by Iris Smyles
“Gross, Felix.”
A shy-looking Asian girl passed in front of us. “And what do we have here?” Felix asked, sidling up beside her.
I fell back a few paces to give him room to operate. They talked for two or three minutes and then, stopping at the corner, she wrote down her phone number.
The odd thing about Felix is that he routinely says the most offensive things you can imagine, and it almost always works. Women find him adorable. The only reason I can figure is that they think he must be kidding. I mean he is, partially. It’s like he knows what he’s saying is gross and ridiculous, but he still means every word of it. What’s even weirder is that if he goes out with these girls, if they start to date, they inevitably fall for him with the rough result that Felix has to sit them down—in their own apartments, naturally—and give them the hard talk about his not being ready for a relationship.
Meanwhile, Reggie, who is polite, good-looking, a moderately successful computer programmer at a cool downtown start-up, has none of Felix’s success. Felix is crude; basically homeless; drinks and smokes way too much; and has been unemployed for the last four years save for the occasional acting gig here and there, a brief stint selling Christmas trees last winter, this one time when he got a job handing out comedy club flyers in Times Square, and another time in 2000, when he and May had just started up, when he worked a few weeks as a census taker. He has pretty much nothing to offer a girl, and yet, women want whatever he’s got.
How he scored May and kept her as long as he did remains a mystery to his friends. How it ended was much less of a puzzle. Reggie told me the whole story that day on line at the Halloween store. Felix told me, too, during a game of backgammon months later. And then May gave me her version when she was visiting New York a few weeks ago and crashed on my couch, ousting Felix to Reggie’s for a few days.
Apparently the whole thing fell apart a few months after her older sister’s wedding. After her very Christian parents found out she and Felix were living together, they began a long-term cold war against the couple. In the three months leading up to her sister’s wedding, May and her parents did not exchange a word. Then, all together in Mountain Brook, on the night before the big day, a huge argument erupted between May and her mother, with the result that May felt she’d finally gained ground on Felix’s behalf.
She’d told her parents firmly, “If you love me, you must love Felix, because I love Felix and he is going to be in my life whether you accept him or not!” Exhausted by their estrangement, her parents reluctantly agreed, and the three of them reconciled with a tearful hug. Then, at the reception the following day, Felix got drunk, and using one of the disposable cameras set out on all the tables for wedding guests to document the joyous occasion, he took a photo of his penis.
After the pictures came back from the developers, the whole family—still at the house celebrating—gathered in the family room to pass them around. May’s father was the first to see the penis. He laughed uncomfortably and then, in a kind of shock-induced automatic response, passed it over to his wife, who also laughed before passing it to grandpa, who hooted and held his sides, and then passed it to grandma, who bellowed, “Get a load of that,” in a strange cowgirl accent....
After his penis finished making the rounds, May and Felix, who had been present for the photo-share, repaired to the patio. May, seething, inquired, “Felix, what the fuck?” Felix responded that it was a joke, and then pointed out how everyone had laughed, motioning through the glass door to May’s mother, who’d laughed so hard she was now crying.
Eventually the two reconciled and returned to L. A. where they remained together a few more months, until, on the heels of a minor disagreement over where Felix left his skateboard, May ended things once and for all, thus catalyzing Felix’s journey back East.
Felix was shocked by the breakup and maintains that May overreacted, that the whole photo episode was actually quite hilarious, and reminds whomever he’s telling this story to that her father’s initial response was laughter. May contends that her father’s laughter was nervous and that, anyway, it wasn’t just the photo of Felix’s penis that did it, but a whole bunch of other things, too, which the photo of his penis had only made clear. “It just got to be too hard,” she told me.
Felix and I rounded Bleecker. Since we had no place to go and very little money, we decided to walk over to the large Picasso statue below Washington Square Park.
“That’s weird,” Felix said when we got there, looking at me and then at the statue ten feet away. “It looks just like you.”
“Most of the work from his cubist period does,” I answered. “It’s my broken nose. It creates the illusion that I can be viewed from all angles at once. I also look a lot like Mondrian’s color block paintings, though the reason for that is less clear.”
“My balls are cold. I hate winter,” Felix said.
“I mean, fine. We’re not exclusive, I get that,” I exploded, thinking about Jess again, about what happened last night. “But did he really have to grab her ass right in front of me? That’s just rude.”
“If I had the money, I’d buy one of those chemical hand-warmers and put it in my underwear,” Felix went on dreamily.
2
Jess was a friend of Felix on whom I’d developed a small crush. Two weeks ago, we ended up alone in his apartment—he was having a barbeque and all his guests were up on the roof. Though there was no music playing, we’d started to slow dance. Then he kissed me. It was all very romantic until he told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship. I said that was good because I’d just gotten out of a long one. “I hate relationships,” I said, spinning away and out of his arms.
Then last night, a whole bunch of us were supposed to meet up at this bar on Delancey where someone’s friend’s band was playing. Jess had been there awhile before Felix and I arrived, and I was excited to see him because Felix had told me he was excited to see me. He’d been asking about me, he said. “A lot.”
“What’s up?” Jess yelled, over the music.
I gave him a kiss on the cheek and explained why we were late. “Poor Felix,” I shouted and looked over at him.
Felix nodded weakly, before sinking into a stool at the bar.
“We stopped at Matt’s on the way over and Matt had this really really strong weed, which made Felix sick. We were playing Awakenings but then had to stop in order to minister to his health. He’s mostly better now, just tired I think. Have you ever played Awakenings?”
Jess shook his head.
I knew he hadn’t because I invented the game myself; I suppose I was showing off. I have a pretty good track record when it comes to inventing games: Turbo Sculpture, The Water Game, Let’s-Throw-Magic-Markers-at-My-Ceiling-Fan. . . . Unlike conventional games, however, mine have no winners or losers; you just play to exhaustion.
Before Felix got sick, he’d been sitting on Matt’s couch, feigning catatonia, like in the movie Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. “I’m the doctor,” I explained, and threw a head of lettuce at him. Without looking up or in anyway changing position, Felix caught the lettuce in one hand.
I went on to Jess, describing the game’s few rules, thinking he would be impressed, maybe say to himself, “Wow! Iris is not like the other girls.” “That’s basically it,” I said, smiling at him expectantly.
A bullet leaving a smoking gun, or a truck bearing down on the love interest as the hero mouths, “NOOOOOO,” one quarter of the way through the summer’s hottest blockbuster—these types of things always occur in slow motion: A girl arrived at Jess’s side and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. He greeted her with his hand on her behind. They laughed. Then . . . her hand against his chest . . . his mouth beside her ear . . . his arm around her waist . . . his eyes to her eyes . . . and then back on mine and with that time resumed its normal flow, as if they were a movie and my face were a Play button.
I kept talking, searching for the conclusion to some stupid thing I
’d gone on blabbing about, while he continued to whisper in her ear. Lifting her chin, she let out a musical little laugh before flipping her hair—straight and shiny—a taut sail catching the gale-force wind of their joyous rapport.
I finished my sentence—“You know what I mean?” I asked desperately, looking back and forth between them.
“Totally,” the girl said.
“Totally,” Jess agreed.
I mumbled and looked down at my feet.
Shipwrecked. Washed ashore. The crew’s lone survivor, I spot a lighthouse, crawl my way to it, and knock on the door. A man opens it; warmth and firelight spill out into the cold dark night from which I’ve just emerged. Dripping in the doorway, I motion dumbly to the storming sea at my back, before a woman joins him to see what’s the matter. He puts his arm around her waist and I understand I’ve interrupted something. Offering an apology for not having drowned along with my crew, I begin, “What’s that? I couldn’t hear you over the music.”
“This is my friend Jenny,” Jess repeated.
I touched my chest, squeezed the front of my shirt to ring out the damp.
“I’m Iris,” I said and offered my wet hand.
“Oh, you’re Iris,” she said looking at him. “Jess has told me so much about you.”
“He has?”
“I was getting off work when I called you the other night,” he said abruptly. “Jen and I tend bar together on Thursdays.”
I nodded. “Great band,” I said, stretching my neck to see around them. And then, pointing at nothing in particular, “Excuse me,” I said, following the line of it to the back of the bar.
He had called last Thursday “just to talk.” That’s what he said. I asked him what he wanted to talk about. He said he’d been thinking about me. He said he got my number from Felix. He said, as if referring to the newly discovered scientific fact of us, “Iris, Iris, Iris . . . what are we going to do about you and me?”
3
“That’s it!”
Felix was miming a creepy hand gesture to three girls passing by in NYU sweatshirts.
“I’m done playing games! One minute he likes me, and the next—”
“Maybe you guys should see other people,” Felix laughed.
“Yeah, I should tell him that.”
“Text him.”
“It would be pretty funny,” I said.
“Break up with him,” Felix smiled. “I dare you.”
“A text saying we’re through, even though we were never actually together.”
“Exactly.”
I took out my phone and smiling, began to type. I read aloud, “‘Jess: I’m breaking up with you. I hope we can still be friends.’ How’s that?” I looked at Felix.
“Perfect,” he said, distracted by a blonde woman in pinstripes.
“Send!”
We circled the statue once more, laughing as we imagined Jess receiving my message. Then we started back to my place in silence.
“You think he knows I’m kidding?” I asked after ten minutes.
4
Regardless of however negatively “the experiment” might affect my relationship, regardless of however much I might actually like the guy on whom I was “experimenting,” I had to go through with it, “because,” May and I agreed, “it’s too funny not to!” Showing up to a date in a pink ski mask, mailing an autographed photograph of myself in a heart-shaped frame, calling a guy and saying, “I’m in prison; bail me out!” just had to be done if not for the laugh then “for science,” my faithful lab assistant reminded me.
“Ours is an age of enlightenment,” I noted solemnly, “and it is toward this noble end that I sacrifice myself.” Because we smoked so much pot back in college, pretty much everything struck us as hilarious, too, with the rough result that if something were even whispered, if the words “wouldn’t it be funny . . .” even left our mouths, I ended up having to go ahead and do it. We’d laugh and laugh, imagining the outcome of each new scheme, and then, on the crest of this hilarity, I’d sadly take up my mission, compelled to follow through like some martyr to the joke.
Felix and I eventually made it back to my apartment where, immediately, he began checking the responses to his last Craigslist post. I fixed us drinks—orange juice with some vodka I’d gotten on sale—and washed a few dishes to get my mind off Jess and the fact of his not texting back.
I had sent the message with the vague idea that this would be the last word, a “joke” to cap the whole stupid non-affair. But in the silence that followed, none of it felt very funny. I didn’t really want a laugh, I realized. I wanted him to win me back.
An hour later my phone beeped, and I rushed from the kitchenette.
I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY.
Felix looked up from the computer. “What’d he say?”
“He didn’t get it,” I said and showed Felix the text.
“There are better guys for you, Iris,” he said and looked back at the computer.
I read the text over again, the words becoming blurry. I missed Martin.
“All I ever do is break up with people,” I said, laughing thinly. “Every time it ends faster and faster. Pretty soon I’ll be able to skip dating all together and just start right at the end. Why wait, when I know where it’s going? I could post an ad on Craigslist:
‘It’s Not You, It’s Me—W4M:
I saw you on the subway. You had your hands in your pockets when I walked by and smiled. If you are reading this, I don’t think we should see each other anymore.’”
Felix was silent.
I flopped onto the couch and lit a cigarette. I thought of the time May and I decided it would be too hilarious for me to call this guy I’d been seeing and pretend to cry into his answering machine while recounting the plot of a particularly moving episode of Alf. It had been so funny when we smoked a joint and talked about it over Mac and Cheese. But then, when I was sniffling into his answering machine and there was no laugh track provided by May—she was standing beside me holding her breath in order not to corrupt the conditions of the experiment—all the humor dried up, and I knew I didn’t sound funny at all, just nuts.
I hung up and May burst into laughter. “How’d it go?” she asked.
“Yeah. So that’s over,” I said. I told May he wouldn’t be calling anymore and entered my prognosis into my chemistry ledger to make it official.
What did all my experiments prove?
“Is humor my tragic flaw?” I’d asked her later that afternoon, after closing the ledger and putting it aside. In addition to Physics and Quantum Philosophy, I was taking a class called Fate and Free Will in the Epic Tradition and had begun to project myself into the role of tragic hero. “Your comic flaw,” May replied, passing the joint back.
5
That afternoon, Felix continued to troll the Internet for girls while I retired to my bedroom. I turned on the TV and fiddled with the antenna, changing the channel before settling on the only one that came in with decent reception.
I watched Oprah. Tom Cruise was on, promoting his new movie War of the Worlds and talking about his burgeoning relationship with Katie Holmes. He jumped on the couch, threw his head back and bared his teeth. He was thrilled and smiling and took Oprah’s hands and shook her. He jumped on the couch, then to the ground again. “I love her,” he said, so sincerely it seemed he had to be kidding. And then it was time to bring out his new girlfriend.
The studio audience rose in a frenzy. “Ka-tie, Ka-tie,” they began chanting, as if preparing a virgin for ritual sacrifice. When the sacrifice wouldn’t come out, he had to go backstage and get her. The cameras followed as he found her, got hold of her arms, pulled them behind her back, and marched her onto the soundstage and up toward the mouth of the volcano. The gods were angry and required a gift. Everyone was screaming, Oprah leading them. I lowered the volume and turned over on my side.
A white cat sat in the windowsill across the street. I watched him for a while and tried to catch his ey
e; he wouldn’t look at me. I gave up and shut my eyes, pretending that the sound of the restaurant doors slamming downstairs was soporific, pretending that the sound of the Tenth Street bus screeching to a halt and growling as it pulled away was peaceful. I pretended that I was tired and numb and couldn’t feel anything anymore, and eventually I fell into a quasi-sleep.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, I thought about my future now that I’m single again. I thought about my almost-something with Jess, a bad movie with a script full of problems. Our romantic comedy would never get made, because nothing much happened, because we disagreed on the details, because we couldn’t agree on how to move the story forward. Scenes from our unmade movie passed before my closed eyes:
Our running into each other on East Tenth Street, how he saw me from behind a fence in Tompkins Square Park and called my name. How we passed the rest of the day together on a bench, how it got cold and he put his arm around me, how I told him not to kiss me and then he did, how I told him to call me later and then he didn’t. The way he called me last Sunday, depressed about his lack of career, asking if we could meet up for milkshakes. He was thinking about moving, maybe to L. A. “What do you think?” “I think you should go if you think you should,” I answered. “I could visit you if you want. Or not,” I added, when he looked away. Or when the three of us, Jess, Felix, and I, had been walking together on our way to Matt’s. Felix had found a large piece of wood left out on the curb among the trash. He was excited, he said; he could use it for a painting. He was excited because it had six sides and six was his lucky number. “My lucky pentagon!” he exclaimed.
“Actually, a pentagon has five sides,” I interrupted. “A hexagon has six. Ask me anything!” I joked, before Jess, a step or two behind me, asked, “What about your heart? How many sides does that have?”