by Jeff Strand
“Pancreas!”
“You put your pancreas in, you put your pancreas out, you put your pancreas in, and you shake it all about, you do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about.”
“Now, everyone—drop your togas!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Friends, Lovers, Or Ships Sinking In The Night?”
During the walk home, I had a moment of sudden realization.
There we were, walking down the road, being honked at every few minutes by jerks who felt they should inform us that they were mighty motorists while we were lowly pedestrians. The conversation had drifted from the events of the evening to songs we hated to the future of Out of Whack. Travis admitted that he wasn’t all that fond of the scripting process and agreed to turn the writing duties over to me. For some odd reason, he was also very agreeable to not having me act any more. Laura was extremely enthusiastic about the whole venture, and about half an hour into the walk I had my realization.
I was completely comfortable around her.
I’m not sure when it happened, but it did. It was a scary idea, not being scared of Laura. I mean, I was still insanely attracted to her, and though I wasn’t planning any time soon to extend an invitation to smear ourselves with peanut butter and roll around on a jelly-covered mattress, I was definitely hoping this would be more than a professional relationship. And yet I could actually speak coherently in her presence.
Travis seemed genuinely fond of her, too. But, in one of his few sweetie-pie acts, he wasn’t flirting or favoring his pelvis when he walked or “accidentally” dropping credit cards on the ground. He could be fiercely annoying at times (lots of them) (lots and lots of them), but he wasn’t going to try to move in on Laura when he knew how much I wanted her. What a guy.
Not being experienced in such matters, I couldn’t quite gauge whether or not Laura was interested in me in a romantic way. She certainly wasn’t flirting or favoring her bosom when she walked or “accidentally” dropping prophylactics on the ground. But she also didn’t seem to be using us just to become a part of Out of Whack. If anything, I was getting the impression that she wanted us all to be good friends.
I supposed I could handle just being friends. She was exceptional friend material—obviously intelligent, and surprisingly cheerful. Had she just been in a bad mood when I spilled beer on her, or was she just in an unusually good mood now? I suspected the former. It seemed to suit her better.
My first attraction had been physical. Then physical had blended with that “thingie” she had about her. And now even her personality was getting into the Let’s-Drive-Seth-Absolutely-Mad act.
She was a fun person! I loved talking to her! And I didn’t feel like an incredible lily-livered chickenshit when she was around! What more could I possibly ask?
Finally we crossed the street and reached the edge of campus. Travis stopped in his tracks and smacked his forehead.
“Oh, crap! I forgot that I was supposed to meet my friend at the student union! He’s gonna kill me!” He reached out and shook Laura’s hand. “It was really nice meeting you. Set a time when we should get together again and we’ll make Out of Whack work. Oh, man, Hank is really going to throw a fit!” And with that, Travis quickly took off, muttering about how much trouble he was in.
We continued walking in the direction of her dorm. “So, that’s who I’ll be acting with, huh?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“I hope his acting in Out of Whack will be better than the performance we just saw.”
There wasn’t a whole lot I could do besides nod. While I was certainly grateful to Travis for arranging to leave me alone with Laura, I had to admit that he could’ve been less obvious.
“So,” Laura began, “it appears that we’ve been left alone in order to give Cupid the chance to whip out the ol’ crossbow and open fire, huh?”
“Look, I know this seems like a set-up, but really, I didn’t tell Travis to do that, because, you know, that would be...you know, sneaky and disrespectful and, really, I’m not trying to pull anything and, God, I hate it when I babble like an unsocialized imbecile.”
“You can relax. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
“I wasn’t accusing you of accusing me of anything, I just—”
“Seth. Quiet.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m quiet.”
“Good. So, it’s out in the open that your friend thinks there may be something between us. What’s your opinion on the subject?”
The comfort I’d been feeling around Laura was immediately flushed down the toilet.
“Um, I dunno,” I replied, the words sticking in my throat as if they’d been spackled there.
“No opinion at all?” Laura asked.
I shrugged.
No! This was no time to wimp out! If ever there was a time in my life when I needed to be brave and outspoken, this was it! I needed to tell Laura exactly how I felt, and then drop to my knees and pray at the top of my lungs that she felt the same way.
“Well...” I said.
Okay, I was one word in the right direction. If I could say one word, then damn it, I could say two!
“I...” I said.
Two words! After getting out two words, three words would be no problem whatsoever!
“Well...” I said.
No, no, backtracking wasn’t any good! I was losing ground! My chances of having Laura for my bunny-o-love were pouring through my fingers! If I passed up this moment, there may never be another! I couldn’t mess this up!
“Laura, I love you,” I blurted.
Whoa. Not what I meant to say. I’d meant to say “I think you’re neat,” which my brain censored at the last moment because it would have made me sound like the King of Dweebs.
Laura stopped walking. She looked me in the eye. “Really?” she asked with genuine surprise.
Had I screwed up? Was I now one of those scary guys who said “I love you” to people they barely knew? Was she going to file a restraining order against me?
Figuring that I had nothing to lose at this point, I nodded.
“I don’t know quite what to say,” Laura admitted. “That’s a little more extreme than I was expecting.”
“A little more extreme than I was expecting, too.”
“Do you take it back?”
“No!”
Laura seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. If not for the rising cost of copyright infringement suits, I would include the full text of War and Peace here for you to read to simulate how long her response seemed to take.
“Seth, I think you’re a very nice guy...”
Eeeeeeek! Even I knew that being thought of as a nice guy was the kiss of death! Aauck! Aauck! I’m choking, I’m choking!
“...and I don’t want to give out any false impressions...”
So, Mr. Trexler, we hear your heart is just about to be put into a vice and squished to a flat gooey icky pancake! Any words for the public?
“...but...”
Why, yes, Roy—may I call you Roy?—I certainly do. THIS SUCKS!!!
“...I don’t think it’s a good idea to start anything that could affect our work on Out of Whack.”
I was speechless. I’d invited her into Out of Whack to impress her, and now she was telling me it was the reason we couldn’t be together? Forget appreciation for irony! I wanted Laura!
“Okay, you’re fired,” I said, trying to grin.
Laura gave me a sad smile. “I’m sorry.”
“Do I get to hit you for saying that?”
“If you really want to.”
“Nah.”
Laura shrugged. “But, who knows? Maybe Out of Whack won’t work out, and from that point anything’s possible.”
We resumed walking. I was definitely hurt, but her last comment suddenly added a new emotion to the rejection buffet. I was mad.
“Wait just a second,” I said. “You’re saying that if Out of Whack blows up in our f
aces, there’s a chance we could have a relationship?”
Laura nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I may seem like a pathetic puppy yapping at your feet for the chance to lick your face, but writing comedy is important to me, too, and where do you get off trying to make me choose between them?”
“Excuse me?” Laura was taken aback.
“What is this ‘No relationship unless Out of Whack doesn’t work out’ deal? So, which one am I supposed to root for?”
“You’re supposed to root for Out of Whack. That’s what’s important right now.”
“Okay, okay, let’s pretend that Out of Whack is in fact the more important of the two. Let’s pretend that we have a strictly professional relationship—”
“We don’t have a strictly professional relationship. We’re friends.”
“Fine. We’re friends. Now, pretend with me. We have a strictly professional and Just Friends relationship that revolves around working together on a comedy troupe. Why would you tell me that we could possibly be more than friends if the comedy troupe didn’t work out? What purpose does that serve?”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t care if it’s the truth. It’s not fair to make me root for Out of Whack to fail.”
Laura sighed. “This is stupid.”
“No, it’s not. I just told you that I love you, and you said that Out of Whack stands between us. So you’ve just taken the joy out of working on Out of Whack, because by doing that I’m sabotaging our chances of a relationship!”
“I didn’t mean to do that. I just wanted to get things out into the open. I should have just kept my mouth shut and let you wonder if you stood a chance. And when you finally worked up the nerve to ask me out on a real date, I should have just made up excuses for the rest of my life.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said, stumbling over the words. “You could have said let’s just be friends and been done with it. You didn’t have to make Out of Whack failing a pre-requisite for being more than friends.”
“Seth, that’s where it stands! I apologize if this makes your life more difficult, but yes, I guess I see you as potential boyfriend material, and no, I will not date somebody I’m working with! It’s that simple. Take that information and do whatever you want with it.”
Aw, great...now I didn’t know which one of us was right. I wasn’t even in a romantic relationship yet and everything was so damn complicated.
“I don’t think I can work with you under those conditions,” I stated.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m not interested in having you in Out of Whack any more.”
“Seth, you’re just angry.”
“Yes, I am. But I’m serious. Out of Whack is now officially defunct. Again. I’ve chosen you over the comedy troupe. Now where do we stand?”
“Right now we stand at the point where you’re being a jerk.”
“Most women seem to like jerks. Maybe I need to quit being a nice guy. I should be an asshole who gets laid.”
“Oh, that’s such a beautiful thought,” said Laura, her voice like acid. “Gosh, how can I resist your charms?”
“The comedy troupe is over. Wanna go to the movies tomorrow?”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so. Have a nice life.”
I started to walk away from her. “Wait just a second,” Laura called after me. “You’re giving up on it?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Sure I can.”
“Okay, how about I make things easy for you? We will never be more than friends. But I think we could put this behind us and still work together.”
I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”
“Seth—!”
“Laura, Out of Whack is nothing but three people who haven’t so much as sat down to look at a script yet. I don’t know why you think it’s so important.”
“It is important.”
“Not anymore.”
I walked back to my dorm alone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Guy Talk”
Travis, who was seated on his bed cutting out obscene paper dolls, looked surprised as I walked in. “Jeez, Seth, you’re at least supposed to give them a couple minutes of snuggling afterward!”
I didn’t say anything. “Be gentle when you shut the door,” Travis informed me. “I think the light bulb is about to drop out of the socket.”
I gently shut the door, sat down on my bed, and looked at the floor. That depressed me even more because, well, we had a really depressing floor.
“From your ‘life really, really sucks’ expression I’m getting the feeling that things didn’t turn out as well as they could have,” Travis observed. “So what’s the deal?”
“I kicked her out of Out of Whack.”
“Well, that was stupid.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “Things seemed to be going so well, then all of a sudden we’re practically yelling at each other.”
“Damn. That’s not supposed to happen until you’re married.”
I rubbed my forehead. I felt the onset of a really serious headache, one that was going to bash me between the eyes with a “Muahahahahahahahahaha!” laugh.
“So what’d you do that pissed her off?” Travis asked.
“I didn’t do anything. It was her that pissed me off.”
“Really? You got mad at her first?”
“Why are you so shocked?”
“Well, it’s just that you were sort of like a puppy following her around,” Travis explained. “You know that Clint Eastwood western where he keeps spitting on that dog, but it follows him anyway? I figured you’d be like that.”
“Thank you for your confidence.”
“I’m just being honest. You’re a whippable kind of guy.”
“This is just what I need, to come home after losing the one girl I’ve ever loved and have you make jokes about it.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Travis seemed genuine. “Tell me everything that happened.”
I recounted the waking nightmare as well as I could. Travis listened attentively, and though he tried to keep a poker face I could tell that his opinion of me was swayed more and more toward “Dumb Guy” as I spoke.
When I finished, he stared at me for a full twenty seconds. Then he spoke: “What?”
“What?”
“Seth, you’re my best friend, and if I weren’t having a homophobic moment I’d even say I love you, but what the hell were you thinking?”
“You’re taking her side?”
“Not one hundred percent, no, but you didn’t need to go off like that. On her part, it was cruel to pull that ‘What’s your opinion on us having a relationship?’ thing, but she’s a woman, it’s in her genetic structure to manipulate and torment. It was most definitely not a reason to throw a tizzy fit.”
To be completely honest, I’d been thinking that ever since the argument ended. But I still wasn’t absolutely sure I’d been wrong.
“Travis, she set me up!”
“What do you mean, she set you up?”
“She tried to make me choose between Out of Whack and her.”
“No, she didn’t. Her point that was she didn’t want anything complicating your ability to work together. It’s not that easy to work creatively when she’s still mad because you snored all night and drooled all over her favorite pillow.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not.”
“Nobody believes that they snore, but some people obviously do or else the word ‘snore’ wouldn’t appear in dictionaries all across the nation. You’re asleep, so how would you know? If you want me to tape record you some night, you can hear yourself. Hoooocccch-shhhh, hoooocccch-shhhh, hoooocccch-shhhh!”
“At least I don’t talk in my sleep. I hear you asking for your pink blankey and complaining that your thumb
is all shriveled up.”
“Okay, Seth, I am now going to do something unprecedented and be the one to get us back on the subject. You need to call up Laura and apologize.”
I sighed. “I just made the apology rounds.”
“You’re going to have to do it again.”
“I don’t have enough money to buy another bribe bag.”
“I’m serious, you need to get this worked out. The only reason you reacted so poorly is because you were so anxious for the two of you to be more than friends. It wasn’t that Laura did anything especially wrong, it’s that you were so upset over her not wanting to jump you that she could have said ‘I think ducks have too many feathers’ and it would have sent you into a fury. Call her.”
“I can’t.”
“Call her, you ignorant doofus.”
“No, really, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
(As a note to those of you who may sense a punch line approaching, let me state that this conversation will not end with “I don’t have her number.”)
“No, I’m not going to do it. Look, if Laura is to be nothing but a memory for me, I want the memory to end with a suitably dramatic final fight, not me pleading for forgiveness and her laughing in my face.”
“Don’t suddenly develop pride,” Travis warned me. “Get on that phone and call her.”
The phone rang.
“It’s fate!” said Travis. “Answer quickly before she changes her mind and hangs up!”
“I don’t want to talk to her,” I told him.
“Pick up the goddamn phone!”
I picked up the goddamn phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Seth, it’s Mike Garrett, Gleefully Disturbed—”
“Fuck off!” I said, then hung up.
“Okay, bad call on my part,” remarked Travis.
“No, it’s fine, it was Mike.”
“Oh. You should have told him to fuck off for me, too.”
I grabbed my portable CD player off the desk. “I’m going for a walk.” Maybe listening to the group Everyone Should Die But Us would calm me down.
