Chapter 2

Upon arriving home, I found that James had made his first major purchase with his lottery money, which was a mountain of cocaine. Perhaps this is hyperbole, and it was actually more of a foothill of cocaine, but in any case, it was a substantial amount. If James had intended to set up shop, rather than just consume the mountain in a whirlwind frenzy of narcotic consumption, he would have made a great deal of money, and perhaps had to hire bodyguards and fly to Colombia to make contact with the manufacturer to get a discount on the thousands of kilos he would have to sell in order for said mountain to be his profit sack, but it seemed far more likely that he intended to rewrite a passage in the Bible to read “as long as you have a nose, you can move mountains.”
I cannot even begin to imagine where James found someone holding that much coke, nor why he would want to buy it, but nevertheless, he had bought a quantity of blow that, pardon the pun, blew the mind, and apparently had recruited the help of a pair of buxom blondes in an attempt to snort the entire mound. These girls were pretty, and although they seemed to be unrelated in a strictly biological sense, they were twins in a more metaphysical sense, inasmuch as they were identical regarding goals, hobbies, taste in fashion, vocabulary, and basically every other attribute over which a human being has volition and which is a fundamental component of their character. It might be said that they were exceptional honest representations of the same Platonic form. Even their mannerism were identical.
I quickly began to suspect that many of their likes and dislikes were dictated largely by popular opinion, and were accordingly as fickle as that most mutable of pseudo-intellectual edifices. There is a certain sort of person who sinks into the cultural fabric. They mimic in dress their favorite celebrities. Their taste in music changes at exactly the same pace as top forty charts. Their taste in books is nonexistent, or else a vestigial thing that restrains itself to books from which popular films are adapted. These girls seemed that sort.
“It’s nice to see that you’re investing your newfound wealth wisely, dude,” I said. “What happened to Cindy?”
“Oh, she wasn’t that cool, and was surprisingly bad in bed. I mean, to the extent that I just passed out rather than deal with the hassle of trying to have sex with her. So I found some new girls that are better.” This statement was so patently untrue that I had no choice but to maintain a straight face while bursting into raucous guffaws internally. There are times when I am grateful for an inner monologue, if only for tact’s sake. This is particularly important when dealing with any man describing his sexual activity, because all of us lie in order to exaggerate our prowess and reinforce our masculinity. I myself have a penis like a freight train, and can give a girl five consecutive orgasms just by looking at her.
“Uh huh. Do they have names?”
“Yeah, this one’s Jamie and this one’s Chastity.” I don’t know how he could tell which was who. At this point, Smitty entered the house to behold the ludicrous decadence in which James was engaged.
“Sweet fucking Christ! You didn’t tell me you lived with Scarface.”
“I didn’t know. He never had the money for this shit before.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like he’ll have it for long.”
“Fuck you, Smitty! I’m just celebrating. This isn’t like, an every night thing.”
“I fucking hope not, or you’ll have a fucking heart attack at the age of, like, tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blow me. You want a line?”
“Sure.”
“Sid? Andrew? New girl?” General assent was issued, and a round of lines were cut and inhaled. It is my opinion that cocaine is drug on which money should never be spent, inasmuch as a cost benefit analysis shows the expense of cocaine to be deficit spending in one sense or another. Cocaine is for people who have never been frothing at the mouth with energy and enthusiasm genuinely and soberly acquired. It makes people as chatty as a good day or passionately loved hobby, keeps them awake in circumstances when self-discipline is sufficient, and the come-down is akin to the end of days: it is, in short, motivation for people who are too lazy to motivate themselves. I prefer not to spend money on something that accomplishes things that I can do for free. It also possesses the tragic tendency to erode the character of those who use it, so that they behave themselves poorly. Perhaps the undeserved and chemically induced zeal is balanced out by a corresponding degradation of morality. It does however draw the night out, and is a tidy punctuation to the massive consumption of alcohol. This last being an activity that had followed us home from the show.
“Oh, James, her name is Angie, not new girl. She’s apparently a big fan of Smitty’s.”
“Why the fuck would she do a foolish thing like that? Last time I saw Smitty, he ended up fucking that godawful abomination of aborted femininity, what was her name, Smitty? Or should I say ‘its’ name?”
“As I recall, you tried hitting on her too, and fell flat on your face. And I picked up your bar tab too, dickhead.”
“Yeah, well, things have changed. I won like two hundred million in the lottery, didn’t you hear?”
“No, I didn’t. You have to borrow money for the ticket?”
James laughed and said, “No, I robbed a bum for it.”
“Fair enough. So Angie, why do you like my purty pictures?”
“Just like you said, Mr. Smith, they’re just so pretty that I can’t help myself. Just being here with you is enough to make me want to rip off all of my clothes and worship you for the master of pretty pictures that you are.” Perhaps it was the influence of alcohol, or perhaps time had made her more comfortable with our presence, but Angie had begun to express herself quite freely.
“Oh, the sarcasm, you teasing bitch. And call me Smitty.”
“All right, Smitty. And you just met me; you aren’t allowed to slander my character yet. James, can I get another line?”
“Sure thing. Don’t take shit from Smitty, he’s kind of a pussy anyway.”
As James began to cut Angie another line, moving in the precise, frenetic motions of a man whose cup overfloweth with cocaine, Johnny burst into the room. There was a strange energy to his movements, the sort of vigor that results from some notable occasion.
“Holy shit! Do much coke, James?”
“Fuck, why does everybody keep saying that shit to me? I’m celebrating.”
“Shut the fuck up. I have the most ridiculous and disgusting story to tell all of you.”
“Well quit with the suspense and tell the fucking thing.”
“Eat my asshole. All right, all right, so I picked this chick up from a bar, this sweet little thing just oozing libido out of her pores, and go back to her place, right, and one thing leads to another, and we start fucking. But this bitch is fucking noisy in the sack, like, make the neighbors pound on the walls or call the cops noisy, so noisy that I flip her over and start fucking her doggy style just to preserve my hearing. So I’m doing her from behind, and she no shit asks me to put it in her ass. I’m thinking, fuck yeah, usually you have to coax a girl into that sort of thing, who am I to turn down this gift from God, so I start fucking her in the ass.”
“Right. It was your sense of spirituality that persuaded you.”
“Fuck off, asshole. Anyway, after a while, I get kind of bored with that, so I pull out, and she just starts sucking the shit off my dick. Straight up volunteers to do it, craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. So I make this mental note not to kiss her on the mouth after that, but a little while later, things are really coming to a head, and she’s starting to come and I’m like five seconds away myself, and in the heat of things, I end up making out with her shitty mouth.”
“That’s fucking gross man.”
“Yeah, no shit. But pretty funny.”
Andrew, who had been quiet since we left the gallery, spoke. “I have a story that tops that. A while ago, I was having sex with this girl, and she was on top, and I’m wearing a condom and haven’t blown my load yet or anything, just having a good time, when I feel something dripping down onto my stomach. So I look, and some other dude’s semen is dripping out of her vagina onto me.”
“Oh, that’s foul! How is that even possible? I mean, you would think that it would have slid out when she was walking around or something.”
“I don’t know. I assumed that it was the cum that was wedged way up in her uterus or someplace deep inside the maze and all the bouncing up and down shook it loose from the nooks and crannies.”
“Maybe she just has a quick turnaround time,” suggested Smitty as he lit a cigarette. He took a drag and added, “I’ve got a story that tops both of yours. A couple weeks ago, I pick this girl up at a bar, take her back to my place, you know, and we’re starting to get busy. So she says, ‘Hey, I’ll go down on you if you go down on me,’ and I start to eat her out, when I feel this tickle on my chin. I don’t think nothing of it, just carry on carrying out the plan of the day, when I feel the tickle again. So I kind of feel around her downstairs to see if I can’t figure out what it is, and don’t really feel anything out of the ordinary, so I keep going. Well I feel the tickle again, so this time I pull my head back and look, and there’s a fucking tapeworm sticking three inches out of her ass that’s been hitting me in the chin while I’m eating her out.”
“Oh, fuck that!” said Johnny. “Please tell me you’re making that shit up!”
“I’m completely serious, it absolutely happened.”
“Fuck, what did you do?”
“I grabbed that fucking tape worm and wrestled it into submission! What the fuck do you think I did? I threw her the fuck out of my place. I think her shoes might still be there, actually.”
“That’s ridiculous, and fucking disgusting. I’m going to brush my teeth.”
I spoke. “You all make me feel so much better about the women that I’ve fucked. That’s fucking ridiculous. You know what you should have done, Smitty?”
“No, Nancy, tell me.”
“You should have given her the Alabama hot pocket.” Smitty immediately burst into laughter, as he is fully aware of the meaning of the euphemism. Angie was not so fortunate.
“What is that?”
“It’s where you rub Icy-Hot on the outside of your condom, and then fuck the girl. The outside, mind you, because it would be really tragic if you put it on the inside.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I know. Her vagina would be hot and cold at the same time, and smell like menthol.”

The next morning, I awoke next to one of the matched set of ladies that James had brought home with him. Which one, I have no idea. They really were indistinguishable. The night had grown hazy at a pace proportionate to the number of beers consumed, so that by the end of the night, there were isolated islands of vague recollection floating in a sea of oblivion. This is not to convey the impression that there was anything even close to an archipelago in this sea, which appeared to be fed by the waters of Lethe. Rather, the evening was more or less one blank slate shortly after the end of the mention of the Alabama Hot Pocket. And the little that I did remember indicated gluttonous consumption spiraling into casual fornication. I had vague recollections of upending bottles of beer into my mouth and flashes of bare skin, but little else.
I wandered over to one of the guest bedrooms to check on Smitty, who I think had gone to bed with Angie. The room was empty, although the bed was unmade and the sheets bore a few suspicious stains. There was also a note on the nightstand. Smitty had written, “Hey, buddy, thanks for the good time. Went to get breakfast with Angie. Too bad you got too drunk to form sentences last night. Angie is the shit. I think I’m in love. Ask somebody about what you did with that tangerine. It’s a funny story.” He had signed his name in a terse squiggle at the bottom.
When I went downstairs, I found that every horizontal surface in the kitchen and living room was covered in empty beer bottles, in a flagrant display of irresponsible consumption of alcohol. The mess was imposing. So imposing, as a matter of fact, that it immediately killed any urge that I might have had to investigate anything that had happened the previous evening. It also precluded the possibility of making myself a cup of coffee. The coffee maker was blockaded by what seemed to be a miniature replica of the Tower of Babel made exclusively of beer bottles. How we had managed a feat of such spectacular coordination in our impaired state is beyond me. Perhaps the culprit was James, who still sat at the table, right where we had left him, cutting himself another line, ad nauseum. “Hey Sid,” he said, “What do you think love really is?”
“What the fuck kind of question is that? Seriously, man, how much fucking coke have you done?”
“Don’t interrogate me. Is this Guantanamo Bay? Am I a terrorist? No. So just answer the fucking question. I’m curious.”
“What do you mean, ‘What do you think love is?’ What type of love are we talking here? Romantic love? Brotherly love? A mother’s love?”
“I don’t know. Just love generally speaking. I hadn’t really thought to narrow the question down like that.”
“Huh. I guess that I don’t think that love generally speaking exists. I think it’s more or less all situational. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, really. The question just occurred to me while you were sleeping, and I don’t think that I have a really good answer. I thought I’d get someone else’s opinion.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s still pretty weird.”
“Fuck off.
“Anyway, I’m going to go get some coffee. Do want any?”
“No, I have coke to keep me awake. Thanks though.”
“Make sure you get some sleep man. The blow will still be there when you wake back up.”
“Thanks mom.”
“Oh, and do you know if I did anything with a tangerine last night?”
“No fucking clue, man. I went on like a five-mile walk with Jaime last night.”
“Huh. I’ll see you later.”
“Later, man. And try and figure out love, why don‘t you.”
“I’ll do my best.”

I was comfortably seated at a corner table in the coffee shop, reading Nietzsche and drinking a double short latte, which is one of life’s greatest little pleasures. For those of you unfamiliar with the beverage, a double short latte is two shots of espresso in a small cup, with steamed milk mixed in. It is potent enough to make it clear that you are drinking coffee, but smoothly delicious enough to please the palette and avoid bleeding ulcers and other gastrointestinal maladies. It is, in its own way, every bit as delicious, subtle, and delightful as a glass of fine scotch. It was the sort of little finial ornamentation that joins forces with other trivialities of its sort to make life an overall pleasant and worthwhile place. It’s strange how often this sort of minutia define a day’s merits.
I was minding my own business in my little espresso paradise, when my solitude was intruded upon by a girl.
“Hey, is anyone sitting here?” she asked, and I glanced at her and then at the proliferation of unoccupied tables in the shop. Could this perhaps be an attempt at flirtation? In my heart of hearts, I was actually hoping that she was on the run from the mafia, and that this chance meeting would lead along a string of coincidences towards capers, heists, the destruction of villains, and our mutual discovery of true love, with national fame as a great hero playing the role of a cherry on top of this ice cream sunday of delusion. This fantasy seemed unlikely, but taken in a glance, she appeared up to playing her role in the narrative. She was pretty in a minimalist sort of way, dressed simply in a pair of jeans and a halter top, displaying thick tattooed greenery from both of her shoulders to both of her elbows, baroque ivy climbing around one arm, with stylized Japanese cherry blossoms on the other, and also a smattering of smaller tattoos sprinkled about the skin in view. She had a slender build, the sort of slight frame in which the scarcity of curvature only seems to emphasize the existence of those curves, and the slightest quirk of her lips summoned to mind the line of hip and leg, the slightest suggestion of breast. She was slim, but avoided the aesthetic tragedy of the mildly anorexic, in whom every bone and neurosis bristles akimbo to the world, possessing instead a build that seemed to fit perfectly in its allotted place within the world.
There was an air of defiant eccentricity to her, as if she was the sassy but beautiful female lead who marched to the beat of her own drum or whatever the cinematic cliché is. She had beautiful brown eyes beneath cropped hair dyed an artificially neon pink, and an open manner that made it seem as though she was presenting herself authentically, which is to say that the duplicities inherent to human beings seemed refined to a subtler flavor in her, the sort of fine-grained misrepresentation that does not mar the surface of any character that it brushes against, but rather smoothes away rough edges.
For whatever reason, I took an immediate liking to her as an entire human being, which is a fairly rare thing for me. Usually when I meet a girl for the first time, the character defects to which everyone is prone prevent me from taking her very seriously. I have this problem with men also, but it bothers me less in their case, because there is no possibility of a serious romantic relationship with a man, which means that masculine flaws are not a let-down of nearly the same magnitude as their feminine counterparts, but rather speak of the sort of trouble that you‘ll get into when you‘re drunk together at some point in the future.
“No, it’s free. Go ahead and pull up a chair.” She smiled prettily, the sort of smile that gives you an entirely unjustified faith that life is not so bad after all, and offered her hand.
“I’m Maria, by the way.” As she said her name, her tongue tangoed with Anglican mediocrity, rolling the letter “r” around and around her mouth in a farcically Spanish manner. I took her hand and shook it, and she smiled again.
“Hello, Maria. I’m Sidney.” She laughed, because I had mimicked her pronunciation. Her laughter hung daintily in the air in delicate dulcet bell tones, sprinkling the air with pure and unpretentious joyfulness.
“You don’t have to say it that way; I was just being playful. I feel like you can only say the same name so many times before you have to start experimenting with it.”
“Fair enough, Maria. Sit thee doon and tell me about yourself. What do you do for a living, what are your hopes and dreams, what’s your astrological sign?” She smiled and sipped her espresso.
“I guess the pressure is on. I don’t really know if I’m up to being interrogated by a stranger.”
“Well that’s what you get for talking to strangers. We’re a bunch of ungrateful, nosy louts. In any case, consider it the price of using the chair.” Her eyes were twinkling with repressed mirth, and the twinkle simply served to emphasize their lush depths: they were the sort of eyes in which it is easy to lose yourself. I suspected that I could spend an entire day staring into them and be completely content.
“Well, when you put it that way, I guess that I have no choice but to spill my guts. I really ought to be more careful about who I talk to.”
“Probably so. I know that I’m certainly an unsavory character.”
“So it seems. Forcing a poor, innocent girl to confide her hopes and dreams to a stranger. Terrible.”
“Quit stalling.”
“Fine. Right now, I’m working as a bartender at the Drunken Peasant and getting a master’s degree.”
“Oh really? You’re just going to come right out and say that you kick ass? Just like that? So are you just starting your master’s, or getting close to the end?”
“I’m almost done, thank God. I’m about to go out of my mind, I’m so busy.”
“Yeah, that’s life.” She looked down at her coffee for a moment, as though seeking to divine something in its milky depths.
“Aren’t you just Mister Sympathy. I bet you pick up all the ladies with your charm.”
“Not so much. I’m sorry, I didn’t actually mean to come across like a dick, or to imply that you weren’t working really hard or anything. It’s just one of those things, where it seems like everyone who is getting a post-graduate education is always stressed out. It’s kind of the nature of the beast, but at least you’re compensated by the satisfaction of the accomplishment.”
“I guess so. I haven’t been compensated yet, though, so it mostly just seems like a never-ending punishment.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, I guess it does. Hopefully it is actually worth it. What about you? What do you do for a living?”
“I basically don’t do anything for a living.”
“Oh really? Does it pay well? And what about the benefits?”
“It pays surprisingly well, actually, but I don’t get any benefits. No, I actually write for a living.” In saying this, I had reached a point in the conversation that I loath, inasmuch as I write the least admirable sort of book, and have become fantastically wealthy doing so. I hate admitting that I write the sort of books that you buy in a grocery store, and also hate admitting that I could, if I so chose, wallow in palatial splendor, especially to someone like Maria, who I suspect has been working herself into threadbare exhaustion and despair while getting a higher education, which is in all senses admirable.
The real problem is that I feel like I have basically been given a great deal of money for doing nothing particularly remarkable, for writing novels that in the worst case scenario might actually make the world a worse place. It might be argued that with the diminishing importance of religion, it is literature of the sort that I write that has become the new opiate of the masses. I create fantasies into which the masses can escape from their stagnant lukewarm lives and imagine that they are off fighting dragons or something equally ridiculous.
Also, I despise the sort of person who cannot wait for an excuse to laud their financial success, because that sort of masturbatory self-congratulation is indicative of a general failure as a human being and also spectacularly obnoxious. Suffice it to say that I’m close to being the wealthiest author in history, and that I feel guilty about the role that the sale of my books plays in the destruction of the world’s forests. Normally, I would tell a little white lie about the nature of my work, to play up my strengths and hide my embarrassing flaws, but Maria seemed the sort of person who actually deserves honesty, if only to reciprocate her seemingly honest nature.
Already, I had built an idol of her in my mind, and place it snugly atop a pedestal. Obviously I can’t follow my own advice regarding the idolatry of mere mortals. I had taken quite a shine to Maria.
“Oh, so you’ve also chosen a life of poverty.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? No, I’m actually doing pretty well. I write these fantastically awful pulp fantasy books and they sell really well, although they do have the unfortunate side-effect of destroying any claim that I might have had to dignity and integrity. I’m basically a capitalist whore.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
“No, it really is. They sell my books in grocery stores, for Christ’s sake. I’m the scum of the literary earth. The fact that my average reader knows how to read is actually kind of surprising. If I gave my publisher a manuscript for a novel that was attempting to be serious literature…well, he’d probably publish it, because I’m making him filthy rich, but he’d regret the decision as soon as sales figures came in. I don’t think anyone expects Sam Beckett…that’s my pen name…to write about mortality or love or philosophy; I just write about fucking and fighting, with a few dragons and some magic thrown in.” Her face took on a look of ecstatic mirth, the sort of laughter that manifests itself in partially strangled laughter and mild convulsions.
“Wait, you’re Sam Beckett? No, you can’t be! You’ve got to be lying!”
“It’s sad but true. I really am Sam Beckett.”
“That’s really hilarious! Your books are awful!”
“Yes, yes they are. It’s nice of you to remind me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You just don’t seem the sort of person who writes trashy books. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that you even admit it. You really ought to lie and say that you do something a little more respectable. That’s really embarrassing.”
“And you so kindly continue rubbing it in, which I appreciate to no end. But seriously, I am pretty embarrassed about it. I’m kind of harboring secret dreams of writing the Great American Novel, but they haven’t quite come to fruition yet.”
“I really am sorry, but I don’t seem to be able to help myself. And I’m sure that you’ll do just fine when you put your mind to it.”
“Thanks.”
“Wow, this must really be my day. I’ve never met a famous hack author before.”
“Well, we tend to keep a low profile, for good reason. I’ve never met a grad student before, so I guess that we’re on even ground.”
“Really? How have you never met a grad student before? We’re not particularly rare.”
“It depends on where you are and who you hang out with, I guess. I never went to college or anything, and neither have most of my friends, and my job doesn’t lend itself to meeting any sort of people at all really, so I just haven’t. I mean, maybe my editor has a master’s, but I haven’t asked him about it.”
“Weird. It seems like everyone I know at least went to undergrad. Personally, I can’t imagine not continuing my education. I mean, part of that is probably just that I don’t want to actually have to deal with the real world, but also, education just opens up so many doors for me. It rounds out my life, I guess. I can’t imagine a life not having read Dostoevsky, just to throw out an example.”
“You know that you can get books from places besides college, right? I mean, I’ve read Dostoevsky, and so have a bunch of my friends who didn’t go to college.”
“Really? You can get books outside of college? I don’t believe you.” She was drinking her coffee through a straw that had impaled the mass of whipped cream crowning the beverage, and her eyes glittered as she sucked through the straw, and it seemed that part of the crinkle around the edge of her mouth was not inspired by the need to create suction but rather glee. Or condescension. It was hard to tell. “But really, just reading in your free time isn’t necessarily the same thing as an education. Like, who chooses to spend their free time reading a Marxist account of the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, for example? And even if you do, you don’t have the professor to explain Marx to you, or general trends in Marxist criticism, or a bunch of other little things. I mean, you might miss out on the concept of historiography entirely, and that’s really significant in being able to comprehend what you read, especially if you read multiple accounts about the same thing, because they almost always contradict each other at least a little.”
“That’s true, but you can also just read whoever is mentioned in something to clarify whatever it is that you don’t understand. Especially in scholarly works, because there’s a bibliography. Like, right now, I’m reading Nietzsche, but reading Nietzsche has made me realize that I need to read Kant and Schopenhauer, and also Goethe. Just follow the trail of footnotes to the next step in your education, I guess.”
“Well yes, I suppose that works, but then what about translation issues? If you were taking a class about Nietzsche in college, you have a professor who knows German and can point out discrepancies in translation, or puns that are missing in English. Little things like that.”
“So learn German and read Nietzsche in German.”
“Yeah, but are you actually going to do that? I mean, the fact that you actually read what’s cited in footnotes is pretty incredible in itself.”
“Well, I’ve started learning German, but I’m not good at it yet. Not good enough to read Nietzsche, that’s for sure. Mostly, I’m still getting the hang of Greek, and it’s proving a little more time consuming than I had planned, I guess.”
Once again, I broke my customary behavior towards the gentler sex. Usually, I try not to brag about my academic pursuits, partly because I learned in elementary school that the average person prefers for their peers to be reasonably stupid and fairly ignorant in order to reinforce the myth of egalitarianism as set down in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, and partly because it makes me seem like a pompous ass. Perhaps I had blown my own horn this time because I really liked the girl.
Women make braggarts of us all.
Also, it’s nice to talk about that sort of thing with the sort of person who has some ground upon which to stand, and who possesses keen wit and vibrant interest. With the exception of Carl, my roommates tend towards libidinous pursuits far more often than academic pursuits, which sometimes leaves me longing for someone to talk to about a certain segment of my hobbies.
“Wait, you’re actually learning Greek?”
“Yeah, I’m coming along pretty nicely. It still takes me a long time to read anything, and Thucydides is kicking my ass, but he writes so densely that even if I were able to read Greek fluently it would be a hassle.”
“Who learns Greek for fun, though? I think you might be the only person I’ve ever met.”
“I guess. I mean, I have a lot of free time, so why not?”
“That’s still really unusual. Especially since you didn’t go to college. Do you know any other languages?”
“You have to keep bringing that up, don’t you? No, I know Latin and Spanish, which are kind of the same thing, I guess. Most of the vocabulary from Latin transferred to Spanish.”
“And you’re getting passable at Greek and starting to learn German? What’s next after that?”
“Probably French, I guess. Read Sartre and Hugo and Foucault in their original.”
“That’s insane. Russian is kicking my ass, and I have to learn it to do my degree justice. Why would you subject yourself to that kind of misery voluntarily?”
“It’s really not so bad. I mean, you’re really busy, so the work that you’re putting in to learn Russian is all precious time that could be occupied in other ways. I spend most of my time just sitting around, so I might as well learn something. The whole Cyrillic alphabet thing probably doesn‘t help, either. I know that the Greek alphabet made Greek infinitely harder to learn.”
“Still. You’re probably the most surprising stranger I’ve ever met.”
“It’s probably for the best that there are still a lot of people that you haven’t met in the world; it would be a shame if I was the most interesting one you ever met.”
“I don’t know if I’m so sure of that. You pretty much just blew my mind.”
“I still think you’re making too big of a deal about it, but whatever floats your boat. Do you want another coffee?”
She glanced at the clock, and looked dismayed. “No, I actually have to go. But let me get your phone number: you’re just too interesting not to continue hanging out with.”
“Okay,” I said, and gave her my phone number. As she left, I realized that the day, which had not seemed to be any sort of competition at all, now seemed to have been thoroughly vanquished. Carpe diem and all that.