twenty-seven.”
[Japanese] “I’m twenty..seventh.”
[Japanese] “Seven.”
"Tell me your email address.”
And the introduction was made.
The falseness of this moment (karma debt being settled aside) was that of course it was just a return to a normality that should have happened under any circumstance. In truth, week two was about the slow slow collapse of things, ICEPRINCESS’s broken promise probably more emblematic of themes than the rockstar redemption. GREENEYES fixed TUSK’s cheap tie; boy 5 the hidden talent made some inroads with his own country’s contacts; the South Americans disappeared; the very cute Taiwanese girl showed that was only things to be gained by cross-cultural interaction with an outgoing people. But overall sometimes after class it would just be the least attractive and even bordering on repulsive that remained behind, standards had become so ridiculousness now (and personalities so wearied over) that even BARBIEDOLL would snub, and AJ-5, though pleasant and there with her daughter, would remain aloof and uninvolved. Things turned on the hinge of a phrase—and the phrase would just be some mad-cap extremity that invited defeat. This was tragedy; asked for and delivered according to strict schedule.
"Are you after the boys or the girls tonight?”
"Heheh, good question. Think after the bassplayer.”
"You ever chase a boy?”
"I’ve kissed a boy. Only ever dated a girl.”
"How uncool.”
"Yeah buy us a drink.”
Sure why not. But it would be held at the bar, waiting, and not delivered like a lackey’s service.
Rockstar finished her set, swinging the guitar’s band over her head and setting down her equipment. The nerdgirls, a group of four, pointed and tittered; it was amazing they found each other; their underlying conservativeness a commentary too on reality. Under certain circumstances, they knew themselves to be more than Rockstar; they knew they knew something even BARBIEDOLL could not pretend. And though they now had something on TUSK as well, still there was an underlying friendliness of sorts, a lack of fear, a aesthetic defeat that possible only for the highly civilized. They held hands; they gossiped.
"What do you think of Boy 3?”
"Oh he’s so cool.”
The provocation was deliberate. They didn’t even necessarily feel like saying it.
"I heard…[etc etc etc]”
"I heard…[etc etc etc]”
"That’s still cool he can speak three languages…”
"I heard five.”
The night ended without special result. Nobody found each other, but nobody would have under any circumstances. What occurred was just some final communication between artist and artist, the stakes that were played for, the brief flurry of meaningless activity that disguised a private decision that had turned the corner. “I’m playing to lose,” decided Rockstar. It wasn’t about success, the contract, the breakthrough, or even the One Hit Wonder. It would be about following the path, wherever it took her, bad agent or good agent notwithstanding. Around and about the crowd she would flutter, ‘Threebird,’ a bird that had unfolded its wings. The key was not the commitment that had been made (although it was great it was made young), but the outcome that would follow in a lifetime of austerity. Everyone would get old, but some would get richer, some would become renowned. Rockstar was on the slow slow path down, and this was all right. Play to lose, and you’ll never be disappointed. Play to lose, and even minor victories are treasured. Play to lose, and who knows, maybe the totality, seen afterwards, will actually almost simulate victory.
Week 6
If all the sadness of a “beautiful sad-eyed dark-haired girl” could be brought to its highest degree in some sort of characterization of a New Jersey suburb life, dark nights, rain-wet trees, the potentiality that was stifled and never expressed itself, en this would constitute a sort of half-seen vision, a over-romanticization that Shoegazer would call “wildly romantic visions of the decline of my romanticism.” It was aesthetic theory and conversation all at once; it was wooden-walled saints bars, it was that sometimes talked about idea of “the girl of our fourteenth summer,” before love ever existed, before we had words to describe things, before reality thundered in, took everything away, and went on without you.
The sad eyed German girl at Planckstrasse; the dark-haired mythical samisen-strumming Asian: who could decide between the two? Whose sadness was deeper? SEATTLE would show up one last time; there was space for one last waltz, and it happened, finally, a few years after graduation, in some statistically unlikely coincidence of a few weeks in Seattle proper, as TUSK nervously fumbled for coins in his pocket, found the payphone, and dialed the numbers scribbled on a wrinkled piece of paper. SEATTLE answered.
"Oh TUSK! Totally awesome! You’re in Seattle for how long? We should definitely meet!”
The undercurrent of what had passed before them was the undertone for a couple of completely unawkward meetings at a Starbucks (and it was in in Seattle itself) that culminated finally in a long drive out to the eastern part of the state. Neither brought up the issue of past history; it was understood to be under the bridge, and what had changed was merely that SEATTLE had become more in touch with her life goals. he girl who had once refused to clean floors at a bakery was now a senior director at an arts foundation and with her Blackberry clicking away, she continued to manage her workweek even as the two drove in the dark Mercedes out to forest country. She seemed incognizant of her change; she was older, for sure, but if anything more beautiful, her long dark hair had shortened to shoulder length, but she was still somehow incredible, her features were just so refined and Angelina Joliesque that one’s throat caught; one was enraptured by beauty.
"I don’t know what this is all about,” stuttered TUSK. “I mean we’re just hurtling through space, to some unknown destination in time, and nobody seems able to stop anything, nobody seems to be in control.”
SEATTLE was sympathetic. “But it’s exactly that we’re all in this situation that makes it able. What would be unbearable if you were the only one caught up like that, and everyone else was in control. So you work with what you have.”
"I just feel like my future is even more unknowable than others’. It looks like I’m going to be working in China for a while, some industrial city in the westlands that’s all black smoke belching out of coal burning plants and sticky sand-storms that coat everything in a blanket of pollution. It’s that, or just be unemployed and sulking at home all day, no choice.”
"I’m sure it will be a great adventure. You just have to think that few people actually get to live lives like that. And see, you even think in those terms; how remarkable.”
This is what had finally become understood about SEATTLE. Whereas most girls had something inside of them—some punch or kick or desire for something, SEATTLE just didn’t have anything inside of her. There was a black-hole—a lack of wanting things, that maybe could only come up when you were born into everything, and were standing to inherit so many millions in so many years, and this was beautiful, this was why she didn’t strive after things or ride the corporate ladder; even the accession to director-level at a non-profit was something that happened accidentally, and she was doing it because it was a process of making the world a more organized place. She would leave—in a second, if asked to.
"We were thinking at the time that we were all going to be brilliant artists. We had this idea we’d be famous, we’d be Jack Kerouac, or we’d somehow manage to defeat all odds—all the econ majors, all the science dorks—and be something; be distinctive. But we’re just middling successes.”
"TUSK, you’re worried too much about what you are and not about what you do. Just live each moment by the day; you come into work, you get that day done. What is driving this anxiety?”
It’s not certain; or rather, it’s certainly not the case that describing what happened that car-trip would make this description any more accurate. Nothing happened, of course; the two drove, th
ey ate at a diner, they got into a canoe and paddled around looking at nature. Underneath was the undercurrent of sexuality; on some level they could have maddeningly ripped each others’ clothes off and had frantic sex, but that would almost cheapen what had been going on for so many years, and in any case, the decision was already set. SEATTLE was dedicated to her work; TUSK wasn’t going to bring up projects in distant Chinese provinces. He was going to be annoying, in fact; he was going to be insistent on the unfairness of things he was doing, although there was no possible reason for it. They smoked cigarettes at some night-time lamppost; they discussed long-forgotten people, and SEATTLE was maybe a touch narcissistic about things, sipping deliberately on sparkling wine from a local vineyard. Seattle had just decided, some long ago time, that she would just live out her twenties, and then at thirty not push things anymore, not really pursue matters, so her choice was something that was, well, destined, not even a choice really, rather a lack of choice to return. Like a certain other construct in a certain other Japanesque literature stream, she would leave this vale of tears and that would be the result of certain choices and actions, although in this particular case, there wasn’t even a precipitating love act. It was just: the sea of nothingness, a data pool, television static.
"When I grew up