IN CHICAGO’S O’HARE AIRPORT, WALKING east on a moving sidewalk, Paul saw a beautiful woman walking west. She’d pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail, and her blue jeans were dark-rinsed boot-cut, and her white T-shirt was a size too small, and her pale arms were muscular. And—ah, she wore a pair of glorious red shoes. Pumas. Paul knew those shoes. He’d seen them in an ad in a fashion magazine, or maybe on an Internet site, and fallen in love with them. Allegedly an athletic shoe, the red Pumas were really a thing of beauty. On any woman, they’d be lovely; on this woman, they were glorious. Who knew that Paul would someday see those shoes on a woman’s feet and feel compelled to pursue her?
Paul wanted to shout out, I love your Pumas! He wanted to orate it with all the profundity and passion of a Shakespearean couplet, but that seemed too eccentric and desperate and—well, literate. He wanted the woman to know he was instantly but ordinarily attracted to her, so he smiled and waved instead. But bored with her beauty, or more likely bored with the men who noticed her beauty, she ignored Paul and rolled her baggage on toward the taxi or parking shuttle or town car.
“‘She’s gone, she’s gone.’” Paul sang the chorus of that Hall & Oates song. He sang without irony, for he was a twenty-first-century American who’d been taught to mourn his small and large losses by singing Top 40 hits.
There was a rule book: When a man is rebuffed by a beautiful stranger he must sing blue-eyed soul; when a man is drunk with the loneliness of being a frequent flyer he must sing Mississippi Delta blues; when a man wants revenge he must whistle the sound track of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When a man’s father and mother die within three months of each other, he must sing Rodgers and Hammerstein: “Oklahoma! Oklahoma Okay!”
Despite all the talk of diversity and division—of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight—Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different, thought Paul, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs? Paul knew the same lyrics as any random guy from Mobile, Alabama, or woman from Orono, Maine. Hell, Paul had memorized, without effort or ever purchasing or downloading one of their CDs—or even one of their songs—the complete works of Garth Brooks, Neil Diamond, and AC/DC. And if words and music can wind their way into and around our DNA strands—and Paul believed they could—wouldn’t American pop music be passed from generation to generation as easily as blue eyes or baldness? Hadn’t pop music created a new and invisible organ, a pituitary gland of the soul, in the American body? Or were these lies and exaggerations? Could one honestly say that Elvis is a more important figure in American history than Einstein? Could one posit that Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect” was more kinetic and relevant to American life than Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 speech that warned us about the dangers of a military-industrial complex? Could a reasonable person think that Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” was as integral and universal to everyday life as the fork or wheel? Paul believed all these heresies about pop music but would never say them aloud for fear of being viewed as a less-than-serious person.
Or wait, maybe Paul wasn’t a serious person. Maybe he was an utterly contemporary and callow human being. Maybe he was an American ironic. Maybe he was obsessed with pop music because it so perfectly reflected his current desires. And yet, Paul sold secondhand clothes for a living. He owned five vintage clothing stores in the Pacific Northwest and was currently wearing a gray tweed three-piece suit once owned by Gene Kelly. So Paul was certainly not addicted to the present day. On the contrary, Paul believed that the present, past, and future were all happening simultaneously, and that any era’s pop culture was his pop culture. And sure, pop culture could be crass and manipulative, and sometimes evil, but it could also be magical and redemptive.
Take Irving Berlin, for example. He was born Israel Baline in Russia in 1888, emigrated with his family in 1893 to the United States, and would eventually write dozens, if not hundreds, of classic tunes, including, most famously, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Yes, it was a Russian Jew who wrote the American love song that suggested we better hurry and meander at the same time. Can a person simultaneously hurry and meander? Yes, in the United States a romantic is, by definition, a person filled with those contradictions. And, the romantic American is in love with his contradictions. And the most romantic Americans (see Walt Whitman) want to have contradictory sex. Walt Whitman would have wanted to have sex with Irving Berlin. Paul loved Irving Berlin and Walt Whitman. He loved the thought of their sexual union. And most of all, Paul loved the fact that Irving Berlin had lived a long and glorious life and died in 1989, only sixteen years earlier.
Yes, Irving Berlin was still alive in 1989. It’s quite possible that Irving Berlin voted for Michael Dukakis for United States president. How can you not love a country and a culture where that kind of beautiful insanity can flourish? But wait—did any of this really matter anyway? Was it just the musical trivia of a trivial man in a trivial country? And beyond all that, why was Paul compelled to defend his obsessions? Why was he forced to define and self-define? After all, one doesn’t choose his culture nearly as much as one trips and falls into it.
Splat! Paul was a forty-year-old man from Seattle, Washington, who lived only ten minutes from the house where Kurt Cobain shotgunned himself, and only fifteen minutes from the stretch of Jackson Street where Ray Charles and Quincy Jones began their careers in bygone jazz clubs. Splat! Paul’s office, and the headquarters of his small used-clothes empire, was down the street from a life-size statue of Jimi Hendrix ripping an all-weather solo. Splat! Paul bought his morning coffee at the same independent joint where a dozen of Courtney Love’s bounced checks decorated the walls.
Paul believed American greatness and the ghosts of that greatness surrounded him. But who could publicly express such a belief and not be ridiculed as a patriotic fool? Paul believed in his fellow Americans, in their extraordinary decency, in their awesome ability to transcend religion, race, and class, but what leftist could state such things and ever hope to get laid by any other lefty? And yet Paul was the perfect example of American possibility: He made a great living (nearly $325,000 the previous tax year) by selling secondhand clothes.
For God’s sake, Paul was flying to Durham, North Carolina, for a denim auction. A Baptist minister had found one hundred pairs of vintage Levi’s (including one pair dating back to the nineteenth century that was likely to fetch $25,000 or more!) in his father’s attic, and was selling them to help raise money for the construction of a new church. Blue jeans for God! Blue jeans for Jesus! Blue Jeans for the Holy Ghost!
Used clothes for sale! Used clothes for sale! That was Paul’s capitalistic war cry. That was his mating song.
Thus unhinged and aroused, Paul turned around and ran against the moving sidewalk. He chased after the beautiful woman—in her gorgeous red Pumas—who had rebuffed him. He wanted to tell her everything that he believed about his country. No, he just wanted to tell her that music—pop music—was the most important thing in the world. He would show her the top twenty-five songs played on his iPod, and she’d have sex with him in the taxi or parking shuttle or town car.
And there she was, on the escalator above him, with her perfect jeans and powerful yoga thighs. Paul could hear her denim singing friction ballads across her skin. Paul couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex with a woman who wore red shoes. Paul dreamed of taking them off and taking a deep whiff. Ha! He’d instantly developed a foot fetish. He wanted to smell this woman’s feet. Yes, that was the crazy desire in his brain and his crotch when he ran off the escalator and caught the woman outside of the security exit.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, hello,” Paul said.
She stared at him. She studied his face, wondering if she knew him, or if he was a gypsy cab driver, or if he was a creep.
“I saw you back there on the moving sidewalk,” Paul said.
Wow, that was a stupid thing to say. That meant nothing. No, that meant Paul had noticed the lovely shapes of her green eyes, breasts, and ass—their mystical geometry—and that made him as ordinary, if slightly more mathematical, as any other man in the airport. He needed to say something extraordinary, something poetic, in order to make her see that he was capable of creating, well, extraordinary poetry. Could he talk about her shoes? Was that a convincing way to begin this relationship? Or maybe he could tell her that Irving Berlin’s real name was Israel.
“I mean,” Paul said, “well, I wanted to—well, the thing is, I saw you—no, I mean—well, I did see you, but it wasn’t sight that made me chase after you, you know? I mean—it wasn’t really any of my five senses that did it. It was something beyond that. You exist beyond the senses; I just know that without really knowing it, you know?”
She smiled. The teeth were a little crowded. The lines around her eyes were new. She was short, a little over five feet tall, and, ah, she wore those spectacular red shoes. If this didn’t work out, Paul was going to run home and buy the DVD version of that movie about the ballerina’s red dance slippers. Or was he thinking of the movie about the kid who lost his red balloon? Somewhere there must be a movie about a ballerina who ties her dance shoes to a balloon and watches them float away. Jesus, Paul said to himself. Focus, focus.
“You have a beautiful smile,” Paul said to the stranger. “And if your name is Sara, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“My name isn’t Sara,” she said. “Why would you think my name is Sara?”
“You know, great smile, name is Sara. ‘Sara Smile’? The song by Hall and Oates.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.”
“You’ve made me think of two Hall and Oates songs in, like, five minutes. I think that’s a sign. Of what, I don’t know, but a sign nonetheless.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a man say nonetheless in normal conversation.”
Was she mocking him? Yes, she was. Was that a positive step in their relationship? Did it imply a certain familiarity or the desire for a certain familiarity? And, by the way, when exactly had he become the kind of man who uses nonetheless in everyday conversation?
“Listen,” Paul said to the beautiful stranger. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. But I want to talk to you—and listen to you; that’s even more important—I want to talk and listen to you for a few hours. I want to share stories. That’s it. That’s it exactly. I think you have important stories to tell. Stories I need to hear.”
She laughed and shook her head. Did he amuse her? Or bemuse her? There was an important difference: Women sometimes slept with bemusing men, but they usually married amusing men.
“So, listen,” Paul said. “I am perfectly willing to miss my flight and have coffee with you right here in the airport—and if that makes you feel vulnerable, just remember there are dozens of heavily armed security guards all around us—so, please, if you’re inclined to spend some time with a complete but devastatingly handsome stranger, I would love your company.”
“Well,” she said. “You are cute. And I like your suit.”
“It used to belong to Gene Kelly. He wore it in one of his movies.”
“Singin’ in the Rain?”
“No, one of the bad ones. When people talk about the golden age of Hollywood musicals, they don’t realize that almost all of them were bad.”
“Are you a musician?”
“Uh, no, I sell used clothes. Vintage clothes. But only the beautiful stuff, you know?”
“Like your suit.”
“Yes, like my suit.”
“Sounds like a cool job.”
“It is a cool job. I have, like, one of the coolest lives ever. You should know that.”
“I’m sure you are a very cool individual. But I’m married, and my husband is waiting for me at baggage claim.”
“I don’t want this to be a comment on the institution of marriage itself, which I believe in, but I want you to know that your marriage, while great for your husband and you, is an absolute tragedy for me. I’m talking Greek tragedy. I’m talking mothers-killing-their-children level of tragedy. If you listened to my heart, you’d hear that it just keeps beating Medea, Medea, Medea. And yes, I know the rhythm is off on that. Makes me sound like I have a heart murmur.”
She laughed. He’d made her laugh three or four times since they’d met. He’d turned the avenging and murderous Medea into a sexy punch line. How many men could do that?
“Hey,” she said. “Thank you for the—uh—attention. You’ve made my day. Really. But I must go. I’ll see you in the next life.”
She turned to leave, but then she paused—O, che sarà!—leaned in close to Paul, and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. Then she laughed again and walked away. No, it wasn’t just a walk. It was a magical act of transportation. Delirious, Paul watched her leave. He marveled at the gifts of strangers, at the way in which a five-minute relationship can be as gratifying and complete (and sexless!) as a thirteen-year marriage. Then he made his way back through security and to his gate, caught his flight to North Carolina, and bought a pair of 1962 Levi’s for $1,250.
Of course, Paul was a liar, a cheater, and a thief. He’d pursued the beautiful airport stranger without giving much thought to his own marriage. And sure, he was separated, and his wife and three teenage daughters were living in the family home while Paul lived in a one-bedroom on Capitol Hill, but he was still married and wanted to remain married. He loved his wife, didn’t he? Well, of course he did. She was lovely (was more than that, really) and smart and funny and all those things an attractive human being is supposed to be, and she in turn thought Paul was a lovely, smart, funny, and attractive human being. They had built a marriage based on their shared love of sixties soul music on vinyl—and vintage clothes, of course. Or perhaps Paul had built this life and his wife had followed along. In any case, they were happy, extraordinarily happy, right? Jesus, it was easy to stay happy in a first-world democracy. What kind of madman would stay that long in an unhappy marriage, especially in an age when people divorced so easily? Yes, Paul loved his wife; he was in love with her. He was sure he could pass a lie-detector test on that one. And he loved his three daughters. He was more sure about that.
But if he was so happy, if he was so in love with his wife and daughters, why was he separated from them? Sadly, it was all about sex—or, rather, the lack of sex. Simply and crudely stated, Paul had lost the desire to fuck his wife. How had that happened? Paul didn’t know, exactly. And he couldn’t talk to anybody about it. How could he tell his friends, his circle of men, that he had no interest in sleeping with the sexiest woman any of them had ever met? She was so beautiful that she intimidated many of his friends. His best friend, Jacob, had once drunkenly confessed that he still couldn’t look her directly in the eyes.
“I’ve known her, what, almost twenty years?” Jacob had said. “And I still have to look at her out of the corner of my eye. I’m the godfather to your daughters, and I have to talk to their mother with my sideways vision. You remember the time we all got drunk and naked in my hot tub? She was so amazing, so perfect, that I had to run around the corner and throw up. Your wife was so beautiful she made me sick. I hope you know how lucky you are, you lucky bastard.”
Yes, Paul knew he was lucky: He had a great job, great daughters, and a great wife that he didn’t want to fuck. And so he, the lucky bastard, had sex with every other possible partner. During his marriage, Paul had had sex with eight other women: two employees, three ex-girlfriends, two of his friends’ wives, and a woman with one of the largest used-clothing stores on eBay.
After that last affair, a clumsy and incomplete coupling in a San Francisco apartment crowded with vintage sundresses and UPS boxes, Paul had confessed to his wife. Oh, no, he didn’t confess to all his infidelities. That would have been too much. It would have been cruel. Instead, he only admitted to the one but carefully inserted details of the other seven, so that his confession would be at least fractionally honest. His wife had listened silently, packed him a bag, and kicked him out of the house. What was the last thing she’d said? “I can’t believe you fucked somebody from eBay.”
And so, for a year now, Paul had lived apart from his family. And had been working hard to win back their love. He’d been chaste while recourting his wife. But he was quite sure that she doubted his newly found fidelity—he traveled too damn much ever to be thought of as a good candidate for stability—and he’d heard from his daughters that a couple of men, handsome strangers, had come calling on his wife. He couldn’t sleep some nights when he thought about other men’s hands and cocks and mouths touching his wife. How strange, Paul thought, to be jealous of other men’s lust for the woman who had only wanted, and had lost, her husband’s lust. And stranger and more contradictory, Paul vanquished his jealousy by furiously masturbating while fantasizing about his dream wife fucking dream men. Feeling like a fool, but hard anyway, Paul stroked as other men—nightmares—pushed into his wife. And when those vision men came hard, Paul also came hard. Everybody was arched and twisted. And oh, Paul was afraid—terrified—of how good it felt. What oath, what marital vow, did he break by imagining his wife’s infidelity? None, he supposed, but he felt primitive, like the first ape that fell from the high trees and, upon landing, decided to live upright, use tools, and evolve. Dear wife, Paul wanted to say, I’m quite sure that you will despise me for these thoughts, and I respect your need to keep our lives private, to relock the doors of our home, but I, primal and vain, still need to boast about my fears and sins. Inside my cave, I build fires to scare away the ghosts and keep the local predators at bay, or perhaps I build fires to attract hungry carnivores. Could I be that dumb? Dear wife, watch me celebrate what I lack. I am as opposable as my thumbs. Ah, Paul thought, who cares about the color of a man’s skin when his true identity is much deeper—subterranean—and far more diverse and disturbing than the ethnicity of his mother and father? And yet, nobody had ever argued for the civil rights of contradictory masturbators. “Chances are,” Paul often sang to himself while thinking of his marriage. “Chances are.” And he was singing that song in a Los Angeles International Airport bookstore—on his way home from the largest flea market in Southern California—when he saw the beautiful stranger who had rebuffed him three months earlier at O’Hare.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s Sara Smile.”
She looked up from the book she was skimming—some best-selling and clever book about the one hundred greatest movies ever made—and stared at Paul. She was puzzled at first, but then she remembered him.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s Nonetheless.”
Paul was quite sure this was the first time in the history of English that the word nonetheless had caused a massive erection. He fought mightily against the desire to kiss the stranger hard on the mouth.
“Wow,” she said. “This is surprising, huh?”
“I can’t believe you remember me,” Paul said.
“I can’t believe it either,” she said. Then she quickly set down the book she’d been browsing. “These airport books, you know? They’re entertaining crap.”
Her embarrassment was lovely.
“I don’t underestimate the power of popular entertainment,” Paul said.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said. “Wait, no. Let me amend that. I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I guess I don’t either,” Paul said. “I was trying to impress you with some faux philosophy.”
She smiled. Paul wanted to lick her teeth. Once again, she was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Why is it that some women can turn that simple outfit into royal garb? God, he wanted her. Want, want, want. Can you buy and sell want on eBay?
“Are you still married?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Damn,” she said. “You’re as obvious as a thirteen-year-old. When are you going to start pawing at my breasts?”
“It’s okay that you’re married,” he said. “I’m married, too.”
“Oh, well, now, you didn’t mention that the last time we met.”
She was teasing him again. Mocking. Insulting. But she was not walking away. She had remembered him, had remembered a brief encounter from months earlier, and she was interested in him, in his possibilities. Wasn’t she?
“No, I didn’t mention my marriage,” he said. “But I didn’t mention it because I’m not sure how to define it. Technically speaking, I’m separated.”
“Are you separated because you like to hit on strangers in airports?” she asked.
Wow. How exactly was he supposed to respond to that? He supposed his answer was going to forever change his life. Or at least decide if this woman was going to have sex with him. But he was not afraid of rejection, so why not tell the truth?
“Strictly speaking,” he said, “I am not separated because I hit on strangers in airports. In fact, I can’t recall another time when I hit on anybody in an airport. I am separated because I cheated on my wife.”
Paul couldn’t read her expression. Was she impressed or disgusted by his honesty?
“Do you have kids?” she asked.
“Three daughters. Eighteen, sixteen, and fifteen. I am surrounded by women.”
“So you cheated on your daughters, not just your wife?”
Yes, it was true. Paul hated to think of it that way. But he knew his betrayal of his wife was, in some primal way, the lesser crime. What kind of message was he sending to the world when he betrayed the young women—his offspring—who would carry his name—his DNA—into the future?
“Yes,” Paul said. “I cheated on my daughters. And that’s pathetic. It’s like I’ve put a letter in a bottle, and I’ve dropped it in the ocean, and it will someday wash up onshore, and somebody will find it, open it, and read it, and it will say, Hello, People of the Future, my name is Paul Nonetheless, and I was a small and lonely man.”
“You have a wife and three daughters and you still feel lonely?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true. Sad and true.”
“Do you think you’re as lonely, let’s say, as a Russian orphan sleeping with thirty other orphans in a communal crib in the basement of a hospital in Tragikistan or somewhere?”
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely.”
“Last week, outside of Spokane, a man and his kids got into a car wreck. He was critically injured, paralyzed from the neck down, and all five of his kids were killed. They were driving to pick up the mother at the train station. So tell me, do you think you are as lonely as that woman is right now?”
Wow, this woman had a gift for shaming!
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely. Not even close.”
“Okay, good. You do realize that, grading on a curve, your loneliness is completely average.”
“Yes, I realize that. Compared to all the lonely in the world, mine is pretty boring.”
“Good,” she said. “You might be an adulterous bastard, but at least you’re a self-aware adulterous bastard.”
She waited for his response, but he had nothing to say. He couldn’t dispute the accuracy of her judgment of his questionable morals, nor could he offer her compelling evidence of his goodness. He was as she thought he was.
“My father cheated on us, too,” she said. “We all knew it. My mother knew it. But he never admitted to it. He kept cheating and my mother kept ignoring it. They were married for fifty-two years and he cheated during all of them. Had to go on the damn Viagra so he could cheat well into his golden years. I think Viagra was invented so that extramarital assholes could have extra years to be assholes.
“But you know the worst thing?” she asked. “At the end, my father got cancer and he was dying and you’d think that would be the time to confess all, to get right with God, you know? But nope, on his deathbed, my father pledged his eternal and undying love to my mother. And you know what?”
“What?”
“She believed him.”
Paul wanted to ask her why she doubted her father’s love. Well, of course, Paul knew why she doubted it, but why couldn’t her father have been telling the truth? Despite all the adultery and lies, all the shame and anger, perhaps her father had deeply and honestly loved her mother. If his last act on earth was a declaration of love, didn’t that make him a loving man? Could an adulterous man also be a good man? But Paul couldn’t say any of this, couldn’t ask these questions. He knew it would only sound like the moral relativism of a liar, a cheater, and a thief.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff to you. I don’t say this stuff to anybody, and here I am, talking to you like we’re friends.”
Paul figured silence was the best possible response to her candor.
“Okay, then,” she said, “I guess that’s it. I don’t want to miss my flight. It was really nice to see you again. I’m not sure why. But it was.”
She walked away. He watched her. He knew he should let her go. What attraction could he have for her now? He was the cheating husband of a cheated wife and the lying father of deceived daughters. But he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. So he chased after her again.
“Hey,” he said, and touched her shoulder.
“Just let me go,” she said. A flash of anger. Her first flash of anger at him.
“Listen,” he said. “I was going to let you go. But I couldn’t. I mean, don’t you think it’s amazing that we’ve run into each other twice in two different airports?”
“It’s just a coincidence.”
“It’s more than that. You know it’s more than that. We’ve got some connection. I can feel it. And I think you can feel it, too.”
“I have a nice ass. And a great smile. And you have pretty eyes and good hair. And you wear movie stars’ clothes. That’s why we noticed each other. But I have news for us, buddy, there’s about two hundred women in this airport who are better-looking than me, and about two hundred and one men who are better-looking than you.”
“But we’ve seen each other twice. And you remembered me.”
“We saw each other twice because we are traveling salespeople in a capitalistic country. If we paid attention, I bet you we would notice the same twelve people over and over again.”
Okay, so she was belittling him and their magical connection. And insulting his beloved country, too. But she was still talking to him. She’d tried to walk away, but he’d caught her, and she was engaged in a somewhat real conversation with him. He suddenly realized that he knew nothing of substance about this woman. He only knew her opinions of his character.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re making progress. I sell clothes. But you already knew that. What do you sell?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“It will kill your dreams,” she said.
That hyperbole made Paul laugh.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“I work for a bank,” she said.
“So, wow, you’re a banker,” Paul said, and tried to hide his disappointment. She could have said that she did live-animal testing—smeared mascara directly into the eyes of chimpanzees—and Paul would have felt better about her career choice.
“But I’m not the kind of banker you’re thinking about,” she said.
“What kind of banker are you?” Paul asked, and studied her casual, if stylish, clothing. What kind of banker wore blue jeans? Perhaps a trustworthy banker? Perhaps the morality of any banker was inversely proportional to the quality of his or her clothing?
“Have you ever heard of microlending?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s where you get regular people to loan money to poor people in other countries. To start small businesses and stuff, right?”
“Basically, yes, but my company focuses on microlending to unique entrepreneurs in the United States.”
“Ah, so what’s your bank called?”
“We’re in the start-up phase, so I don’t want to get into that quite yet.”
He was a little insulted, but then he realized that he was a stranger, after all, so her secrecy was understandable.
“You’re just starting out then?” Paul asked. “That’s why you’re traveling so much?”
“Yes. We have initial funding from one source,” she said, “and I’m meeting with other potential funders around the country.”
“Sounds exciting,” Paul said. He lied. Paul didn’t trust the concept of using money to make more money. He believed it was all imaginary. He preferred his job—the selling of tangible goods. Paul trusted his merchandise. He knew a pair of blue jeans would never betray him.
“It’s good work, but it’s not exciting,” she said. “Fund-raising is fucking humiliating. You know what I really do? You know what I’m good at? I’m good at making millionaires cry. And crying millionaires are generous with their money.”
“I’m a millionaire,” Paul said, “and you haven’t made me cry yet.”
“I haven’t tried to,” she said. She patted Paul on the cheek—let the hounds of condescension loose!—and walked out of the bookstore.
After she left, Paul bought the book she’d been browsing—the list of the greatest movies of all time—and read it on the flight back to Seattle. It was a book composed entirely of information taken from other sources. But Paul set it on his nightstand, then set his alarm clock on the book, and thought about the beautiful microbanker whenever he glanced at the time.
On a Tuesday, a year and a half into their separation, while sitting in their marriage counselor’s office, Paul turned to his wife and tried to tell the truth.
“I love you,” he said. “You’re my best friend. I can’t imagine a life without you as my wife. But, the thing is, I’ve lost my desire—my sexual desire—for you.”
Could there be a more painful thing to say to her? To say to anyone? You are not desirable. That was a treasonous, even murderous, statement inside of a marriage. What kind of person could say that to his wife? To the person who’d most often allowed herself to be naked and vulnerable in front of him? Paul supposed he was being honest, but fuck honesty completely, fuck honesty all the way to the spine, and fuck the honest man who tells the truth on his way out the door.
“How can you say this shit to me?” she asked. “We’ve been separated for almost two years. You keep telling me you don’t want a divorce. You keep begging me for another chance. For months, you have begged me. So here we are, Paul, this is your chance. And all you can say is that you don’t desire me? What are you talking about?”
“I remember when we used to have sex all day and night,” he said. “I remember we used to count your orgasms.”
It was true. On a cool Saturday in early April, in the first year of their marriage, Paul had orgasmed six times while his wife had come eleven times. What had happened to those Olympian days?
“Is that the only way you can think about a marriage?” she asked. “Jesus, Paul, we were young. Our marriage was young. Everything is easier when you’re young.”
Paul didn’t think that was true. His life had steadily improved over the years and, even in the middle of a marital blowup, Paul was still pleased with his progress and place in the world.
“I don’t know why I feel the way I do,” Paul said. “I just feel that way. I feel like we have gone cold to each other.”
“I haven’t gone cold,” she said. “I’m burning, okay? You know how long it’s been since I’ve had sex? It’s been almost four years. Four years! And you know what? I’m ashamed to say that aloud. Listen to me. I’m ashamed that I’m still married to the man who has not fucked me in four years.”
Paul looked to the marriage counselor for help. He felt lost in the ocean of his wife’s rage and needed a friggin’ lifeguard. But the counselor sat in silence. In learned silence, the bastard.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked Paul. “I’m your wife. I’m the mother of your children. I deserve some respect. No, I demand it. I demand your respect.”
He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell himself the truth, really. But was he capable of such a thing? Could he tell her what he suspected? Could he share his theory about the loss of desire? If he sang to her, would that make it easier? Is honesty easier in four/four time?
“Are you just going to sit there?” she asked. “Is this what it comes down to, you sitting there?”
My love, he wanted to say to her, I began to lose my desire for you during the birth of our first child, and it was gone by the birth of our third. Something happened to me in those delivery rooms. I saw too much. I saw your body do things—I saw it change—and I have not been able to look at you, to see you naked, without remembering all the blood and pain and fear. All the changes. I was terrified. I thought you were dying. I felt like I was in the triage room of a wartime hospital, and there was nothing I could do. I felt so powerless. I felt like I was failing you. I know it’s irrational. Jesus, I know it’s immature and ignorant and completely irrational. I know it’s wrong. I should have told you that I didn’t want to be in the delivery room for the first birth. And I should have never been in the delivery room during the second and third. Maybe my desire would have survived, would have recovered, if I had not seen the second and third births. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like such a failure. But how was I supposed to admit to these things? In the twenty-first-century United States, what kind of father and husband chooses not to be in the delivery room?
My love, Paul wanted to say, I am a small and lonely man made smaller and lonelier by my unspoken fears.
“Paul!” his wife screamed. “Talk to me!”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “I don’t know why I feel this way. I just do.”
“Paul.” The counselor finally spoke, finally had an opinion. “Have you considered that your lack of desire might be a physical issue? Have you consulted a doctor about this? There are—”
“He has no problem fucking other women,” she said. “He’s fucked plenty of other women. He just has a problem fucking me.”
She was right. Even now, as they fought to save their marriage, Paul was thinking of the woman in the airport. He was thinking about all other women and not the woman in his life.
That night, on eBay, Paul bid on a suit once worn by Sean Connery during the publicity tour for Thunderball. It would be too big for Paul; Connery is a big man. But Paul still wanted it. Maybe he’d frame it and put it on the wall of his apartment. Maybe he’d drink martinis and stare at it. Maybe he’d imagine that a crisp white pocket square made all the difference in the world. But he lost track of the auction and lost the suit to somebody whose screen name was Shaken, Not Stirred.
Jesus, Paul thought, I’m wasting my life.
After the divorce, Paul’s daughters spent every other weekend with him. It was not enough time. It would never be enough. And he rarely saw them during his weekends anyway because they were teenagers. Everywhere he looked, he saw happy men—good and present fathers—and he was not one of them. A wealthy man, an educated man, a privileged man, he had failed his family—his children—as easily and brutally as the poorest, most illiterate, and helpless man in the country. And didn’t that prove the greatness of the United States? All of us wealthy and imperial Americans are the children of bad fathers! Ha! thought Paul. Each of us—rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white—we are fragile and finite. We all go through this glorious life without guarantees, without promise of rescue or redemption. We have freedom of speech and religion, and the absolute freedom to leave behind our loved ones, to force them to unhappily pursue us. How can I possibly protect my daughters from their nightmares, from their waking fears, Paul thought, if I am not sleeping in the room next door? Oh, God, he missed them! Pure and simple, he ached. But who has sympathy for the failed father? Who sings honor songs for the monster?
And what could he do for his daughters? He could outfit them in gorgeous vintage clothing. So he gave them dresses and shoes and pants that were worn by Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn.
“Who is Audrey Hepburn?” his youngest daughter had asked.
“She was perfect,” Paul said.
“But who is she?”
“An actress. A movie star.”
“What movies has she been in?”
“I don’t think you’ve seen any of them.”
“If I don’t know who she is, why did you buy me her dress?”
It was a good question. Paul didn’t have an answer. He just looked at this young woman in front of him—his daughter—and felt powerless.
“I thought maybe if you wore different clothes at school,” Paul said, “maybe you could start a trend. You’d be original.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s high school, Dad. People get beat up for being original.”
Jesus, Paul had thought he was giving her social capital. He thought he could be a microlender of art—the art of the pop song. So he gave music to his daughters. Yes, he’d once romanced their mother with mix tapes, dozens of mix tapes, so he’d romance his daughters—in an entirely different way—with iPods. So Paul bought three iPods and loaded them with a thousand songs each. Three iPods, three thousand songs. Instead of just a few songs on a CD or a cassette tape, Paul had made epic mixes. Paul had given each daughter a third of his musical history. And, oh, they were delighted—were ecstatic—when they opened their gifts and saw new iPods, but, oh, how disappointed—how disgusted—they were when they discovered that their new iPods were already filled with songs, songs chosen by their father. By their sad and desperate father.
“Daddy,” his eldest daughter said. “Why did you put all your music on here?”
“I chose all those songs for you,” he said. “They’re specifically for you.”
“But all these songs are your songs,” she said. “They’re not mine.”
“But if you listen to them,” he said, “if you learn them, then maybe they can become our songs.”
“We don’t have to love the same things,” she said.
“But I want you to love what I love.”
Did I say that? Paul asked himself. Did I just sound that love starved and socially inept? Am I intimidated by my own daughter? In place of romantic love for my wife, am I trying to feel romantic love for my daughters? No, no, no, no, Paul thought. But he wasn’t sure. How could he be sure? He was surrounded by women he did not understand.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said. “I can just load my music over your music. Thank you for the iPod.”
She shook her head—a dismissive gesture she’d learned from her mother—kissed her incompetent father on the cheek, and left the room.
Three years after his divorce had finalized, after two of his daughters had gone off to college, one to Brown and the other to Oberlin, and his third daughter had disowned him, Paul saw Sara Smile again in the Detroit Airport. They saw each other at the same time, both walking toward a coffee kiosk.
“Sara Smile,” he said.
“Excuse me?” the woman said.
“It’s me,” he said. “Paul Nonetheless.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”
He realized this woman only looked like his Sara Smile. It would have been too much to ask for a third chance meeting. If he’d run into Sara Smile again, they would have had to make their way over to the airport hotel—the Hyatt or Hilton or whatever it was—and get a room. He could imagine them barely making it inside the door before their hands were down each other’s pants. God, he’d drop to his knees, unbutton her pants, pull them down to her ankles, and kiss her thighs. He’d pull aside her panties and push his mouth against her crotch and she’d want it for a few moments—she’d moan her approvals—and then she’d remember her husband and her life—substantial—and she’d push Paul away. She’d pull up her pants and apologize and rush out of the room. And Paul would be there, alone again, on his knees again, in a room where thousands of people had slept, eaten, fucked, and made lonely phone calls home. And who would Paul call? Who was waiting for his voice on the line? But wait, none of this had happened. It wasn’t real. Paul was still standing in the Detroit Airport next to a woman—a stranger—who only strongly resembled Sara Smile.
“Are you going to call this coincidental now?” he asked this stranger.
“You have me confused with somebody else,” she said. She was smiling. She was enjoying this odd and humorous interaction with the eccentric man in his old-fashioned suit.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked. He knew she was the wrong woman. But he wasn’t going to let that become an impediment.
“Sir,” she said. “I’m not who you think I am.”
She wasn’t smiling now. She realized that something was wrong with this man. Yes, she was in an airport, surrounded by people—by security—but she was still a little afraid.
“How’s your marriage?” he asked.
“Sir, please,” she said. “Stop bothering me.”
She walked away, but Paul followed her. He couldn’t stop himself. He needed her. He walked a few feet behind her.
“Me asking about your marriage is just a way of talking about my marriage,” he said. “But you knew that, right? Anyway, I’m divorced now.”
“Sir, if you don’t leave me alone, I am going to find a cop.”
She stopped and put her hands up as if to ward off a punch.
“My wife left me,” Paul said. “Or I left her. We left each other. It’s hard to say who left first.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders. And then he sang the first few bars of “She’s Gone.” But he couldn’t quite hit Daryl Hall’s falsetto notes.
“I can’t hit those high notes,” Paul said. “But it’s not about the notes, is it? It’s about the heat behind the notes.”
“What’s wrong with you?” the woman asked.
Two hours later, Paul sat in a simple room at a simple table while two men in suits leaned against the far wall and studied him.
“I’m not a terrorist,” Paul said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
The men didn’t speak. Maybe they couldn’t speak. Maybe there were rules against speaking. Maybe this was some advanced interrogation technique. Maybe they were silent because they knew Paul would want to fill the room with his voice.
“Come on, guys,” he said. “I got a little carried away. I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it wasn’t Sara. I just needed to pretend for a while. Just a few moments. If she’d let me buy her some coffee or something. If she’d talked to me, everything would have been okay.”
The men whispered to each other.
Paul decided it might be best if he stopped talking, if he stopped trying to explain himself.
Instead he would sing. Yes, he would find the perfect song for this situation and he would sing it. And these men—police officers, federal agents, mysterious suits—would recognize the song. They certainly wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sing along, but they’d smile and nod their heads in recognition. They’d share a moment with Paul. They’d have a common history, maybe even a common destiny. Rock music had that kind of power. But what song? What song would do?
And Paul knew—understood with a bracing clarity—that he must sing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” And so he began to hum at first, finding the tune, before he sang the first few lyrics—mumbled them, really, because he couldn’t quite remember them—but when he came to the chorus, Paul belted it out. He sang loudly, and his imperfect, ragged vocals echoed in that small and simple room.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
And, yes, Paul recognized that his singing—his spontaneous talent show—could easily be seen as troublesome. It could even be seen as crazy. Paul knew he wasn’t crazy. He was just sad, very sad. And he was trying to sing his way out of the sadness.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
The men kept staring at Paul. They wouldn’t smile. They wouldn’t even acknowledge the song. Why not? But then Paul remembered what had happened to Marvin Gaye. Broken, depressed, alcoholic, drug-addicted, Marvin had ended up living back home with his parents. Even as his last hit, “Sexual Healing,” was selling millions of copies, Marvin was sleeping in his parents’ house.
And, oh, how Marvin fought with his father. Day after day, Marvin Gaye Sr. and Marvin Gaye Jr. screamed at each other.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s all your fault.”
“You had it all and you lost it.”
“You’re wasting your life.”
“Where’s my money?”
“You have stolen from me.”
“You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
Had any father and son ever disappointed each other so completely? But Paul couldn’t stop singing. Even as he remembered that Marvin Gaye Sr. had shot and killed his son—killed his song.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
And then it was over. Paul stopped singing. This was the wrong song. Yes, it was the worst possible song to be singing at this moment. There had to be a better one, but Paul couldn’t think of it, couldn’t even think of another inappropriate song. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember? Paul laughed at himself as he sat in the airport interrogation room. How had he come to this? Wasn’t Paul a great man who lived in a great country? Hadn’t he succeeded? Jesus, he was good at everything he had ever attempted. Well, he had failed at marriage, but couldn’t he be good at grief? Couldn’t he be an all-star griever? Couldn’t he, through his own fierce tears, tell his captors that he wasn’t going to die? Couldn’t he survive? Couldn’t he pause now and rest his voice—rest his soul—and then start singing again when he felt strong enough? Could he do that? Was he ever going to be that strong?
“Officers,” Paul said, “I’m very tired. Can I please have some time? The thing is, I’m sorry for everything. And I know this is no excuse, but I think—I realize now that I want to remember everything—every song, every article of clothing—because I’m afraid they will be forgotten.”
One of the men shook his head; the other turned his back and spoke into a cell phone.
Paul bowed his head with shame.
And then he spoke so softly that he wasn’t sure the men heard him. Paul thought of his wife and his daughters, of Sara Smile, and he said, “I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me.”