by Allen Wyler
5.
Six weeks earlier
Arnold studies the image staring back at him from the mirror; acne scars, black curly hair, the “Jewish nose” people make jokes about and that Nazi propaganda cartoonists exaggerated. He hates his face. Hates this damn sports coat, hates the slacks and polo shirt draped over his gangly frame. He can even discern outright loathing in the dark brown eyes as they stare back. He sees a 23-year old virgin who lacks the social skills to rectify the problem and who will never have a girlfriend. In other words, he’s totally hosed. Put another way, he stands a 0.001 percent chance of getting one. He is the quintessential cliché of the computer nerd, the social outcast, the toe-dragging hem-hawing geek, the guy who will eventually enter a retirement home having never scored.
“Fuck it. I’m not going to do it.” He rips off his sports coat and throws it on the floor. With an exasperated sigh, he turns from the mirror so Howie can scope a head to shoulders frontal view. “What do you see?” His stomach aches with dread and anxiety.
Howie picks up the sports coat, makes a point of brushing it off, and shakes it open for Arnold to slip back on. “I see a great guy with a big heart who has a lot to offer any girl he wants. Seriously, dude. There’s someone out there who would love to meet you. Believe me. And you’re the smartest man I know. Smart goes a long way.”
Lip service, nothing but goddamn lip service. Then again, what do you expect from your best friend? He knows Howie not only means well, but his friend also loves this role of coach to the socially downtrodden. This confuses his emotions even more, as if he’s a damn charity case or something.
“Bullshit. I’m ugly. You know it, I know it. Everyone in the goddamned nebula knows it. So why don’t we both save ourselves a shit-load of grief and go out for a beer instead of persisting with this charade?”
Howie bobs the coat like a matador goading a bull, encouraging him to slip it back on. “Come on, Arnold, we’ve discussed this, like, how many times now? Too many.”
Arnold shakes his head. He hates the sound of his petulant whining voice but seems unable to open his mouth on this particular subject without it spilling out like Niagara fucking Falls. Just another reason to cancel the evening. It’d be way simpler if they just went out for beers and talked computers. “Easy for you to say. I’m not going.”
Howard steps closer, now holding the coat in his left hand and making a come-here wave with his right. “Oh, yes you are. You’ll do fine. Just take this first step. You’re never going to get yourself out of this…”
“Out of what!” he says too loudly. Arnold snatches the dangling coat from Howie’s grasp and throws it on the bed in a huff. Immediately regrets his tone and action and wants to say, “I’m sorry,” but fears it’ll come out whining again. Goddamn it! He’d punch the wall like he’s seen real men do in the movies, but knows that would hurt like hell and will accomplish absolutely zip to diffuse his mounting frustration. Why do people do that, punch walls, it seems so… stupid.
Howie sighs. A parental-sounding sigh, one that makes Arnold feel even more infantile than a moment ago. Now he’s as furious at Howie as much his is at himself. Jesus! There’s no way to win.
Backing up a step, Howie raises a palm at him. “Whoa. Take a deep breath, calm down.”
His friend is right. He knows this. So, he pauses to do exactly as instructed, but it doesn’t help because he still wants to scream and stomp his feet, just do something—he’s not sure what—to short-circuit his self-loathing. How juvenile is that? Pretty damn juvenile.
Howie says, “Listen to me. We need to find a way to get you out of this… this isolation. You’re trapped. You’re mired down in the damn quicksand. Okay, so I get it: you feel awkward around women,” he says in a sing-song voice of having heard it so many times he wants to puke, “like you don’t know what to do. That’s the way every guy feels at the beginning. That’s why it called the beginning. The only way you’re going to fix that is to take the first step and start dating. Might be a little, ah, uncomfortable the first time out, but come on, dude, you got to do it. I know you can and you know you can.” He pauses before dropping the bomb. “You don’t, people are going to start thinking you’re gay and you don’t want that, do you?”
Arnold scoffs. The Gay Threat. Can’t believe Howie actually stooped to such a snake-low level. But why be surprised? He’s done it before. On multiple occasions. Didn’t work then either. But he does have a point: his social isolation is beginning to make him feel, well, weird. And the weirder he gets, the harder it’s going to be to rectify the situation. He knows all this intellectually. But actually taking action and doing something about it, well, that’s a whole different ballgame.
Arnold shakes his head side to side and blows a long breath though pursed lips. Still doesn’t help. He glares back at Howie. “Start dating. Just like that, huh. Easy for you to say. Look at you!” Arnold gives him a head to toe appraisal. “You’re the guy who’s got it all: good looks, you know how to talk to people—especially women—and you’re dating at least three girls I know of. God knows about the ones I don’t know about. You got it made.”
Only thing I have over him is smarts, he thinks. And even that’s close. But he would never tell Howie that. He envies Howard. Dude is everything he wants to be. The other thing he’ll never admit to him is the huge crush he has on Rachael, his sister. He’s secretly been in love with her since puberty, when he started to notice girls.
Howie offers up the sports coat again with a little nod to say, come on, put it on. Grudgingly Arnold does just that. Then Howie runs his palm over the shoulders smoothing out a wrinkle or two.
One of these days I should splurge and get a sports coat, one actually tailored for me, Arnold thinks. Then again, why? I never have to dress up.
Howard says, “Come on, I’ll drop you off. We’ll go out for a beer afterward and you can tell me about all the great girls you met.”
The bell rings.
Relieved to have this agonizing period finally come to an end, Arnold pushes away from this table and silently shuffles to his right, to the chair just vacated. He drops in, sighs, lets his eyes drift up from his knees to the woman directly across from him, a distant look on her face, as if to say, “Okay, here’s the next clown.” Aw, Jesus, drop-dead gorgeous too.
Arnold’s mind blanks.
The buzzer sounds.
“Hi, I’m Debbie.” She’s beaming now—stunningly, with perfectly aligned white orthodontics and flawless complexion—as she extends a slim hand across the table, suddenly transformed into Ms. Personality now that they’re on the clock.
Arnold stares at her delicate fingers, the perfectly painted and manicured nails, as heavy silence settles over his head like a blank cartoon speech-bubble.
Shake it, you idiot. He reaches out, gently grasps the warm soft skin, gives one brisk pump before dropping it like a lump of toxic uranium. She’ll probably wash it in the ladies’ room as soon as this particular encounter finishes.
“Arnold…. Ah, Arnold Gold.”
He starts massaging the knuckles of his left hand, eyes drifting down to the surface of the table, his mind racing for something, anything, to contribute. Aw, shit, say something. Do not repeat the last disaster. Remembering Howard’s advice, that it’s going to be uncomfortable initially but then gets easier, he opens his mouth, but no words come. Come on…
The ambient noise level increases with chatter as couples—perhaps ten of them—are now well into their three-minute conversations. She studies him, waiting for an initiation of conversation. His gut cinches into a rock-hard square knot and he feels warmth ascend his face like a rapidly spreading brush fire, and, for a moment, hates Howie for forcing him to attend.
Hears her ask, “So, Arnold—oh, may I call you Arnold?—what do you do?”
“I…”
He’d love to tell her, to describe the artificial intelligence he’s been developing since age twelve, to ask if she’s ever worked in the Linu
x environment and if so, how does she solve certain problems. But he knows this wasn’t greeted with shrieks of joy during the last feeble attempt at conversation, so why repeat the mistake?
“Ah… nothing,” he mutters, watching his right hand squeeze into little white pearls of knuckles.
“Okay,” she says.
Did he hear a twinge of disappointment in that single word? Or is he simply projecting? Would she be impressed if he told her about his work? Of winning his grade school science fair in sixth grade? Of being advanced into the special mathematics program in high school, a junior-level college course? Would she even believe him? She’s beautiful, which only amps up the cloud of cotton candy fluffing around his stomach.
I’m dying here. Do something.
“Want to hear a joke?” he asks, face now radiating like a megawatt space heater.
“I’d love to.”
He swallows, inhales, rallies his nerve. “How do you recognize an extroverted engineer?”
“Don’t know. How?”
“They stare at your shoes instead of their own.”
She laughs, but he can tell it’s forced, which makes him even more anxious than a moment ago—if that’s possible. He shifts position on the chair and starts to massage the back of his neck, forcing himself to look at her face. He wants to tell her she’s beautiful but suspects she knows that only too well. That kind of person always knows.
Howie advised him to act interested in women he talks to, so asks, “What do you do?”
But his heart really isn’t in this anymore. Guys like him don’t have a snowball’s chance of ever dating a woman this fine. If he stood even the most miniscule chance of getting close to her he’d exert a bit more effort, but she’s so damned gorgeous she wouldn’t be caught dead talking on the phone with a nerdy, pimply, gangly geek like him, much less agree to a date. And she knows he knows this.
Life is so damn unjust. So unfair. Beautiful women, for example. They have such a huge advantage over the average guy. Well, maybe not over the Tom Bradys of the world, but the middle-of-the-road guys. Engineers, accountants, mid-level managers; your basic average salaried schlemiel. Beautiful women can pretty much write their own ticket in life. They only marry good-looking guys with money and power. And, in contrast to men like him, they can get laid whenever they want, by whomever they want. They have life so damn easy. And now, instead of being simply envious of her drop-dead beauty, he’s jealous as hell of her. Why does she get all the breaks while he only gets the short end of the stick? Life is so damn unjust.
Shaking his head, he scans the chatting couples around them just as the beauty across the table asks, “This your first speed dating experience?”
Aw, Christ! “That obvious, huh?”
Now she pities him. This only twists the knife into his gut further.
His right hand, he realizes, is splayed against his belly as if counter-pressure will somehow ease the pain.
“Yes,” he lies, desperately hoping to save face. Actually, this is his second try at pounding square pegs into a round holes, this experience just as disastrous as the last. He’ll be damned if he’ll fess up to that, because that’ll simply evoke more pity.
“It gets easier,” she reassures him. “Believe me.”
Bullshit. What would a girl like her know?
“Hey, look, I’m sorry,” he says, pushing out of the chair. “I just can’t…”
Without another word to anyone, he almost runs for the door, wanting nothing more but to end this torture. Never again.
He sits at the small kitchen table—a comforting space for him—with a frosty long-neck Anchor beer in hand, Howard slouched in the chair across from him. Arnold shakes his head, face burning with embarrassment even though it’s only Howie. Step by agonizing step he recounts the disastrous experience, leaving nothing out, making no attempt to salvage any self-respect. As if confession is now penance for his sins. Howard stares back with a pained expression, listening, not interrupting, not asking questions, and in no way being judgmental. Thank God. Howard could be a great psychiatrist, Arnold believes. It’s a damn shame he’s chosen to be a computer engineer.
“Awful is the only word to describe it, but that’s like saying the universe is bigger than an electron,” Arnold tells him. “You can’t relate, but it’s terrifying, not knowing what to talk about, what to say. There gotta be some way, some sort of finishing school… some place where someone can teach me how to act with a woman. I guarantee you, until some miracle happens, I’ll never willingly submit to that type of humiliation again. Never. Not unless I have some…” searching for the right word, “training, some coaching.”
Training? Really? Yeah, well, it’s the first word came to mind, so it must be right. He shakes his head, overwhelmed by yet another pang of self-pity.
“Can’t change the way I look,” although he had considered consulting a plastic surgeon last year. “So there’s nothing I can do about that. There’s gotta be some way to learn to be more comfortable…” he says, letting the thought trail off into nowhere-land because Howie’s heard it so many times there’s no reason to drag him through it yet again. He wants to cry or smash the beer bottle or scream, just do something to release the frustration eating him alive like a goddamn rat scurrying around his gut, its little claws and teeth chomping at him. Any minute it’ll pop out of his chest like the Alien.
Howie picks up his bottle, uses his shirt cuff to wipe away a ring of water condensation on the red Formica tabletop. “Know what I think? I think you need to get laid.”
“Well, duh.” Arnold coughs out a sarcastic sound. “What do you think I’ve been talking about? Can’t get laid without a female. Well, yeah, I can fantasize…”
“No,” and up pops a just-a-second-finger. “Hear me out. I think we need to take you to Vegas, get you laid.”
A moment of silence deafens him until his hearing slowly returns.
He knows it’s returned because now he again hears the soft hum of the refrigerator and, in the distance—through the open French doors—the wail of a siren off toward the University District. The air carries spring warmth and the scent of freshly mown grass and pollens. Allergy pollens. Suddenly, he’s acutely aware of these myriad sensory stimuli while Howie’s suggestion echoes though his mind, turning a distant possibility into an actual reality.
Did Howie actually suggest what he thinks he did?
“I’m serious,” Howie adds, apparently reading his doubts.
Arnold watches his thumb swipe condensation off the bottle, embarrassed by having to respond to the suggestion. “I know you are,” he mumbles, embarrassed even more by the stew of emotions suddenly bubbling up inside: lust, yearning, fantasies, more embarrassment followed by another loss for words. The story of his pathetic life is now floating below the surface of consciousness, making him feel naked and exposed.
He forces his eyes to look at his best friend, sees him sitting there, silently waiting for an answer. Arnold drops his gaze to the bottle again, too embarrassed to admit the very same thought has crossed his mind numerous times in the past months. It is, however, the first time Howie has put the topic on the table for open discussion. Now, hearing his fantasy actually suggested by his best friend—a person whose judgment, especially when it comes to women, he admires and trusts—it becomes… what, more realistic? Not so fantastic, not unreasonable? Doable?
Seeing a pro would certainly solve the biggest problem. Isn’t this the way some guys lose their virginity? There was this movie a couple months back on late night TV, a old film, a comedy/drama about sailors—Cinderella Liberty, he thinks is the title—where that’s precisely how one sailor was indoctrinated into the mysteries of consensual sex.
It’s just… actually… implementing the idea.
Boy! He sucks a deep breath and shakes his head at nothing, the idea now niggling away at him like a loose tooth, painful, yet curiously demanding to be played with.
“Well?” Howie presses.
“What do you want me to say?”
“How about, thank you, Howard for providing me a solution to my misery?” Howie nudges the laptop toward him without a hint of goading in his tone. “Google Las Vegas escorts.”
Arnold’s face is doing the space heater thing again. “I… can’t.”
Howie gives him that sideways squint he mastered in grade school, an effective non-verbal message the meanings of which are always appropriate to the situation. “Why not?”
The two friends stare at each other, Howard’s face dead-ass poker-serious now. And that’s when Arnold knows the proposition isn’t a joke, that Howard isn’t simply jerking his chain to see what kind of a reaction he’ll get. Has to admit this is just another example of why he loves Howard, looking out for him like a big brother. Although there are times… Jesus, how can emotions flip-flop so quickly?
Howard taps the computer again. “Ever looked before?”
That a trace of a smirk?
“No.” His face amps up ten more degrees.
“Well, just for laughs, let’s sneak a look, see what kind of woman appeals to you.” Howie scrapes his chair around the table next to him. “Just ‘cause you look doesn’t mean you have to actually do anything about it. Right?”
