet resignation at its inability to bend the world to its desires. The only thing Amy wanted from Taro at that point was to be left alone in this ethereal state of total peace.

He was sitting in his room thinking about all the things that could have made Amy so upset with Taro when Cindy walked in. Her room was just across the narrow hallway but this was the first time she had come in to his. She stepped around his body laying on the futon on the floor and found herself an empty spot between the bed and the wall. She pulled her knees into her chest, clasped them with her hands hidden under her oversized Berkeley sweater, and jammed her naked toes between his blanket and the futon to protect them from the constant chill that drifted across the floor of the apartment. His eyes had tracked her movements in curiosity from the time she unexpectedly walked in. He could sense she wanted to talk and he got up and closed the door. They talked about their friends, about relationships, and their parents. When they ran out of things to say he suddenly worried that she would leave and quickly suggested they look at pictures from the past few days. He set up the computer and sat up. She moved closer to him. He wondered if this was his moment, if he should tell her with his eyes how much he wanted them to bridge the gap between their two rooms where each of them slept in the cold each night alone. He wanted to tell her with a single kiss that she should come curl her body next to his at night when everyone was asleep and no one would know. He believed he knew if a girl was right for him from the way they cuddled. Some girls knew how to wiggle themselves into every nook and cranny until the spoons fit just right. Other girls had been cumbersome and awkward when they had slept together, their limbs and edges stabbing and protruding in all the most uncomfortable places. He wondered, looking at her sitting on his bed, if Cindy and he would fit each other well.

Lost in these thoughts he had pulled himself away from her. Physically he was still only a few inches away, but suddenly each of them was alone, side by side. She could feel his absence now, she could feel that again he had left her and lost himself in his own head. “Always thinking, thinking, thinking!” she would chastise him later, almost with pity in her voice for him because she knew he could never just let himself go. The moment had passed. She was tired and they were out of pictures. She was going to bed.

He felt stunned. As she left, before she was even out the door, he fell back to thinking about what he had done wrong. He remembered his first date with the first girl he ever loved. He had let the entire movie go by thinking of when he should finally put his arm around her, his heart beating so loudly that he could hear his pulse in every part of his body. By the time he had worked up the courage to make his move, the movie had ended. A decade later he had found himself in the same position. In David Bowie’s “Always Crashing in the Same Car,” a man drives around and around the same empty hotel parking lot and manages to repeat the exact same accident over and over again, even though he knows each time of the danger ahead. He saw in that miserable modern Sisyphus his own fate. It was no wonder that Kafka once wrote, “Sisyphus was a bachelor.” His dad had always told him that not even a donkey falls into the same ditch twice.

When he met up with Cindy and Seth in Yokohama’s Chinatown she looked at his suitcase and asked where he was going.

“I’m spending the night at a friend’s in Tokyo. I figure I’ll be too drunk after the bachelor party to come back to Yamate.”
“So I’m going to be all by myself tonight?” she asked. He almost wanted to cancel his plans and find a way to get back to Yamate that night after the party.

“If I had known you weren’t using your room tonight I would have invited Seth to come stay with us. He had to get a hostel here because he has nowhere else to stay.”

He knew the last thing she wanted was for Seth to be across the hallway from her. She was using Seth to make him feel replaceable and generic. The only reason he had even met them in Chinatown was because she had called Amy five times in two hours from payphones all over the city asking when he would come. Still, he couldn’t help being annoyed with her.

Seth had traveled on an overnight bus from Kyoto to see Cindy and had put the entire week aside to see Tokyo with her. Instead, he would sit alone in his hostel in the middle of Chinatown for days without a word from her. Cindy was too busy with the wedding and anyways she had no obligation to see someone she had no interest in. When Cindy finally felt guilty about ignoring Seth, she asked him to write the message. He told Seth that Cindy would be meeting a friend at the Starbucks in Shibuya across from the Hachiko exit and that Seth could meet her there. He wrote the message as tersely and quickly as he could, not only because he was annoyed with himself for doing Cindy’s bidding (he always found it difficult to refuse to do favors for women) but more importantly because he hoped to convey to Seth the preposterousness of her gesture. He hoped that Seth would see from the message’s hasty style and ambiguous instructions that Cindy really had no interest in seeing him at all. He wanted to oblige her by helping her fulfill her formalistic desire to extend him an invitation, but he also wanted to warn Seth that the invitation was hollow and that he would do better to sit in his hostel alone in Chinatown than to trek to Shibuya in search of her at the busiest intersection in Japan, where her Asian face and short stature would make her impossible to find among the thousands of faces blending into one another and moving about like the tips of waves shinning, glimmering and sinking on the surface of a tempestuous ocean.

Seth was one of the many men lingering around Cindy’s life. Fred, her roommate and part time lover from New York, was another. Harry, a thirty-something Scottish multi-millionaire who had been one of the earliest employees at Google and cashed out his options at the peak of the market, was a third. They were not the only ones, just the ones who had followed her to Japan and were now hovering about the country, close enough to be there if she called but far enough not to seem desperate.

As they walked through the subway on the way to his friend’s apartment in Tokyo she constantly asked him if he needed help carrying his suitcase. He found it endearing that she was worried about him, but he also saw it as a sign of her lack of confidence in him and told her so. “Cindy, I can carry the suitcase. I know you don’t have any faith in me now, but that will change the more you know me. I’ll show you that you don’t have to worry about me, or about yourself when you’re with me. I’m strong.” He wanted her to know that he was capable of taking care of himself as well as others. He wanted her to know that he could take care of her.

Cindy was five foot three and very thin. She had fine, glimmering soft black hair that fell a third of the way down her back. Her small nose and disproportionately big smile made him want to make her laugh. When she smiled, her high cheekbones became more prominent and her clear brown eyes narrowed to a squint. She worried that her butt was too big, but it was the feature that added the most sensuality to her otherwise girlish figure. And while she was certainly very pretty, she could have easily been mistaken for someone ordinary.

“Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory,” wrote Kundera. Cindy entered his poetic memory with the words “let’s race!” On their first visit to Tokyo, they were walking side by side through the subway station when they suddenly realized that he was about to get on the moving sidewalk and she could not. Before he could figure out what to do, she yelled “let’s race” and took off running. He took off after her and had to actually jog on the moving sidewalk to keep up with her. In high school, she ran hurdles. But because she was short, she had to jump every time. Watching her running and laughing, her hair swinging in its pony tail from one shoulder to the other, he lost track of what they were doing and almost didn’t notice that two people were blocking his way to the finish. She had assumed she would win because he would not be able to run through them. But he stepped to the left around the first person and back to the right around the second and took two quick steps to the finish, beating her by a shoulder. As they caught their breath, he could not take his eyes off her. Looking at her while they both panted he realized that she had created for them a moment of instant, fickle happiness that would endure long afterwards as a memory. In that little act of spontaneity she had shed everything ordinary about her and showed him why she was uniquely special.

It was the day of the wedding and the groomsmen still had not bought their ties. The ties were supposed to match the bridesmaids’ champagne colored dresses and this had turned out to be more difficult than anyone expected. He took responsibility for finding and buying them, but by the time he moved all his bags to the hotel where everyone was staying, it was already 2 PM. They were supposed to meet at the wedding venue in two hours. He ran down the hill from the hotel to the Shinagawa station, ran through the station to the train, ran from the train to a department store where the information desk circled a few affordable suit shops on a map of Shibuya, and ran, faster than ever, through the streets of Shibuya, weaving through crowds, sprinting and dodging people and jumping over obstacles on his way to the suit shop. He knew that if he did not make it back to his hotel by 3 he would never have time to shower, shave and dress in time for the wedding. If he did not arrive at the hotel with champagne colored ties exactly matching the very particular color of the bridesmaid dresses, the groomsmen would stand in front of the entire chapel with open collars. But what was more important to him than any of this was that if he failed, Cindy would lose faith in him.

When he arrived at her hotel room at 2:50 with the bag full of four champagne colored ties and matching handkerchiefs, her roommate opened the door. Cindy was sitting in front of the mirror putting on her make up. When she heard that he had found the ties, she jumped up and came over to see how they matched up to the dress. The colors were nearly perfect. The adrenaline from the mad dash through Shibuya now subsided. He fell into a deep calm. He felt confident and at peace, knowing he had managed to avoid a disaster at his best friend’s wedding but also that he had shown Cindy that he was trustworthy and capable. When they met downstairs in the lobby and he saw her in the bridesmaid dress that had been hanging in Taro’s living room for the past five days, he had to stop himself from staring. She looked gorgeous. Of course she must have looked beautiful to anyone who had never met her: her smile was radiant and the dress perfectly draped over her taught body. He wished they were in high school and she was his prom date. For the first time in years, the childishly romantic thoughts he used to have for women in college came rushing back. As they waited for the elevator up to the chapel, she looked at his tie and said, “I must say, I’m very impressed.”

Cindy was sitting at the next table when it was time for his speech. He told the story by Murakami of the boy who met the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. A boy saw a girl in the street and suddenly his heart leaped in his chest and his mouth went dry; he knew that she was the 100% perfect girl for him. And she too immediately knew that he was the 100% perfect boy for her. But in their youth and uncertainty they doubted themselves and each other. As a test of their love, they agreed that they should part ways. If they were truly 100% perfect for one another then surely they would find each other again. But they never did. Taro and Amy avoided turning their love story into a sad one because they seized their moment. They had met less than a year before the wedding, but they knew not to let time or distance or anything stop them from being with each other. He told them how extremely happy he was for them. As he sat down, he looked at Cindy and she smiled at him with her eyes. She knew him well enough by now to know that his speech was sincere, not merely poetic, and this touched her perhaps more than it touched anyone else at the wedding, for no one else could be sure how heartfelt his words were.

When Cindy and he got away from the tables later to have a cigarette, he was so lost in the thought of her that he could not be with her even though they were right next to each other. He was not merely quiet, he was brooding, and again she felt alone with him. The feeling of being lonely in the company of another person is the most extreme form of loneliness because it deprives both people of even the small pleasure of solitude. Imagine a person living alone on an island far away from the world with no way of rejoining human society. That person will do everything he can to alleviate his extreme loneliness. He will befriend animals, create companions out of his surroundings, dedicate himself to decorating his abode and amuse himself by finding ways of constantly eating and sleeping better. Now imagine two people on the same island, except that neither can talk to the other even though they both speak the same language. Every word they say is a miscommunication, every game they start ends in failure, when one of them wants to eat, the other wants to sleep, when the other wants to hunt, the one wants to fish. Eventually those two people will move to opposite sides of their island, far away from each other. They will prefer the loneliness of solitude to loneliness spent in the company of another. And so it was that, while he was staring at the floor lost in thought, Cindy put out her half-smoked cigarette and said she wanted to go back inside. Hearing her voice and realizing what had just happened, his soul traveled through layers and layers of his body, escaping the deepest parts of his mind and coming back to the sensory world of his flesh. But it was already too late. He lost her when he left her alone in his company.

Every person in his mind has a limit for himself. There is a point at which, though he believes that he believes he can go on, his subconscious has decided that he cannot possibly. This is in fact what sets apart great people from ordinary ones. The discrepancies in intelligence in the world are not the reason some achieve greatness and others do not. There will always be more intelligent people than there will be great ones. As Emerson once said, “nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.” Great men truly believe in their subconscious that they are meant to be great, that greatness is their destiny, and that they can overcome any obstacle to achieve it. A noted professor at Carnegie Mellon was dying of cancer. The doctors had told him he had less than a month to live. He was at the peak of his career, had a loving wife and several young, beautiful children. Faced with the certainty of death in the near future but relative health for the moment, he decided to do what he loved best: teach one last time. His talk, entitled The Last Lecture, became a Youtube phenomenon. He spoke to the crowd about how to achieve one’s goals in life and how to reach the point of happiness. Again and again he told them that to succeed where others had failed, one has to view the walls that stand in one’s path as obstacles to keep other people out. The walls, he told us, are not there for you, they are there for everyone else. Moving past the impossible obstacles is heavy work; it is difficult, demoralizing, and grueling. But that is what makes the goal worth reaching. He knew that he could be happy with Cindy, but he could not bring down the walls that his mind had built between them.

Everything was wrong from the beginning. His plan was to have enough fun with other girls at the club that night until Cindy took notice and came to him, hoping to be a part of his world. He ordered everyone drinks, bought a bottle of vodka, handed shots to the twenty some people, danced while everyone cheered, drank shot after shot, lifted a girl in the air while everyone laughed; he took pictures and exchanged hugs and handshakes with everyone. They must have all thought he was having a great time, but she knew him and could sense that he was trying too hard. She could see how out of place this person was with the one she had spent time with the past five days and she knew that he was being untrue to himself. When a woman sees that a man is unfaithful to himself, she knows he will never be faithful to her. A man who tries to become someone else is unhappy with himself and therefore not strong enough to make her happy. A girl had once said to one of his friends, “the thing I love about you most is how unapologetically happy you are with yourself.”

When he finally went to look for her, he saw Cindy dancing with his friend. His hands were all over her, almost cupping her breasts and lifting her into the air. He was kissing her neck from behind. She seemed to be enjoying it.

Months later back in Chicago, an old friend asked him about Cindy over dinner.

“I thought you liked her a lot, what happened there?” she asked.
“Did I tell you that I was into her? I don’t think I ever told you that.”
“I just guessed from your photos. Not just the photos of the two of you together. I could even tell from the way you took pictures of her.”
“Well, it’s over now. She’s with another guy. I had my chance, I never took it.”
“Does it hurt you that she’s with someone else?”
“No. It hurt that she wasn’t into me, but I don’t care who she’s with. I hope she’s happy with him.”

He remembered her laughing and running down the subway as he chased after her. He remembered her eyes as they faced each other, doubled over and panting afterwards. He stared off into the corner of the restaurant as he took a sip of his beer. "Let's get the check," he said, pushing his glass away.

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August 15, 2006: My First Encounter with a Stripper

At 10:30 AM, I walked out the French TGV that had whisked me down from Paris in a little over three hours. I had been through Bordeaux many times on my way to Biarritz and the Pays Basque, but had never actually set foot in this city renowned the world over for its wine.

Today is a national holiday of some sort, one among the innumerable holidays the French have awarded themselves comme ca. Nearly all the stores are closed, except for a boulangerie here and a café there. So I wandered around, took some pictures, and got a feel for the city until it was time for dinner. Earlier, I'd spotted a popular local restaurant that looked promising.

The place was called L’Entrecote and there was a long line of people waiting to get in. I figured if they were willing to wait in the rain for a seat, it had to be good. Once I got in, I found out that life according to L'Entrecote was simple; the restaurant only served one main course and had an overwhelming choice of two wines: red or rose, both house label.

"A bottle of your red please," I said to the waitress.

"A half bottle for you, sir?" She seemed to doubt my manly capacity to hold my liquor; it became a point of principle to prove her wrong.

"No, a full bottle please, thank you."

After my small salad of lettuce and walnuts, after the ribeye steak smothered in bearnaise sauce with a heaping mound of fries on the side, after the six cheeses, and the café with the cream puffs stuffed with vanilla bean ice cream, covered in melted dark chocolate and garnished with finely sliced almonds, after I had dusted off the wine and given my irreverent waitress the stink eye – in short, after having thoroughly gorged myself, I paid the bill and left with my dignity intact and my digestion in a shambles.

I headed out to make friends with some other tourists at a local bar. Apparently this was a serious holiday for the French. No one was on the streets and hardly a bar was open. I had expected to find throngs of tourists pacing the sidewalks, but everyone seemed to have stayed in. Disappointed and tired, I headed back for my hotel.

But just as I was about to walk up to my hotel, out of the corner of my eye I saw five scantily clad young women in an otherwise abandoned bar. I stopped, thought for a second, and tugged at the door. It was locked and I turned to leave, almost relieved. Suddenly, the door opened behind me. I was let in and assured the bar was still open. I figured I’d have one drink before going to bed; that was a terrible idea.

I soon realized from the bartender’s frequent references to the young ladies as “whores” and “dirty little sluts” that this was not a typical bar. The bartender seemed to own the place. He was at least sixty, with a neatly trimmed head of white hair, a long pointed nose, and a healthy paunch that suggested he did not consult the labels on his food for caloric information.

I had a strange feeling the entire joint was working me over. The patron began to chummy up to me and the girls would glance over flirtingly. Confused, I just sat and stared blankly into my Lagavulin, wondering what I had gotten myself into. Suddenly, the eldest girl of the bunch—and also the least attractive—came up to me and began to strike conversation.

“What part of France are you from?” she asked me, narrowing her eyes in suggestive flirtation.

“I’m not French, I’m an American here on vacation.” I replied, nervously gulping my 14 year old scotch, feeling like a child of the same age.

“Where are you from in America?”

“California, southern California, Orange County,” I said quickly, trying to preempt her next two questions with unnecessary detail.

“You speak French very well,” she said coyly, looking at me through narrowed eyes and flashing her nicotine-stained teeth in what must have been an attempt at a suggestive smile.

“Thank you,” I said, looking away from her. I wanted to pretend she wasn't there, so I started carefully reading every alcohol label on the shelves in front of me. This seemed to ease my nervous discomfort. I was wondering how they pronounce Bunnahabhain in Scotland when she started talking again.

“Can I sit next to you?” she asked, almost shyly. How odd, I thought, that she is playing this game with me. I knew I should have left then, but my scotch was terribly expensive and I couldn’t bring myself to leave it half finished. Before I could make up my mind, she was sitting next to me.

She began to interrogate me, feigning interest in my hobbies, in law school, in whatever she could to keep me talking. I was less than obliging and kept all my responses as terse as possible, taking long slow sips of my scotch in the middle of sentences.

“This is a caberet, not just a bar,” she said, smiling at me again with her squinty eyes and yellow teeth. “It is a private club. My friends and I are dancers here.”

I looked at her with my best attempt at seeming obtuse. Frustrated, she took my non-responsiveness as a sign that I was either very weak linguistically or mentally.

“We’re strippers,” she said, cutting to the chase.

“I see.” That’s what I always say when I don’t know what else to say. Sometimes it fools people into thinking I am thinking something deep. I must have picked it up from Chauncey Gardner in Being There.

“Would you like to buy me a glass of champagne?” she asked. She had probably told herself that if this was going to happen, she would have to hold my hand through the steps.

“How much is it?”

“We have small glasses for 22 Euros and large ones for 44. I suggest that you buy me large glass.” Again, that disgusting smile. She really wasn’t helping her cause. There was no way I was paying over $50 for a glass of champagne, so I went on the offensive.

“What does it come with?” She looked shocked and offended. I had broken the code of courtesy between man and stripper.

After a few seconds, her emotion turned from indignation to self-pity and she began to think about her youth, not so long ago, when being turned down by an able-bodied young man in a deserted bar would have been impossible. I almost felt sorry for her.

“Look, I just wanted to have a drink before bed. I’m a student and I can’t afford to buy you drinks or anything else. Besides, I have a girlfriend.”

Outside, I laughed at my naivety. What did I think five young women in “fuck me” dresses were doing in a deserted bar in a deserted city? I laughed at my awkwardness, at my stubborn insistence on finishing my drink, at my revulsion toward the overripe stripper on the hustle. I felt like Holden Caulfield.

I couldn’t wait to go back to my squeaky little bed and forget all about my encounter with the nicotine-stained narrow-eyed champagne-thirsty stripper. I couldn’t wait to forget that I am 22 and afraid of sexual solicitation.
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Compounded Miscalculations Can Result in Huge Errors

The last time I visited New York, I met up with two of my friends from Paris whom I hadn't seen in ages. We went to a very smart, quiet bar somewhere in the West Village. It might as well have been a bar in Paris. The lights were almost completely off, creating an air of intimacy. Each small round table could seat four people at most and in the middle was a tiny flickering candle that accentuated the facial contortions of whoever happened to be leaning across the table to make a point. As my friends and I fell deeper into conversation, we all three began invading the candlelight, sometimes all at the same time. I realized how good it was to see them again.


As the cigarette butts kept piling up in the ashtray and our black cocktail straws lay strewn across the table by the dozens, the conversation became more personal. One of my friends had just been dumped by his girlfriend. He had a thing for Eastern European beauties and she definitely fit the bill. The break up had really shaken him up and made him reevaluate everything in his life. He was a smart, successful young man with a blazing bright future. He had been to all the right schools, his parents were both incredibly successful; he was well read, well traveled, well spoken, had a great sense of humor and was always up for an adventure. But she had left him for a guy with his own home alarm installation business. She said that he worked too hard, that while he was traveling four days a week to Tennessee for his consulting job she had started seeing this other guy. This other guy had time for her, she had told him. He may not be as smart, but she respected him for having his own business and for being there when she needed him.

"What did I do it all for?" my friend asked. "When I was a kid, deciding what to do in my life, I thought to myself that if I went to a good school, got a good job, made good money and had some adventures along the way, I would be the perfect guy for any girl. I thought I could be with the girl I want and make her totally happy because she couldn't find anyone better. Now, I work 70 hours a week, I spend half my time in Tennessee, I spend all the money I make on my tiny apartment and drinks at bars, and my girlfriend left me for some nobody, some guy without even a college degree who installs alarms. Where did I fuck up so bad? If I had known this was all pointless ten years ago, I would have just dropped out and done all the things I wanted to do, instead of the things I thought I was supposed to do."

The emotions really resonated with me. I remembered the times in my 10th grade English class that I would stare at that gorgeous girl in the back corner who always wore low cut tank tops and a push up bra. We were constantly writing in-class essays and, when I ran low on motivation and my hand would start to get numb from writing so quickly, I would look up and just stare at her beauty. "If I do well on this essay, I can get a good grade in this class, and if I do well in this class, I can do well this semester, and if that happens, then I can do well this year. And if I keep doing well in high school, I can go to a good college, and eventually I can be successful. And when I'm successful, I can be with a girl like her." The logic seemed as infallible then as it seems absurd now.

In reflecting back on all this, and in thinking of my friend's predicament, I thought of the following parable:

A young boy once yearned for love and happiness as a poor man yearns for wealth. So he looked around to see what women liked and thought, women like guys in really nice clothes, a really well dressed guy. The clothes are a metaphor for accomplishments and titles and prestige, things with which people adorn themselves throughout life. So the boy set about acquiring money and pieces of clothing. And he bought some beautiful things at very dear prices.

And then one day he put it all on and strolled down the street, and he had a bounce in his step and a grin on his chin. And he looked at all the women and thought, "Surely they'll love me now! Behold how well clothed I am!" But to his dismay and disbelief, he was no more loved than when he was 10. And he couldn't see why! Men in far less refined garments were walking with women who seemed to really enjoy their company. Why was he not happy now, draped in the clothing of his accomplishments?

And then he saw a freshly cleaned window reflecting the light off itself. He caught his image in it, and he understood. The clothing didn't fit the man. Though draped in fine cloth, he looked like a beggar still. Because all this time, he had not done anything to grow himself into the clothing, into his accomplishments, to better himself from the inside.

Being superficial himself, he had judged the world to be the same. But the world was far more perceptive than he and quickly saw the fraud beneath the finely woven threads, saw the poor and hungry spirit of a little boy draped in the garb of a successful man, saw how his clothes hung awkwardly about his limbs, how ill they fit and suited his demeanor. And seeing himself thusly in the reflective glass, the man bowed his head and strolled on idly, meandering about the streets more lost than when he was a child.

And although I comforted my friend that night and told him that she just wasn't the one, that she didn't appreciate him, that she wasn't good enough for him, I couldn't help but wonder if he was right, if somewhere along the way we had just gotten it all wrong.

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I nominate the head of marketing at Goldfishes as the new Secretary of Education

I've wanted to start a blog for a long time now, but -- like paying the money I owe the City of Chicago (or Societe Generale, or SFR, or the Gas Company, or whoever is financing my student loans) -- I never got around to it.

Last night my roommate Ben and I were sitting around watching Reno 911 when I offered him some Goldfishes. "I love 'fishes cause they're soo delicious, gone goldfishin'!" I said to him as I handed over the bag. I just sat there and shoveled goldfishes into my mouth, dazed in a whirlpool of my prepubescent nostalgia. After about 15 seconds, Ben started to talk; apparently he'd been thinking the whole time I was trying to find out how many goldfish would fit in my mouth.

"You realize how genius the marketing for kids' products is? I mean, the fact that you remember that stupid jingle after all these years, what does that tell you? These people knew exactly what created memories for kids and they used all the elements in the commercials they made. Can you imagine if they used that same skill to teach kids things instead of trying to sell them junk?"

"That would be unbelievable. You would sit at home and learn about math and science through an amazing series of jingles and adorable animated characters. You would never forget anything ever. We would have the best-educated kids in the world." I said back, warming up to the idea.



"Yeah, a guy would come up to you and ask, 'so, you know about quantum dynamics right?' and you would just look at him, insulted, and say, 'of course I know about quantum dynamics, you think I was never six years old sitting at home watching tv all day?'"

"Yeah dude, and the quantum dynamics cartoon would be on when everyone's parents are at work. So the more you know about quantum dynamics, the less your mother loved you. You can tell what kind of childhood people had based on how sick they are at quantum dynamics. Someone comes up to you and starts complaining about their childhood and how their mother was never around, and all you have to say back to them is 'Woah woah woah. Your mother wasn't around? Let me tell you a thing or two about quantum dynamics.' Quantum dynamics would be the cross that unloved children would have to bear the rest of their lives, and like the stupid goldfishes jingle, they'd never be able to forget it."

"Do you realize if we had this in America we would have the smartest, most educated people? The way this country absorbs whatever commercials feed them...if we could turn that into a way of delivering educational material..."

And then we both went silent for another 30 seconds as we contemplated the possibilities of a nation educated on jingles and animation.

"Ben!" I shouted, cause that's what I do when I get excited about an idea, "Ben, they already do this in Japan! In Japan, they use all kinds of media to teach kids crazy stuff. Remember the other day how you were telling me the reason the Japanese crushed our auto industry wasn't that they had better technology but that they had better management? Well guess what my friend Yohei used to do all day when we were kids. He would play this video game that made no sense to me. This was a baseball video game, but instead of playing baseball, you were the manager of the baseball team. So instead of using the controller to throw a pitch or hit a home run, you use it to decide the batting order, to deal with injuries, to manage the team finances and create revenue. And then once you have all your plans set, you sit back and watch the team play to see if you end up winning. Isn't that insane? While we were playing games that glorified the superstar athletes, Japanese kids were playing video games that taught them to be managers."

The ideas were rolling freely now, and I could tell Ben had something really good to say. But just as he was forming his thought, both of us noticed the TV again. Reno 911 was still on and Terry (or Tear Bear as he's affectionately called) was selling blow jobs at Tacos Tacos Tacos Tacos. The Reno police are on the scene, about to arrest him for prostitution.

"How much are you charging for a blowjob Terry?" the cop asks him.
"$2."
"$2?! Terry, look, the special here at Tacos Tacos Tacos Tacos costs $4.09. Don't you have any dignity?"
"Yeah. But my blowjobs don't come with fries and a drink..."

What were we talking about again? Oh well, let's just keep watching TV. Read more!