There was this guy who once told me about this calendar he was making for a while, where he would describe days in deliberately obscure ways. July 5: The day of narrowly avoided imaginary kiss. September 14: The day of French fries and broken stereos. May 22: The day I finally told her. February 10: The day I thought I would. March 4: The day of broken promises. April 24: The day I was happy for the first time in my life. January 8: The day of the most amazing dream. January 9: The day I forgot what the most amazing dream was all about. September 12: The day I wasn’t in a car accident. June 12: Snow day, except without snow. July 20: The day I lost something big, but gained something bigger in return. He looked at it years later and he was amazed about how little he remembered about all of this. “Should I have been more specific, or would it be cheating?” We couldn’t find the answer. “Should I start another one?”
The next guy met a girl on a train. One of those evening long-distance trains that seem to go on forever. Too tired to do anything, too early to go to sleep. Actually, they did not really meet. They never exchanged a word; he was too shy to even say “hi.” Perhaps she was too. She washed her hair right after the train departed. He says he still remembers the smell of her shampoo, but I think he’s lying. Then she went to sleep; how come he never could? It was winter, and she was cold; he noticed goosebumps on her arms. “Chickenskin,” as his Indonesian friend would call it, in all seriousness. He wanted to cover her with his jacket, he agonized over it for hours, but he never found the courage. It was all about misread intentions, he said. Like rushing to pick up a bank note someone dropped on the pavement. Will you give it back, or will you snatch it or run away? True story. But that was another guy. This one hated himself for many years after that incident. How can you regret something so unimportant, I asked. I think he never spoke to me after that.
How about this guy: he used to count distance in songs. He could fit exactly one Brothers in arms on his way to the grocery store. The bus stop was True colors away – fortunately, the Cyndi Lauper’s version, not Phil Collins’s. Suzanne Vega’s Night vision was the way to the bar. He never calculated the way back. Extended remix? His girlfriend’s lived just 4:36 minutes away, which was the timing of at least three Alanis Morissette’s songs that she loved so much. He never figured whether it was the distance or the songs that made him break up with her. And finally, his parents. High hopes. Twice. Who would ever want to listen to it twice? It might have been more painful than the visit itself. All of this was like this obscure Bruce Willis movie that he would talk about all the time. Yet I never managed to remember its title.
Another used to walk like RoboCop when he was little. 90-degree turns only, with head turning a second before the rest of the body did. He wished he could make robot-like sounds. Like that black guy from Police Academy, he said. He tried, for a while, but his sister laughed at him, like only she could. How would you not want to be a cyborg, he asked her. She wouldn’t understand. Not many people would. I think he gave up on this himself, but he still pretends he’s Alex Murphy sometimes, when no one’s watching. Alex Murphy. Peter Parker. Clark Kent. He told me he used to imagine everyone being a secret superhero in their class during roll call. But he always ran out of superpowers before the teacher came to his name.
The other used to buy cherries whenever it was raining, and eat them only then. Chocolates when it was snowing. Grapefruit juice only on a foggy day. Somehow they fit together, he claimed, but he couldn’t explain why. Would he give up cherries and chocolates if he moved to a warmer climate? Would he travel back just to have them? I think he didn’t really consider these loopholes, but I never told him that. I looked at the weather for the little town he still lives in, and it was raining all week. Hope he won’t get sick.
There were other guys too. One who was petrified of pipes, but only those that were curved. Straight lines were okay, somehow. A little bend and he would run back home screaming. One who was proud of never having a cigarette in his life, but then, to his horror, remembered that one day when his friends asked him to have one with them. He had one, and then, ashamed, wiped it from his memory. What about the one who started laughing at the end of Four rooms so hard he couldn’t stop for 10 minutes?
I don’t know what happened to some of them; they went away without saying a word. Some would return after many years, and pretend they never left. Some I hang out with too often. Some are still around, even though I so much want to forget about them.
Or do I, really…? I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t want to exchange them for anyone else.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet the one that sometimes goes to the laundry room and puts extra coins in washing machines. He started doing it back when he used to visit the arcades, I was told. I hope he hadn’t heard of the one guy who was sued in New York for doing the same to the parking meters.
— San Francisco, 2007.