My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays (8 page)

*

Our relationship deepened. My phone had a special ring for
PRIVATE CALLER
, and since Nicole was the only one who rang like that, I could tell when she was calling. I started looking forward to her calls. She finally gave me her number so I could call her, too. I dropped the funny guises and just talked to her genuinely—sometimes we’d talk for half an hour before phone sex. Some nights, she’d tell me stories about work and share favorite memories of her mom. Other nights, out in my van after a long night in Phoenix or Des Moines, I’d be lonely, drunk, and depressed, and tell her about my problems. Nicole was a great listener, willing to indulge each tangent of every story she was told. She was as curious about my life as I was about hers. In a fucked-up way, this was the closest I’d had to a real girlfriend in years. Living on the road, a new city every day, she was one of the few constants in my life, and I both came to depend on her and, in our shared fantasies, dependably came on her. And the more we got to know each other, the more the sex improved. Nicole was insatiable. She started calling me every day, a half hour before my reading, when she knew I’d be out in the van getting my notes ready. “Hey, Davy,” she’d breathe, “how ’bout a quickie?”

*

In December the book tour ended, and I resumed a more regular kind of life—staying put in Michigan, playing basketball twice a week at the rec center, sleeping in my own bed. For the most part, I stopped answering Nicole’s calls. I was busy with work, and I had more interest in local girls I could meet for a drink and try to make out with than in someone across the country I could only hook up with by phone. But I also felt bad that I’d left Nicole in the lurch, and on occasion I’d still have a late-night phone tryst with her. We were like those couples who break up but still end up sleeping together every once in a while. Then, one day, her number was no longer in service. Nicole was gone.

*

One night the following winter, the old Dodge van broke down on the freeway near my house, and as I waited for a tow and the bitter cold edged in, I started playing that game I play when I’m feeling lonely, the one where I review all of my prior relationships, marveling that so many sweet, smart, pretty girls have come into my life and that I’ve found a way to fuck things up with every one of them. This game usually ends with me calling two or three of my exes and leaving miserable voice mails on their cell phones or their machines at home. Inevitably, one of their new beaus calls back to say, “Hey, man, I heard your message. Emilie’s down in Chile for two weeks, but you sounded really down … I just wanted to call and make sure you were doing all right.”

That night, marooned on the shoulder of I-94, big rigs howling past, I thought of Nicole. We’d had kind of a nice connection, hadn’t we? All the funny and mournful stories she’d told me about working at the nursing home flooded my mind, along with her reminiscences of her mom, and I got the urge to track her down and meet her, find out who the fuck she was. I knew she might be four hundred pounds, or my grandma’s age, or a guy, but there was also a possibility that she was, well, hot. So I tried her old number. A moment later, I heard her familiar whisper. “Hi, Davy,” she said. “Been a while.”

“I know! I can’t believe I reached you! I’ve tried you every few months but I always get that lady’s voice saying your number’s out of service. Listen,” I said, “this is gonna sound crazy, but okay, I’ve been doing some thinking, and what I think is, I think we should meet. We should meet up.” There was a long pause, the kind of silence you hear when the TV’s showing footage of a plane crash or a natural disaster and the anchorman’s at a loss for words. “Look,” I said, “I just want to meet you in person. I’ll come down to Austin or Waco or wherever you’re living. It’s fucking freezing here, anyway.”

Another long pause. Then she sucked in a deep breath and said, “You sure you’re ready to meet the real me?”

*

Ten days later, I flew to Austin. I rented a car and dropped my bags at the same Motel 6 where Nicole had first found me. She suggested we get together at an Applebee’s off I-35 at the far north end of town. I pulled into the parking lot at eight; this was one of those grim, anonymous commercial strips where Americans carry out their ordinary lives that appear on MSNBC after, say, a sniper shooting, or a child abduction. I went inside. Nicole knew what I looked like—I’d directed her to my picture online—but I had no idea who to be looking for other than somebody sitting alone. A weary hostess greeted me: “Table for one?”

“Actually, I’m looking for a friend.” I walked past her into the restaurant. The place was mostly empty; on a jumbo-sized TV, the Pro Bowl was on. At a table in the back, gazing at me with an odd smile while sipping a Coke, was a woman who was at least eighty-eight years old.
No fucking way
. I almost bolted right then. But I’d come fifteen hundred miles to meet the real Nicole, even if the real Nicole had stumbled off the set of
Cocoon
. I ambled over and stood above her table. “Nicole?”

“There’s no radishes in my soup!” the lady cried. “I asked for radishes!”

It wasn’t Nicole. “Let me check on that for you, ma’am,” I said, and wheeled away.

At another table, sitting by himself and halfheartedly watching the game, was a skinny Eminem-looking kid in a white Spurs hoodie who couldn’t have been out of high school. I went over to him, squeamish and cringing.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Hi. I’m Davy.”

“Okaaa-aay.” He looked at me sideways.

Not Nicole. I felt dizzy with relief, and asked him, so as not to seem like a total weirdo, “How’s your meal, sir?”

“I haven’t ordered yet.”

“That’s great! You need anything, I’m shift supervisor, just let me know.”

Then I saw her, perched on a red stool at the bar, toying with her cell phone—a curvy Latina girl maybe twenty-four years old. No J.Lo, but perhaps a young Rosie Perez.
Nice!
I felt a little tingle. This was the kind of girl I’d move to Texas for. I wondered if in eighty minutes we’d be having actual sex back at the Motel 6.

I moved close, and she turned to me with a smile.

“Nicole?”

“No,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

What the fuck? Had she stood me up? I rushed back out toward the parking lot in such an anxious daze, I almost crashed into a guy on his way in. Out in the lot, there wasn’t a soul in sight. It came to me: Nicole wasn’t coming at all—she’d sent me on this wild goose chase as payback for disappearing on her when the tour had ended. I spun dismally in place and saw, to my surprise, that the guy I’d almost run into on my way out was still standing in the doorway, halfway in, halfway out. He was black, with a shaved head, maybe thirty years old, about my height but a bit more stout. We gazed at each other for a long couple of beats. Then slowly, shyly, he raised his hand and gave a little wave.

*

Nicole’s real name was Aaron. We went inside and sat in a booth far from everyone. He ordered a Long Island iced tea; I ordered two whiskeys. The world seemed to rattle and buzz. Each steamy moment Nicole and I had shared over the phone flickered through my mind like a porno on fast-forward. But now, in each frame, I had to replace Fiona Apple with this—
HOLY FUCK!
—this
guy
. Honestly, I couldn’t do it. What kind of deranged motherfucker even pulled stunts like this? My neck got hot, and I thought about just getting the fuck outta Dodge, but after a minute, the drinks and Aaron’s bashful, slumping presence cooled me down.

Aaron began to explain things. He’d been doing the Nicole voice since he was thirteen, he told me. His first calls were to a guy at his high school who he had a crush on. Over the years, he’d had dozens of relationships with the same general trajectory as ours: heated phone sex gradually evolving into a deeper friendship, then, after three weeks or three years, an inevitable flameout.

But how had he come to find
me
that night at the Motel 6? Was he staying in another room and saw my TV on?

“No, I was at home,” Aaron said, his voice soft and effeminate. “There’s five Motel 6’s in Austin; I have all their phone numbers memorized.” These motels were somewhat unique, he said. Calls don’t go through the front desk; they’re handled by an automated system that asks for a room number. Many nights, after the clubs had closed, he’d be bored and drunk and start dialing random rooms. If a girl answered, he’d hang up—Aaron was gay; he didn’t want to talk to girls. If a guy answered and he sounded nice, “Nicole” would start whispering.

He had dated—by phone—cops, businessmen, students, even a butcher and a baker (truly, but no candlestick maker). “I always want to be able to reach someone when I’m in the mood,” he said. “So I like to have two or three things going at any one time.”

“You mean all that time you were cheating on me?” I said in mock horror. “
Whispering
to other guys?”

He laughed—a squeaky girlish laugh. I could see how I’d mistaken him over the phone as female.

Aaron revealed more: I wasn’t a very adventurous phonesex partner. Spanking, domination—sometimes his calls veered into these territories. As Nicole, he’d led guys into the shower and had them pee on themselves. Once he’d arranged to have a guy fuck his wife while he listened, without the wife knowing. All of this information was dispensed with the sheepish amusement and reluctant pride of a criminal reflecting on his work at the end of a spree.

Did he think Nicole’s phone buddies knew she was a guy? Some knew, he figured, but chose to ignore it. Others had no clue. A few guys had become so obsessed with Nicole that they’d proposed marriage. One even promised to leave his wife for her. “That’s when I have to tell them who I am,” Aaron said. “I feel bad for deceiving them for so long. It can be really heart-wrenching, because I might have feelings for them, too, but I have to tell ’em, ‘Look, I’m a guy.’” There’d been shock, anger, promises of a beating. A lawyer he’d been screwing over the phone for a year called him a fucking faggot, slammed down the phone, and then, hours later, called back, confessed he’d had fantasies about guys, and asked to meet up. They ended up having sex at Aaron’s apartment. A half dozen times, he said, he’d hooked up with guys he’d met as Nicole. All of them claimed to be straight, only curious.

I still couldn’t understand the allure of all this. Aaron was a handsome guy, fit, with kind eyes. I knew from months of calls that he was a sweet soul and bighearted. Why didn’t he find himself a boyfriend?

“I had a bona fide boyfriend once,” he said. “A few years ago. I was so in love. But then he took off.” Aaron looked down. “It’s hard in the gay community. People are not faithful. It’s hard to find someone who wants to be committed and serious.”

That sounded like a cop-out to me; plenty of my gay friends had managed to find long-term partners.

“Maybe I’m in the wrong scene,” Aaron said. “Guys at the clubs, they don’t want what I want.” Over the phone, he could get to know someone as a person first. It wasn’t all about looks. “Sometimes,” he said, “you can express yourself better with a stranger.”

I asked about his mom—had she known he was gay? “We never had ‘the conversation,’” he said, “but I think she suspected. Didn’t matter. She loved me no matter what.”

“She passed away last year?”

Aaron paused. “Nineteen ninety-nine.”

“Oh, my bad,” I said. “For some reason I thought it was more recent.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I lie about that. I always want to talk about her with people, but I think they’ll think I’m weird if they know it’s been so many years and I can’t get over it.”

“Wow.” I ordered us another round of drinks.

Aaron drifted from one story about his mom into another, and gradually his double life as Nicole began to make sense to me. Here was a guy still grieving over the loss of his mother, crushed from a broken relationship, and surrounded by death at his job—no wonder getting involved with people felt harrowing. As Nicole, it seemed, he managed to get his rocks off and find meaningful human contact without risking true intimacy. I could only applaud his innovation, though it struck me as incredibly lonely.

The Pro Bowl had ended, and Applebee’s was clearing out. The junior hip-hopper I’d mistaken earlier for Nicole walked past our table, glanced at me, and muttered, “Your food here sucks.”

I paid the bill, and me and Aaron made our way out to the parking lot. A gloomy mist had settled in; the wet pavement had a dull shine. “You know,” I told him, standing by his car to say goodbye, “I feel like I lost Nicole but gained Aaron, and it’s a trade up.”

Aaron flashed a forlorn smile.

“How ’bout a hug?” I suggested.

We hugged. He smelled of musky cologne, salt, and beer, like a football stadium after the stands empty out.

“See ya around,” Aaron said, though he knew I’d soon be flying back to Detroit.

“Yeah. See you around.”

We got in our cars and rolled out of the lot, both headed for the I-35 South ramp. On the freeway, we drove side by side for a half minute with the fellowship of two truckers. I tapped the radio on; a sorrowful trumpeter blurted low notes. I saw Aaron playing with his phone, and then my phone buzzed—he’d sent me a text:
Wanna try a guy?

I looked across at him, shook my head sadly, and held up my hands—
Sorry, man, no can do.

Aaron gave a little tight-mouthed nod and lifted his hand—the same understated wave as when we’d first spotted each other outside of Applebee’s. Then he zoomed ahead, and a mile later, at a split in the highway, peeled away. I watched his taillights until at last they disappeared into the foggy, aching Texas night.

THE 8TH OF NOVEMBER

One night, about ten years ago, a woman handed me an old, weathered journal she’d discovered on a wet street in Washington, D.C.—I make a magazine called
Found
which compiles these kinds of personal notes and letters that folks have plucked up off the ground. The journal, written by a soldier in Vietnam named Jim Thompson, chronicled his year of brutal combat as a member of the 173rd Airborne. In the fall of 1965, Jim had fought in one of Vietnam’s bloodiest battles, known as Hill 65—a battle recalled in the Big & Rich song “8th of November.” In his journal, Jim described the initial ambush:
“Chunks of flesh rained down on me.”
Hours later, when both sides ran out of bullets, they fought with knives and entrenching tools. Out of twenty men in Jim’s unit, only he and three others survived.