I Think You're Totally Wrong (3 page)

DAVID:
Too many micro-discussions of mac-and-cheese?

CALEB:
One person talks about what their kids ate last night. The other two or three listen, mouths agape, eyes bulging, waiting to say, “And my son likes peaches but didn't when he was a baby, although he's always liked bananas yakkety-yak-yak.”

DAVID:
Hey, man, you signed up for stay-at-home-dad duty.

CALEB:
I know I come across as pretentious and detached and I'm certain I bore people. My wife thinks I'm arrogant and patronizing, which really isn't—well, isn't always the case. Her family is more successful and less insecure; they're admirable and solid. I can be introverted at family gatherings, even though I'm starving for conversation.

DAVID:
I'm by no means the only bookish person you know, but you're eager to flash your chops, show me how I'm wrong.

CALEB:
Shit.

DAVID:
You miss an exit?

CALEB:
A shortcut. We could have saved three to five minutes. It's minor.

DAVID:
How'd you meet your wife?

CALEB:
She's good friends with my sister Sarah, who set us up.

DAVID:
And Terry and Sarah are still good friends?

CALEB:
Best friends. We all went to high school together, but I hardly said a word to Terry, even though she was friends with Sarah. I didn't talk much to Sarah, either—though Sarah and I are close now. Terry went to the UW [University of Washington] same time I did; she was a poli-sci major and lived with her gay ex-husband a block away from me my last year of school. A year or two after her divorce, she dated a guy twenty years older: the vice president of the Tacoma Rainiers. She stayed with him for four years—his “trophy.” She went to sports events, Detlef Schrempf's house in Bellevue, Sonic boxes. At some function she sat by WSU coach Mike Price, and he pinched her ass.

DAVID:
Mike Price? Didn't he go to Alabama and get in trouble at a strip club? He said it was a one-time thing.

CALEB:
It's never a one-time thing.

DAVID:
When did you start dating?

CALEB:
2001. I was between Brazil and Taiwan. We had a long-distance relationship. She came to Asia three times before we got married.

DAVID:
You've been married ten years?

CALEB:
We got married in 2003. We got married at the same age as you and Laurie, but you're twelve years older. You had Natalie around the same age we had Ava. Natalie's eighteen and Ava's six. Twelve years. This is boring stuff we'll probably take out.

DAVID:
It's not boring. We'll just talk, but then when we
talked about your tendency to interrupt, the car got a little cold. You could really feel—

CALEB:
Moo!

DAVID:
You could really—

CALEB:
Moo!

DAVID:
There was real tension. Basically, any time we can—

CALEB:
Mooooo!

DAVID:
We need ninety-seven—

CALEB:
Moo! Moo!

DAVID:
Okay. I get it. The interrupting cow?

CALEB:
“Knock, knock! Who's there? Interrupting Cow. Interrup—Moo!”

DAVID:
Did you just come across that?

CALEB:
From
Enough About You
. You said that was the funniest joke you ever heard.

DAVID:
It was my favorite joke at the time. Seemed like a good thing to say in the Bill Murray chapter, since he's such an interrupting cow.

CALEB:
You kept talking and I kept mooing.

DAVID:
Noted.

CALEB:
I hope you're not one of those types that, you know, never cracks a joke and never acknowledges a joke cracked.

DAVID:
I am humor incarnate, my friend.

CALEB:
What'd you think of
Adderall Diaries
?

DAVID:
I don't know. I wanted to love it but didn't. I liked it
okay. I like consciousness contending with experience. It felt to me more like experience. What did you think?

CALEB:
Murder, sex, drugs, confusion. Good stuff.

CALEB:
I haven't gotten to Helen Schulman's
This Beautiful Life
. Not sure why you suggested it.

DAVID:
It's just an example of the kind of book I think doesn't need to be written anymore.

CALEB:
Have you read it?

DAVID:
No, but—

CALEB:
You're asking me to read books you haven't read?

DAVID:
I don't think I said, “Could you read this book?” I just meant, “Caleb, let's bookmark this and talk about it later.” I've read a lot about the book, I've read her other novels, and I know her. It's about what happens when a sex tape goes viral at a high school. But we've all already processed this narrative in real time: we already did this novel through the Tyler Clementi case.

CALEB:
There was the Billy Lucas suicide and so many others.

DAVID:
That was DeLillo's big idea twenty-five years ago: terrorists are the new novelists.

CALEB:
You probably didn't read
We Need to Talk About Kevin
, then, either.

DAVID:
Really great title, but what novel could ever touch Columbine?

CALEB:
A friend of mine wrote a novel about a pop-star celebrity—how he picked up boys and took them to his mansion, etc. His agent wouldn't even send it out.

DAVID:
Why not?

CALEB:
The main character was transparently Michael Jackson. The topic was too controversial, I guess.

DAVID:
For a long time I wanted to write about Tonya Harding. These moments really grip you during the time they're happening, but I've come to realize that for me, anyway—

CALEB:
(stops car)
Uh-oh.

CALEB:
Jeez, I wasn't even going fast. I saw the crosswalk but didn't see her. I'll wait until she crosses.

CALEB:
How Literature Saved My Life
—the title doesn't work.

DAVID:
Seriously?

CALEB:
How Literature Saved
Your
Life
?

DAVID:
The good thing about it is that it doesn't need a subtitle. “What's it about?” Well, it's about how literature saved my life.

CALEB:
That's every book you write. Didn't Steve Almond already write
How Rock 'n' Roll Saved My Life
?

DAVID:
Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life
. Did you see that thing Almond and I did? Someone interviewed me, then she asked Almond to criticize my answers. It was supposed to be funny.

CALEB:
He seems like a cool guy.

DAVID:
He's lively.

CALEB:
His persona, when he's in his element, works. He should be a comedian, but he's not a serious writer—“serious” being a writer who writes about “serious” topics.

DAVID:
In person he's charming. And he's quick, insanely quick. I like him, even if I'm not a huge fan of his work, and I think the feeling is mutual. I find his stuff a little superficial, don't you?

CALEB:
He hasn't earned the right to be a political authority. Not that I have, either, but I'm not going around issuing self-indulgent moral stands that have no substantive value. Sartre refused the Nobel Prize. How many lives did that save? Almond was teaching at Boston College—

DAVID:
Where he quit.

CALEB:
—when Condoleezza Rice was invited to give the commencement speech.

DAVID:
You wonder if there wasn't another motivation on his part.

CALEB:
It got him on Fox News.

DAVID:
I saw something by him recently called “Twenty Tough Questions for Barack Obama.” A very, very stock liberal critique of Obama. I come close to sharing virtually all of Almond's politics, but I don't pretend to be a political scientist. He always winds up writing 1,500-word articles for
Slate
called “Steve Almond's Solution to the Palestinian Crisis.”