Authors: Elyse Douglas
I tossed the story down in frustration. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about here, Rita. It’s too damned abstract.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to retrieve them.
Rita lifted her eyes from the page, surprisingly pleased by my comment.
That encouraged me, so I went on. “I mean, …well, she didn’t kiss him. Okay. But no matter how you look at it, it was still a choice not to kiss him, whether she wanted to or not!”
“No it wasn’t.”
“It was.”
“No. She knew the outcome.”
I felt the temptation of argument rise, giving strength to my voice. “Okay, fine. She knew the outcome. Big deal. It was still a choice. I mean, this is a world of dual things. Physics tells us that: The law of cause and effect. For every action there is a reaction. You didn’t kiss him, because, I don’t know, because you knew he’d like try to have sex with you or something. Okay, fine, but that was a choice.”
Rita shook her head. “No. The choice never happened,” Rita argued. “She did not choose.”
“By not choosing, she chose, Rita! There’s no way around it!”
“No. By rejecting both choices, she went beyond choice to a ‘happening’.”
“Come on, Rita! So the point is to become a victim and just let fate make all your choices? I just don’t get that!”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No. It’s pointless. It’s way too abstract for the reader. And this whole comparison of the astrologer and preacher. Any preacher I know thinks astrology is the devil’s work.”
“It gives tension, Alan James. It gets your attention. It provokes.”
“It’s too damned abstract!”
“Okay, it’s too abstract. Good!”
I leaned forward. “Rita, all this character did was make a choice based on a feeling or an experience. But it was still a choice. There’s no way around it. And what does ‘grind together in a friction of possibility, so she could truly be born into a LIFE of BEINGNESS’ mean?”
Rita’s face became flushed, animated. “Freedom. The struggle for freedom to live without the fear of making a bad choice.”
“That’s how we learn, Rita! You make a bad choice, you learn not to make that choice again.”
“No way!” Rita protested. “If you’d finished the story, you’d see that it’s about the freedom to truly be what you are. The freedom to cut a path through water, leaving no foot prints.”
“And what if you can’t walk on water, because you can’t, and the water’s too damned deep and you drown?” I asked.
“Then so be it. Better to die free and true to yourself than to be scared and a slave.”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know, Rita. You’ve been reading too much Thoreau or something.”
She went into her recitation pose and I waited for a quote from Thoreau. ‘What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer.’”
“Thoreau was an airhead,” I said.
“Okay, what about Blake?”
“More than an airhead. He was whacked out. Who can even understand what the hell he’s saying half the time.”
Rita’s expression turned philosophical, and I braced for a Blake quote. ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare. My business is to create.’”
I blew out a frustrated sigh. “I still say your story is illogical and idealistic, and, don’t get mad at me or anything, but it’s just…just… idiotic!”
She looked at me with amused tolerance. “Thank you, Alan James. Coming from you, the hardheaded pragmatist, the brainy kid who would be king, that’s a compliment.”
I didn’t know whether to be angry, because I’d been insulted, or laugh because she was so clever. But I didn’t really care if she’d insulted me. The somber mood had been broken and I swiftly made my move. I took off my glasses and narrowed my hopeful eyes on her. “So, what if I pick you up at 7 o’clock on Friday night?”
She rested her alluring eyes on me. “Where are you taking me?”
“Back to the lake?” I asked, hopefully.
She shook her head slowly. “Nooooo... Never repeat, Alan James. Be original and inventive. Otherwise, life becomes flat. Boring. Let’s go to a movie.”
I shrank back, disappointed. “A movie!? How ordinary and boring is that? A movie!?”
“Yes, Alan James. Your choice. Then, afterwards, we’ll improvise.”
I liked the sound of “we’ll improvise.”
She picked up my story. “Now, let me read your story. Let’s see what the young Mr. Einstein has written for us,” she said, playfully flitting her eyebrows.
I grabbed three french fries, salted them generously, and pushed them into my mouth.
Extraordinary
by
Alan Lincoln
Harry Pine awoke one morning and, to his utter astonishment, he felt EXTRAordinary. He’d never really felt extraordinary before. Not in his entire life. It had never even occurred to him that it was even possible to feel extraordinary. The word itself had never even been part of his vocabulary; had never occupied any space within his vast universe, nor in the quantum field of the subatomic particles of bosons, leptons and quarks. But, there it was. He couldn’t deny the obvious. The remarkable! The incarnate! As he looked into the mirror, he saw on his face, written clearly and boldly, the word E X T R A ordinary.
Harry had fallen in love with Lizzy McAlpin, a girl who had startled the best and the worst in him; caressed him into disorder with her white willowy arms and sent him off into that extraordinary world of delightful pain.
All would not be well. Nay, never again. Harry Pine would never again play the electric guitar with those sharp Hendrix riffs, or wind-mill through chords like Springsteen, or scream out hoarsely like Zepplin. No, he was in the world of the extraordinary now and he was doomed to a world of tripping and stumbling through Dylan-esque words and phrases, on the fruitless search for the true meaning of that word: E X T R A ordinary.
Rita laid the pages aside, nibbling the tip of the blue striped straw, taking the occasional thoughtful sip of her soda. When the glass was drained, the straw scraped the bottom in little staccato hisses and crackles. I waited, peeved, by her deliberation and obvious stalling. When she finally turned to me, her eyes had filled with a firm conviction. “Okay, Alan James…Okay. Only a couple of things.”
“No way,” I said, defensively.
“I don’t like the girl’s name, Lizzy McAlpin.”
“Big deal.”
“And,” she stressed with a raised finger. “And…I skimmed ahead and read the middle and end of the story. Harry only talks about himself. HE felt. HE this, HE that.”
“It’s his story!” I protested.
“It’s a selfish story, Alan James.”
“Bullshit!
“I want to know more about Lizzy. You don’t even describe her. Not once! We only hear about Harry. Harry this and Harry that. It’s selfish, Alan James. Pure and simple.”
“Rita, it’s a story about Harry!”
“No, Alan James. It’s really a story about what happened to Harry after he met Lizzie. It’s their story. Maybe more her story than his.”
“It’s from Harry’s point of view, Rita!”
“Just tell me this. Would there be a story without Lizzy?”
I squirmed. “No, but…”
“Okay then.”
“Okay, nothing. You’re missing the whole point.”
“Which is?” Rita asked.
“Harry has been utterly changed. Transformed. Because of Lizzie. I’m focusing on him!”
“Yes, and I say it’s selfish. I want to know who Lizzy is. What she looks like. Why Harry likes her. What was it about her that changed him? You’ve got none of that in your story. It’s Harry, Harry, Harry!”
“It’s a short story, not a damned novel!”
Rita reached for a french fry. “That’s just an excuse, Alan James.”
Frustrated, I sat back. “You are wrong,” I said, with a jerk of my chin, just like my father, when he wanted the last word.
Rita grinned. “And you, Alan James, need to rework your story because it is selfish.”
I spent the next two days living on the edge of exhilaration and irritability. Every emotion was heightened, every brief conversation with Rita examined for some potential treachery, or indication that our sexual intimacy and literary relationship had fueled a solid foundation of love and trust, although I had neither. At school, Rita talked to other boys. Laughed with them. Touched them. They hovered, delighted to be on the outer ring of her resplendent Planet Rita. The jocks struggled for smooth words; the others, “the rabble” I called them, hungrily grabbed the scraps of her comments—of any comments—as they nudged forward with slanting eager eyes.
“Yes…tomorrow I have a photo shoot for
Pennsylvania Getaways
Magazine,” she said. And “Of course I’m trying out for
Picnic
. William Inge is one of my favorite playwrights.” Or, and this made me want to vomit, “No, I’m not going to tell you who I was with Saturday night when Jeremy played
Do You Want to Dance
.”
“Was it Alan Lincoln?” Dusty asked, so close to her that their arms nearly touched. What a striking couple they were. They were natural, like sky and sea. They rang true and any idiot could see that. It was devastating.
Rita didn’t flinch. She drew closer. “That’s nobody’s business, Dusty,” she said not meeting his eyes, but I could see that Dusty’s near touch had had an effect on her. She grew a little restless and self-conscious.
“He told me, Rita. Alan told me himself,” Dusty continued.
Rita shrugged.
“Alan’s a dick,” somebody said. Dave Webster, I think.
“A smart dick with a good head,” Kenny Hill said.
They all chuckled. Not Rita.
That was the cleverest thing I’d ever heard Kenny say. He’d be lucky to graduate from high school and yet his insult of me was nearly worthy of Shakespeare.
I kept a safe distance from “the ring”. A “Rita Distance,” she’d called it. “I need space, Alan James,” she’d said only the day before. “I’m not comfortable holding hands in the hallways or meeting for lunch and sitting together all the time like we’re little lost fluttering doves in love. I hate that.”
So from a Rita distance, I watched Dusty take in the elixir of her presence. His devotional eyes found her lips, her breasts, her neck; when he breathed, he expanded and was transformed from boy to man. I hated him. I hated myself and I hated Rita.
Rita did not come to school on Friday. She had her photo shoot. Friday night, I was in the bathroom splashing on my father’s Brut Aftershave, when the telephone rang. I expected the worst, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“It’s Rita Fitzgerald,” my father called from the living room.
That pissed me off. He could have just said “Rita.” I would have known. Why did he always have to be so proper and exacting? So damned uptight!?
I stared into the mirror, seeing the bottled-up contradiction on my face. I hated Rita with a love that overpowered me, that debased me. I took some quick breaths and went to the hall phone. I answered sharply.
“Yeah!”
“Alan James?” Rita’s voice was tense.
“Yes…”
“Something’s come up.”
Dusty, I thought bitterly. “Yeah…”
“My father’s here.”
“Your father?” I asked, surprised. I hadn’t expected that. A lie? The truth? I couldn’t think.
“Alan James?”
“Yes…Yeah… When?”
“An hour ago. I haven’t seen him in almost 2 years.” Her voice suddenly sounded strange. Tentative. “I can’t make it tonight.”
I looked toward the ceiling, the walls, the floor. I switched the phone to my left ear.
“Alan James?”
“I’m here.”
“I have to be with him. Him and Mom.”
“Have to? Where’s all that freedom? I must create a system or…”
She cut me off. “…Don’t be a prick!”
“Then don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not lying! You think I’d lie about this!? Do you, Alan James!?”
“What do I know?”
“You are a shit, you know that!?”
“Yeah, I am, especially when I know you’re lying to me.”
Her voice dropped an octave, in a challenge. “Okay, Alan James, come by tomorrow and meet him.”
That unsettled me. “What…What do you mean?”
“Alan James,” she said with contempt. “You told me you have a near photographic memory and an I.Q. of at least 142, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, don’t play stupid with me. You called me a liar. Okay, I’m asking you to come by tomorrow and meet my father so I can prove to you that I’m not a liar. Afterwards, we can go to the movie. Is that very clear, Mr. Smart Ass? Can your brilliant little mind grasp all of that or do I need to repeat it 50 times or put it into some mathematical equation or draw you a very clear and precise picture?”