8
I hope that most people at this point in time realize that Prince is one of the great poets of our time. I didn’t say songwriter— I said poet. Prince is the closest thing we have to e. e. cummings and people are so stupid because they don’t come in here and buy books of Prince poems.
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.
That is one of the greatest first lines of a poem in all time for a number of reasons, primarily because of the reversal of hours and days. A nonpoetic person would cite days and hours. A poet is different. A poet transforms the world with
Such small hands.
You haven’t written back to me yet. You have forwarded my e-mail to Chana and Lynn. You have giggled over photo-booth pictures of the three of you—ChanaLynn . . . us!—and exchanged dozens of idiotic e-mails about nothing. You have found the time to read and respond to your classmates’ short stories and beg the bosses at WORD in Brooklyn to let you read but you haven’t written back to the guy who saved your life. You are still in pursuit of Benji and it has not been seven hours and fifteen days but we are getting there, Beck. It’s not funny anymore.
You wrote to ChanaLynn:
How come I have to be a stereotypical chick that meets a nice guy and is like, thanks but no thanks? I don’t read Cosmo or do cleanses or post selfies, which means I don’t fit the profile for lame-girl-who-hates-nice-guys. I mean Benji is married to his business and this guy is the total opposite, works at a business, you know? Also, rooftop at the Wythe on Friday?
Chana wrote back first:
Beck, is this the guy you met at KGB? Wythe maybe.
And this tells me that you meet too many guys. You have this hunger for strangers. That’s why you read Craigslist “Casual Encounters.” No, you don’t have casual encounters (thank Christ), but at the same time you treat life like a giant fucking casual encounter, wasting time with Benji, with random guys from places like KGB.
Lynn wrote back:
They got shrinks on campus that can answer that question, girl. Also, KGB guy was super cute. Also, Wythe yes unless maybe UES for a change? Just a thought . . .
These girls don’t know about our Italian Dan Brown and the extent of your crush because you don’t tell them and finally in the middle of the night after five hours and eight days you write back to me:
How about happy hour on Thursday?
I wait three hours and one day to write back:
That works. Where?
You didn’t earn my humor this time. You don’t write back right away. Four minutes three hours and two days pass before this bullshit stinks up my inbox:
Sorry omigod one of those weeks. Whatever you do, do NOT go to grad school. Anyway. How about next week?
Like Prince, I have a poetic nature and I know how to shift my perspective. Driving you into my arms isn’t working out, clearly. You are scattered and you flirt and you crack phones and you don’t delete anything and you use your period to get extensions at school and a lot of your e-mails have more creative vitality than your stories and you’re talking to like nine dudes on nine different sites. You flirt. With everything. Do you realize how much crap you have in your shopping basket at Anthropologie.com? Christ, Beck, you need to learn some decision-making skills. In the meantime, I see that you are sick. Sick like your father was. You’re hooked on Benji. And I can’t get you off Benji until I know about Benji.
Which takes all of about thirty-five seconds.
Benjamin “Benji” Baird Keyes III is a friggin’ joke. He’s been to rehab, which is a travesty; you can tell by his smug face that he’s not capable of genuine addiction. He owns an organic club soda company that symbolizes everything bad about right now. His business is called Home Soda, a superior alternative to commonplace club soda because “while a club is exclusive, a home is the most exclusive place in the world. You can get into a club if you pay a cover. The same cannot be said of a home.”
Beck, you can’t tell me you buy into this, not really. Benji’s little start-up is a runaway, underground Whole Foods–style success, and his pastel-laden website includes a diatribe on Monsanto (as if this kid’s parents don’t profit directly from Monsanto, as if this kid wasn’t fucking raised on Monsanto—literally, his dad worked for fucking Nestlé when Benji was a kid), and yet Benji rants. A photo essay (otherwise known as a fucking slide show) reveals that Benji came up with Home Soda while camping with friends on Nantucket. Camping is a bullshit term; Nantucket is not New Hampshire and Benji was staying at a friend’s waterfront summer home. I blow up the photo and see the untagged girl from your Facebook profile. Aha. So you know Benji through that miserable odd girl, who does have a legitimate smile, reserved for wealthy friends in staged propaganda photos. But did you go camping with them? Nope. You probably weren’t invited. Your friend probably fed you some bullshit excuse about there not being enough room on the beach. You are the townie and Benji is the tourist who literally enters you and uses you as a vacation from the wear and tear of the artisanal club soda business only to dump you before Labor Day. He is the daddy you try desperately to please, the daddy who leaves, no matter what you do.
Your emotional livelihood is a demented seasonal economy where Labor Day is every other fucking day. He rents you out, the same way he rents loft space in SoBro (South Bronx to those of us who don’t need to make up bullshit pet names for neighborhoods where we’re not wanted). And he cheats on you, Beck. A lot. Compulsively. He is in intense pursuit of a performance artist who fucks with his head the way he fucks with yours. It has been six minutes and three hours and one day when you e-mail me:
This is random, but I am in Greenpoint. Are you maybe bartending right now?
I respond:
I’m not, but I could meet you at Lulu’s.
You respond:
IT IS ON BABY! Sorry for all caps. I am just excited!
I wait twelve seconds nine minutes and no hours before writing back:
Haha. On my way. 5?
You don’t write back but I have to take two trains to get there and the Hannah and Her Sisters soundtrack is playing in my head, all the songs at once, so loud that I can’t listen to the music on my phone or the music on your phone and all I can think about is our first kiss, which will likely take place in eighteen seconds nineteen minutes and three hours when we are both drunk in a cab on Bank Street and I get it now, why dudes jerk off on trains sometimes. But I don’t. I have you in my future. The train can’t go fast enough and engine engine number nine and look how much we share already and we haven’t even fucked and I got you a present too. I’m bringing you The Western Coast. And it’s inscribed:
Engine, Engine, Number Nine
On the New York transit line
If you go in a nursing home
This here book will be your tome
It’s not perfect but it’s close and I had to buy you something, reward you for stepping up, and the train is here and I hope that Prince eventually got to be where I am, pounding up the sixteen steps and two blocks and one avenue toward the rest of his life. But I’m only halfway up the subway stop stairs when your phone beeps. There is a lot of information to process and I have to sit down and I do. Things have changed. Quickly, too quickly. Nearly two weeks after your mass e-mail announcing your new phone number, Benji has e-mailed you back:
Hi.
And you wrote back:
Come over.
And he wrote back:
And then you e-mailed me:
Ack, I had to go to a school thing. Reschedule for next week? Sorry. Sorry!
And then Benji wrote to you:
Give me an hour, work thing came up.
And you wrote back:
You’re smiling because you want life to be like it was before your father messed up on Nantucket, without secrets, without danger. You write about how safe it is there, how claustrophobia and comfort go hand in hand. Your family never locked the doors to the house or the cars and they left the car keys in the ignition but come March, you’d give anything to see a stranger. You tweeted a few weeks ago:
The island of #Manhattan is like the island of #Nantucket: Groceries are expensive, drinks are expensive & in winter, everyone goes nuts.
That’s cute, Beck, but the island of Manhattan is nothing like your precious Nantucket. Let me tell you what I did last Tuesday.
On the island of Manhattan, you have to lock your shit up or some streetwise guy might just stop by a friggin’ club soda factory for a tour on a Tuesday when he knows the boss isn’t around (special thanks to Benji’s Twitter feed) and excuse himself to use the bathroom and bypass the bathroom for Benji’s office (which is unlocked), and bypass the rest of the club soda tour for a private tour of Benji’s computer (which is also unlocked), and learn that Benji keeps a calendar with links to @lotsamonica’s performance schedule. She’s on today, live-doodling at a converted fire station in Astoria (bite me). As a verified fan of hers on all social media platforms (oh the things I do for you, Beck), I am granted access to the live coverage and though I don’t see Benji the man (the place is too crowded), I see bottles of Home Soda in all the filtered pictures. He’s there. A comment from some chick with bangs and pink glasses proves it:
Benji rocks for bringing club soda. #organicforlife #homesoda #drinkfreeordie
So there it is. Your precious Benji doesn’t show up at your reading but he treks all the way to Astoria in the middle of the day because he thinks Monica is superior, because she’s tall and blond and he mistakes her doodles for art. I have to calm down. You don’t know about this. You’re not a fan of Monica’s because you’re not an imbecile. But you need to know and I can’t get out of that bloated factory fast enough. I need to save you.
I am the kind of guy who prepares for emergencies like this, so I already have an e-mail account called [email protected] You don’t do your research so you don’t know that Nathan Herzog is the food critic at Vulture’s new Eats section who sucks the tit of pretentious beasts like Benji and his Home Soda. I read the guy’s stuff; I’m not impressed. But Benji kisses his ass, tweeting his reviews in a flagrant effort to get his own puff piece on the site. And over at the exhilarating news blog on HomeSoda.com, “fans” of Benji’s pussy water grumble incessantly about why Home Soda has yet to be featured on Vulture.
Until now.
Obviously, I use my new e-mail account to impersonate food fuckwad Nathan Herzog. And soon, Benji will receive an e-mail from Nathan Herzog, who just sipped the most fantastic club soda of his life and realizes he is late to the party but remains desperate to meet Benji. He writes:
Is there any way you could meet now? There’s a bookstore on the Lower East Side, Mooney Rare and Used, and it’s a great place to start. There’s a café downstairs; nobody knows about it.
Sincerely,
N.
It takes Benji only nanoseconds to reply:
Absolutely, Nathan. I’m flattered and I’m en route.
I don’t respond. What kind of an asshole says en route?
I am on the subway thinking about you when I realize that I have fucked up. Something is missing.
The Western Coast.
With my signed inscription.
I left it on the sidewalk when I took a minute to recover after realizing you blew me off and Mr. Mooney was right. I will never be fully capable of running the bookstore. I am not a multitasking businessman at heart. I am a poet, which is why I know that I am four stops, one transfer, three blocks, two avenues, and one flight of stairs away from stopping at my apartment to pick up some treats for Benji. I text Curtis:
No need to come in today, I got it covered.
He writes back: Sweet.