Are you Like Me? by James Francis Flynn

Are you like me? Do you watch Friends at 6:30 every night while eating dinner, thinking "I wish my life was like that?" then feeling guilty about feeling so shallow? Do you scan the "Missed Connections" section in the back of the Reader secretly hoping someone wrote in about you and all the furtive glances you’ve given while on the El? Do you call old friends on a Friday night and scream when you get voicemail, assuming they’re out having fun without you, paranoid they’re leaving you out on purpose? You wake up Saturday morning after eating cookie dough ice cream in your underwear, watching Entourage episodes on DVD. One ends, and you press play again.

* * *

Phone rings. It’s Carrie, an old college friend. She means well but remains a little too perky: the kind of girl who ends all her sentences in an email with !!! and begins all her sentences in conversation with ohmygod. Watch:

"Ohmygod, Kevin!" See? "It’s Valentine’s Day!"

"Yep."

"What are you doing today?"

"No plans," I say. That’s not entirely true. I had already planned on not having plans, and at this point, I consider that having a plan. My non-plan included a bottle of scotch, a bag of peanuts and a porno. Pretty much in that order.

"Ohmygod, that’s so good to hear, because there’s this party that my friend from Evanston is putting on. It’s called the Anti-Valentine’s Day Party."

"Catchy," I say. "Clever."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Um…"

"Anyway," she barges on, "You totally have to go."

"Well…"

"You’re going."

"To Evanston? I’m not going all the way up to –-"

"No, she’s only from Evanston, she doesn’t live there now. Andersonville."

"OK, that’s more reasonable."

"So you’ll come?"

I pause. I look over at the coffee table, littered with cigarettes (I don’t even have a fucking ashtray). In the center of the table is my scotch, my peanuts, my porno. They sit there, silent. They look like a still-life. They look like a diorama. They look like they are on a stage, ready to perform for me. I imagine the room darkening slowly, as someone sexy walked in and turned the dimmer near the door down. A spotlight comes on, illuminating my scotch, my peanuts, my porno. An announcer’s voice comes on through the PA, but he sounds tired, bored. Why? Well, the porno itself is nothing special: Asian Vacation #4. The ladies on the cover are surprisingly busty and one is wearing a nurse’s uniform and is showing some butt. But still, it was probably shot on grainy video in a motel in a suburb somewhere.

And the scotch? Eh. Middle shelf shit. The peanuts couldn’t hold a candle to anything at the ballpark.

"OK." I say.

"Great!" she says. And since my imagination is still running wild, I imagine three exclamation points afterward. !!!

* * *

The party doesn’t start for another 8 hours; I have a lot of time to kill. There’s tons to do, so right away I take a nap.

In my nap I dream of a fun encounter at the party tonight. Her name is Jill, her name is Megan, her name is Sarah, her name is Who Cares. I see her across the room as I’m telling joke after joke to strangers who love me. The men ask for my card and the women touch my arm as they laugh and say "You’re So Funny!"

Here’s the joke: "So it was the mailman's last day on the job after 35 years of carrying the mail through all kinds of weather to the same neighborhood. When he arrived at the first house on his route he was greeted by the whole family there, who congratulated him and sent him on his way with a big gift envelope. Then at the second house they presented him with a box of fine cigars. The folks at the third house handed him a selection of terrific fishing lures. At the fourth house he was met at the door by a strikingly beautiful woman in a revealing negligee. She took him by the hand, gently led him through the door, and led him up the stairs to the bedroom where she blew his mind with the most passionate sex he had ever experienced. When he had had enough they went downstairs, where she fixed him a giant breakfast, eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage, blueberry waffles, and fresh squeezed orange juice. When he was truly satisfied she poured him a cup of steaming coffee. As she was pouring, he noticed a dollar bill sticking out from under the cup's bottom edge.

‘All this was just too wonderful for words,’ he said, ‘but what's the dollar for?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘last night, I told my husband that today would be your last day, and that we should do something special for you. I asked him what to give you.’

He said, ‘Fuck him, give him a dollar.’

The lady then said, "The breakfast was my idea."

Funny, eh? I got a thousand of ‘em. That’s why I get laughs. Lots of laughs. And not that polite laugh, that chuckle that comes from the throat: these are belly laughs, and these people mean it.

Who Cares approaches me as I walk away from my adoring audience to pour another two fingers of scotch.

"That was really funny," she says.

"Thanks," I say. "I’ve got a million of ‘em." That’s true – I had been on a bunch of web sites, studying jokes earlier that dream day.

"Why don’t we go somewhere quiet where you can make me laugh?"

And it is like that. It’s a dream, so we seem to float away. She takes my hand and we glide through the kitchen, past the dancers in the dining room rocking out to ironic Bon Jovi, past the couches in the living room, up some stairs, to a door marked "Private". It must be for this very purpose – The Hook-Up, one stranger to another.

She gives me a movie star look, raised eyebrows, and opens the door slowly. The candles are already lit, the bed is made with blood red blankets. Incense. Rose petals. On the walls are originals by Van Gogh and maybe Mark Rothko. I feel like I’m in the Playboy mansion.

I look back at Who Cares, and she’s already naked. Wow.

"I want you to fuck me", she purrs. It’s not romantic, but I appreciate her directness.

She throws me on the bed and unbuttons my pants, rubbing her big tits on my thighs, brushing long hair on my legs. She licks like an expert, teasing.

Then her face turns blurry. Her tits disintigrate. The Van Gogh disappears. Everything turns pitch black, then suddenly light.

I wake up with a boner. I masturbate to get rid of it, trying to envision the face I so clearly saw in my dream. But its gone now, just a blurry blur on a black-haired head, fading in obscurity. I come into my cupped left hand.

I walk out into the living room, past the porno. The porno shakes its head disapprovingly at me: I jacked off without it. For shame.

I walk over to the bathroom, wash my hands with some anti-bacterial soap. I wash my face too, checking it over. Zits? No zits? Hair? A full head still: my mother’s father died in his sixties with a big mane, so I’m good. Weak chin? Yes, still. Bags under eyes? That’s what you get when you stay up till 2 surfing MySpace for old high school friends…

But never mind that negativity! Tonight! Tonight is a party, a new beginning, a chance at something, something. Like in the dream, like in the dream. There’s much to do. I get out a fresh sheet of paper, sharpen a pencil in the electric doodad my mom gave me for Christmas, and I make a list of things to go and buy for the party.

1. New dress shirt.

Not a "dress" shirt exactly, but a nice shirt. Something clean, something classic, something flashy to get attention, but not flashy like a gay guy. I couldn’t pull that off. Wouldn’t want to.

2. Booze.

Certainly I should bring some booze, right? Maybe not booze booze, maybe just a bottle of wine. Something nice.

3. Cologne.

I haven’t worn cologne since my high school reunion. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t tonight.

What else? I can’t think of anything else, so I get out the cereal and turn on the TV and eat some while watching CNN, because I am trying to grow up and be an adult who is involved in the world.

* * *

The store is wonderful. I find a shirt that fits just so, and the sweet part is that its in the sale section, so its only $30. Its striped white with blue and black, and that might sound bad, but this shirt looks good. And it looks good on me, which the lady in the men’s section even agreed on.

"That looks good on you," she said, and they don’t pay her to lie.

So I bought that and some expensive cologne at the mall, then went across the street to the package store and bought a $20 bottle of wine. I don’t know shit about wine even after seeing "Sideways", so I sucked it up and asked the guy who worked there what he thought. He told me Chilean wines were good, nice bouquets, a fine all-around wine. Whatever, I said, just pick one out that will make me look good at a party. He gave me a look, which I admit I deserved, and then put the bottle in a bag.

I came home and immediately looked at the answering machine. The red light is blinking, which means: A Message! I press play and slump a little when I hear this:

"Ohmygod, Kevin! I talked to my friend – I don’t think I told you her name before, it’s Jenna. Anyway, Jenna just told me that the party tonight is a costume party! Pretty cool…so give me a call and we’ll figure something out. Maybe we could dress up like something together? Anyway, give me a call."

And then I slump a little bit more.

* * *

Carrie and I arrive at the party. We are wearing pirate costumes, which was her idea. We went to the Party store and it’s the only thing we could find for cheap – eyepatches and bandanas. It's low-rent I know, but we didn’t have much time and why put in effort? It’s a costume party on Valentine’s Day, for fuck’s sake.

But I’m pissed about the whole thing anyway. I bought that shirt for nothing, and what pirate smells like Brut? At least I get to bring my bottle of wine – fuck rum. So we walk in. Already I see the Sexy Syndrome – every girl here is dressed up as The Sexy (Blank). The Sexy Nurse. The Sexy Schoolgirl. The Sexy Vampire – "I’ll bite your neck," she says. I half-expect to see The Sexy Rape Victim.

Hell, even Carrie is in on it. She’s got an eyepatch and a fake plastic pegleg, sure. But she’s also wearing a thin white shirt and you can see her bra underneath and she’s got the shirt tied up so that you can see the tattoo on the small of her back and her small belly with the crystal and her pelvic muscles and enough of those thoughts.

Booze! We head straight for the kitchen to plop down our bottles (she brought flavored vodka) and there are some DudeShawns there, dressed up as football players. They’re wearing full shoulder pads and helmets and they keep yelling and grunting and slamming their helmets into each other, then tipping back their facemasks a bit to take shots. Wow.

"Shooters!" one yells to me.

"No no," I say.

"Puuuuussy!" says his friend. "Shoooooters!"

A shot is shoved into my hand. Another dude grabs Carrie by the waist roughly and she shrieks a little and pushes him away.

"Get the fuck off me," she says.

"OK, OK," the DudeShawn says.

"Jesus," she says.

"I apologize. Let me make it up to you," and he gives her a shot.

At this point, everyone in the kitchen has a shot glass in their hand, and the DudeShawns do their chant:

"Down! Set! Hut hut hut hut…Shoot!" Everyone takes a shot, slam their glasses on the table, and the DudeShawns slam each others helmets again as I slowly back up out of the room.

I walk into the dining room, which looks converted into a craft room. Off to the side there’s a table with a sewing machine with some colored thread and fabric and buttons. A wicker basket filled with yarn and knitting needles sits in the corner. And a short table sits in the middle of the room with reams of colored paper, bottles of glitter, markers and pens and paints. Three girls are there, crafting away.

"Hi," they say in unison.

"Hi," I say. "What’s going on in here?"

"Making some Anti-Valentine cards. You should make one."

And they are all cute, all three of them, without fail. So I say OK. I sit down. I look at what they have done so far. The girl closest to me has one that says "Rot In Hell" in bold black letters on a pink gravestone-shaped card.

"This is for my ex," she explains. I nod.

Another girl shows me one that depicts a dagger stabbing a startlingly accurate- looking human heart. No simple heart outline for this girl, she’s got the ventricles and the aorta and everything.

"Accurate," I say.

"I’m an art student," she explains, and smiles.

The last girl’s card is a little different. She’s got a blank white sheet of paper and is scribbling black crayons all over it. Black back and forth, scribbling, scribbling.

"This is what it feels like when you get dumped," she explains, and I nod knowingly. I move over closer to her as she continues to scribble. I extend my hand and introduce myself.

"Hi, I’m Kevin," I say.

She stops scribbling. "Catherine," she says. And she looks me in the eye, and she smiles, and its one of those electric moments where you instantly sense a connection, a chemistry, a feeling that this person looks at you as a real person as opposed to just someone you can meet and instantly forget.

So while she continues to scribble we start to talk. What do you know? We have things in common. We have similar backgrounds, growing up in small coastal towns out East. And we have the same sense of humor, going back and forth about hilarious hipster tendencies we see on the train everyday (iPod holders, messenger bags with band buttons, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"). And its little things, like the way she says "car" without that long A that’s characteristic of the Chicago accent, or the way she brushes her hair behind her ear when she says something she thinks she shouldn’t have.

Have you guessed that I’m smitten? I am. So after two hours of talking and drinking and talking, we go into the kitchen to take shots. The DudeShawns are still there, of course, and they’ve set up empty beers cans in a small pyramid and they are bowling with full cans, seeing how many empties they can knock over.

We walk in. The DudeShawn bowling looks over at Catherine, runs up to her, gives her a big bear hug. I watch in horror as he lifts his helmets and kisses her full on the mouth.

"You behaving yourself, Sean?" she says. And I can’t believe it. I was fucking fooled. How could she be like she is and be with this guy? How could I be such a fucking dumbass? How could be be such a DudeShawn and actually be named Sean?

I look around the room just so that I don’t have to look at them kissing. And the horror continues: Carrie is sitting on some dude’s lap, and they are nuzzling, and he’s basically groping her breasts over her shirt alittle as she giggles and tries to slap his hands away in that way where she’s doing it but she really wants him to keep going.

I bet my mouth is hanging open when Catherine says, "I want you to meet my boyfriend Sean." I limply shake his stupid hand.

"Wanna do a shot?" he asks. Do I ever.

So we all do a shot, and the DudeShawns do some sort of handshake afterwards. And guess what? I do another shot really sneakily while they do their handshake. And guess what else? I take the bottle with me as I go back to the dining room and start drinking more more more as I try to figure out what I want to write on my Anti- Valentine’s card.

* * *

"So the joke goes like this: There was once a train conductor, and he had a history of really bad anger management problems. One day a woman on the bus refused to pay the fare. Well, the train conductor got so angry he killed her. He was tried and sentenced to death by the electric chair. The day for his execution came, and they took him out of his cell and brought him to the chair. The guard said, ‘Have you any last requests?’ The man replied, ‘Yes, I'd like an unripe green banana, please.’

So they got him an unripe green banana, and he peeled it, ate it, and threw the skin away, and they strapped him to the chair.

‘Are you ready?’ they asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. And they hit the switch. And nothing happened. So he was taken back to his cell.

The guards rewired the chair and tested it a few times, and it worked perfectly. They brought the man back and said, ‘Have you any last requests?’

The man replied, ‘Yes, I'd like an unripe green banana, please.’

So they got him an unripe green banana, and he peeled it, ate it, and threw the skin away, and they strapped him to the chair.

‘Are you ready?’ they asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. And they hit the switch. And nothing happened. So he was taken back to his cell.

Well, the guards bought a brand new electric chair. This one was amazing: leather seats, gold-plated armrests studded with rubies, the works. It was an incredible sight. They brought the man back and asked, ‘Have you any last requests?’

The man replied, ‘Yes, I'd like an unripe green banana, please.’ So they got him an unripe green banana, and he peeled it, ate it, and threw the skin away, and they strapped him to the chair.

‘Are you ready?’ they asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. And they hit the switch. And nothing happened.

Now, in this particular state, there was a law that if someone survived the electric chair three times, he must be set free. So the man was released, and as soon as he stepped out of the prison, the press was all over him. He walked through the crowd and the flashing cameras until he saw a small man who asked, ‘Have you discovered some miraculous phenomenon of unripe green bananas?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I've just always been a bad conductor.’

The joke falls flat. It is nothing like in my dream. People look at each other with faces that say "Who brought this guy?" Carrie cringes. No one laughs. No one touches my arm. In fact, there are groans. I deserve them. The joke sucks. I read it on some retarded website and I am a retard for repeating it.

I walk back to the dining room and there is no one in there. I grab the Anti-Valentine I’ve been working on for the last half-hour. I know I am drunk. I know that. I can tell by the way my breath smells. I can tell because I’ve been stumbling a bit, not quit tripping over furniture but close. And I can tell because I told that stupid fucking joke that I should have kept to myself.

I have the Anti-Valentine in my hand, and I sit there on that itchy plaid couch for a minute, just thinking. I think about my first girlfriend in 5th grade. Does that even count? We kissed once in the woods, how couldn’t that count? And even though I know I should be over it, why does it still hurt that she dumped me for fucking Justin Strubing after two weeks?

I think about all the other times I’ve flubbed a joke, like the time I fucked up my speech at the school assembly with a joke about Columbine. Or when I tried to make light of post office shootings in that job interview. Or like on that blind date that fucking Carrie set up with her Hispanic friend who just didn’t get my sense of humor and who by the end of the night was sighing deeply with her head resting on her chin, waiting for the check. I guess dead baby jokes don’t fly south of the border.

Is that why I’m so goddamned lonely and can’t keep a girl? Because my sense of humor sucks? Or is that girls just don’t get it? But Catherine…Catherine got it, didn’t she? She laughed when we were talking on the couch. She laughed – she did! Maybe she gets me. Maybe she understands my sense of humor. Maybe she’ll understand this.

I get up. I almost tip over from getting up too fast. I walk in the kitchen. Catherine is there with her DudeShawn Sean, her arm wrapped around his waist as they watch the beer bowling.

I tap her on the arm.

"Hey!" she says.

"Hey," I say.

"What’s going on?" she asks.

"Is that your boyfriend?" I say.

‘…Yeah? Remember, I introduced you?"

"Why did you lead me on?" I ask.

"What are you talking about?" she says.

"Here," I say, and I hand her the Valentine I made. It’s a black heart-shaped heart, and in hot pink letters it says: Hi, I Hate You.

"You’re an asshole," she says. "You’re drunk."

"Does that mean I can’t hit on you anymore?" I say.

She looks at me with a sort of screwed-up face.

"Yes."

Suddenly, I see myself from above. I see myself upturning a table. I see myself throwing things. I see myself kicking at her stupid boyfriend. I see the guys come from the other room and put me in a headlock. Punches to the gut don’t hurt at first. That’s adrenaline. I hear the girlfriend screaming with glee, egging the boyfriend on. I hear the music being turned off. I hear mumbled voices about how I’m an asshole, about how I probably wasn’t even invited, about how I should go back to wherever the shit I came the fuck from. I am tossed out the door and into the yard. I am drenched with beer, poured directly over my head. I am kicked in the butt by someone bigger than me as a last little reminder that I am not wanted. I am ashamed, finally, of being kicked in the butt and left in the mud.

So on the walk home, I wrote that note.

* * *

Sarah M______ was driving along Ashland, arguing with her boyfriend. "I don’t care, OK?" she said, gesturing with her hands. "You can say whatever. I still say she was flirting with you."

She and Tim where arguing about a party they had to been to earlier that night. Sarah was fuming about a woman who she thought had been flirting with Tim, leaning in, tipsy, touching his arm at the snack table.

"Listen, Sarah, it wasn’t anything. You’re overreacting."

"Don’t tell me I’m overreacting!"

Sarah started yelling, really relishing the argument and the way it let her unleash a little bit. She turned her head when she said: "I hate it when you say that! I’m not overreacting!"

Because her head was turned momentarily, Sarah didn’t see the man move in front of her car. She hit him. She heard the hit. She let out a little yelp. Tim let out a big yell.

"Holy shit!"

"What was that?" Sarah said, even though she knew.

She hit the brakes. She stopped the car right in the middle of the street, even though other cars where speeding by. They both got out of the car, surprised and scared and so thoughtless in their worry and nerves that they didn’t even close their doors. Sarah stood by the rear quarter panel of the car while Tim ran back abut 50 feet to the black mass that had settled there. She stood silently, biting her lip, hoping against hope, rubbing her thumb against the side of her finger in a nervous twitch she couldn’t shake. She watched Tim stand over the man. She watched him walk around the body in a circle, looking down. She watched him crouch, his back to her, shielding her view, but she could still see the pool of blood slowly swelling, growing. And she watched his head swivel around so that she could see his face, and it happened as if in slow motion, and she saw his face with what looked like empty eyes. The mouth opened, and it was black inside to, and words came out like molasses:

"Sarah, call 911. Now."

She reached in her black bag and did. Minutes later, the police and the ambulance came. They surveyed the scene. They put yellow tape around the area. They looked at the man, now a body, and checked his wallet to find out who he used to be. The police sat Sarah down in the median, on the rim of a planter brimming with bushes and trees.

Sarah was weeping. She was sobbing into two hands. They told her to calm down. They told her things like this happen. They told her he was probably drunk, that it wasn’t her fault, that it was an accident.

Another officer walked over and showed his partner a note that he had found in the body’s pocket. He looked at it grimly, shook his head.

"What does it say?", Sarah asked.

"No. Nothing," he said.

"What does it say? Why won’t you tell me?"

"You can’t see this," he said, but right as he said it she quickly snatched the note from his hand and read it. It said:

Please excuse all the blood.

She dropped the note and that’s when she really started crying.

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Are you Like Me? by James Francis Flynn