(24 weeks)
SUNDAY.
Tucker lives around the corner from me, but he doesn’t like to leave the house very often, so I introduce him to video chatting. After getting him to install the appropriate software, within minutes I’m staring into my computer screen and Tucker is staring back. The experience is unexpectedly unsettling, but I still try to convince Tucker of its virtues.
“See?” I ask. “If chatting on the phone is like a game of chess, then video chatting is like a game of threedimensional chess.”
“I’ve always thought chatting with you in any form as being more like a game of Sorry!,” he says. “Can we stop this?”
“I guess so,” I say. “I’m not too crazy about your ‘listening face’ anyway.”
“What you’re seeing is my ‘pretending-to-listen face,’” he says, “ and either you’ve got poppy seeds in your teeth or I really have to clean my computer screen.”
Sometimes when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back; at other times, it is Tucker who stares back. I’m not sure which fills me with more angst.
WEDNESDAY.
I meet Gregor for soup. I show up in my new vest which, I’m informed, makes me look like a children’s entertainer.
“Strike that,” he says. “A children’s entertainer’s monkey.”
“It’s reversible,” I say meekly, not exactly sure why I’m defending myself. “And vests are practical, what with all the pockets.”
“So when you strip down to eat a mango, the vest stays on or off? With it on, you have a place to keep your toothpicks and paring knife.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you once tell me you hate making a mess with mangos, so you eat them naked in your bathtub?”
“No. No I didn’t.”
“And what is this? Your five hundredth vest? Keep going this way and you’ll end up on that TV show about hoarders.”
“What are you talking about? This is the first vest I’ve ever owned in my life.”
“If you can manage to get a little more famous, I can pitch the network on a Hoarders celebrity edition.The first episode could be Bret Michaels swimming waist-deep in bandanas, cross-cut with you trying to decide which of your twenty thousand vests to wear while eating a mango in your bathtub.”
FRIDAY.
Tony and I meet for coffee downtown. He’s carrying a bag from Victoria’s Secret, a present for his fiancée.
“When you work in a lingerie store,” he says, “you’re inevitably seen as being beautiful enough to work in a lingerie store, or not beautiful enough.You’re always going to be judged against the dainties.”
“There’s something about your saying ‘dainties’ that doesn’t sit right.”
“I’d make a good lingerie store worker,” Tony says dreamily. “Sitting on a stool, telling it like it is between bites of my sandwich. ‘That thong really brings out the blue in your eyes.’”
“The fashion world can really use a man like you,” I say.
“Of which,” Tony says, looking me over with distaste, “what’s up with the vest? You look like Emo Philips.”
As Tony rips into me, I settle back into my chair and brace myself. Unlike your finer quality vests, the subtle dynamics of old friendships are not reversible.