Petra's eyes stared out of her head drifting and floating around. It was like she couldn't focus her gaze. They were eyes that wandered around the landscape looking for meaning. They weren't the strong eyes of a person that had authority and power. They weren't the cold intellectual eyes of an old dean of a philosophy department. And they weren't the eyes of an angry blue collar worker who never had authority and has worked with his hands all his life. They were a different kind of eyes. A lot of people in New York had them. They weren't the eyes of a person who could take control and make people do what they wanted. They were sad whimsical confused eyes, constantly scouring the landscape for more entertainment.
She had a small Asian body. It was thin and taut with muscle. It was so different than what I was used to. My experiences with the female body consisted of Northern European white girls who were wide and always had a little meat on them. And black girls with loads of muscle. The women I had dated could pick this woman up and smash her. I felt weird walking along with Petra's Asian body… like I was betraying the strong bodies and hard eyes of the women back in Youngstown. I imagined them saying, “Look at Benny, what does he think he's doing walking around with that frail little bitch?”
We stopped in front a bar and Petra said, “Here it is, isn't it great?”
I looked at the bar and said, “It's small.”
“All the bars are small here.”
I threw my cigarette down and we went in.
We went up to the bar. The bartender had a mustache. Petra said, “You look like Freddie Mercury.”
The guy was very excited and said, “You think so?”
“Oh, you look really good. Freddie Mercury was awesome.”
He looked really happy. Several of the men had mustaches in the bar.
We got Pabst and sat on a couch.
I said, “Why does everyone have a mustache. Cops have mustaches. Have hipsters become obsessed with cops?”
“No, that's the new hipster apparel.”
“We have beards in Youngstown.”
“Beards are so two years ago.”
“I like beards. I think men look good with beards,” I said honestly.
“No, beards are gone.”
“I don't like men with shaved faces, they look like penises.”
“Yeah, they do. They look like flaccid penises.”
“Like a sad weak penis that can't find a pussy.”
“I don't think they are trying to look attractive with their mustaches.”
“They are hip,” I said.
“The mustache says, 'Look, I'm really trying to look stupid to look cool. Imagine how good I am in bed.'”
“When they give head you can feel hair brushing against the area above your vagina.”
She looks off into the horizon and says, “I don't think I like that. When it’s short, it's all prickly. But if he has a bushy beard, you can't feel it.”
“His mustache is prickly.”
“Yeah, it is.” She patted my knee and said, “Come on, let’s go play video games.”
It was the first time she had really touched me. I felt nervous. There was a woman and she was being nice to me. Every time I ever got into a situation like that. A situation where there is a woman and she is showing signs of possible sex mixed with alcohol I feel like a block of stone walking around all stone-like staring out of my head wondering what the hell I should be doing. I felt like running out of the building down the street calling Tom White on the phone and having him come to get me. Tom would never make me feel nervous. I would go in his apartment and he would give me a glass of water, a pillow, blanket, and place to sleep.
Trying to be romantic with a real live human woman is a lot harder than reading Wittgenstein or doing political statistics. If you can't understand a concept in Wittgenstein you can Google it or go the library. Political statistics consist of math and constants. There are answers without contingencies with an empirical basis. Dealing with people is a lot harder. You never fucking know what they are going to do. They're out there not being you. They are just like you though, they are configuring, applying logic, acting, contriving, and they are capable of lying or switching their mind. I kept getting the urge to kiss her though. She knew I was a weak person without confidence and she was going to have to do everything. It seemed like a game to her.
We got more drinks and took shots. Everything became easier.
We sat next to each other on the couch again. We sat close, like we were lovers, like we had known each other for years and we were going to make love. I kept looking at her face and feeling happy. I would look at her eyes and she would look at my eyes and somehow that meant sex. I could never figure out why eyes meant sex, but they do.
A guy came over and started talking about a zombie movie. He asked Petra to be in it. Petra said she had been in a zombie movie once. I said I had been in a killer space alien movie once. The guy said he loved zombies. Petra also said she loved zombies. I clapped and said I loved zombies. Everyone was bonding over zombies. The guy kept talking to Petra about the movie. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I looked around the room and there were people playing pool. They looked like people but hipper versions. I wondered if they liked Dave Eggers. I imagined Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer coming in the bar and ordering Captain and Cokes. Foer looked beat down because of the long term failure of his last book.
Dave Eggers said, “But it sold a lot; you should be happy.”
Foer responded, “But it only sold for like a year and half the reviewers said it was nonsense.”
Eggers responds, “What the fuck does that matter?”
Foer says looking sadly at his beer, “But I don't want to be known as that guy who wrote two really topical books because his agent suggested writing on those topics.”
Eggers responds without caring, “Seriously Jon you're like a pretty rich kid with connections and a good editor. How many pretty rich kid writers can you name who wrote books that transcended time?”
Foer rubbed his head, fixed his glasses and said, “Dostoevsky and Proust.”
“They were ugly. Try again.”
“Hmm, Albert Camus?”
“He was poor.”
“You have the same problem as I do.”
Dave Eggers responds politely, “No, I know my fate. I'm pretty and rich. I like to write. The world lets me write. I get lots of money and I can get laid easily. I'm not trying to be a great writer; I'm trying to live a great life.”
Some guy came over to me with tattoos and a bowler hat and said, “I hear you like zombies and you write. You think you can write me a zombie movie?”
“Zombies,” I said in monotone voice.
“Yeah, man, zombies. Like people are in a building and they are trapped with zombies.”
“How about a movie about 30 normal people trapped in a high school with machines and a million dollars.”
“Then what?”
“Then everyone kills each other for the money.”
“That would be dumb.”
“How about this, we call the movie State of Nature. The movie has a godlike creature who has a deal for humanity. The godlike creature has a resource that will allow everyone to drive and transport goods and grow more food than they ever dreamed of. But there's a catch after three generations the resource will run out and their entire civilization will collapse. Now it won't matter to them because they will be dead. But their great great grandchildren will die of starvation and violence because the resource will run out and all their motorized vehicles will stop running.”
“I don't think anyone would make that deal.”
“You don't think so?”
“No, of course not.”
“What about a movie about a zombie that can't find anybody to eat. Like he keeps running around and when he sees somebody, everyone else gets there first. And he is like standing by a gas station pump looking depressed. Then all the other zombies come over and make fun of him.”