An Incredible Vocabulary

You had to write a 40-word romance ad for Westword's classified section at the door to get in. There was a free buffet, but the drinks weren't free after all. I stood around smiling stiffly and trying to look inviting, waiting for someone to come up and offer to buy me a drink but no one did.

Slippery fire played over the dancefloor. Candy hearts labeled with sappy phrases like LOVE or HEY CUTIE jeered from blood-red tablecloths. Anxious faces cruised the room like the prows of ships, each one personally stoned with fear and self-loathing to find itself here, among the unwanted admitting their hunger with heart-shaped nametags.

Wanda was waiting in the back of the lobby when I was on my way out, with an alligator purse and alive soft jumpy face, cheeks sliding abruptly into mischievous smiles. We walked away together with a conversation down the street into a huge, bright bar like a highschool lunchroom, with garish green plastic shamrocks hung everywhere, and made eyes at each other.

Wanda was older than me, and it made her cautious. She admitted she was attracted to me, but said it made her feel uncomfortable, our ages. She wore gloves the whole time, so I asked her if her hands were horribly burnt or maimed or something, "haha, just kidding." She showed me one of her hands and it was fine. Then she kissed me on the cheek and hurried out of the bar.

The next day I called her and she said, "You know, I meant what I said."

"About what?"

"About the difference in our ages making me uncomfortable."

"Aw," I said, disappointed.

"Goodbye," said Wanda, who hung up quickly.

For days I couldn't stop seeing her face in my mind.

The first girl to answer my romance ad was really something special. She was a poet and her poetry was skillful and savage and striking, connected by long rows of dots. Her name was Lucy, and she worked as a dental hygiene assistant in her father's office in the suburbs. She got drunk with me at the Jellyfish, and when we got back to my apartment, she said, "Do you wanna fool around?" She spent the night, but we didn't have sex, just fooled around in blue apartment shadows. She wore lavender lipstick and kissed me hungrily. In the morning she said, "Don't forget to brush your teeth. It feels so good."

She said she was going out of town for a week in a few days, and wouldn't be able to see me until she got back. I called her twice before she left and made a fool of myself trying to sound earnest, articulate, casual and sincere. Hanging up the phone the second time, I knew I'd ruined it.

Then the second girl called to respond to my ad. Her name was Caroline. At her suggestion, we met at the Hornet on 1st and Broadway, which I'd always sort of hated because it had replaced Mary and Lou's, which I'd always sort of loved. All the booths were torn out and a huge marble bar had been installed.

There was nowhere to sit when I got there except next to Clem, the speech-impaired paraplegic who'd been a regular at the location since the days of the skid-row diner, and was always making unintelligible complaints about his food that held up the whole wait-staff for several minutes at a time.

"Are your eggs cold, Clem?" asked the bartender, a stout girl with Indian features.

"Maaaaaahh . . ." the old man moaned, in his mossy voice.

Caroline got there a few minutes after I did. After drinking we decided to walk to a nearby record store so I could listen to her favorite band. I slipped up on a patch of ice and fell down on my ass. Caroline was an aerobics instructor. She helped me up.

"Are you all right?" she asked me. "Your little arm twisted behind you, and I thought.."

"I'm all right," I said quickly. I knew I was out of shape, but that 'little arm' rankled.

Caroline decided she was cold, and didn't have time to go to the record store anyway. We started walking back to her house, where her car was, so she could give me a ride home.

"Do you like Tom Robbins?" she asked me.

"Ugh, no."

"Why not?"

"I think he's a hack. I think he gets a lot more credit than he deserves. I think he's too cutesy."

There was a silence.

"But don't hold it against me," I said.

"Well . . . he has an incredible vocabulary," she went on, "he uses a lot of unfamiliar words. That might make it boring for some people."

I was silent.

Caroline told me she would come to my poetry reading Thursday night.

"It's not a poetry reading, it's a freakshow," I said. I'd been contracting with actual contortionists and fire-swallowers. "But yeah, I'll see you there."

I couldn't stop thinking about Lucy. She was beautiful, intelligent, talented, and had seemed to like me. I left her a message on Thursday about the show, but I figured she was still out of town. Now it was Sunday, I had to work from three to eight, and when I got home, she still hadn't called. I nurtured a small seed of hope that she would for some weeks.

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