The Fantasy Years

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT FEMALES? Dennis wondered. What was it about a female that she could seem simultaneously older even though he knew she was younger? He couldn’t explain the effect they had on him. There was a girl a work, a lady named Huong. She was Vietnamese. Probably only in her late twenties. Six or seven years younger than himself. Whenever she and he crossed paths in the dim, carpeted, cubed offices of Mid-west Surveying Associates, she smiled at him. Dennis had trouble looking her in the eyes. Not because there was anything wrong with her. But for fear of losing himself in them and making a scene.

Huong had beautiful black eyes. He could see them in his mind without even looking at them. Huong glowed with youth and health.

Not like Dennis, whose eyes were heavy with weight, with worry. The physical difference between himself and Huong was astounding. Not only because Huong was of Vietnamese parentage did she seem to be from another race. She seemed to belong to the people of the world who could laugh easily, who could smile effortlessly, who were no strangers to happiness. People who were well-liked and well-adjusted and lived in the here and now and not the past and what could have been. Huong, rightfully, belonged to the world of the living. She drove a Honda with a little red-silk and gold-stitched Oriental charm hanging from her rearview mirror.

Not a crappy truck with an empty gun rack in the cab.

But the strange thing about Huong was that she continued to say ‘hi’ to Dennis. Even after she had figured out what kind of supporting role he was relegated to in the office. Long after she knew what job he did. Long after she should have known better.

She would flash him that smile. She had the most beautiful mouth. The most kissable lips. “Hey, Dennis,” she’d say. There’d be a kind of delight in her eyes. They didn’t flee him at first chance either. She probably thought he was funny. Just a funny fat guy.

Yet, she continued to greet him. The big black eyes. The dark hair. The sensual lips that could kiss. She was so seize-able, so clutchable, caressable, kissable, touchable, holdable, huggable, embraceable. Everything. Everything. Always with those lips that would kiss. Why did she keep doing this to him?

Why? He wondered day after day.

Until she smiled at him again and his imagination couldn’t take it any longer. He thought: What if she liked him?

Mike sneezed. “Democrats need voters to stay poor.”
“They need them to be on welfare,” his no good brother-in-law’s friend agreed.
“To be minorities.”
“To be oppressed.”
“I’m not too PC to say it,” said a voice in Alaska.
“Neither am I,” said another.
“Affirmative action is a ploy.”
“It’s a scam.”
“It’s a boondoggle.”
“To “pay poor black people—“
“To vote Democrat.”
“But Republicans empower the individual.”
“Republicans trust people,” said a voice in Missouri.
“And people trust Republicans,” agreed another.
“They have faith in people.”
“Republicans are for freedom.”
“And that’s why they retook Congress.”
“And why they’re the party of the future.”

Cigarette smoke mingled in the narcotic light of the neon beer signs on the wall. CNN blathered on the TV above the bar, sending its glow through the rising smoke and mid-afternoon light. “Can’t someone put some sports on?” A customer asked plaintively.

“No, wait. I want to see the news,” came another voice. “The Republicans really whupped the Democrats. Did you hear?”

Ben supposed he should care that the Republicans just took control of Congress. Ben didn’t. He wanted to know why every time he got close to the kind of girl he liked, he said the wrong thing and blew it. Ben would always say something très un-PC and they’d clam up, look at him like, well, like he was one the mechanics sitting at the bar next to him.

Ben noticed this pattern forming for some time. It had happened in various degrees. Sometimes on first dates. Or sometimes after six months, like with Annalee. Each time with a different but similar kind of girl. Always the sexy, punkish, liberal types. Even her name Annalee was beautiful. The sort of angry young woman he could imagine himself really happy with. Happy in bed. Happy sitting over a table at a cafe. Happy lazing around a Saturday afternoon. The sort of girl like Annalee.

Ben took a swig of his beer and stared at himself in the mirror across the bar. Maybe he was a sexist pig and just didn’t know it. Maybe they could see what he was trying to suppress in himself.
Ben stared at himself in the mirror and took another big swig. Ben had read somewhere girls in bars don’t trust guys who are alone. Ben watched himself in the mirror wondering if there was something suspect about him being here alone. Was it possible there was something suspect about himself that not even he could see?

In this frame of mind even if a cool girl did show up Ben didn’t see how he could make a decent impression on her. After all, he was alone.

But it was Friday night and even if things were off-again with him and Annalee Ben wanted something to happen. Ben peeled a dollar off his stack of change on the bar. He did it like in the movies, he could see in the mirror behind the bar. Then, real cool-like, in case a chick anywhere in the bar was watching he got up and went to the juke box, taking his beer with him.

He hovered over the console, pressing the arrow buttons and becoming somewhat mesmerized by the flipping of the CD cases. He liked the motion. Like a big plastic bug trapped under glass.
Ben took another sip of his beer. The Kinks. The Doors. Steely Dan were the best choices on the jukebox. He’d have to make do.
As his first song started to play he went back to his seat. He saw himself in the mirror as the guys next to him guffawed and carried on to the jokes they told between themselves.

Ben wished he was part of the fun. He drank his beer in solitude, which probably appeared suspicious. Ben clawed his hand through his hair, looked around as if expecting someone. Maybe Ben could pal around with the mechanics and then not look so alone to the two college girls playing pool in the back. Maybe Ben could butt in with the mechanics and join the fun.

Ben stared at himself in the mirror. Was he really sitting at a bar hoping a bunch of greasy mechanics would talk to him? How gay was that? Ben clawed his hand through his hair again, wondering with a thud of concern just exactly how gay that was? Maybe the sexism women always found him secretly guilty of was a force at work in his subconscious to secretly push women away.

Ben took a gulp of his beer. But what nonsense. He liked women too much; that was his problem. But then, why was it was so difficult to find a girlfriend? Ben looked around and saw the overweight bartender laughing it up with the overweight cocktail waitress. He was suddenly losing interest in hanging out here. It seemed less like a place where he could even possibly meet a check. The low, green and red lights over the pool table looked odd and angular. They must have been there since the Sixties.
All of it looked strange.

Looking himself in the mirror freaked him out too and he wondered if it was apparent. Would anyone notice he left before the songs he paid for played?

Ben finished the beer and got up to leave. As he walked out the door, his Kinks song finally came on. “Lola.” Was there a reason, he wondered, as he left the bar that he choose a song about a transvestite?

Rush was nervy. His listeners grew ornery. Rush said things you weren’t supposed to say. And millions of listeners said them too. And so two guys in Huntsville, Ala. agreed:
“I’m not too PC to say it.”
“Neither am I.”
“Welfare pays people to stay poor.”
“It pays them to fail.”
“That was the point of welfare all along.”

At home, in bed, after another obstacle course of a day completed, Jenny climbed into bed. The boys were safely tucked in. Everything was cleaned and put away after dinner, the house was in some semblance of order. And another day at work waited for Jenny like a knife-wielding stalker at dawn.

She turned to Rick and asked “Do you think I’m fat?”
“No,” Rick said.
“You didn’t even look at me when you answered.”
Her husband looked over at her. “No, honey. You’re not fat.”
“But you’re saying that to be nice.”
“No, I’m saying it because that’s what I think.”
“I feel like I’m drowning.”
“What?”
“Or suffocating.”
“Why?”
“I…I don’t know. That job I do sucks.”
“I know honey.”
“I mean. It’s a job. But it sucks.”
“I know. I don’t want you to have to work.”
“I’m not complaining.”

Rick was exhausted these days. He had to work all the hours he could. In construction, you never knew when you’d hit a dry spot. Or the winter would turn too hard to work. You worked all you could while the work was available.

Jenny knew. She just wished that they weren’t so tired.
“Honey, I love you.”
“I love you.”

Her last thought was wondering how long it had been since they’d last did it. She remembered hardly anything of the conversation except Rick telling her he loved her. That brought a smile to her face the next morning while she wrangled the boys to get them ready.