Hello there. Excuse me. Sorry, I thought that was the. That you were. If I could just. Get past. Phew—not much room. There we go—my space, your space. Hi. What an evening it is. Trees in the night…the wind in the trees, sighing—or soughing, is that what they call it? Soughing—rhymes with allowing! Or bluffing? Means what the wind does. Whoosh. The wind is like—well, so many things the wind can do, if you think about it. Yep. It’s quieter out here, you hear the wind, the bassline inside, alone together, up here, out here, the city lights. I once had a place with a balcony like this one. You know you look down and the cars are just like—like little ant cars!

Hiya. How ya doin’? Kinda windy, hmmm? You’re like a friend of his, right? That’s cool. I’m a friend of hers—college. Beautiful ceremony, yeah. You can just tell they’re going to be very. They’re not around, so we’ll have to introduce each other. …I mean ourselves to each other, then later we could you know introduce each other to others. Ha ha ha! The point being is that so I couldn’t help noticing you here all by your er lonesome. Or but so like when after the last dance I spotted you heel-toeing around the band to go or come out here to take a call or meet someone or find someone or -body or just for a breath of air, me-time, which is an item, that last one, we all need, time to time, these days, the hecticness, oh gosh do I understand that. Um. You closed the French doors but not all the way. Is it just me or. Seemed like summer was just flaring up, now here we are, days shorter and. End of another cycle, time to. That’s just it, that’s it: September twentysomething, the real new years eve.

No thanks, don’t smoke. Used to, haven’t since. I didn’t come out here to bum a smoke. What’s that? No, I’d rather you didn’t. Put them away. Kidding! I’m kidding. Of course I don’t mind if you smoke. Course I don’t mind! What am I gonna be like: “Ohhh, I know we’re outside in the designated area that the funny sign on the front door told us to go to and you asked but I just have this prejudice you need to respect!” Yee-ah right. That would be like a vegetarian not letting people order meat! It’s like these days we’re too obsessed with what other people might think. Like people we don’t even know will get all pissy if we act like ourselves, if we do what we want. What kind of logic is that, not to be critical. I mean yeah, it’s a wedding and we have to smile at strangers, but it’s still a party! Have we all gotten so uptight with the groupthink morality that we can’t party? Puff away, I say! It’s all good.

It’s very nice to meet you. That dress is very. White polka dots like. Said roots you. Janine? We worked on the newspaper in college! Well she worked, edited, I used to write these little pieces. Just little op-eds. Little screeds. She’d lop off 400 adjectives and run them. Oh, political, you could say, political. That idealistic age. Telling truth to power. Critiquing the American Empire. I was a Chomskyan then. I was in a club. We filled out the club form and the uni gave us a deasbestosed alcove to gripe in. We used to congratulate each other for being too subversive to be allowed to meet anywhere else. We used to discuss hegemony. The university signed this exclusivity thing with Pepsi and so one night we came scampering around in black and we were gonna subtly alter all the Pepsi logos and slogans, you know, reveal the latent content, but it was taking too long so we just tore them down and kicked the shit out of them. …He-JEH-men-ee. It’s like…the way power tricks you into thinking you’re free. Freedom is the one necessary illusion. Or how the media fools you into, you know, buy, buy, buy, before you die! Fuck it, I never really knew what it meant. We needed a word for what we all felt. Or just that we felt so much. Back then. It was easy to feel…things. Hmm? Fine, feeling just fine, thanks. You? Let me loosen this noose a little…mmm. It is hot in there, no? Gotta breathe, breathe.

Personally, I thought the dinner was good. You could argue if it was great, but it was good—just on a kind of practical other-things-being-equal minimum basis. It’s all relative. You have to be realistic about these kind of mass-catered events. Some people just expect too much, like the World owes them perfection—you hear them complaining all the time. There’s a YouTube about that, I’ll send you the link. I had the chicken and the chicken was basically decent, just my opinion. Not mega dry or stringy or greasy. Poulet avec sauce brune, I guess you’d have to call it. And it was definitely well-cooked, cooked through, no pink inside, no salmonella, I checked, I always do, I send things back if I need to. Was it organic or even grain-fed? Hard to say, the way they Hiroshimaed the hell outta that meat. So what if it was a tad overdone and looked kinda scungy—it was meat and two veg, it filled us up, we’re not hungry anymore, what more do people want? Living in luxury, carping all the time.

Not that I’m a foodie or anything, I don’t know the finer points, mostly take-aways for me, the single life, on the go, General Tao’s, hyena digestion, I can live on trail mix and Gatorade for two weeks. There’s this hairy Turkish guy with a fruit stand, I grab bananas in my stride and point at my watch as he grins at me and I stop by on Fridays to pay my tab and talk hockey. So it’s not every day I get a kind of sit down, cutlery from the outside in, fresh pepper sir, more wine sir, pass the radicchio. …How was the salmon? You’re a vegetarian then? No? So why would you have the salmon? Oh you like it. Personally I find salmon a little—fishy. Well it can be. It’s that weedy kind of cilantro taste, childhood games in dank basements. Stuff they would dare you to stick in your mouth without looking. It’s just leaves but it’s then you find out what you’re gonna be fearing all the too-long rest of your life. Or am I starting to believe what they say about mercury levels in fish? Or did the mercury make me forget? Maybe I’ve never had it cooked right. I’ll admit I don’t come home to a plate of perfectly grilled salmon, wild rice, paired wine. Maybe I should’ve tried the salmon. I make a certain effort to try new things. That’s something we could all stand to do more of if you think about it.

So where ya from? Oh really? Never been there but I’ve heard it’s very. Yeeeeees. Unaffected by the you know, the financial difficulties—or is it that it tanked but’s winding up way up on the deal, creative destruction: a stimulused, genetically modified phoenix from the ashes. Me I grew up kind of all plover the ace. I got to like the moving around, the meeting new relatives in new towns. I think that’s why “after” college I just pulled up stakes and taught English in Korea. …South, south. No, I’m not—I mean do I look Korean to you? Jew take out your contacts? Cause most Koreans are sort of like, you know, Asian-looking. I’m not racist, I just call it like I see it. Anyway, this was before everyone’s cousin started heading out there, Japan and Korea, padding out the résumé, bumming around Thailand till the money runs out, the year abroad, the gentleman’s tour, and it was just gonna be this summer thing, a Christian fellowship. They had this nicely naughty Konglish name for it, Summer Tingling Delight Baptist Initiative, yar, shortbussing around the countryside with smiling virgins, having Faith, hymning in rhythm, helping out at community centres, eating gramma’s pajeon…I mean not that I’m into the whole belief thing, like I’m gonna invite you to my church and wax architectural and introduce you to my interventionist god, but my parents were like nominally Protestants—if they had to fill out a form or something, they would tick that, tick it in ink, tick it with pride, if they were allowed to ask that on forms anymore, would make them feel less alone, decline of the whatever, and my dad’s orca-fat boss at the construction’d done missionary work there in some retro decade and still had the contacts so the whole thing came up what you could call organically for a post-break up young apocalyptic/romantic guy who’d outgrown school and all I had to do was shave and climb into a clean shirt and shoot a rainy afternoon of nine-ball with him and not mention his oceanic sweating and tell him everything I did I did with god’s help and sorry, I’m parched—going to get another drink inside, would you like one? Oh, are you sure? Even a cranapple, glass of water, nothing like that? OK. You don’t mind waiting a second for me? What is it they type? Bee are bee!

…’ello, ’ello again! No, I’m not double f-fisting, I brought this one for you. In case you change your mind. It’s a Long Island Iced Tea, it’s a nice summer drink, ice in it, refreshing, an -ade. Like having a Snapple. I’ll just leave it over here, you can try it if you want. We just met so it’s no peer, no pressure. I mean, it’s a wedding, it’s open bar, all friends here—what’re weddings for, let yourself go—said hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. …That was a song by Lou Reed. Let it be what it is. For tomorrow we may all.

So yeah, ’swas saying, I stayed in Korea for a coupla years teaching English is about the gist of it, didn’t mean to go on’n’on’n’on, but hey, once you stop forgetting you start remembering…. No, I don’t go back to visit anymore. There was a girl, Korean girl, hair like a mirror down her back, really, you could check your own hair in it, on the platform after the night train to Busan. Flights to Korea not so cheap neither. Huh-uh. Nope, I don’t speak Korean. Korean’s impossible, no one can speak Korean. That’s why they’re so reserved. I mean when I came back all my friends were coming out of grad school and’d moved in with their significants, and now they’re onto careers and screaming little why-nots and floating-point mortgages and hybrid minivans and you might think they sold out to some bourgeois false consciousness but no, there’s nothing to sell out, no one’s buying, they’re really the same as always, it’s me that changed. I mean we’re all changing, that’s what time is, the little nickname we have for change, as if we liked it, but I changed more. And not just because I was always going to, if you follow me.

Can I tell you something? I have a theory. Not just changed but actually became another person that didn’t exist before. I mean literally. Not in the newspaper sense of literally but actually literally. I know it sounds kind of—whoa!—but that’s why people had to make up religions and talk about finding god and being born again and all that, just to explain it, that cosmic feeling, because it does happen and it is scary. It’s a paradigm shift. It took me a long time to see that. Like I know my ID says I’m the same person, but that’s just for their bureaucratic convenience, they don’t wanna hafta handle the implications of people born in mid-life, I mean it would be easier for them if there were no people at all, just trackable assemblages of data, and it’s like when you get beyond that, beyond what you were supposed to see, and you’ve finally given birth to yourself, which is exhausting, and I know other people it’s happened to, life can be a game of catch-up, because you’ve had this paradigm shift but externally everyone’s talking to the old paradigm, like you’re out of phase, you’re fricken mediated, you know what I mean, so yeah, you play catch up, but you better know what you’re catching up to or you won’t know when you get there, or if you do know, the old you will be there when you arrive and he turns around and smacks his forehead, like, Dude, I was handling things over here so you could go over there, you fucktard! Talk about embarrassing, am I right? Very. Ha. I know you know what I mean.

Hey, this is great chatting with you! I mean it. I’m glad we got to eat each mother! Tell you the truth, I don’t always enjoy parties, weddings, do’s. You know how people can flop their chops, talk without speaking, darkness my old friend. Smile to your face then knives out. I almost didn’t come. I have this screenplay to finish. Yeah, like for TV. I used to hate TV until I started watching it. Now I love TV—there I said it and I don’t care who knows! I used to brag that I didn’t even own one, scribbling away, slurping ramen. Korea. Shopping around drafts three five and six of the stranger in a strange land novel, The Tunnel at The End of The Light. A tale of innocence lost, alienation, cross-cultural affections of the gaijin can’t get no joy luck—the mental borders, the borders inside, didja get it, didja get it? Got my sledgehammer right here—kapowie! Thank Christ on a crutch that’s all done with. Now I’m a commercial writer, I write for the industry, I write for people, not at people. Is what it comes down to fundamentally. I'm an entertainer, I'm shameless, I just try to make people happy, give them a moment of uplifting whatever away from the day-to-day screwjob. And when you get down to it, who has time for more than that these days? Because I'm sorry but what else is there, is what people fail to understand. Life's too short to have to roll up your pants and go wading into the toxic sludge of someone else's semi-autobiographical bullshit.

What? Oh my show's about vampires—vampires are always the last thing and the next thing. You just have to catch the crest of the wave. The twist is these are teenage eco-vamps use their powers to protect the environment. It's called Nature's Avengers. Undead Superfriends, basically: half guys, half girls, all the usual tokens. Quiet chiropterologists until big baddy logging company slash-'n'-burns Transylvanian virgin forest and the erosion sweeps away their regenerating coffin soil. Big mistake. So they're like this new endangered species of mortal vampires on a beat-the-clock mission to avenge Mother Earth, same time industrial espionage to steal the geological know-how from these trans-national nature-rapers, reverse erosion and renutrient their spooky dirt. Plus all the Twilight teen romance, but these vamps aren't PG-13 Mormons, they get it on. In the pilot they suck that BP CEO's blood for sucking the blood of the Earth, poetic justice y'understand, and he's not young and buff enough to become one of them so they go ahead and compost him, recycle him, maybe tastefully after a fade-out, into 185 pounds of vampire dirt to FedEx back to their crypt in Romania, and then they summon skele-dolphins to ride down into the Gulf of Mexico to seal the oil leak. Hell with the fade-out, with CGI, they'll show everything, everything, and why shouldn't they. They can do what they want with it, whatever it takes to put butts on sofas. It's TV. I'll be out celebrating somewhere, reserved table, nothing too wild, no shooters, just a few close friends who knew me when. Actually, I'm going to request they leave my name off it, you can do that through the union, I think, Alan Smithee, the big pseudo. It's better that way. You're really not gonna drink that, are you? So you don't mind if I—? You sure? It's just kind of hot out here.

You're such a good listener! No really, you are! We just met but it's like I could tell you anything. Cause the real reason I almost didn't come tonight is me and Janine have this weird history—not bad, just weird. I was sort of surprised she invited me. You know what I mean, is it like you invite someone because you want him to be there, like he should be there, cause he's super-intermittent but still weirdly somehow this tiny random corner-jigsaw piece of your life picture, needs to be snapped in place for your big day, right, the great photo-op, this once-in-a-lifetime effort to get all those floating pieces to fit together for a few hours—cheese!—before you can shuffle him back into that big honkin' 1000-piece selective memory box and politely ignore him again, or is it more like you're trying to prove something to him? This is it. And if you're gonna let paranoia annoy ya, well, you didn't know her back in college when she was this poor little rich girl away from mommy and daddy for the first time, rebelling against privilege, acting all über-chronic when she was a rookie sensation zonked on two hits, canvassing for Amnesty, working on the student weekly, Value Village chic to her poli-sci and po-co lit classes and humping any guy in a Che shirt. So when I start coming around the student paper offices with my little anti-whatever rants, of course something was gonna happen, I see that now. We lasted ten months. She wanted me to meet her family, to show this long-haired, vanilla anarchist, contrarian dude to her exec dad, to say fuck you and the trust-fund, daddy, this is my daddy now! So there was one armageddon of a Thanksgiving dinner…I didn't say much, really, it was them screaming over the turkey and potatoes, in the family way they had, and right after that, walk in the leaves, she said she loved me and she didn't see how she could stay with her parents ever again, but you know, things were never the same after that. As if I'd served my purpose. She says she broke up with me because I went to Korea, but the fact is I went to Korea because she broke up with me. But she can believe whatever she wants—all some people have left to believe in is their delusions, I can accept that, it's all good.

The groom? I can't say I really know Benjamin—haven't gotten to the Benj let alone the Ben stage or anything—but he seems like a really good guy for her. He must be a good guy, fine and upstanding and all that, working for that firm he works for. It's investments they do, isn't it? Now there's a guy with a future. No time for humanistic horseshit. Building the pile higher, wheeling and dealing, bobbing and weaving, buy low, sell high, sell 'em short, sell 'em financial "products" they'll be too embarrassed to admit they don't understand, boom times and bailouts—it's win/win! It's really nice to know Janine will be so well taken care of, with some people's taxes to fall back on, just in case. I guess Benj'll be busy working late most of the time, or unwinding after work, the way well-to-do young red-blooded guys do, boys'll be boys, with the lads, but that's OK, he and Janine'll text each other plausibly and the kids can be with some earnest Filipina and Janine can buy whatever she needs for those times when he's not around. And so can he.

And you know some people might've been saying that the vodka-shot ice ramp where you stick your mouth on the low end of the groove and wave up to double-D skimpy dress girl to pour Cristall and the desserts as tall as your head and his best man's speech with all the leering inside jokes about the bachelor's party were a bit vulgar, a bit out of place, a bit frat…but I say that it's Benjamin's wedding and we should all just shut up and smile and let him be himself and respect Janine's choice, even if, you know, it might seem like a bit of a headscratcher to people who knew her back in the day when she would've broken down laughing at you if you'd fixed her up with an ex-jock money-man clone of dear old dad. Cause people change, that's what we don't want to accept, people, most people, have these phases, maybe more than a couple-few, and then they change and they can be themselves without being what they used to be and the sooner we all just lay down our accusations and accept that, well…cause at least it's not like we have to marry him. This isn't some cult's mass polygamist ceremony where we all have to envisage ourselves going to bed with Benjamin and waking up married to him—that's not what this is all about. Only the bride's mother has to undergo that little thought experiment. At any rate, he's friendly enough. Check this out: when I went up to him and introduced myself and congratulated him and made my little joke where I compared him to Gatsby, he smiled and clapped me on the back exactly as if he had the faintest idea what I was talking about.

Hup! Ah, that's better. You really feel the breeze up here. Don't worry, I have a grip. This is vintage wrought-iron, solid as a rock. See, I'm hanging on, both hands! Railing's plenty wide enough to sit on. Maybe not designed for it, but hell, I'm no big guy, no lineman, you might've noticed. Don't even need to hold on, really…. What if I just try rocking back a little here…look ma, no hands—whoo! Gotcha! You dropped your cigarette. You stopped killing yourself to stop me killing myself! Ha ha. As if I would. Like I would just up and toss myself off the balcony at a friend's vows. Don't think so, not cool, not the headline I'm after. When I picture it it's never that way. Grief and satisfaction to all the wrong people. White chicks always do pills, white guys always do firearms, doncha know that? But hey, that's so sweet that you were gonna stop me! That's nice to see, I appreciate it, really. Because you can wonder sometimes if anyone would even bother to you know.

Hey! I just realized that we've been chatting for a little while now but somehow it's like I hardly know anything about you. I think you're kind of shy, am I right? I am right aren't I. Well guess what, we have something in common: I'm shy too! No, I am! I just fight through the shyness—with the right people, people who listen. People like you who like people like me who like like to talk. You didn't look shy at all on that dance floor. You're really terrific at that—what is it?—swing dancing I guess. That's so totally! Swingin' it, all that turning and shucking and jive posing, busting those moves. Love it. Have you taken classes—he asked her knowingly! Wish I could dance like that but I'm two left feet. I'd need tattoos to tell left from right. Once I click-bought a twelve-DVD ballroom set from a persistent pop-up. It came with pink paper feet you taped to the floor. I gave them to the neighbor's kid to stick on her wall. No, no, don't go all modest on me now, I can tell you're a first-rate dancer. Ha-cha! Was that it? Ha-cha! I liked that move. How do I do it so I don't bump your head like that? Ha-cha! Sorry.

Oh, you're going back in there? I think that was the band's last set. But it can't be—is it?—you call that late? Well, late for some things, early for others. So you're on your way. OK. I'd offer you a lift but I don't think I should drive. I did drive, didn't I—I did. I know it doesn't look like it but yeah, not driving. Not right now. Not this instant. It's better off if I'm alone. Go, go. Goodbye. What? I'm fine, I'm OK. Strange: it's such a nice night and I feel wide awake. I think I'll take a walk, clear my head. I'll walk to an all-night diner and drink a pot of coffee and break up a fight or something. No, you don't need to call me a cab. I'll flag one if I need to. Please don't call me a cab. It's nothing, I just have this allergy, when things get in my eye. Need to get pinprick tested for that. It's all good in the 'hood.

Well ice meeting new. I don't know why I said all that about Benjamin—I mean he is a good friend of yours, so you must know all about him already. Oh, you work with him? That's nice. Good boss? Oh I get it, my bad, with him, with him, not under him or on him—horizontally. So you must have a secretary of your own. I'll bet it's a super-friendly gay guy who does these mega shrugs and sighs and gets up in everyone's business, but you get to feel good for tolerating the poor flaming loser! I think that's great. I guess you speed-dial cabs all the time then. Hand them a card, special rates. They're like rickshaws for you people—uptown, downtown, chop chop. You must really appreciate this chance to get away from the grind and meet one of Ben's wives' bohemian friends. One of her friends, not one of his wives, I meant. And hey—tomorrow's Sunday, you can sleep in for a change, watch art-house movies in your pajamas, Häagen-Dazs with a tablespoon, be a girl for one day before facing the office again. Must be tough for a young, well, youngish woman, a single not-so-old woman like you, in a man's world—oh? Sorry, I just have this bad habit of making inferences when I can't spot a tan line on a girl's finger. That's really old-fashioned of me, I should get with the times. He sure is one lucky individual. I mean your partner, be he man or woman. To be wed to such an assertive gal as yourself.

Well, a toast—to the bride and groom! That's right—mime a cup of cheer for me! May they continue to live and remain together in bliss and keep all their resentments hidden from the tots, especially the one due in six months. And of course all the love and happiness they deserve.

Please close the door on your way in. Ciao now. Thanks muchly.

top