BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: WINTER 2001

parallel conversations :: 2/2/01

Pale green music. A plate scattered with blobs of oil and the remnants of salad. Fletcher’s book: John Ashbery, As We Know. Jakob sips from his coffee mug, sets it down. The mug is one of those thick cream-colored ceramic jobs that Jakob has seen in a million different diners and cafes. One stabilized element in a personal iconography that’s normally prone to shift.

—I don’t know, Jakob says. Thinking: I’m glad that Fletcher and I can talk about this stuff; that’s rare, I think, supposed to be rare, two men able to talk directly about their feelings towards women, without all of the posturing, without all of the dude so I was fucking this chick last night shit. (Jakob saw more than his share of that, firsthand, years ago in the dorms.) OK, it’s true that Fletcher brought up Freya as a topic by saying So how go your attempts to bang my old friend?, a token crudeness, but it serves a purpose. Introducing it early masks the true business of talking. Without it they would be so self-conscious about being perceived as "sensitive" (or, worse, being perceived as people who self-identify as "sensitive") that they would actually be unable to display sensitivity.

Fletcher isn’t thinking. He’s listening.

—I’ve been thinking a lot about that date, Jakob says.

—Date? Fletcher says. —What the hell was I, your chaperone?

—You know what I mean, Jakob says. —I could say I’ve been thinking a lot about the first time that her and I hung out for an extended period since I decided that I was kind of interested in her, that may be more accurate, but Christ, doesn’t it strike you as unweildy?

—Point taken. So, go on.

—I don’t know. I wish it had gone smoother. I wish I felt like we had clicked a little bit better.

—Yeah, well, Nick’s is probably not the best place to have, like, an intimate conversation.

—I just kept saying these things and I could hear myself from outside, and I just sounded like this fucking pointy-headed academic geek...

—Yeah, well, you are an academic geek. But Freya’s pretty smart. A lot smarter than you’d expect for someone who didn’t finish school, and I don’t think she’d be, like, put off by that.

—Mm.

—In fact, I think she’s kind of craving some, you know, intellectual discourse. (Air quotes around this last.) —It’s hard, you know, to find a community of smart people if you didn’t go through school. I don’t think she really meets that many through the record store. And, uh, I’ve seen some of her last few boyfriends, and they didn’t particularly strike me as real strong in that department.

—Great. She likes big dumb tough louts. I don’t stand a chance.

—No, Fletcher says. —I think she’s, um, had her fill of those types of guys for a while. (He remembers, not last summer but the summer before, remembers her face, the space around the eye swollen and green. The television broadcasting a South Park episode in bright colors. Her cursing— fuck I’m so stupid —her huddled shape on the couch suddenly boiling up into action, seizing a milkcrate full of Mike’s LPs, hauling it out to the back balcony and lifting it, pitching it down into the alley below. Motorhead; Molly Hatchet. Fletcher had warned her of the obvious— Mike’s anger, and what it would be when he returned —and he remembers Freya pulling an aluminum baseball bat out from under the sofa and screaming I’ll split that fucker’s face right in two.)

—I don’t know, Jakob says. Every time her and I talk it seems like we’re having two different conversations.

Fletcher hears someone at the next table over: She’s actually funnier on e-mail than she is in person.

—Different conversations aren’t necessarily a bad thing. A faulty connection between two people is often more interesting than a clear one. It can stimulate in unexpected ways.

(He thinks here of the Ashbery. The two columns of "Litany" are meant to be read as simultaneous but independent monologues. And yet each of the two parallel signals invariably interferes with the other; there’s no other way to read the thing. The intersection of different voices is one of the merits of the poem. You could say the same for all of Ashbery’s work.)

—So there’s some interference, Fletcher says. —It’s no big deal. That’s where complexity enters.

—The Situationists say "cities are born from interferences of situations," Jakob says, nodding.

Fletcher nods, and thinks of the cafe’s side wall, where people have posted various bulletins and flyers. Before he’d placed his order he’d checked it out for a few minutes, let the culture flow over him. Requests for roommates and flyers for shows. Town and Country : it all has to do with it. Some wit had photocopied an image of a television remote and, at the top, wrote LOST. "Remo" : missing since 12/15/00. Reward! If found, please call. A number. One voice in a field.