By all measures, it was going to be a prodigious weekend. Smokey and Miho were throwing a concert, and I was free to drive out to DC and watch. Meanwhile, I had, improbably enough, invited Ruth to come along. She could be pretty fun on a car ride. Moreover, Shige and Megan were driving down from there college in Ohio to meet us there! ‘Twas to be cool. Hours in car, During upcoming weekend, Should be kind of fun.
OK, so I’m a little groggy when I wake up. Normally, I forget my dreams by the time I’m brushing my teeth, but… In the weeks since prom, Ruth and I had begun IMing on a somewhat regular basis. Before this, she sent me impassioned emails of the exact same nature as the letters I sent and received in hiGhSCHOOL. She wanted to know about our “status.” She want my sanction to use words ending in -friend and starting with a gender/age description. *No-Thank-You handwave*
Êtto â… Dômo sumanai… Sô? Chotto… (Well, ah… I’m very sorry… Is that so? It’s just…)
I’m driving down the highway, and about a gajillion miles of interstate are stretched before me. The tape deck tries its best to keep up with Wu Tang’s first album, with Lisa Loeb’s newest one, with Cornershop’s popular one, and on and on down an endless river of concrete. There’s an engagement ring in my pocket. Kmart, ~$3. In my friend’s room, watching Saturday Night Live live, it suddenly hit me, what I needed to do. “Becky! I totally need to propose to someone!” But to whom? It would have to be someone spectacularly intelligent, someone infinitely clever, someone fantastically cool. Someone I could never have. “I’ve got it! I’ll propose to Miho Hatori!”
OK, so my visceral reaction to getting what I want is now, and probably will remain for sometime, complete and utter revulsion. I mean it’s the classic Groucho Marx dilemma: I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member. And Ruth seemed to want my membership. She seemed appeakingly (don’t ask) accepting of me, and everyone I introduced her too. I’m sorry, the world just cannot be that pleasant. Some people just have to be non-wonderful in order for the concept to have meaning. She was exactly what I wanted and I didn’t want her at all. It's like in Ghost World when Thora Birch is trying to setup Steve Buscemi with a woman, and so she asks about his interests. Forget it, he says. I hate my interests. “Where can I go to meet the exact opposite of myself?” So Neil, go ahead and laugh and say be careful what you wish for and comment on the irony of it all you like. I know I have.
We go past the Pentagon a half dozen times, always at a different angle. Planes take off and land nearby. It’s not surreal; it’s hyper-real. Walking out of the metro stop past construction equipment, the insanity of it all, “I”—love isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind—“that this is a crime scene.” Hours earlier, that morning in bed, I dreamed of terrible things. September 12ths and the next day. The world had been covered by a flood. Terrorists had changed everything. It was a nightmare. Then, suddenly, it was over. Everything was OK. Out of somewhere came there came a shape, a mass, a weight, a form, a body, a human body, a girl! leaning on the mattress of my bed telling me to wake up. It was Ruth! Everything was OK! The world was a sublime place again. Love was possible. If not, then we were letting the terrorists win. … Screw the terrorists.
So, the reason I wanted to propose to Miho Hattori—to say those magic words, “Miho-sama, bokuto kekkon suru?”—was my old friend and RA, Joseph Hoffmeyer. Joseph is a funny guy. One time in class my freshman year, he passed his friend a note that said, “Will you marry me? (Check below:)” and went on to list hilarious answers and explanations. Yes (for the money), no (because of the lack of money), no (because you’re ugly), no (because boys have cooties). OK, I can’t remember many reasons for ‘yes,’ but there was more than one, I think. Anyhow, soon thereafter he alighted to Wal*Mart and purchased the cheapest ring available, which he presented to her, on bended knee, in the middle of the cafeteria, as I and others in his acquaintance laughed hysterically. She laughed too and never really answered him, but she pocketed the ring, which was as good as a yes for him. His mom cried when he acted serious about being engaged on the phone. His dad had him explain that he was just kidding.
I’m driving down the highway back towards South Carolina and Furman by way of Hartsville, and there are increasingly few miles of highway in front of me. Shosha and Stella take turns singing through the tape deck. An incompetency of incalculable proportions on my part results in getting off on the wrong exit to reach “South of The Border,” South Carolina’s perhaps greatest achievement in the field of self-referential tourist attractions. Once back on the highway, there was no way to turn around for a half dozen or so miles. I suppose I can keep dreaming of the gaudiness of it all. At least there’s a <>photo of the enormous sombrero thingie. In certain ways, I like having a story about not getting to do something more than I like doing it, you know? It's like when you get a toy as a kid, a toy you really wanted, something you were pinning your whole life on, and it disappoints. Those experiences gave me a sort of aversion to completeness.
Freud of course said that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious.” That dreams are always a form of wish fulfillment. I don’t know what I think of that. When I remember them, my dreams are frequently a struggle of some sort. There’s something that needs to be done or that I want to do, so naturally, it becomes impossible through mundane sorts of defeats. If I want to go somewhere, then I’m suddenly somewhere else. If I want to do something, then it can’t be done. If I'm talking to someone, they're someone else. Actually, maybe Freud was onto something.
The thing with Joseph for a while was he was in love with this girl, who didn’t reciprocate. And to make matters worse, her roommate did like him— a lot. So there was a triangle kinda thing going on. Except the roommate was a tad obsessive and willing to hang out in silence for no reason. This situation went on for the whole first three quarters of the school year. And it made me wonder how awful the roommate could be that Joseph didn’t just give up and love the one that loved him, especially given his lilt towards self-deprecation and one sided loves. I even asked him that once jokingly. Then Joseph and the roommate started hanging out a little bit more, and he talked to her some, and finally he decided to give it a shot. People would make snide comments about them staying in his room with doors closed all day, but I never saw it that way. I thought it was cool how he managed to just accept life and love and take what was given to him and make something of it. As far as I know, more than a year later, they’re still going out. So, the question for me became, “Is Joseph Hoffmeyer happy?”
So, one day soon after all my gallivanting, life wasn’t just surreal, it was hyperreal. Naturally, I first wrote about it in a letter to Erin.
