Raymond's screen name was ed0pusrex19. I was impressed that he didn't immediately ask to cyber. We found each other in a Star Trek chat room. We'd already had a heated debate over who was the best captain--Kirk or Picard--when he asked for my a/s/l. He was a gentleman, and a traditionalist--he chose Kirk.
When I first started chatting in my early teens and someone would ask “where do u live?” I'd lie and choose a state I'd never liked--Nebraska, Iowa or one of the Dakotas. If I were feeling sultry my name would be something like Veronica or Jasmine. If I wanted to seem interesting, I'd scan the contents of my room, and tell them my name was Paisley or Fedora. And they'd reply, “cool. wat kind of a name is that?“ And I'd tell them it was Finnish.
I didn't want to lie to Raymond, though. He already knew about my love for cheesy science fiction, that I spent my youth taping Deep Space Nine and saving up money to go to Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas--something that I only admitted to people with screen names like “lowrursheilds57” or “livl0ngndpr0spr.”
Anus
Some people I knew were playing spin the bottle in a mini-mall parking lot. I sat just outside the small circle, looking at the bottom of my sneakers. They puffed on cigarettes without inhaling and passed around a bottle they called “Mrs. Trudy.”
A thin-armed girl with a chipped tooth spun the empty Pepsi bottle. It landed on me.
I shook my head and laughed a little. I didn't want to play.
“Don't be a loser,” said a fat girl in a revealing v-neck.
I looked at the person I was supposed to kiss. He had red-hair and a lip deformity that he liked to show off. He'd raise the top of his lip, exposing an additional meaty piece that appeared stitched on; the tiers of lip looked like a fanny-pack under a fat belly. His contorted lips stretched into a smile and he said, “They call me Anus.”
Calvin
Calvin couldn't hear very well. He was a drummer in a band and he went to a lot of alternative rock shows. He'd ask me to repeat everything. I found myself screaming comments like, “Do you like pepperoni on your pizza!” or “I have to go to the bathroom!” Most of the time, though, I liked that he couldn't hear me. I've always regretted my comments immediately after voicing them. I met someone with a speech impediment once. He told me I was “wondahful pahson.” I laughed and asked him why he was talking like Sylvester the pussycat. He told me he couldn't pronounce his “awwhhs.” We never spoke again.
I saw myself as an out-of-place cartoon character with a speech bubble that always said the wrong thing. I wanted to rewind time and erase my comments. Being with Calvin was the closest thing to that. A song would come on the radio and I'd start humming.
“I love the Indigo Girls,” I'd say.
“What's that?” he'd reply.
“I said, I've never heard of the Indigo Girls!”
“Oh,” he said. “You're not missing anything -- they suck.”
Erin
Erin was the star-- and that's the only way she'd have it. Her legs were small and tanned but she thought they looked like chicken bones. She liked to wear floral skirts above the knee and layer cotton tees. Her hair was blond, and it fell to her shoulders when I first met her.
She ordered her coffee with a lot of milk and one sugar. She dated a boy for a long time but she told me was bored. She fantasized about kissing boys who wore hound's-tooth vests or maybe never kissing anyone again. “I'd barely miss it,” she said.
Erin said certain words funny and I couldn't help but pick it up. She wrote poetry about tea-cupped dresses or watching ice break on tile and she didn't show it to many people. We went to a party once. “I'll drive,” she said. She was late, and I knew she would be.
I clutched the door handle as Erin weaved in between slow moving Cadillacs. We walked into the house. Erin was wearing heeled boots and I followed her assertive steps down the hall.
She liked to do impressions of dinosaurs at parties and sing Madonna and everyone would listen. With a red plastic cup in my hand we moved around the hoards of sloppy teenagers. Erin struck up a conversation and her soft giggle seemed to be the only noise in the room. She said we had to run. She waved bye and we kept moving, “I hate that person,“ she said.
Christian
Christian got in first. He put his foot on a rusted indentation and pulled himself up. I watched his body flop in, his curly pony tail trailing behind him. I heard a soft crunch, like a kid playing in a pile of leaves. He trudged toward the edge of the giant, metal box. “Ok,” he said. “This one's really not bad.”
Christian went dumpster-diving and this time I came along. He worked the night shift at Kinko's. That's where we met; he helped me laminate a poster at 3am. I reached for my wallet and he told me not to worry about it.
“Won't you get in trouble?” I asked. He smiled; he had small teeth and his gums looked like the inside of a plum.
“I'd be fired anyway--if they really knew what I was doing here,” he said.
He pulled out a small booklet tattooed with intricate fonts and a picture of two men having sex. It read, “Fuck the man.”
He became determined to convert me to a life of freeganism. He'd decided to start with dumpster-diving. I took careful steps toward the massive receptacle. I smelled old Mexican food and vomit. “I don't want to do this,” I said. Christian cocked his head and looked at me like a concerned tee-ball coach. He reached down and pulled out a rotary telephone and an electric menorah.
“There's great shit in here!”
I could use a new menorah, I thought. The street lights reflected off layered black plastic bags. Christian was grinning widely like he was about to watch his child shoplift for the first time. He secured his position among the trash, dropped the etch-a-sketch he was holding and took my hand.
The Train
I signed up for the first dinner service at five o'clock. A fed-up train employee led us to our table, “You two,” she said. “Slide all the way in.“ Tina got in first; the blue vinyl pulled at her velour tracksuit. We were facing an older couple in golf polos. They didn't tell us their names, only that they were heading back to Rhode Island.
The table was set with formal plastic ware--Amtrak-issued plates and small disposable champagne glasses, the kind used at office Christmas parties. There was a half carafe of white wine on the table. “Look, dear,” the old woman said. “They have booze!”
I ordered the chicken Provencal for dinner. My plate came back with two slabs of chicken underneath tepid cheese and a perfectly rounded scoop of mashed potatoes. I took another sip of my wine--it was as bad as the food, but I found it cute that they tried, like a mom who writes “lol” in her text messages.
The woman from Rhode Island smiled in between bites of limp goulash. I poked my chicken with annoyance. “Do you not eat meat, dear?” she said to me. I lied and said I didn't. “Too bad,” she said. “This food is divine!”
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