Neanderthal Seeks Human

Jon was my first boyfriend. I went on dates with guys in high school and college but always first dates. Jon was the first guy who didn’t seem put off by my rampant randomness, he seemed to bask in it. I wondered if he would be the only one.

The thought didn’t trouble me as much as it should. In fact, it bothered me far less than the thought of never experiencing something like the smoldering warmth of awareness I experienced during my seven to twelve minutes with the blue-eyed security guard.

I spoke only briefly to Jon since the break up and I still needed to evaluate what I actually felt during our conversation. He was mad at me; in fact, he was outraged and he’d yelled at me for the first few minutes of our conversation. He said he’d found out about my job loss from his dad, a man I couldn’t ever bring myself to call by his first name, and wanted to know why I didn’t asked him for help.

I couldn’t believe my ears; it took me a few seconds to respond, “Jon, is that an actual question? And how did Mr. Holesome- I mean, how did your dad know?”

“Yes. It is an actual question. You need me, you are my girlfriend-”

“No-” I shook my head as if convincing myself.

“Nothing is decided. I want to take care of you. I still love you. We belong together.” He sounded resolute and a little sullen.

“You cheated on me. We are not together. ” I was starting to become aggravated, which was the closest I came to anger.

I heard him sigh on the other end, his tone softening, “Janie, don’t you know that changes nothing for me? It was one time. It meant nothing. I was drunk.”

“You were sober enough to put the condom wrapper back in your pocket.”

He half growled, half laughed, “I still want to take care of you, let me take care of you.”

“That’s not your role-”

“Can we be friends?” he cut me off, his voice somewhat gentler.

“Yes.” I meant it. I didn’t want to lose him as a friend, “Yes. We should be friends.”

“Will you let me take care of you?” His voice was pleading, “Will you let me help you?”

I thought about what he was asking; I knew he meant financial support. “You can help me by being a good friend.”

“What if I can’t be just friends?” I could sense his renewed annoyance with me as he spoke, “I can’t think about anything but you.”

It was my turn to sigh; I couldn’t think of anything to say. Well, more accurately, I couldn’t think of anything to say related to our topic of conversation but I could think of plenty of things to say about the climate of New Guinea or the prehistoric ancestors of the African secretary bird.

After a moment of silence he cleared his throat, his voice sounded firm, “Nothing is decided.” he said again, “When can I see you?”

We arranged a time to meet on Saturday morning, at a neutral spot, then said our goodbyes, during which he told me he loved me again. I didn’t respond.

I reflected on all that had happened. I didn’t feel an acute need to grieve the loss of him or the five years of our life together. In order to be confident in my feelings I made sure the invisible closet door in my head was open, the light was on, the box was unlocked- but detachment remained.

I knew that my preoccupation with the trivial was a direct result of my mother’s death as well as, what my therapist called, an already natural propensity to observe life rather than live it. He called it self-preservation.

My parental grandmother, ever a fangirl of pharmaceutical products, insisted that I needed therapy when my mother died. And, so, I started therapy at the ripe age of thirteen. I thought therapy meant I would be sitting on a couch as a man showed me inkblots shaped suspiciously like blobs of ink and told me I was angry with my mother for her affairs, for running off with her latest lover, for getting herself killed in a motorcycle accident, for leaving me with my somewhat dimwitted- albeit well meaning- father and my two criminal prone siblings, and for cooking veggie tacos on the Tuesdays of my childhood instead of the hot dogs and potato chips I craved.

The therapist did all those things even though I hadn’t felt particularly angry; I just felt sad, enormously sad. It was why, the therapist said, my brain always took a hard U-turn when I was faced with difficult or uncomfortable emotional situations. Nevertheless, during that year, I also reluctantly learned strategies that worked; I learned that overwrought with emotional distress, small things could be a trigger, like finding a bathroom stall bereft of toilet paper. The mundane became as insurmountable as moving Mt. Fuji.

However, I felt certain that I was doing my utmost to spend some time marinating in the end of my relationship. The most emotion I could conjure over its end was a wistful melancholy over the possibility of losing Jon as a friend. Admittedly, I also felt a twinge of regret when I realized I’d already bought him a birthday present.

Maybe that made me shallow.

Elizabeth thought I was in shock.

Whatever the truth was, I reasoned, once enough time passed, the truth will out. I liked to think of myself as Launcelot Gobbo from Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice; even a foolish man will produce some wisdom, given enough time to drone on and on in unchecked soliloquy. Since most of my time was spent in unchecked soliloquy, I held out hope for some wisdom.

The job search was in its infancy. Nevertheless, I sent out at least a hundred resumes, applied for every job on craigslist for which I might be the least bit qualified and contacted all the temp agencies I could find in the Chicago area. I was determined to be employed. It wasn’t just the money, I had a pithy savings and likely could not take any prolonged sabbatical from the working class, it was also my temperament.

The recognition that my temperament was less than ideal for appropriate integration into society was the reason I started tutoring elementary school kids in Math and Science every Thursday afternoon and evening. Although, admittedly, it wasn’t why I continued. I continued for selfish reasons like: the kids liked comic books, they were funny, and I liked doing it.

If left to my own devices I would eventually become a hermit, sans my weekly tutoring on south side. I knew the longer I was out of work the more despondent I would become. I even considered learning to knit. I think this last revelation is what led Elizabeth to insist that we spend some time being outrageous.

And, therefore, we were destined for club Outrageous.

The only items she approved of in my wardrobe were my shoes. In fact, she borrowed a pair of orange faux-crocodile leather wedge heals with a turquoise bow at the toe. I wore a zebra printed spiked heal; the rest of my outfit came from her closet. She said I owned the clothes of a radiologist and the shoes of an OBGYN; which is like the medical doctor equivalent of saying that I dressed like a librarian with a propensity for f**kmeboots.

We wore the same shoe size but she was at least a size smaller than me everywhere but her waist. There were only two dresses she owned which actually fit over my expansive direr: an olive green button down, Mad Men throwback, 1950s style house dress or a cinch-waisted, almost backless, simple black dress which gathered and flowed nicely over her shoulders and h*ps but which merely stretched and puckered on me in the same areas. The black dress ended mid-thigh. I looked at myself in the mirror then gazed longingly at the olive green dress still hanging in the closet; it was knee length.

Elizabeth gave me a dirty look from over my shoulder, meeting my eyes in the mirror, having seen my attention stray to the closet.

In the end I wore the black dress. Even with the addition of thigh-high stockings to cover my bare legs I felt exposed and, if I must admit, a tad sordid.

We were able to enter the club with little difficulty even though a long line of party goers snaked around the length of the building. Elizabeth walked to the front and handed two large tickets to a man wearing sunglasses, at 11pm, flanked on either side by two beefsteaks of man-meat. As far as I could tell, the man in the sunglasses didn’t look at the tickets but I got the distinct impression he was studying us behind his dark lenses. He nodded his head, just once, then moved to the side so we could pass.

Elizabeth tossed me a bright, carefree smile as the clicking of our heels was swallowed by the jungle sounds of the club. I gaped at our surroundings in uneasy wonder; it was definitely going to be an experience. She didn’t communicate to me that the name of the club was actually ‘Outrageous.’ To be honest, ‘Overwhelming’ would have been a better name.

The inside of the club was quite literally a jungle. Twenty foot replicas of trees native to the rainforest towered above us and I followed the line of one of the taller trunks as it reached to a ceiling, either painted or canvassed to look like the canopy of a rainforest.

Strategically placed lights filtered through the pseudo-branches creating the effect of twilight in the heart of the Amazon. The ground slanted downward as you entered and it was impossible to tell how big the room was; I guessed rather than saw that the majority of the walls were covered in mirrors which multiplied the jungle atmosphere in every direction.

428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been classified in the Brazilian rainforest; I wondered how many would be represented in club ‘Outrageous.’

Unlike most clubs I’d had the misfortune of attending; the music wasn’t oppressive or omnipresent. I recognized the music playing unobtrusively over the sound system as The Mix-Up by The Beastie Boys, specifically the song B For My Name; intermixed with 2007 Grammy award winning album for instrumental pop were wildlife calls of the Brazilian rainforest. Just as the bass strummed a low rhythm a call wretched forth from what I guessed was the giant leaf frog, which was found in western and northern Brazil.