Searching For Her

I guess you could say it began in April. That is, I believe it is accurate to say it began in April. Oh hell, I don't know. I suppose you could say it started well before then and would arguably (or perhaps diagnostically is the more appropriate word) be correct. Does such a journey as the one I am about to relay really "begin" or "end" at one particular point? (A certainty! A certainty! My kingdom for a certainty!) Well, anyway, the first day of April did mark the dawn of resolution for change in my life. And my odyssey actually began on that day as well. So that is where I'm going to place "the beginning." Of course, having now fixed this point, I can't help but observe that I failed to note the popular significance of this date - and to see it as the ironic, damning omen that I now do - which speaks volumes as to just how distraught and distracted I had become. But such trivialities would not likely have concerned me anyway. By then, I was mad and manic and thinking only of her. In truth, I had functioned relatively well up to and a bit past my graduation from college in '91. Twenty-five years had passed since I'd floated in the blissful ignorance of my mother's womb (forgive me, dear reader, but cliché does hold truth). My cynicism toward contemporary life had reached its nadir. Nearly all relationships of any value (meaning anyone who would put up with me) had fallen by the wayside. The last to go was my friendship with Jack. As far as looks, Jack could easily have played Shaggy in the movie version of Scooby-Doo. His hair was a dingy reddish-brown mop that appeared to have fallen onto his head after being flung from the window of some airborne castle by a scullery maid pinching her nose in revulsion; his dark, scruffy beard was a non-deciduous perennial, which, though I never saw him groom it, was thin, patchy, and always the same length. He was tall and the further up his lanky frame went, the more it stooped in struggle with gravity. The Shaggy parallel stopped with Jack's eyes, however, which were set wide apart, and the left of which wandered in a creepy, underworldly way. They were also alert like the wily, half-crazed assistant of some Walmart pharmacist. Personality-wise, Jack was not a goosey coward comme Shaggy either, but was calm and deliberate. A songwriting, aspiring "alternative rock" band leader, an adequate if somewhat superficial thinker, and a wry observer of the ironic, Jack was the closest thing to an intellectual I knew at the time. I had known him since my junior year when we were in a secondary discussion group for a Joyce class. He was the only one in the group who seemed to actually think about what he said, so when he made a subtle social overture to me outside class (he shared a sarcastic comment about the Prof.'s hair style, of all things), my response was uncharacteristically positive. We hit it off relatively well in day-to-day pleasantries but were always arguing the opposite point of view intellectually. While I, for example, gloried in the beauty of the language Joyce chose, Jack felt that since Joyce used that very language to attack his oppressors, it undermined whatever beauty there was to it. A real yawner for most folks, admittedly, but we got pretty worked up over such things. Okay, maybe I was the one who got worked up. Despite this, we managed to remain relatively close until he met Claire. It wasn't the typical "your friend gets a girlfriend and the friendship goes to pot" situation, though. I actually liked Claire. She was a dark and languid beauty with a very small diamond nose stud. I wasn't attracted to her at all because of her spiritually spacy, unkempt, tree-hugging ways, but she could be clever and funny. The problem was Jack and her together. Their mutual affinity for pop culture eventually proved too much for me. Our final parting came the night we went to see Slacker. They had both seen it and, in their eternal drive to bring me into their camp, had persuaded me against my better judgment to go and see it. When I got to their place, Claire wasn't ready, so Jack threw a copy of Generation X on my lap. He knew I had been avoiding it because of all the hoopla. Since I had caved-in partially anyway by going to see the movie, the masochist in me said, "Oh, why not make an evening of it?" But when I reached the part where the narrator is picking liposuctioned fat from his dog's nose, I quietly put the book down. After just a moment of sitting there, I realized I was really annoyed. It bothered me so much I wished I had not read it. Agitated though I was, however, I said not a word. I was not up to yet another argument with Jack and was thankful when he asked me nothing. I said very little on the way to the movie, which neither of them seemed to notice. I was glad they left me alone. I wanted to figure out why what I'd just read bugged me so much. But I could not understand specifically what had upset me, which irritated me even more. We got to the theater and settled in with the rest of our contemporaries, who made up almost the whole of the audience. I had calmed down a bit and had even managed to chuckle like a good sport at a comment Claire made about how my coloring would work well with the tacky brown uniforms the theater employees wore - a cloaked jab about my lack of employment. When the lights went down, the darkness and the glow from the screen relaxed me a little more. Unfortunately, there was the movie to contend with. As the rambling, aimless story bled onto the screen, my agitation began to grow again. I made it as far as the scene where that reedy, tubercular looking girl tries to sell a pap-smear she claims is Madonna's to her friends. That scene typified all I had grown to loathe about my generation. I asked myself what drove us collectively to this pathetic, apathetic state of mind? Why was the vulgar and irrelevant so fascinating to us? Then, suddenly, I understood just what I hated about it. It was complete self- absorption; extreme egotism cloaked in irony and the perverse preoccupation with the squalid in life. They cynically pointed out these mindlessly inconsequential things supposedly to display the damning relativity of life. But the truth was that they just did it to show how smart they were and to avoid any serious self-examination which might allow them to actually do something with their lives. I sat there no longer seeing the movie, seething over this shameless waste, this giving up before even trying. I fumed in my seat a little longer until I felt an incredible anger at the senselessness of it surge up and overwhelm me. My whole body trembled like rapidly jiggled Jell-O. I was flush and hot and my head throbbed like the tip of a highly-heated Looney Toons thermometer. But though I wanted to scream, to spew the venomous contempt I felt on everyone in the theater, I could not because I was actually so angry that I started coughing and gagging. At this point both Claire and Jack turned to me. When they saw my face, they both went white. "Are you okay, man?" Jack leaned over and asked in a hurried, anxious whisper. I choked and hacked a bit more, then - with enormous effort - finally got control of myself and haltingly sputtered: "Fahuck yeww." "What?" he started and asked out loud. "Shhh!" came hissing from all around. "Fuck you!" I shouted out with wild euphoric relief at my rediscovered ability to speak. I jumped to my feet, wobbled a bit, then gained my balance and pointed at the screen: "Fuck this and fuck you, every one of you, if this is all you fucking think of yourselves!" A pause. "Shut the fuck up, asshole!" came a snide female voice from the balcony. "I may be an asshole," I instantly roared back, "but I'm not as big an asshole as anyone who would sit here and watch this shit and think it's in any way funny! You all make me fucking sick!" "Man, would you just sit down and shut up!" Jack pleaded, tugging urgently at my arm. "Yeah!" a voice cried out from my left. "Sit down and shut up or get the fuck out, prick!" "Oh, I'll leave all right! You can have this crap for yourselves! I'm through with this shit... I'm through with you all!" "Good! Split! Loser!" boomed a deep baritone from the front row. Everyone laughed. I could not respond. My head was now reeling from the release of so much pent-up passion. I stumbled down the row and up the aisle. An alarmed theater employee met me coming through the door. I shoved him out of my way and went crashing out the front doors and into the night. Jack did not call for several days. When he finally did, he left a message saying he thought the whole thing was "really fucking lame." I was screening the call, but felt no impulse to pick up and defend myself. I was through with him. Through with everybody. It all made me sick. Everything. I was tired of trying to pretend that I could like it. And I had finally realized that that was what Jack represented for me: my last attempt to fit in.

?

Before I moved to Seattle, everyone warned me about the rain. They were right. It rained for the next six months. It was mind-numbingly constant. But I didn't care. I was provided for financially by a small trust fund set up by my grandparents. They had intended it to help pay for graduate school. When it turned over to me at twenty-five, graduate school was about as likely as a career in Amway. So, I lived modestly and, except for trips to the grocery store, kept to myself. For a few weeks, I did nothing but sleep 'til noon then sit and watch the rain out my window. In the beginning, I stewed about the theater episode and what had brought me to that point. At first, I was worried about the suddenness and violence of my outburst. But I finally decided it really wasn't so sudden. As I mentioned before, I'd felt a deep-seated distaste for contemporary society and decided I had obviously been suppressing those feelings more than I'd realized. So naturally it would have to have come out at some point. Albeit, it had broken forth... well, a tad fortissimo. But then, that was to be expected given the potentially explosive nature of the psyche when repressed. As to what had actually upset me, I had begun to feel even more apathetic than those whom I'd condemned. After all, what did anything really matter anyway? Even though I hated what my generation was saying, ultimately, I knew I did not have the strength to fight it. Given the overwhelming tide of mediocrity flooding the world, fighting it was a losing battle, and I felt broken and defenseless against it. So let the whole world slide into a stinking, degenerate swamp of irrelevance. Everything was fucked up, and trying to save it would be futility epitomized. The weeks grew into months, and to fill the empty hours I tried to read again. I picked up the books I had enjoyed in college and high school and managed to finish a few short stories and even to wade through one or two novels. In the end, though, I hadn't the energy for it. So I started flipping on the TV. Of course, I saw it was still the giddy idiot-savant messenger of the Apocalypse I had already judged it to be; still mindlessly yet distinctly proclaiming the contemporary passion for degrading, eroding, stupefying banality. But, with my attention span so limited and my mind so hungry for anything to chew, even these hopelessly "empty calories" sufficed. The soap operas were in full swing by the time I was up and eating my Cheerios. At first, I found it difficult to believe there might be people who actually watched them with any kind of sincerity. Some of the story lines were so incredible, so ridiculously fantastic. People from small-town America in love triangles with characters involved in Central American guerrilla warfare. Lovers stranded on desert islands through the scheming of a long lost (though admirably tenacious) family enemy. Pointlessly elaborate, unyielding plots that no one watching could honestly dream of getting caught up in. Of course, there were the more mundane themes. Some of them never attempted to leave Smalltownsville, USA (save the occasional sally to New York, Los Angeles, or Europe to give the pretentious characters something to lord over their socially oppressed lessers). However, intrigue was provided by the many vicissitudes of love (first love, marriage, affairs, discovery, divorce, re-marriage) under the umbrella of small scale social infighting over everything from race relations to family disintegration. Here, as with the other approach, cliché abounded. I did not bother criticizing them, though. There was simply too much to attack. It was mental cotton candy. So I just watched them like a child. Surprisingly (at least to me), I soon found myself looking forward to them. I wanted to know what Michael would do when he found out Sarah, his homespun, down-to-earth fiancee, had a sordid, high-flying, bi-sexual past in the pornography industry and was addicted to diet pills? And Sarah's best friend, Camielle: would she confront the step-uncle who had molested her as a child, but now wanted to be godfather to Camielle's love child with the step-uncle's best friend's son, who had recently died from a rare blood disease? These and many more equally elaborate sub-plots enticed me to and through the noon hour. I began to wake a little earlier so as not to miss the beginning of the one with which I'd started. This resulted in catching the end of the one before and getting interested in it. So I got up even earlier. It wasn't long before my day was filled with watching them. I even started taping ones from other channels and viewing them into the night. I knew it was absurd. I could in no way rationalize what I was doing. I was pursuing something that was the quintessence of all that had driven me away from people. But what did I care? So I'm into mindless drivel, I thought. What does it really matter? There was also the fact that I really could not help myself. The one or two times I tried not to watch, I nearly went out of my head. In short, I was addicted. My addiction did create a problem: though I taped several different shows a day, filling up many hours, I could not tape enough to occupy all my waking moments. I tried watching the ones I'd taped again, but that was unsatisfying. Like chewing gum from the bed post, it lacked the zest and flavor of the initial experience. I yearned, almost lusted for the new episode. This sense of absence was probably the reason I found myself glancing at romance novel covers in the supermarket. I had to pass them on my way to the produce section. Of course, the covers are designed to catch the eye with those strapping chests and heaving bosoms. And, I'm human, so I looked occasionally. Then late one night, after I had watched my last tape for the day and was in heavy withdrawal, I stopped and picked one up. I'll just read the summary on the back, I thought. When a good-looking middle-aged woman passing by gave me a reproachful little smile, I returned it to the rack and scurried off to buy some bananas. Before I left the store, though, I was drawn back again. This time I went around the corner by the magazine stand to make what I fully intended to be only a scan of the contents. The next thing I knew I was twenty-five pages into the story of a London born, Highlands bound beauty named Penelope whose lavish red hair and independent, audacious spirit were spurned by the locals but admired and desired by the brawny, brooding land-owning citizen called Malcolm. It was trash, and I knew it. But I kept reading. The writing was thin, the characterizations trite. Still, I kept reading. I told myself to put it down. Just put it down and walk away. But I couldn't. I felt ashamed with each page I turned. It was a sin against every aesthetic value I had ever believed in. Had I really become so desperate? When I crammed two others with equally lurid covers in my bag and left the store without paying, I knew I had my answer.

?

Several months passed, and my obsession grew exponentially. I quickly exhausted the supermarket's romance novel supply and graduated to discount book emporiums. Eventually, I just made several indiscriminate large purchases and had them delivered to me. Throughout my apartment were stacks of read and to-be-read books, from which I selected and read voraciously whenever I had a spare moment. Of course, recording and following twelve different daily soaps meant spare moments were rare. I had to buy another VCR and TV to accomplish this stressful task. The planning involved for recording was difficult enough, but the execution of the plan was even worse. Since I couldn't stand having to run through the end-of-the-hour commercials with each and every