600 Hours of Edward (17 page)

I can’t really put my finger on it and this is just a lame example of what I am trying to say but I am a very intuitive, sensitive (clearly), sensual and “musical” kind of person and you are more a “TV guy” and not as much of those things…and I have met men who are and I am looking more for that because around gardeners I open up and blossom and that’s how I like to experience life.

When you brought up sex, that freaked me out also but Im willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that your nervous about meeting. I was too.

Anyway those are my thoughts and I share them with you with respect and I hope you will understand that this is a gift, to share anything is a gift…and my hope is you will treat it as such. But thats up to you.

I just don’t see us being more than friends and since we live so far apart I don’t see that either.

Sorry.

Joy

I don’t keep records on such things, but surely 9:12 a.m. is the earliest I’ve ever written a letter of complaint. I prepare a new
green office folder, put a tab titled “Joy” on it, and sit down at the computer to type.

Joy:

Thank you for your e-mail of the twenty-fifth. Please allow me to retort.

First, I don’t know what “the click” factor is.

Second, I burped because of the wine, which I’d never had before and you were insistent that I try.

Third, you spelled “compatible” wrong.

Fourth, you need to learn how to use apostrophes correctly and consistently.

Fifth, I was listening to your story.

Sixth, I don’t know what a “TV guy” is.

Seventh, your note doesn’t feel much like a gift.

Eighth, why say you don’t see us being more than friends and then say you don’t see that, either? It makes no sense.

Regards,

Edward Stanton

I print out the letter and file it away, then come back to the computer, pull up Montana Personal Connect again and see this:

Inbox (1).

Edward:

I had high hopes for this. I really did. Dating men in Broadview is so hard because there are only a limited number of cool places to go here and I always run into
someone. I am an extremely private person and so I generally like not being around town and the rumor mill. Also I meant to tell you this last night but didn’t and I feel I should now: my first name is actually Annette. I didn’t want to have my real name for my e-mail so I created this account with my middle name. I figure that anyone reasonable will understand and believe me it has kept me safe.

Annette

I go back to my files, pull Joy’s folder, take out the tab, and add this to the “Joy” that’s already there: “aka, Annette.”

Then it’s back to the computer for another letter.

Annette:

I am flabbergasted by this latest revelation. I was honest about my name. Why couldn’t you do the same? Frankly, I find that our correspondence has taken an ugly turn. Please refrain from contacting me further.

Regards,

Edward Stanton

I file the second letter, then put the green office folder back in the filing cabinet and return to the computer.

Inbox (1).

Holy shit!

Edward:

The guy Ive been writing to didn’t show up last night. All in all, you seemed like a nice guy but not easy to talk to in person…for whatever reason. I don’t like having to work this hard at something. Im sorry if my perceptions sting and they may be inaccurate as hell, I’ll give you that.

I don’t have it in me to wait for you to show up…and that you never commented or supported me on anything that I said about my life was very revealing that you thought you were the only one nervous or needing to feel put at ease. I gave you that, you didn’t. It made me sad and angry a bit because I thought more of you.

Annette

I retrieve the green office folder yet again.

Annette:

I do not know why you insist on continuing to write to me. Your complaints are heading into bizarre territory now. Dr. Buckley says that when I start to feel overwhelmed or out of control, I should take a deep breath and focus on a path out of the chaos. I rather think you should take that advice now.

Regards,

Edward Stanton

Annette, or Joy, or whoever she is, writes three more times, and my green office folder begins to fill up.

Edward:

I was going to write and see if we could work something out but I think that it is better to let it go. I think that at this point, any making up would just lead to more of the same kind of misunderstanding and “drama.” I think your substantial, kind-hearted, sweet, beautiful in your own way, and so much more you will never know. But I cant go into something this emotional. My last boyfriend, whom I dearly loved and completely supported through so much stuff, took it and then he slammed another girl just a few short months ago. Therefore, I am looking for a less dramatic deal right now.

Annette

Annette:

My head is swimming. You’re looking for a less dramatic deal? Somehow, I find that hard to believe.

Regards,

Edward Stanton

Edward:

I wish you would write back. I need to know what your thinking about all of this. Maybe there’s a way we could start over. I don’t know. Write me back and lets talk about it.

Annette

Annette:

I think it’s funny—not funny “ha-ha,” but just funny—that I’m the one with a mental illness.

Regards,

Edward Stanton

Edward:

Your an asshole. I pour out my heart to you and you say nothing. Good-bye, looser.

Annette

Annette:

Good-bye. And it’s “loser.”

Regards,

Edward Stanton

I put the green office folder called “Joy—aka, Annette” away for the last time. It’s nearly noon, and I’m headed back to bed.

– • –

I stir at 6:03 p.m. and pad into the kitchen for dinner. In addition to all the other ways in which this thing with Joy-Annette went sideways, my meal schedule is fouled up. I didn’t have lunch, and now it’s dinnertime. Consequently, I will have one extra meal in the house when I return to the grocery store next week. These are complications I do not need.

I cook my Banquet fried chicken dinner in the microwave and try to, as Dr. Buckley says, find a route back to normalcy.

I can’t see that road.

– • –

At 10:00, I play tonight’s episode of
Dragnet
.

I am irritated that I have missed the fourth episode of the first season, “The Interrogation,” as it is my favorite of all ninety-eight color episodes. But I decide that sticking to my schedule is more important than making up the lost ground. As it turns out, I will see “The Interrogation” again on January 4, 2009, as I reset from the beginning of these series on the first day of every year. That is not so far away now.

The fifth episode of the first season is called “The Masked Bandits,” and it is one of my favorites. It originally aired on February 16, 1967, and involves a gang of young punks who wear red masks and hold up cocktail lounges.

One of the punks is a seventeen-year-old kid named Larry Hubbert (played by Ron Russell, in his only
Dragnet
appearance). Larry is married to an older woman named Edna (played by Virginia Vincent, who made six
Dragnet
appearances). Edna took Larry in when his parents left town, and she wants what is best for him, even though he wants to rob cocktail joints.

At one point in the episode, Edna tells Sergeant Joe Friday that she’s as entitled to love as anybody is. Sergeant Joe Friday doesn’t disagree.

I don’t, either, but I have news for Edna Hubbert: love isn’t easy to find.

Do you know that gauzy feeling that comes from having not too little sleep but too much? Everything seems a little fuzzy, there is a faint headache, and things seem to move in slow motion but still too fast. That’s how I feel today at 7:37 a.m., when I wake up. It’s the eighteenth time in 300 days this year (because it’s a leap year) and the second morning in a row for that time. Of the range of my four most common wake-up times—7:37, 7:38, 7:39, and 7:40—7:37 is the least frequent of the bunch. Maybe 7:37 is staging a rally.

I record my waking time, and my data is complete.

– • –

I’m still agitated and flummoxed by Joy-Annette’s behavior yesterday. She seemed nice in our initial e-mails, if a bit sloppy and unfamiliar with proper punctuation. She even seemed nice at our abbreviated dinner, until the misunderstanding about sex. When she left so abruptly, I thought that it was my fault, even though she had asked me what I was nervous about and I answered her honestly, which I thought is what I should do.

But yesterday, she was not nice. I will tell Dr. Buckley about it, and I will bet that she will agree with my assessment. After yesterday, I am no longer even sure that it was my fault that our dinner ended so quickly. Joy-Annette’s messages to me were erratic. First, she said that I was selfish when I burped. Then she said I wasn’t supportive. Then she said she can’t invest in something so emotional. Then she said maybe if I wrote back, we could try again. Then she called me an asshole.

That hurt my feelings.

Now I’m quite sure that I don’t know what Joy-Annette wants, and I wonder if it’s a woman thing or just a Joy-Annette thing. Dr. Buckley is a woman, and I don’t think she would treat someone this way. It must be a Joy-Annette thing.

As I’m considering all of this, I find that my thoughts are drifting back to something that happened a long time ago.

When I was at Billings West High School—class of 1987—I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have any friends, unless you count Mr. Withers, but he was a teacher. I kept to myself and did well in most of my classes, though I liked wood shop the best, partly because of Mr. Withers and partly because I was exceptional at it. “Exceptional” is Mr. Withers’s word. I love that word.

One day during my junior year, a really pretty girl in my English class, Lisa Edgington, started talking to me. I didn’t really know what to say back. She asked me if I thought she was pretty, and I said that I did. That kind of embarrassed me. She told me that she thought I was cute, and that really embarrassed me.

She told me that she wanted me to meet her after school, over near the football field. I said that I would.

A few hours later, I was at the football field. She was there, too. She asked me if I wanted to kiss her. I felt blood rush to my face, and I asked her not to tease me. She said, “No, really, do
you want to kiss me?” I said I did. And she let me. Then I heard laughing. A bunch of kids from school were under the bleachers, pointing at us.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lisa Edgington said to them, and she ran off with them, laughing. They went to the parking lot and climbed into a car and left.

The next day at school, a lot of people were pointing and laughing at me. When I passed by her locker, Lisa Edgington wouldn’t even look at me. In English class, she didn’t talk to me.

The laughing went on for a week, at least. Lisa Edgington’s silence went on longer than that, until graduation, and then I never saw her again. One day, a boy asked me in wood shop, “Hey, Edward, are you going to hump Lisa Edgington?” Mr. Withers overheard it and pulled that boy into his office and yelled at him. That boy came back to his seat red faced, and he never said another word to me.

Is Joy-Annette like Lisa Edgington, only grown up?

I don’t know.

– • –

Joy-Annette has said good-bye, and I have written her my last letter of complaint and filed away the green office folder with her name on it, and yet she continues to affect me. I am not happy about this.

Today, for example, the Dallas Cowboys are playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it is almost game time before I remember to pull on my authentic white Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey. I like the white jersey better than the blue one, but whatever jersey the Dallas Cowboys are wearing on a given Sunday is the one I choose.

Tony Romo is still hurt by a broken pinkie finger, and I am dubious about the Dallas Cowboys’ chances without him, given what I have seen so far from his backup, Brad Johnson. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good team. The Dallas Cowboys are supposed to be a good team, but I just don’t know if that’s true unless Tony Romo is playing.

– • –

A few hours later, I have an odd sensation: The Cowboys won 13–9, but I have no joy about it. The Cowboys have won 298 times in the regular season since the first game I remember, that 1974 Thanksgiving game in which Clint Longley rescued the team after Roger Staubach got hurt, and I’ve been happy every single time. Today, I’m glad they won, but I’m not happy. I’m not sad, the way I would be if the Dallas Cowboys had added to their 210 regular-season losses since Thanksgiving 1974, but I’m definitely not happy.

First, it was a terrible game. The Dallas Cowboys gained only 172 yards of offense, and I heard the announcer say that was the fewest yards Dallas had ever accumulated in a victory. Tony Romo accounts for way more than 172 yards a game all by himself.

Second, Brad Johnson, again, did not look good. To his credit, he did not throw any interceptions, but he also seemed unable to pass the ball very far down the field. As it will be at least a couple of more weeks before Tony Romo is back, I cannot be confident that the Dallas Cowboys will be able to win like this again without him.

It seems that the only reason the Dallas Cowboys won is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers apparently have just as many problems as the Cowboys do, and I also heard the announcer say this.
Tampa Bay kept driving down deep into the Dallas Cowboys’ end of the field but came away with just three field goals. It’s hard to win that way, harder even than winning with only 172 yards of offense.