So listen.
I was with my ex-wife in a Hollywood Video one day. She lives down in NW Portland, just off Burnside. I used to like to drink in a certain dark bar there that had pictures of bulls and matadors everywhere, and we ran into each other on the street—in sunlight, no less. I hadn't seen her in ages and we were kind of catching up. She was looking for a movie to watch later that night—by herself I assumed—and I imagined her lonely, because she has this little flipper arm, like a baby's arm, and it spooks a lot of guys, but it never spooked me. In fact, I didn't even notice until the morning after we first slept together, which was the night we met. So we went into the video store. I told her that she should meet my girlfriend, meaning Face, because we had just moved in together and I had just started calling her that, and my ex-wife said that would be great, and how that kind of thing was healthy—important, even. And right when she said that, this crazy-looking young Goth girl walked up—all sunken eyes and pale and obese, but kind of cute and blushing—and she said, "Hey, I don't mean to bother you, but weren't you in a band back in the '80s?" And my ex-wife busted out laughing. She laughed so hard she knocked a huge display of movies over—fell right into it—and it was that movie, The Truman Show. So the video kid came over and we kind of slinked away, feeling like fuck ups, with Goth girl trailing behind and my ex-wife still laughing. The Goth girl's ears turned red and she told me her name is a city in France and I am "that guy" and I was in "that metal band," and what was my name? I felt like an ass, because I didn't look like a guy from an '80s metal band at all. Maybe a '70s band, or a '60s band—rock or new mod or something, maybe really early metal, before metal was called metal, or early punk, like the Stooges maybe—but a guy from an '80s band? No way! I didn't have big hair, for one thing (long, yes; black, yes), nor did I wear spandex or make-up or any of that.
So I just said, "No, you got the wrong guy."
My ex-wife kept shrieking with laughter, like it was the funniest thing EVER.
Then I started to feel really awkward, because the Goth girl was looking at me and her eyes were full of tears. She kept looking at me, and then looking at my ex-wife who just kept LAUGHING AND LAUGHING AND LAUGHING—back and forth like that—and then the Goth girl started CRYING—really crying, I mean SOBBING—her eyeliner running and make up getting all fucked up and ugly...
My ex-wife stopped laughing. Then she was HUGGING the Goth girl, trying to comfort her. I was just standing there, mortified, feeling like a criminal even though I hadn't done anything wrong.
My ex-wife was giving me this look that said: Why don't you DO something about this?
So I said to the Goth girl, "Hey, she's not laughing at you. She's laughing at me."
She looked even more embarrassed and confused, so I said, "Where did you get those shoes? They're cool."
And Goth girl smiled this tiny smile.
"I dig your hair, too," I said.
And now she was REALLY smiling. She dug into her purse, pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper, wrote down her phone number, handed it to me. "Here you go, '80s goth metal guy," she said. "Call me and we'll fuck! I'll let you do whatever you want!"
My ex-wife didn't laugh this time.
She held it in until we got outside, and then she let it rip: AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
But I didn't think it was funny.
I remembered how she had told me one morning, back when we were still married, "We need to talk," then told me she was leaving. And how she did that, and how hurt and messed up I was for years afterward; how I dyed my hair black and started drinking more, and doing drugs, and sleeping with women whose names I couldn't remember, or sometimes could but only when they had fake dancer names and track marks, and how every time someone laughed when I was walking down the street, or in the grocery store, or at work or anywhere, really—well, I was pretty sure they were laughing at me, even though I couldn't see them sometimes, and had no idea where the laughter was coming from.
I'm pretty sure I still have Goth Girl's number.
I think I hid it under a mess of papers in a drawer in my desk, for posterity.
