by Auld, Alexei
Fuck it.
That Monday, I had to engage in speed dating with Percy and Enos. We had tried two-minute dating, where you’re given a number to go around a room and play musical chairs for two-minute intervals. I was number 34. My problem was number 33. Every time I sat down for the two-minute date, every, and I’m not exaggerating, every woman was staring at number 33, would briefly glance at me, then immediately stare at number 33 with as much confusion as folks had when learning Bruce Willis was a ghost in The Sixth Sense.
Being a nosy bastard, I had to know what the fuck he did.
“He… I… He…”
“That guy… He… He…”
“…”
After a couple of blank looks, I pieced together the problem…
Apparently, there weren’t enough guys for the exercise, so they cajoled a bar patron to participate…after they bought him a shitload of shots. He spent each two-minute interaction spewing his hatred of women, his love for sadomasochism, and the pointlessness of living. By the time he was done and I had to introduce myself, it took a minute and a half to calm each woman down. By the time they were relaxed, the bell would toll, and I’d have to move to the next woman, only to ease her pain and hope I’d have time to say something about myself other than my name. By the end, I didn’t even bother. By the time I’d calmed them down, I just smiled and moved on. By the end of the night, I had no matches.
The fifteen-minute dating seemed more promising. Eight dates, randomly selected. Plus free mojitos all night long. By the seventh date, I was too drunk to know if I had beer goggles. The girl seemed to be a blurred white girl wearing black, with wavy brown hair. Her name was Steffi and she seemed okay.
I got an email that we matched and our numbers would be exchanged.
That day I got a call. I thought it was Steffi, but it was Lola.
“You sound like you’re surprised…”
“That I am.”
“You really didn’t think I’d call you?”
“I did…”
“Shuddup…”
“See…”
“What?”
“You were extremely rude.”
“I’m a nice girl.”
I had to go, but she wanted to give me her number.
“Not like you’re gonna call.” She laughed before hanging up.
That night I got a call. It was Steffi. She seemed plain, but decent. She was a teacher who worked in the Bronx. The call was forgettable but promising. We scheduled a date for Friday.
It was Tuesday, so I called Lola. I was filling a pot with water to make spaghetti with one hand and had the phone in the other. She picked up…
“Are you peeing, Rufus?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you taking a piss?”
“What? No, why—”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s natural.”
“It may be, but I don’t know you that well. Not that I’d urinate on the phone if I did, I don’t use the phone in the bathroom, but—”
She laughed and asked what music I had on in the background…
“Blood on the Tracks.”
“Funny album.”
“No, it’s Bob Dylan about his divorce.”
“I know who recorded it.”
“Pretty depressing stuff.”
“I think that shit’s hilarious. He’s whining like a little bitch: ‘Oh, I lost my wife. I love her.’” She busted out laughing.
I thought I’d met the devil.
For the uninitiated, Blood on the Tracks is the most depressing album you’ll hear…unless you’ve heard Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear. A divorce settlement album with classics like “You Can Leave, but It’s Going to Cost You”, “Is That Enough,” “Anger,” and three versions of “When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You,” including an instrumental.
Dylan’s masterpiece will make you want to kill yourself.
Lola wanted to know when we could get together. Since I had a date set for Friday that I was looking forward to, I didn’t know if a date with Lola on Thursday would jinx it.
“How about Saturday?” I asked.
“That works. I might be hung over, though.”
“…”
“Some crazy friends coming over Friday. But I should manage…”
We set the date.
I set the date with Steffi at my favorite restaurant. When I walked in, I saw a large mass.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
“Rufus?”
Shit, it was.
Everyone’s had beer goggles, but mojito goggles had fucked me up something fierce. We took a seat, and I thought that not all was lost, for her personality would shine through.
She spoke about living in Japan for two years.
“Must’ve been great.”
“Well, they could learn a lot. Backward people.”
I never really gravitated to race-based things. My father, although Chinese-Jamaican, identified as Jamaican. He never lost his accent. Always brought me to international events at the OAS, blasted reggae music while he was working on his art, but he never brought me up Jamaican. He said he didn’t want to mess up my chances as a Yankee. And I don’t mean that in a baseball sense. Americans were Yankees to him. He didn’t want to be here, anyway. He met my mother in college and took her back to Jamaica. People thought she was Indian from India instead of Native American. Called her “coolie babu,” which was as racist as it sounds.
Not to my father. He’d suck his teeth and say my mother was overreacting in a typical super-racialized American hypersensitive way. He didn’t have any problems being called “Mr. Chin,” or having his parents and every other Chinese, or Chiney, as he would say, called that. “That’s how things are,” he would say. Not as if he brought me up knowing anything Chinese. Other than eating in Chinese restaurants, there wasn’t anything I saw growing up that was part of any Chinese-American experience, other than racism now and then from assholes. Growing up in DC, it was really international. My mother was Native American, or American Indian, as she called it, because being American was more important than being Indian. She didn’t think much of her political chances as an off-rez Indian, so she never spoke about race or did any ethnic things. To her siblings, she was a sell-out. I tried going to a powwow once, but felt uneasy. Too many rules with being Indian, or Native American. I didn’t know much about my tribe, or nation, as some called it. Didn’t know my language, didn’t know any dances, didn’t know the differences between federally recognized and state recognized.
It all gave me a headache.
It was easier being Rufus Wang as opposed to whatever others wanted me to be. I seriously considered changing my last name to McCoy, after Hank McCoy, a.k.a Beast from the X-Men. I wouldn’t have to deal with all the judgments of not being authentic anything. But it would still have raised questions, since, you know, I wouldn’t look like a McCoy. So I stuck with Rufus Wang. And when people would say I didn’t look like any Wang they knew, especially when I grew out my Afro, I’d say my father was Jamaican and that would blow their minds. They’d stare with open mouths with drool dripping. Totally would fuck up their world. They never conceived of Chinese people in Jamaica. Never thought that Chinese people in Jamaica would actually, gasp, have sex and marry non-Asians. It was so overwhelming to them that they would just shut down and move on. Now and then I’d get someone who thought it was cool, but they would want me to fire one up with them and smoke to Bob Marley.
Problem is? I’m asthmatic. Breathing as a kid was bad enough, so there was no way I’d fuck it up even more by smoking, even if people claimed it cured asthma.
Where was I?
Oh yes, there I was, stuck with Shamu in my favorite restaurant. Not the nice Shamu, mind you. Shamu was tolerant. This creature? She droned on and on about the most inane things…
The metric system, book width, and eraser integrity.
I shook my leg and reached for my pocket.
&nb
sp; “Who is this?”
“Your phone?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
My phone wasn’t ringing. I faked that shit and summoned my Shakespearean training to play the role of a frustrated lawyer.
I said, “Does it have to be now? I mean, I'm on a date and… Okay.” I hung up and buried my head in my hands.
“Not good?” she asked.
“Not really. I have to go back to work…”
“I thought you were a student.”
Busted. “I am, but I work at a law firm. And I have to back to work.”
“Right now?”
“No, after the meal.”
I wasn’t going to be a complete ass and leave her there. I just didn’t want the prospect of an after-dinner drink. The food at the restaurant was communal and she left me scraps, so I took a few bites, paid for the meal, and we rolled out. I walked her to the subway, and although I could’ve taken the same line, I took a cab home.
I didn’t regret my actions. I acted pleasant. Listened to her bitterness because all of the American male teachers got lovin’ from the Japanese women, but Japanese guys wouldn't touch her titties with a ten-foot pole. I finished the meal. If I wasn’t down, why lead her on? Just to think, I was actually looking forward to her date.
And tomorrow I had Lola.
When I showed up at Lola’s apartment, she was mopping the floor to Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.
She said, “Sorry for the mess.”
“Rough night?”
“Fucking hung over. But whatever.”
“I like your comedy album.”
We were supposed to go to a restaurant in Brooklyn, but she wanted to go local, since she wasn’t feeling well. We went to a restaurant (different from the night before) and the date went well. It was drizzling, but she was surprisingly pleasant.
“You should be hung over more often. It suits you well.”
She laughed, then cringed. “My head.”
She eventually got over her hangover after visiting a few bars, including one that played eighties music. She did the Safety Dance, I did the Rerun. When I walked her back to her place, she asked me to come in.
“It’s raining, so you can stay here. Right here with me.”
I didn’t have a condom, because I thought the date would be shite. I wasn’t about to go raw dog and catch some disease.
“No, I think I’ll be going home.”
She was on all fours on her bed, like a cat.
“I won’t take advantage of you.”
“Really?”
“I won’t. I’ll sleep on the floor if you’d like.”
“That won’t be necessary. I have to work tomorrow morning.”
She purred like a cat. “No you don't.”
“I don't?”
“Nope. You're working from here.”
“With who?”
She puckered and jabbed herself with her thumb.
“Okay. So what do—”
She leapt on me and that was that.
That night I went to the bathroom, and when I was washing my hands, she walked in…to take a piss.
I couldn’t believe it. She was on the toilet and I didn’t know whether to ignore or acknowledge her. Then I felt it. She was staring at me like a hawk. After she finished, she got up next to me.
“See? There’s nothing wrong with peeing in front of someone. On the phone or in the flesh…”
This girl was crazy.
While she was washing her hands, she rubbed against me and stared at our reflection in the mirror. “We could be brother and sister.”
I had to get the hell out of there. But I couldn’t.
It reminded me of the voodoo story in sophomore year. There was a guy who was a model student and soldier who went to New Orleans with some friends. They came back without him. His parents filed a missing persons report, and after two years, we all thought he was dead. A year after that, he’s strolling on campus.
“Larry?”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Where have you been?”
“New Orleans.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know.”
Turned out he’d met some witchy woman who put menstrual fluids in his jambalaya. He was trapped in her house and couldn’t leave. She didn’t tie him down or hold him at gunpoint. The guy just lacked the will to leave. He’d literally be standing by the door, staring at it. When the girl asked where he was going, he’d reply, “Nowhere.” His boys found out where he was and had to physically carry his ass through the threshold. He was violently ill until the plane cleared Louisiana. I shit you not.
And I, like him, couldn’t leave. Not because of jambalaya or a roofie in my drink. It was something else.
She was fine…
…and crazy…
…and I was curious.
All my life I’ve liked crazy women. In the movie Black Orpheus, there was an actress named Mira who Orpheus was engaged to before Persephone came and rocked his world. Mira was a lunatic. But she was fine. And Lola looked just like her…
I had my protection.
I was set.
Or so I thought.
Dating Lola was a rollercoaster ride. She had work to do and no time for anything but drinking, eating, and boning. I love meat and she was vegetarian. She claimed she wouldn’t kiss me if I at pork, which was bullshit, because my eating pork was like giving her Spanish fly. She smoked and I’m asthmatic. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, coughing, to discover she was smoking in bed. Although she was in her late thirties, she had fistfights with her sister. She hid me from her mother, although I met her sister once. Lola’s mating ritual was to have me fuck her missionary and try to come as fast as I could. No foreplay, no post-coital holding. After coming, she’d rub her stomach and proudly proclaim…
“Mmm, you fucked up my internal organs. And it feels so good. I fuck like a dude,” she’d say. It was the most bizarre shit I’d ever, or have since, experienced.
She didn’t like doggy style because it was impersonal.
She didn’t like to receive cunnilingus because she feared she’d like it and become a lesbian.
She’d say she was busy, only to call me an hour later and have me come over to her crib. She’d offer to pay for cab fare. She wouldn’t have me pay for her dinner or drinks, which was great from a financial standpoint, but weird for a relationship. After boning, she’d want me to sleep in the bed with her, but not touch her. She’d wake up and ask for a massage. In the morning she said we couldn’t see each other for a few days, because she had work to do. When she’d call me the same day, I’d ask about her work, and she’d want me to come over.
Once after fucking, she was dazed.
“I think I left my tampon in.”
“In where?”
“Did you feel anything different?”
“No, why would—you think you left it in before sex?”
“Probably. You think that would kill me?”
“Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“I will. Fuck…”
That night she wanted me to come over.
“What about the tampon?”
“What tampon?”
“The one stuck in you?”
“It’s probably working its way through my system now.”
This woman was crazy. I found out that the peeing story came from her parents. Apparently, they shared the same bathroom when they first met.
“That’s sweet. It’s a sign of endearment,” Percy proclaimed.
“Peeing in front of a prospective partner?”
“It may sound weird to us, but she’s probably heard that story for years. So it’s special in her family.”
I found out she wasn’t Brazilian, she was Hawaiian. She found out I wasn’t Cuban.
“But you said you were—”
“No, you assumed.”
“But you said—”
/> “Let me stop you. You made a shitty comment about Cubans and I gave you a look.”
“I didn’t say shit about Cubans.”
“Yes, you did. You said they were entertaining…”
“I’d never say something racist like that…”
And so it began. Lola would say something only to deny saying it later. To make matters worse, she credited me for saying something I never said. Conversations with her became toxic, as did our relationship. She was stressed about her work. She’d call me over to her place and have me wait while she worked on a brief, then would go to sleep. No fucking, no kissing, no nothing. She said she liked my presence and that she would be back to normal after finishing a case in two months.
The conversations got worse. I would get a stomachache just talking to her. I thought that I could weather the storm for two months. Get my offer, and not have to worry until I graduated.
And I did. We were arguing about something and she said she had to meet with a judge. The next day, I called to ask how it went and she said well.
“So, I was thinking we could check out—”
“I can’t. I have a brief to finish.”
“The one due yesterday?”
“I wasn’t anywhere near to finishing, so I got the deadlines extended for three months.”
“For one case?”
“No, all four…”
There was no way in hell I could put up with this shit for another two months. I wanted to break up with her but couldn’t.
My favorite shirt was in her closet.
A few days later, I had a drunken dinner with friends.
“You need to break up.”
“I need my shirt.”
“You need it that bad?”
“It’s my favorite one.”
“Which one?”
“That burgundy one…”
“With the zipper?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve got to get that back.”
“Tell me about it…”
So I gave Lola a call after dinner.
“What the fuck is it, Rufus?”
“I have to go to a—”
“Look, I don’t have the fucking time to go anywhere with you, motherfucker.”