I Just Want My Pants Back

I Just Want My Pants Back.

by David Rosen.

FOR RACHEL, d.a.m.n IT.

All of man"s problems stem from his inability to sit in a quiet room alone.

-BLAISE PASCAL

1.

I was a bored and hungry mammal. I lived in a small apartment on Perry Street that had a working fireplace, but only if you could find logs the size of cupcakes, as my hearth had the dimensions of an Easy-Bake Oven. I sat on my fire escape and watched happy couples come and go, finishing the rhyme in my head, "talking of Michelangelo." But they were never really discussing Michelangelo. Marc Jacobs, who had opened a store on the corner, was a more likely subject. I wasn"t bitter. I didn"t want a girlfriend, not really, at least not right away. But I could have used a functional v.a.g.i.n.a. It had been a while since I"d had access to one of those, and my p.e.n.i.s kept reminding me how accommodating they could be.

Sunday was winding down, and the streetlights flickered to life. It was early April and the day had held hope that spring had finally arrived, but as the sun set a cool breeze informed us we weren"t quite there yet. I zipped up my sweatshirt and wished once again that I smoked. It just seemed like something that might be nice to do, romantic. I stared at Hunan Pan across the street; soon I would call them as I always did, and they would bring me my supper. It was getting a little embarra.s.sing, though.

"h.e.l.lo, this Hunan Pan."

"Hi, can I get an order for delivery?"

"You ninety-nine Perry, number Three-A?"

"Um, yeah."

"Steamed vegetable dumplings and moo-shu chicken with extra pancake?"

"No, um, the dumplings and moo-shu beef."

"You sure?"

Sigh. "Fine. Give me the chicken."

"Okay. Fifteen minute, Mr. Snuka."

They may have known my voice, but they"d never know my name. I wasn"t Mr. Snuka, aka Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, the wrestler from the eighties. I was Jason Strider, a Jewish guy with sideburns. Ever since I moved to New York three years ago, I had used pseudonyms when ordering in. Raphael"s, my second most frequent takeout, knew me as Sir Peter O"Toole.

I slipped back through the window into my apartment and began weighing options for the evening. Common sense held that I should eat my dinner, watch The Simpsons The Simpsons like the rest of my demographic, and get a reasonable night of sleep before work the next day. like the rest of my demographic, and get a reasonable night of sleep before work the next day.

But my p.e.n.i.s, my d.a.m.n p.e.n.i.s. He just wouldn"t shut up. And I had to admit, his argument wasn"t without merit, or logic. His basic premise: "Any girl out tonight might be just as desperate as you." I offered that I had been out a lot this week; the last two nights hadn"t ended until way into the morning, and even now a slight hangover hummed behind my eyes. But Lil" Petey, as I called him, was persuasive. The problem with being a boy is the constant struggle between listening to your brain and listening to your d.i.c.k. The problem with being me was that somehow my d.i.c.k had acquired the argumentative skills of a debate team captain. Or perhaps I was just weak.

I took a quick shower and had just barely gotten a towel around me as the buzzer rang, announcing the arrival of my supper. I opened the door a crack and handed a small Hispanic man a few crumpled bills in exchange for his one crumpled bag. I quickly pulled on jeans and, over a long-sleeved T-shirt, a short-sleeved one that read "Henry Rollins Is No Fun." Then I began to eat straight from the cardboard boxes. Yum, the taste of deja vu. Once finished, I went back into the bathroom and fussed with my hair a bit; it was the same shortish, messyish style that I had sported in one iteration or another since the bad Steve Perry bi-level back in junior high. I looked at the circles under my eyes. Darker and deeper every day. They were the reason I had, about six months ago, forgone my contacts and started wearing gla.s.ses, thick black frames I might"ve stolen from Elvis Costello, if we had similar prescriptions. Plus, the first night I had gone out with my gla.s.ses on, I had made out with a ridiculously hot girl. Call me superst.i.tious.

I fished through the papers on my coffee table and found the flyer that a random woman with a disturbing number of facial piercings had given me on the subway. THE L LIZEE B BAND, SUNDAY AT 8:30, 8:30, AT THE AT THE U UMBRELLA R ROOM. The band was named for the girl herself. She had dyed black hair and wore an ill-fitting business suit; it was a look that said, "It"s because I have to, okay?" She"d approached me and every other young person on the F train, given us flyers, and invited us to see her band. The Umbrella Room was literally five blocks from my house. And eight-thirty was nice and early. It seemed worth the risk. Lil" Petey 1, Jason 0.

It was almost eight, so I cannonballed the a.s.s-end of a joint with the remaining third of a two-liter Diet c.o.ke and let them race each other to see which could get to my brain first. For me, Diet c.o.ke and marijuana went together like ice-cold milk and an Oreo cookie. Like Jacoby and Meyers. Like sha-nah-nah-nah yippity-dip-da-do. I hit the lights, locked my door, and let gravity take me down the stairs like a slightly bent Slinky. Once I was outside, the cool night air felt great against my skin. I searched my mind for an adjective better than "great." I had been an English major, after all; I had been taught to avoid mundane adjectives. Refreshing, soothing, bracing...nope, "great" really did best describe the feeling.

I turned up Hudson and looked across the street at the people hanging out in front of the White Horse Tavern. The White Horse was where Dylan Thomas supposedly mumbled, "I"ve had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that"s the record..." before keeling over and dying a few days later. It"s an unproven story, but that didn"t stop busloads of tourists in matching sweat suits from rolling up every Thursday through Sat.u.r.day. Tonight, however, it looked as if just a few folks from the neighborhood were hanging out by the door, enjoying the evening. One was Patty, the fiftysomething bohemian woman who lived across the hall from me. Gray-haired, a bit of a mutterer, she wore sandals all year round: rain, snow, locusts-sandals. I never used to see her much, but lately we"d been b.u.mping into each other in the building more often. I imagined her to be some sort of lesbian poet who chain-smoked cigarillos and once let Allen Ginsberg sleep in her bathtub because he was "tired and also filthy, just filthy." The one thing I did know from peeking at her rent bill (our landlord taped them to our doors like your mother might tape a note to "clean your room") was that she paid only $210 a month for the same apartment I paid a grand for. And a thousand bucks was considered a deal. So I kept an ear open every time she left her apartment, lest she fall down the stairs and I could inherit the New York dream. I was joking, but she had once given me a card with her "lawyer"s" number on it, just in case anything should happen to her. Then she gave me an orange she wasn"t going to eat.

"Hey, Patty!" I yelled across the street.

She waved. "Hi, neighbor."

I waved back but quickened my step. I was stoned and easily distracted and didn"t want to fly off on a tangent. High, I often went too far for too little. No, I was on a mission. I was going to see this LiZee group. They might just become my new favorite band. Maybe I would buy a T-shirt and start a blog.

Going to a bar alone is no big deal for some people, but for me it was always a bit of an awkward experience. Somehow it always felt as if everyone were looking at me. "Did he come by himself?" "Did he get stood up by a girl?" "Poor guy might be suicidal, let"s step away in case he tries to off himself and we get hit with flesh shrapnel; this is a new shirt." It wasn"t something I did often, but I liked the adventure of it, although I had to deal with the slight anxiety as well. The pot both helped and hurt. It motivated me out of the house and led me to believe I might be the funniest person ever to roam the planet, but once inside the bar it sometimes gave me the inner confidence of a man whose fly was stuck open.

This was a side effect of partying that my friends and I called "The Fear." Mild paranoia was just a touch of The Fear, hardly worth bothering with; a full dose really came the morning after, a bottomless pit of regret and shame fueled by drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, and the insidious feeling that you had somehow just f.u.c.ked up monumentally. I had learned to live with The Fear, but we were not very good roommates and I believed he was using my toothbrush.

Luckily, when I arrived at the Umbrella, the LiZee band was already onstage tuning up, so I felt like just another guy who had come to check them out. The Umbrella was a tiny bar with a tiny stage; it was pretty dingy, with an, um, umbrella motif. There was one black one nailed to the brick wall behind the bar. I made my way toward it and praised Vishnu that there was an open stool. I climbed aboard and ordered a Bud; it seemed like a Bud moment.

The band continued to sound-check. The guitarist, a balding, rotund dude whose tight T-shirt revealed a m.u.f.fin-top of flab over the waist of his jeans, stood next to the ba.s.sist, a shockingly thin poster-boy for meth awareness. Together they looked like before and after, plus side effects. Their random plucking morphed into actual playing and suddenly LiZee started singing. She was no longer confined to her business suit; now she wore a white shirt and ripped pink tights. She was rubbing against the monitors provocatively, shrieking pa.s.sionately, going for a sort of Karen O vibe. Even the most tone-deaf could hear she was missing. The only thing that kept me from leaving after song two was inertia. They had some d.a.m.n comfortable bar stools at the Umbrella.

A girl squeezed between me and the guy on the next stool, who I was sure was related to someone in the band named Jimmy. Or else maybe he just liked to yell, "You rip, Jimmy!" The girl had plastic gla.s.ses similar to mine but tortoisesh.e.l.l; her hair was in pigtails. She held her money up but was overlooked. Petey stirred.

"Want me to get the bartender?" I asked her over the music.

She smiled. "Thanks, could you ask her for a Jameson"s, please?" She handed me a ten.

I took her money. "Uh-huh, no problem." Just a single drink, she was probably here alone. My crotch was gloating already. I made eye contact with the bartender, who shot back the "I see you but wait your f.u.c.king turn" look. An awkward moment pa.s.sed. "She saw me, but I think she"s making a martini for someone first," I said to the girl.

"That"s cool. So how do you know this band?" She had a smattering of freckles, and she did a sweet squinty thing when she pushed her gla.s.ses up her nose. She was so cute it hurt.

"I don"t, actually." I told her the train story. "I was sitting home bored and I figured what the h.e.l.l." I was hoping I had good breath, as she was fairly close to me. I dug in my pocket for a mint. Nothing.

"I don"t know them either," she said. "I was walking past and I saw them setting up so I came in to watch. What do you think?" She twirled her hair, just like girls do on TV.

"Um...what do you you think?" I responded, just as the bartender leaned in. "Jameson"s please," I said, smiling at her. think?" I responded, just as the bartender leaned in. "Jameson"s please," I said, smiling at her.

"Rocks?" She sneered. She could hardly tolerate me. I f.u.c.king hated bartenders like that. Why the anger? You"re at work and a band is playing, life is not so awful. I looked at my pigtailed friend.

"Neat please," she said. The bartender fixed it and I paid, giving the change to Pigtails. "I"m Jane," she said to me, holding up her drink.

"Jason." I clinked her gla.s.s with the Bud, which was getting low. "Nice to meet you."

"You too." She sipped and smiled.

The band played for another half hour but the last thing we did was listen. Jane started telling me about a "gorgeous" Swiss Mountain Dog she had seen on the way to the bar that had made her really want a puppy, and I responded with a story about Daisy, my dog growing up, that didn"t really go anywhere except prove that when younger I"d given my dog a pretty queer name. Luckily, the pointless anecdote didn"t put her off. She flashed me a grin, perfect teeth wet with whiskey.

"So, what do you do, Jason?"

The smile hung there, full of promise. I decided not to disappoint it with the truth.

We left before the last E chord died, and walked down Hudson. "So no way, you"re really an orthodontist? I always thought of them as older," said Jane, now wearing a cabbie hat and strolling alongside me. She lived in Brooklyn and we were walking sort of toward a subway. We were near my apartment, but I was feeling a little too chicken to close the deal.

"Well, I"m not like a regular one, like in the "burbs," I said, hands jammed in my pockets. "I"m a downtown, New York City orthodonist. My clientele are all artists and fashion people and their kids. Jeff Koons designed my office, know him?" She nodded. "Our dental chairs look like oversized red tongues, and all my dental hygienists wear big plushy costumes like Barney, but they"re not dinosaurs, it"s all dental-related-they"re like molars and toothbrushes and plaque and stuff. Once Sting came in for a retainer and had me record the whole procedure on a DAT." I lowered my voice. "He"s got a receding gumline, you know."

"Oh my G.o.d, Sting? That"s hilarious." We walked on a bit more. "So what do you want to do now? Do you want to call it a night?"

"Um, I"m up for something. I could get another drink."

"I"m kind of hungry, actually; I didn"t have dinner yet," she said, adjusting her hat. We stopped and looked around. There were no restaurants on the block.

"Well, we could go to my apartment, back there on Perry, and order in. And if you want, I have some weed there." I immediately regretted that choice of word, it sounded so AE. But it didn"t matter.

"That sounds perfect."

We sat on my small green couch. She finished off a slice while I twisted a joint. "Sandinista" by the Clash was in the stereo; not the s.e.xiest choice, but it was what was already in there when I hit PLAY PLAY and I went with it. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I flicked the lighter and inhaled some smoke. Instantly I felt it, a small tingling in my ears and a bit of nervous energy. The toilet flushed and my mind began racing with the fresh THC and adrenaline. This was just too easy. What was up with this girl? What if she rifled through my wallet in the middle of the night and stole my Discover card? What if she had a p.e.n.i.s? I made a mental note to check for an Adam"s apple. I heard her gargling; she must"ve found my Duane Reade generic mint mouthwash. Christ, how embarra.s.sing. I should"ve spent the extra forty cents for a name-brand variety. and I went with it. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I flicked the lighter and inhaled some smoke. Instantly I felt it, a small tingling in my ears and a bit of nervous energy. The toilet flushed and my mind began racing with the fresh THC and adrenaline. This was just too easy. What was up with this girl? What if she rifled through my wallet in the middle of the night and stole my Discover card? What if she had a p.e.n.i.s? I made a mental note to check for an Adam"s apple. I heard her gargling; she must"ve found my Duane Reade generic mint mouthwash. Christ, how embarra.s.sing. I should"ve spent the extra forty cents for a name-brand variety.

The door opened and she sat down next to me. I handed her the joint and took a sip of her water. We started a halting conversation about G.o.d knows what, both of us waiting for the inevitable to happen. I put my hand on her leg and took the joint gently from her fingertips. Joe Strummer sang "Italian mobster shoots a lobster, seafood restaurant gets outta hand..." I started saying something about how the Clash were really influenced by Jamaican dub and then, I don"t know who started it, but after seconds of leaning closer and closer to each other, we started kissing deeply.

The first trading of tongues officially ended my months of rejection, and I resisted the urge to hop up and perform a victory dance-an Icky shuffle or some spirited clogging. After what felt like the right amount of time, I gently reached up her skirt and made with the artful rubbing of the naughty pieces. It was fun sometimes to go v.a.g.i.n.a before going b.o.o.bs, kept "em guessing. Not that I didn"t get to those, stat. One nipple was pierced with a hoop, but I didn"t let that throw me; a few years back I had learned the hard way that the most important thing with those was simply not to yank them.

Jane unbuckled my belt and released Petey, who stood at attention. The same thought ran through my mind that ran through my mind every single time I hooked up: "I can"t believe this girl is actually going to touch it!" Yes, every single time, it was like David beating Goliath or the apparition of Mary on a tortilla chip. A bona fide miracle.

After some grappling and half-naked clumsiness, we started toward the bedroom but never made it. As she leaned against my wobbly refrigerator and I f.u.c.ked her from behind, I could hear the meager contents-an almost empty jar of Welch"s grape jelly, some ancient rolls of film, and an economy-sized Heinz ketchup-fall and rattle around. She looked back at me mid-stroke and snarled, "I want you to f.u.c.k me in your fridge!" She ripped open the door and lay her chest across the wire shelf, her face wedged back near the light and a partially crushed box of baking soda that had been there since the dawn of man. "C"mon, do it!" she yelled, her voice m.u.f.fled. "f.u.c.k me!"

I thrusted and thrusted, pushing her deeper and deeper into my kitchen appliance. I was grinning like a lunatic. What a fantastic e-mail this was going to make tomorrow.

2.

I awoke alone and surprisingly rested. Jane had taken off shortly after the s.e.x; not only did she live in Brooklyn, but apparently she worked there too, so there was no sense really in her crashing at my house. I"d walked her outside and helped her to hail a cab. She gave me a peck good night, told me she had left her number upstairs, hopped in, and was off.

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and allowed myself a celebratory smile, for lo, the long s.e.xual drought was finally over. It had been four months. Tumbleweeds had begun blowing through my bedroom. A dry spell like that makes a man start to question his haircut, his clothes, if he has done anything to anger the G.o.ds. I had survived the slump the only way I knew how-positive thinking and excessive masturbation.

With girls, for me, it was always feast or famine. I was either 007 or the Elephant Man. Nothing nothing nothing, I"ll never touch a girl again, then kapow! I"m kissing one girl and I have a date with a different girl later in the week. The fact that one female was interested in me seemed proof enough to others that I was worthy of fondling. Unfortunately, and more frequently, the reverse held true. So to have any hope of attracting prey, I had to keep blood in the water, like a shark fisherman. It was the Chum Theory; I hoped it would apply again now.

It was getting late. I hopped up, threw on my jeans, brushed my teeth-did only the things one deems necessary when rushing to get to work. Corners cut included showering, putting on underwear, and eating anything-other than a swallow of mint-flavored toothpaste. As I slipped on my sneakers, I saw that there was no sc.r.a.p of paper with Jane"s phone number in the most obvious place, on top of the coffee table. I looked around on the floor-nothing. d.a.m.n, she must"ve been doing the same thing as me: going out Sunday, simply looking for a little fun. How progressive. I pictured feminists everywhere slow-motion celebrating to "We Are the Champions."

"I feel so used," I joked aloud, smiling. Then the smile faded. Hey, what the f.u.c.k? How come that s.l.u.t didn"t want to marry me? Then I saw it. Her name, number, and e-mail scrawled in the middle of a heart she had drawn on a ripped envelope, hanging on the fridge door. "PS: You need groceries!" Clever girl. Clever, and filthy as all f.u.c.k.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it and was out the door, onto the beautiful old West Village streets. Almost every building had a historic look, stately brownstones that were painstakingly attended to. Except my building, 99 Perry. It was "painted" a pale shade of yellow, the color resembling a dirty towel that had been long forgotten, and was now covered in soot. The front door"s lock was. .h.i.t-or-miss, and the stairwells were creaky and peeling. It was one of the last rent-stabilized buildings in a wealthy neighborhood, and the landlord did as little as he could to keep it standing.

I hustled toward the subway. I was currently employed at a theatrical company, JB Casting. I answered the phone and manned the receptionist area. All of the actors were extra-polite to me, as if I might have pull and be able to help them get parts. It was a little sad, this job, and I had no real interest in it. As my parents might say, I was in the process of finding what I wanted to do with my life. And over the course of the last few months, I had had the epiphany that "casting director" and "receptionist" were two t.i.tles I could cross off my list.

I had graduated with honors from Cornell, but I was an English major who didn"t do all the required reading and owed his diploma to the friendly folks at CliffsNotes. I had even framed the New Testament CliffsNotes New Testament CliffsNotes that had gotten me through my Literature of Religion cla.s.s. I hung the piece on my off-campus apartment"s wall, t.i.tling it, "For Sinners Only." that had gotten me through my Literature of Religion cla.s.s. I hung the piece on my off-campus apartment"s wall, t.i.tling it, "For Sinners Only."

After a couple of road trips down from Ithaca to see bands, I was sold on moving to the city. I had been a DJ at WBVR at school, and I figured I"d be able to find some kind of job in the music industry here, though I didn"t know what. The career center had helped me get a few interviews at radio stations, but they were all in ad sales, which seemed a lot closer to telemarketing than Telecasters. Soon the rent and Hunan Pan bills were looming, so I just looked for any job to cover them until I figured out what I wanted. Truth was, I hadn"t gotten around to doing a full investigation of the music world yet. I was still settling in, and frankly there were a h.e.l.l of a lot more fun things to do here in the meantime. In the two and a half years since I"d arrived, I had worked three different jobs. Well, two, really; I had been a bartender at a bar that had changed names during my tenure, so I counted it as two different jobs. My friends from school mostly had found their niches by now. Even the ski b.u.ms were back from their year in Aspen serving m.u.f.fins to Cher and had found entry-level jobs in PR, not that they"d even known what PR was. I traveled through Europe the summer after graduation. But when I came back, I didn"t see the point in shaving every day and working long hours at something I wasn"t sure I wanted to be doing.

The scary thing was that I was becoming aware that very few people were doing what they wanted to be doing; they just got caught up in whatever they were doing long enough that it became who they were. Or as my dad put it, they had "picked and sticked." I had not. Which I"m sure ate at my folks, because they were textbook pickers and stickers. My parents still lived in the brick house where I grew up, just outside St. Louis, on a street full of brick houses. My mom had been a secretary for a local real estate attorney, Bob Hoefel, Esq., until political correctness came to town. She still worked for him, but now her t.i.tle was "administrative a.s.sistant." My dad was just as loyal to his job. He worked at the same hardware store he"d been at since he was a junior at St. Louis University. Although now he was the owner. Strider"s Hardware. The funny thing about that was, he wasn"t remotely handy. He knew the stock like the back of his hand, he could pontificate on the subtleties that separated Benjamin Moore white dove semi-gloss from Benjamin Moore white dove eggsh.e.l.l, but for the love of G.o.d you didn"t let the man climb a ladder to clean the gutters without a team of firemen holding out one of those "jumper" nets to catch him. His home-improvement mishaps had becoming a running joke between my mom and me.

It was pretty clear a career in home improvement wasn"t his dream. But I felt like maybe dream jobs were a more contemporary desire. It seemed like in his day, a "good job" was all one looked for. Then you put a picture of your wife on your desk in the back office, pumped out a kid, managed a Little League team or two, got chubby from drinking beer and rooting for the perennially lousy Cardinals, and went into minor debt sending your wise-a.s.s son to an Ivy League school, when he could"ve gone to Mizzou for close to nothing. (I felt guilty about that one. But Mizzou had scared the c.r.a.p out of me-it was filled with giant corn-fed heifers of human beings-and like any eighteen-year-old, I felt the urgent need to get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge.) For some reason, my parents thought I might become a lawyer. I was never sure why they envisioned me as a legal eagle, but I supposed they saw how well Mr. Hoefel was doing. "It"s a solid career," they had told me during winter break of senior year, holding out an LSAT prep book they had borrowed from the Richters next door. Cornell was pretty hard, and the last thing I wanted was more school after school. h.e.l.l, I didn"t even know what lawyers did every day, except for what I had gathered watching reruns of Matlock Matlock while hung over. I kept picturing his desk covered with boring legal briefs and dandruff flakes. while hung over. I kept picturing his desk covered with boring legal briefs and dandruff flakes.

Unfortunately New York was the kind of town where the first two questions out of people"s mouths were, "What do you do?" followed by "How much is your rent?" Answering the whole truth to either of those usually wasn"t the best way for me to go, if I was aiming to impress. So frequently I didn"t. And although New Yorkers stayed single or married without kids well into their forties, with cutting-edge European moisturizers or smuggled infant stem cells keeping them young- and fresh-looking, beneath that veneer, they were relentlessly responsible adults. In fact, if adults were some kind of exotic animal species, New York City was their African veldt. People competed for jobs, parking, clothes, apartments, taxis, picnic spots, preschools, brunch reservations, dermatologists, dog-walkers, frozen yogurt, treadmills, Hamptons houses, seats at the movies, you name it. It made me dream about the promise of communism, but I just as soon dismissed it; there were no perfectly taut communist honeys. All those years of sausage and socialism really wreaked h.e.l.l on a girl.

Hence my job at JB"s, to which I was once again about to be tardy. I got to the Twelfth Street 1 train entrance and tumbled down the stairs, pulling out my iPod and headphones as I did. I put it on shuffle, clicked PLAY PLAY, and hoped for a good subway set.

I arrived at the office at Thirty-second and Sixth at about ten-fifteen, or in layman"s terms, an hour and fifteen minutes late. John Barry, the JB in JB Casting, was in his office with the door closed, so I figured I was fairly safe. It was a small office-just me, JB, another a.s.sistant like me named Melinda, and Sara, another agent. The s.p.a.ce itself was a loft that consisted of a large reception area where actors would wait until they were called into a separate room, which contained a Polaroid camera and a video camera. There, one of us, usually Melinda, would film them doing whatever the small part required and then send a tape to the director, who would phone his choices in to John or Sara. It was pretty straightforward, and as far from glitzy Hollywood as one could get.

Melinda was on the phone at the reception desk when I walked in. I sat down beside her, went on the computer we shared, and opened up nytimes.com, my ritual; I figured it was worth seeing whether or not the world was coming to an end imminently before I started working.

Melinda hung up and pushed a few stray brown hairs behind her ear. She had a slightly round face that always sported a deadpan expression; she looked like a smart girl in Barnes & n.o.ble, ready to say something sarcastic about your book choice.

"Good morning." She raised an eyebrow. "Doctor"s appointment, right?"

Melinda had been at JB"s for two years; she was an aspiring playwright, and like me, was only there for the money. Her salary went toward supporting her craft, whereas mine went toward supporting me. She was pretty funny too-if she didn"t live with her girlfriend I might"ve thought about dating her. I had a feeling we"d probably stay friends after one or both of us eventually left JB"s. Although I had thought that same thing about folks at the bartending jobs, and they had vanished into the ether.

"Actually, I got laid last night." I smiled at her and held up my hand, jokingly. "High five?"

"By a girl?"

"Yup." The phone started ringing.

"Well done." She motioned toward the phone. "Maybe that"s her now."

Every day Melinda and I went to grab lunch, and every day I hoped and prayed and promised myself that I would find something to eat other than a turkey sandwich. Foiled again, I sat back down at the receptionist desk, opened up Instant Messenger, and took a bite. There was just nothing else to eat, it seemed. Well, at least today I had bought a different flavor of beverage than my normal Diet c.o.ke-an old-school Dr. Brown"s Black Cherry. Like the White Horse"s patron saint, I was raging against the dying of the light.

On our walk, Melinda reminded me that that night was her last playwriting workshop. They were going to do a "table read" of her play, and then after, it was going to shape-shift into a party; "Jon" from her cla.s.s had some sort of giant loft in the East Village, perfect for such an event. I was definitely going, I told her.

I logged into IM and wrote my friend Tina to see if she wanted to join, although odds were she already had plans. Tina was the sort of girl who epitomized the Reggie Jackson moniker, "the straw that stirs the drink." Somehow she knew everything and everyone, a one-stop shop for social life. Even in college, where we had met, she was that way. She simply loved to party the same way most people loved to breathe-regularly, deeply.

Now she was a web designer at an Internet ad agency; she made a lot of banner ads for pharmaceutical products, but every once in a while she"d get to build a really cool site for an independent film or something. About two years ago when she started there, we all thought Tina was going to be rich. The firm couldn"t really afford to pay her much, so they gave her all these stock options that promised big money if they got bought out. But of course they didn"t, and there went that. Her firm went from seventy to forty people in about two months. How she kept her job she could only attribute to one thing. Her b.o.o.bs. She was proud of them; h.e.l.l, we all were.

However, I had certainly never touched them. Tina and I had kissed once, early freshman year, but it didn"t take. It wasn"t completely yucky, like Frenching a sibling or accidentally getting slipped the tongue by an overly friendly dog, but something was off, it felt wrong. It was unspoken, but mutual. We were just to be close friends. In fact, we were often each other"s wingman.