Jasper burst out with a laugh and I gave him a light slap on the leg.
“I love it,” Alejandro said.
Jasper studied the landscape, his eyes flitting once overhead when two black spots of color burst through a bunch of leaves.
I caught Alejandro's eyes in the rearview mirror. He spoke to both of us though Jasper continued to stare out the window. “Since you've read Dune, have you watched Battlestar Galactica?”
I launched into a ten minute diatribe about why it was the best written show on TV next to Dexter. Alejandro argued that the last show was a total copout. We discussed Cylons, religion and ideas about human history before Alejandro rested his hand on Jasper's arm and said, “Hey man, what's going on in there?”
Jasper turned. “Sorry. I still can't reconcile the beauty of this landscape.” His voice still sounded far away when he said this, like he was really talking about something else.
It got weird for a second so I moved us back where we had been comfortable. “What was the best book ever?”
“A Clockwork Orange,” Alejandro said without missing a second.
“I love that book!” I jumped in, happy to have the banter back.
“Was it the most radical book ever written or what?” Alejandro said.
In the mirror I studied his mouth as he talked; thin lips, but his mouth was full, the effect like something carved from clay, so perfectly shaped and purposefully worked.
I twisted around for only a moment. “Anyone who can make up words like that is a fucking genius.”
“I had no idea that's what I had to do to get your attention,” Jasper said.
“You have my attention,” I said and tickled him under his knee.
Jasper smiled and went back to staring out the window.
My eyes flashed to Alejandro in the mirror again.
“You know, I heard that was one of Burgess's least favorite books,” Alejandro said.
“I can see why,” Jasper turned in his seat, the warm smile back on his face. “It's hard to be known for one thing and have moved past it.”
“I saw the first book you wrote was Stormy Days, right?” Alejandro said.
Jasper turned around and cocked an eyebrow at his friend. My face warmed and I squirmed around in my seat.
“What? I got curious. When I got up this morning I got on my laptop and read her blog. There is a page on her website that lists the titles of the books.”
I added, “I'm about to publish this dark twisted novella called Boy in a Box.”
“Impressive,” Alejandro said, stretching out in the back seat. “I am always in awe of people who can write.”
“Didn't you have to write a book to become a professor?”
“That hardly counts. Not a more dry and dull piece of mental jerking off will you find anywhere.”
Jasper turned, reached back and grasped Alejandro's hand, only briefly, but it was enough to make me take notice. “Don't say that. I remember your stories in class.” He turned to me. “They were quite good. You had a unique voice.”
Alejandro shook his head and his words came out in a mumble, I could hardly hear what he said as he rearranged himself in the back seat. “You were the only one. Every single professor I had, not to mention the other kids, hated my shit. They said I was too crass, too honest, too everything. Too ethnic…”
“I don't remember that.” Jasper's voice rose.
Alejandro shrugged. “Plus, watching you made me really think I was never going to be that good.” Alejandro laughed this off. “We can't all be Flannery O'Connor's on the dry and dusty typewriters of life.”
Jasper sat with his face bent into a frown and long lines formed on his forehead. He finally said, “What kind of goofy metaphor is that?”
Alejandro mouthed the words ‘fuck you’ and Jasper waved it off. They sat watching each other for a long moment.
“Anyway. If I'd tried to be a writer I would never have gotten to see the countries, meet the people, learn the languages that I have.” I locked eyes with him in the mirror and tried to gauge how much he meant this. The light was back in his eyes so I let it go.
During the month that Jasper was in Seattle, we met Alejandro several times; a few nights out on the town, once for coffee and a trip downtown to check out the museum, and once to shop and wander around University Village. One night we went on a double date with him and another girl who spent the whole night trying to impress Jasper by quoting Proust. One cloudy afternoon the three of us were wandering through the Barnes & Noble at the U Village when Jasper and I got into it over our choices of reading material. To my amusement he actually said, “Well, you're just not as well read.”
I planted one foot in front of me. “Have you read Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Alexander Trocchi, John Cleland, Marco Vassi, or the Marquis de Sade? What about Frank Herbert, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Algernon Blackwood, or anything from Pulphouse? Weird Tales? How can you criticize things you haven't even read, and just because I've read different books than you…does that really mean I am not well read?”
Jasper opened his mouth and started to speak, but I interrupted him. “How can you pretend to talk about the human condition, to examine, explore and shine a light on it without handling sex? My authors do, what about yours?”
Alejandro stifled a laugh and took charge, taking one of my arms, leaving Jasper to follow us out. Jasper took my outstretched arm, and while I listened to Alejandro lecture on the merits of reading all sorts of books, I ran my hand over Jasper's forearm, leaned my head against his shoulder as we walked. Jasper silently listened while Alejandro discussed with me the ones he had read and gave me tons more suggestions. All through dinner that night Alejandro tried to find our common ground, leaving Jasper to his silence and barely disguised disapproval.
That was the first night Jasper began with the tired expressions. Alejandro would fix him with these stern looks every so often, though—and instead of upsetting him, Jasper would lean in, attempting to listen, almost the way a father might bring one of his children back to polite dinner conversation. I had never seen such an interesting interaction between two guys. There was a competition, but beneath that, something much more important.
Alejandro apparently liked to diffuse some of this on certain nights by bringing a date. One girl, Melissa, another from the English Department, was used to the discussion of canonical works and liberally used all sorts of dull words like semiotics and fucking post-modern everything that absolutely should never be involved in discussions of something as important a subject as books. It was obvious by the way he held court that Jasper missed, just a little, being worshipped.
As Alejandro and I talked about his erotic book collection, I heard her pick up the subject of Henry Miller, maybe to get in a dig at me, maybe to suck up to Jasper, maybe just to be herself. Henry Miller—for all his rough talk, character contradictions, awe-inspiring description, and twisted but somehow amazing philosophy toward life and art—was suddenly reduced to nothing more than misogynist whose mother ruined him.
“He set up other writers and artists for the depiction of women as objects.” She said this with some authority, even though she hadn't actually read more than Tropic of Cancer for a women's studies class. Of course they would be fair.
I said low so only Alejandro could hear, “There is a certain type of woman who needs a man to bash, and dear old Hank fits the bill every time.”
Alejandro gave me a soft smile. This was the world Alejandro had chosen to work in; I was glad for the hundredth time I hadn't pursued higher education for writing.
Alejandro tried to distract me with talk of The Watchmen. I placed my hand over his in apology. I turned toward the table. “Can I just say something?”
Melissa leaned back in her chair and took a drink of her wine.
“I adore Henry Miller.” I held up my finger when Melissa opened her mouth to speak. “When I read Tropic of Cancer, I spent half the time marking passages and rereading entire page
s for a way to make the words stick in my head. If I denied myself the pleasure of his company because of a few c-words and well-delivered, unwarranted jabs at my sex, I would have missed that. He even gave me an idea. So I tried to do the same thing.”
Melissa looked around the table, picked up her glass of white wine and drank.
Alejandro scratched his chin, while the fireplace in the lobby set off his eyes. “You mean you think you can be as crude and vulgar as a man?”
“That's what I did in a couple of the stories in Dandelions.”
Alejandro made that listening-humming sound. “But those weren't all that offensive either. I doubt you would solicit the reaction from any man that Henry Miller gets out of most women.”
“That was what I did with Boy in a Box,” I said, hoping that was true. Intention and execution are two different things. “My manifesto.” I looked at both of them; Jasper had that distant expression he got, the only time he did this, when I talked about the meat of my work. He would stroke me on the back, be supportive if I sold something, but other than that, when it came to specific ideas, he would glaze. “This was the first time I tried to say something more than tell a story. I had another agenda.”
“Art?” Alejandro said.
“Yes. I wanted to say something, surprise people. And writing that book took more from me than all the others put together.”
Jasper scooted his chair in and placed his hand on my forearm. “So you see how it can be draining; even if you don't act like your work matters, you do get it.”
I stared at him. “Since when did my work not matter?”
“I just thought—” Jasper was excited for once, like I had come over to his side and didn't even know it, only I did.
“Dear Jasper, I just don't dwell on the hard work of my ‘process’ and turn it into a reason to avoid the world. It is possible to make meaning, art, something wonderful, and still have fun.”
Smiling, I sat sipping my beer. He threw up his hands and gave Melissa a small shake of the head.
Melissa was happy to oblige with a smile meant only for him. “So you wanted to write like a man? Like a man who hates women?”
I turned to her, placed my hand over hers, like Laura had done so long ago, flipped her hand over and traced the lines of her veins on the underside of her wrist. Her eyes got wide and I held them. “You just have to pretend you have a small mind. Use the same words over and over… tail, ass,” I pinched one of her knuckles, “cock,” and she jerked back.
Alejandro set his empty glass on the table, staring after the waitress. “Yeah man, I want to see this book,” he said turning to me. Melissa gave him a questioning look.
“One night I saw this commercial on TV,” I began, addressing Melissa. “You might appreciate this, being a feminist and all.”
“See, nothing good comes from the box,” Jasper said, crossing and uncrossing his legs, a grin taking over his face.
Melissa smiled knowingly at Jasper, who avoided her eyes and stuck his tongue into his cheek, then turned his eyes to me.
I smiled back. “Yep. That's the problem, exactly. My brain has rotted. Okay. So, anyway, there were these three guys sitting on a barstool; they're wearing like those flannel hats with the flaps, jeans, work books, thick vests, you know—blue collars.”
Alejandro put his arm up, bent at the elbow, made his bicep bulge, and said, “Manly men.”
I nodded, noting the glance of a woman at the next table. She gave me a sheepish grin when I caught her looking at him. Alejandro saw me looking at her and my smile. Melissa didn't seem to have noticed, so busy was she giving me a withering indulgent look.
I continued my story. “And so this one sticks out a leg and asks the other one, ‘Do you think my legs are too short?’ and the other one says ‘No, of course not,’ he smiles, and then another one twists around on his stool and asks the others, ‘Is my ass fat?’ and they both make this scrunched up face like they think he is but don't want to say it. His face falls, he's crushed.”
Melissa had one corner of her mouth turned up but her eyes were still cold. I leaned forward. “The whole fucking scene is ridiculous. No self-respecting guy would do that. It wasn't until I saw it that way that I really saw how ridiculous the behavior was, the whole mentality that we get stuck with.”
“Wearing makeup is the same thing,” Melissa said with a note of triumph on her clean face.
“Sometimes yes, it most definitely is…but have you ever heard the term ‘war paint’?” I asked.
“So this is like some sort of war, men against women?” she said.
“It's like dancing,” I said. “One has to lead or the whole thing falls apart. Sometimes he leads, sometimes you lead, sometimes you let him lead, sometimes, to make something work, he has to force it, and the whole thing moves smoothly. You can't deny our differences, and when we are fully present in our bodies, celebrating them, the coming together is that much better.”
She gave me a long look, like she was trying to figure me out.
I leaned in and gazed up at her. “Are you picking up what I'm laying down?”
“So let it go. Why would you ever worry about your appearance anyway?” Alejandro asked.
“What?” I asked, forgetting my original diatribe. “Oh, you mean not worry about how we look?” I gave Melissa a truly friendly look, her face softened by a small degree. “What about it girlfriend, easy-peasy right?”
She laughed and I got a genuine smile.
“The point is that our looks don't matter. The reality is that this will always be something women worry about, makeup or not, thin or fat or anywhere in between. My mother had me watching what I ate since I was eight years old. Don't get me started on that.” I sat back. “So the point is that I want to do something like that with all that vulgar talk that used to confuse me…still does. My brother was awful. He didn't talk about girls like they were nothing if he knew I was around, but when his friends were around, I heard plenty. Plus movies and all that, and then I read Tropic of Cancer and his attitude towards the prostitutes was just so cold and matter of fact. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, it's not a bad gig, this whole prostitute thing’…asshole. I never had a love-hate relationship with an author like I have with Henry Miller. I took my frustration with all that bullshit and funneled it into my book.”
Melissa looked from me to Jasper and I know she wondered what outrageous twist of fate had brought us together.
Jasper spoke softly from beside me as he slipped out of his jacket; the smell that wafted out was one I loved to crawl inside, his end-of-the-day scent with the mixture of the warm leather. “Henry Miller, I have read,” he said with no small measure of satisfaction on his face, “may have also been trying to accurately portray the way a certain type of person thinks and acts.”
I leaned against him, sipped from his beer. “There's immeasurable value in that. If I am reading with an open mind, as I should, I require that sort of honesty. I would never say he should change the way he writes if it's honest. On the flip side, we never hear men described in these ways—a piece of ass, tail, cunt, whatever. I don't think I have ever heard a man referred to like that, even by men who like to fuck men. The tone is different in that sort of writing.”
Alejandro spoke so that I felt like he was only speaking to me, though he swept his eyes toward the other two as he spoke, “Well I want to see you pull off this grand vision of yours. I was impressed by the way you handled homophobia, fear of stale relationships, bedroom appliances.”
Melissa choked on her wine. He made an apologetic face and handed her a napkin.
When I stepped into my apartment after I dropped Jasper off at the airport, it felt somehow emptier, and this was both welcome and scary. I called Eric and we went out.
“I missed you,” I said, wrapping my arms around his forearm as we walked together up Pike Street after dinner.
He leaned in and kissed me on the top of the head. “Me too. So when do I get a copy of the real book?”
<
br /> “My editor's final edits were waiting for me in my email when I finally had a chance to check it.” I stopped and bounced on the balls of my feet, not caring if I looked stupid. “This one might actually matter.”
He rustled my hair as we passed a parking garage, and I saw Alejandro crossing the street by himself.
I waved to him, and he tipped his head to the side before walking over with very deliberate steps. “You aren't…” He glanced at Eric.
I rolled my eyes. “This is Eric, my oldest friend.”
“That's right, you two used to dance together?”
Eric nodded and spun me in a salsa twirl three times before stopping me with a firm but gentle hand on my back.
“Muy bien,” Alejandro said, and Eric nodded again.
“Still do,” I said, looking to Eric, then Alejandro. “What are you doing up here?”
“What are you, like my mother?” he said with a laugh. “You made Neighbours sound like a lot of fun. I don't have any classes tomorrow so I can come in late.”
We chatted while walking together toward the brick alley leading to Neighbours, past ratty looking teenagers, past a green metal dumpster. He told me he'd been to the Space Needle, eaten a nice lunch there by himself, wandered Westlake, and explored downtown.
I wanted to tell him he should have called me but it seemed weird; we were close when Jasper was around, but without him it might not seem like such a good idea.
I listened in as he and Eric chatted at the bar; I found out he liked techno and house music, he told me who his favorite DJs were and we talked about Ibiza. He was there not long after the summer Eric and I went as my parents’ reward for taking first place in one of our competitions.
“So the book I told you about is going to be coming out in a few months.”
“Boy in a Box?”
I nodded.
“Wonderful.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me close and spoke into my ear, “That's great, chica.”
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