Iris Has Free Time (32 page)

PLAYER TWO: Pedro the bongo player

PLAYER THREE: Alice the xylophone player, possibly Pedro’s girlfriend

PLAYER FOUR: Guy with a long braid that he calls a “rat’s tail”

PLAYER FIVE: Girlfriend of Guy with the long braid he calls a “rat’s tail”

PLAYER SIX: Your friend Jacob

PLAYER SEVEN: Creepy guy called Ben whom it turns out nobody knows

 

Buy another drink before last call, then invite whomever’s left in the bar back to your place. Pick up a few six packs on the way. At your place, while Player Two rolls a joint and Player Three sets up her xylophone and Player Five sits on the floor behind Player Four and unties his “rat’s tail” and Player Six prepares a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off and eats it without asking anyone if they want a bite, which causes controversy among your guests, and Player Seven discovers the hiding place of your pornographic playing cards and begins shuffling the deck declaring, “Double Penetration is wild!” give each player a magic marker. Flick the switch to activate your ceiling fan. Say, “Now everyone, throw the magic markers at the fan!” Laugh and cover your eyes when they spin out wildly in your direction.

 

HOKEY POKEY

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: The Bastard Felix

 

When Player Two discovers your collection of children’s party records and says, “Sweet! Let’s do the Hokey Pokey!” stand up and reluctantly comply with the song’s demands: Put your right foot in. Put your right foot out. Put your right foot in and shake it all about. Do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. Now stop dancing and ask yourself: What is it all about?

 

DRINKING GAME #4

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your friend Janice whom you met at Graduate School

 

While media outlets are all abuzz over the impending “death of print,” decide to start a print-only literary magazine with Player Two. Bicker about the contents. Seethe over the layout. Try to hide your relief when, shortly before the release of the first issue, Player Two informs you she’s decided to move to Israel in order to live on a Kibbutz and reevaluate her life choices. Stay behind and devote yourself fully to your new magazine.

Print one thousand copies. Sell fifty at your much-anticipated launch party. Smile brightly when greeting people at the door. Speak enthusiastically about your “vision,” leaving out the detail of having founded the magazine in a blackout. Fidget in the corner and furrow your brow when you think no one is looking.

Discover someone was looking when you are emailed photos of the event in which you are fidgeting in the corner, furrowing your brow, thinking no one is looking. Stare at the photos for a long minute before checking the rest of your email. Wonder how you ended up editing a literary magazine—you don’t even read literary magazines—in much the same way you wondered how you ended up in bed with that poet after the launch party—you don’t even read poetry, not much, not anymore.

When you can’t sell the magazines, mail free issues to various colleges, give more away at nearby bookstores, put free copies in the doorways of hip cafés, burrito shops . . . laundromats. Use a few to pack some delicate plates when your friend Reggie asks you to help him move, and store the remaining 750 at your parents’ house in Long Island.

When you run into old acquaintances and they ask you, “Whatever became of [Player Two]?” shrug as if the thought had never occurred to you. Say, “[Player] Who?” Cringe when they ask you if you’re still “doing the magazine.”

PILLOW DIVING

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your friend Reggie

PLAYER THREE THROUGH PLAYER SIX: Assorted friends gathered at Reggie’s apartment on Avenue C to watch the game.

 

Go over to Player Two’s to watch the Super Bowl. Have a beer. Have some chips. Have some more beer. Have some more beer. Fall asleep. Wake up and have wings. Wash it down with beer. Have a few more beers. Cheer when everyone else cheers. Then, struck suddenly by the indescribable beauty of a Sunday afternoon, the way it briefly catches your life in mid-blur, like a photograph of someone running, get up off the couch where the other players all sit with their eyes glued to the TV. Get up and go to the window to smoke a cigarette. Sit by yourself and look out. Shiver a little as the cold spills into the room. Turn. Make eye contact with Player Two ten feet away. Put out your cigarette. Look out the window again expecting to see something more than you do—just a few people bundled and rushing. Close the window.

Dance back over to everyone else. Notice your beer can is empty. Dance over to the refrigerator. Console Player Two when his team loses. Find him a bit more handsome than usual. Look into his eyes; suggest he help you take the sofa cushions off the couch in order to arrange them in a line on the floor. Volunteer to go first.

Begin running from the far side of the apartment, from inside the bathroom in order that you have runway enough to build adequate speed. As you approach the pillow landing, prepare for lift off. Now jump! Now dive! Get up and say, “Who’s next?”

DRINKING GAME #5

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your new boyfriend Philip

 

Saturday, 2:00 PM. Buy a bottle of vodka and a quart of orange juice and return to your apartment. Pour the vodka and the orange juice into two glasses, giving one to Player Two. Repeat until the bottle is empty.

Walk over to Hudson River Park, remarking on the beautiful day but for those clouds over there, gathering in the distance.

Get caught in a sudden downpour and take shelter beneath a deserted jungle gym. Kiss. When Player Two lies on top of you, unzip his pants, spread your legs, let him push your shorts to the side. Kiss. Wrap your arms around him as he collapses into you.

When the rain stops, suggest walking out to the edge of the pier to take in the view. Forget your sunglasses on the grass beneath the jungle gym. Stop short when a policeman taps Player Two on the shoulder. Wait as the cop writes you each a ticket.

Get into a fight with Player Two the next day. Wait for him to call so that he’ll realize you’ve stopped taking his calls. In the meantime, take the subway down to City Hall to pay the ticket you received for “accessing a children’s playground without a child.” Squint without your sunglasses as you search for the address.

 

LIMBO

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO, PLAYER THREE, PLAYER FOUR. . . : the other adjuncts at the college where you’ve been hired to teach World Humanities

 

All the players should line up outside the English office and take turns reminding the secretary to the chair that you’re interested in teaching an elective.

DRINKING GAME #6

 

ANYONE CAN PLAY!

 

Go out Monday for drinks with friends. Go out Tuesday for drinks with friends. Look down on people who watch TV, people who watch
Friends
instead of having them and going out with them the way you do. Now go out for drinks with friends on a Wednesday, but do not drink because you are on antibiotics for a sinus infection. Wonder what everyone else is laughing at. Wonder: Who are these assholes you call your friends?

Come to after a week-long bender. Buy a ticket to a movie matinee—a romantic comedy about a woman your age. Bring an oversized bottle of water to rehydrate. Notice the characters in the film don’t drink the way you do. Realize you’ve not gone more than a week without drinking since you were eighteen years old. Wonder if you could have a drinking problem. Decide to test yourself with a month of sobriety. Make that two weeks. Make that a week.

Go out that night with your friends and do not drink. Wonder again what everyone is laughing at. Discover again that you can’t stand any of these people. Wonder if it’s not a drinking problem you have, but a friend problem. Consider your options:

Put off choosing for as long as possible. Wonder: When did all these games stop being fun?

 

DRINKING GAME #7

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Does it matter?

 

Develop an impressive alcoholic threshold through tireless practice and unerring commitment to the game. Get older. In quieter moments between hangovers and drinking binges, recognize you have a drinking problem and begin to worry about if and when you must quit. Remember how you used to say, “I’m an alcoholic!” precisely because it wasn’t true. Notice how you now say, “I’m not an alcoholic!” for fear that it is. Blush when you reach for the wine bottle at a dinner party. Hope no one notices how quickly you refill your glass.

Catch yourself saying at a cocktail party on a Wednesday evening, “Oh my, I think I’m a bit tipsy,” and act surprised by the powerful effects of alcohol on your small frame, as you’re sipping only your second drink—aren’t you so careful at a cocktail party on a Wednesday night—the second drink, that is, if you don’t count the bottle of wine you finished at home while getting dressed, the tepid can of beer in the shower.

On Thursday morning, lie in bed and review the events of Wednesday night. Tell yourself: You didn’t do anything so embarrassing so far as you can tell, so why are you so ashamed? Stop beating yourself up! Decide you need to get out of your apartment. Call Player Two and remind her of the two-for-one margarita special at that great Mexican place down the street.

Say, “Sorry I’m late,” and arrange your coat on the back of the chair so that the bottom hem drags on the floor. Sit down and say, “Tell me everything,” then look around until you find the waiter. Nod. Say, “Look. You can do better.” After the third round, laugh loudly at whatever she says before drifting off into a brief silent melancholy. Notice the way the lamplight reflects off the wooden bar in the middle of the room. Notice the perfect dusk receding from the window where you’re seated with Player Two. Notice the winter. Feel yourself on the brink of a revelation, feel the world boiling down to now. Tell a joke and back away from
now
slowly. Signal to the waiter. Suggest you do shots.

With a changed voice now, and with changed fleece,
I will return a poet, and at the font
Of my baptism I will take the laurel crown.

DANTE,
COMMEDIA: PARADISO

The only paradise is paradise lost.

MARCEL PROUST,
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

I had a couch in Hell’s Kitchen at the foot of West Fifty-seventh Street. I had a roommate, too.

We were matched up two years before the couch, in a freshman dormitory on Fifth Avenue, just above Washington Square Park. May was standing in the doorway when I arrived. “Are you Iris?” She smiled and came toward me, her arms opening for a hug; I cordially offered my hand. My parents were a few steps behind; handshakes were exchanged all around. Then my father reminded my mother that they were double-parked.

We barely spoke that first night, only when she came out of the bathroom and, finding me already in my bed, asked if it was okay to turn out the lights. For a full week I avoided her—on the second night, I fell asleep in the student lounge; on the third, I crashed on the floor of some guy’s room, a transfer student I’d met in the dining hall who’d kissed me on a bench in Washington Square and lay on the floor beside me at two in the morning, leaving his own bed empty; on the fourth, where did I go, who was I with? And the fifth?—until, too tired to stay away any longer, I returned.

It was a Sunday afternoon. May, a musical theater major, sat on her bed, perusing some sheet music, while I, a drama major, sat on mine, updating “the books”—the charts and graphs I kept in the back of my journal organizing my sexual exploits into statistical data. Names were listed along the Y-axis, maneuvers on the X.

I looked up. “How many boys have you kissed?”

May began counting on her fingers some number between three and four. “One of the kisses was iffy,” she explained.

“I’m up to thirty!” I said proudly, rounding up.

“Wow,” May answered, her eyes wide. “I don’t even know that many boys.”

Most of my kisses had occurred during my summers in Greece. I’d had French “boyfriends” and German “boyfriends” and Dutch “boyfriends” and Serbian “boyfriends.” I showed May the graph I’d made, which resembled a page torn from the immigration records at Ellis Island. Belying the statistics, I wasn’t very experienced, however. I’d had sex with just one person, my boyfriend of two years with whom I’d broken up before coming to NYU.

“Who’s this?” May asked, referring to the blank spot next to which I’d written, “Patchy.”

“I don’t remember his name. I kissed him at this discotheque in Volos behind the WC. He had an eye patch.” I shrugged.

May had spent almost all of her summers at theater camp where generally the boys didn’t go further than stage kissing, she confessed. Then she got out her own journal and decided to make a graph, too. “For science,” we agreed.