Rosanne and Dan, Part II
by Jonathan Penton

A story, a story…

This haphazardly expanding tale is neither told nor being written in chronological order. I am writing this second part after the first part has already been published, and I've gotten a good bit of feedback on the first part, both from random passerby and the people actually involved in this story (for example, the woman I referred to as B., who now wants to be referred to as Beanie instead). So although this story won't make as much sense unless you've read part one, it's not going to follow part one in any logical way. So there.

In our last episode, I had the bad judgment to ponder my own superiority to a certain performance poet, and the millions of men, who bemoaned women's choices in men. Every day, men all over the world whine, "Why do women only like guys who are bad for them?" I've always found such complaints tedious, mostly because I am bad for women, and it's in my best interest that women like men who are bad for them. So when a performance poet cluttered up my open mic experience by complaining about the nature of American womanhood, I silently congratulated myself on the fact that I would never be in his position.

Now, I don't believe in a cosmic system of reward and punishment, but I do believe that the universe will interfere if you say something incredibly prideful and stupid. I don't see it as the universe punishing me, but the universe does seem to make fun of me when I forget my place in it. So not two days after this open mic, Beanie called.

Beanie is an Unlikely Stories contributor from late '98, maybe early '99. She lives in Boston. (I live in Atlanta.) We chat on the phone on a regular basis, discussing literature, politics, and the people we are either sleeping with or attempting to sleep with. It's a satisfying, entertaining relationship.

So after the open mic, Beanie calls me and starts telling me, with great enthusiasm, about the beautiful boy she met at some social event or another. She used superlatives like "skinny Elvis but shorter," "Israeli," and her favorite sexual compliment, "bright and shiny." She talked about his intelligence and wry sense of humor, and how good he was at the all-important task of keeping her busy. She talked about how he touched her belly, and could she safely consider that flirtation? We discussed this at great length, I enjoying her excitement vicariously, until the bottom fell out when she said:

"I need support on this one. Will you be my Rock of Gibraltar while I go through my scenario with this guy?"

"No one ever asked me to be a Rock of Gibraltar before," I said, stunned.

"Well this can be a new experience for you," she said.

* * * * *

"She's doing it on purpose," I told Pablo.

"Uh, no she's not, man," he replied.

"Sure she is. She knows how I see myself, and she's deliberately trying to put me in my place by making me her backup boy, the boy that she runs to while she goes out and plays in the field of Real Men."

"It's interesting," said Paul. "You and I have such different approaches to our misanthropy. People fuck with us and offend us all the time, and you're always coming to the conclusion that they're offending you just out of spite. But really, they're just kind of stupid. They don't know what offends people like us. They can't help but offend us."

"I'm not seeing it," I said. "She knows how I see myself. She's doing this to fuck with me."

"Other than the fact that she asked you to be her Rock of Gibraltar, do you have any evidence that she's trying to fuck with you?"

"Uh…" I offered. "Eh…"

"Yes?"

"I guess not."

"Uh-huh."

"I guess you're right. Sorry about that."

"No problem, man."

All paranoid delusions aside, this was irritating. I didn't want to be Beanie's Rock of Gibraltar. More importantly, I didn't want to be perceived as Beanie's Rock of Gibraltar. Actually supporting her was fine; I was more than happy to be her friend while she tried to sleep with some bright, shiny boy. I just didn't want her or anyone else thinking that that made me a nice person.

She called me three days later and told me that the bright, shiny boy (hereafter referred to as the BSB) had a girlfriend.

"OK," I said, not sure what the significance of that was. I mean, when I'm trying to sleep with someone, I certainly don't let the presence of a significant other deter me. I wasn't sure what her rules were.

But as she kept talking, it became apparent that she wasn't upset that the BSB had a girlfriend. She was upset by the fact that the BSB hadn't told her this relevant fact until her third date with him. That does seem like a valid gripe, but not terribly surprising – BSBs do things like that pretty often.

"So, I don't want you to tell me he's a horrible scummy person," Beanie continued. "I already know he's a horrible scummy person. What I want you to tell me is why he did what he did."

"To get laid?" I offered.

"But then why would he tell me now? Why wouldn't he just sleep with me and not tell me at all?"

"Oh, I guess you're right. Hm. Presumably he thought he was supposed to tell you…"

"He was! At the beginning!"

"Yeah. But he tried to work it into conversation? All casual like?"

"I don't think he ever intended to sleep with me. He's just been flirting with me and going out with me to give himself something to do. He never had any interest in me."

"Kissing to be clever?"

"Something like that."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Stop seeing him, of course. Stop returning his calls. Just ignore him."

And that, gentle reader, was not the end of it. Oh no.

She called me two days later with a stunningly detailed rationalization for why it was OK to call him again. I'm sorry, I forget what her logic was, and I wish I could share it with you now; it was really impressive. Anyway, she called me two days after that and told me she had another date with him.

Our conversations, which were frequent before, became a nightly occurrence. Each night, she would tell me what the BSB said or did that day, and ask me to analyze it, or confirm her analyses.

My problem was not that I found this relationship uncomfortable. In fact, it was quite a bit of fun. I like cracking into someone's head as much as anyone, and the fact that the usual reward of sex wasn't being offered wasn't really a detraction. Why not spend my nights trying to figure out the psychology of the BSB? For me, the stakes were incredibly low, like playing poker with someone else's money.

In general, my relationship with Beanie was, and is, extremely satisfying. All of my friends have received a 4am call from me, when I'm crying, confused, desperate and paranoid, begging for someone to hold my metaphorical hand over the telephone line. Most have the sense not to pick up their phone. During this time period, I called Beanie in this condition, and she got up, made a pot of coffee, and talked to me until dawn. It's happened more than once since.

So our relationship is perfectly satisfactory. And really, she wasn't using me as a backup boy by any practical definition. She's 1500 miles away. I'm not really the "nice boy" hoping for her affections. I'm sure I'd be perfectly happy to sleep with her (she has four limbs, after all [not that that's a requirement]), but she's in fucking Boston. It wasn't my dick that was being stung by this; it was only my pride.

Time passed. We continued to analyze the BSB daily. Until one night, Beanie called me, on the train ride home after leaving the BSB's flat, and said, "I have to pee so bad I'm going to burst."

"No storefronts you can duck into?" I asked.

"No, not in this part of town."

"Drag."

We chatted for several minutes, mostly about her bladder, when she finally said, "I'm going to soil my pants if I can't find a place to pee."

"Well, if nothing else, you can always squat."

"I think I'm about to. But I'm wearing nice leather shoes."

"Mmm. I'm wearing combat boots."

"I'm sure. Oh, wait. Here's a ledge. This is perfect. No one's around, and I can piss over the ledge."

"Excellent."

"OK," she said, pissing away. "You know, there was a time in my life when I would have burst rather than do this."

"Well, you're a wiser person now."

"I'm just certain, absolutely certain, that a cop is going to see me. OK, I'm done," she said, standing up, and suddenly shrieked, a man's face suddenly appearing in her field of vision.

"Beanie?" I asked.

"Can I have some head?" the man's face asked her.

Beanies brain, refusing to realize she had just been asked for a blowjob, made her mouth respond, "No, I'm sorry, I don't have anything."

"Can I have some head?" the man repeated.

"Um, no," she said, and walked quickly away.

"All I can say," she said to me as she got out of the man's earshot, "Is that I'm incredibly glad he assumed I was talking to someone locally."

After telling me the story, she said, "You have to write a poem about this."

"Um, I don't think I really can," I replied.

"You have to! I pissed on the streets of Boston and was solicited for sex; the least you can do is write about it."

"I wouldn't know what to say."

"It doesn't have to be a good poem. Just write me a poem."

"Why would I want to write a bad poem?"

The next day, she told me,

"My mother says you have to write a poem about me peeing."

"You told your mother about it?"

"I know, and I really shouldn't have, because she'll use it against me the next time we're at a social event, I know she will. 'You think she's a nice girl now,' she'll say. 'Wait until you hear what she did…'"

This was getting out of hand. Not only was I being used as a Rock of Gibraltar, Beanie was using her mother to make demands of me.

"I'll write an article about it," I offered.

Since the time of this article's first part, Beanie has given me a long lecture on the symbolic significance of her pissing on Boston's streets. Somehow it symbolizes her inability to screw the BSB. For some reason, her unsuccessful sex life is represented, in her mind, by that moment when she stands up and a strange man asks her for head. I didn't really understand her logic, but it's important to her.

So Beanie continued to see the BSB, and continued to fail to have sex with him, despite their growing intimacy and long and regular dates. Indeed, he began demanding the sort of things from her you expect a boyfriend to demand, all the while not offering his genitalia. For some women, that would be perfect, but not Beanie. She was growing more and more frustrated.

The irony was that not only was Beanie not getting laid, neither was the BSB. That girlfriend of his is a Malaysian living in Australia. They had never laid eyes on one another. They "met" in an Internet chatroom and now talked on the phone every night, offering their eternal love and devotion based on their decidedly non-carnal knowledge of one another. The BSB's girlfriend had vague plans to visit Boston sometime in the future, but there was no clear indication of when that would be. This let to all sorts of late-night conversations between Beanie and me, mostly on the stupidity of Internet addicts and their belief that the artificial environment of a chatroom could substitute, or even lead to, real intimacy. (The fact that we met on-line did not enter into our discussions.)

"Dump him," I suggested to Beanie.

Then, "OK, you clearly don't want to dump him. So fuck him already. Rip off your clothes, lie on his bed naked, and see if he decides to have sex. Or just say to him, 'Hey, BSB, let's have sex.'"

Beanie did neither. And I hope you aren't expecting a resolution to this story, because none will come. I don't get one; why should you?

Images of Malaysian girlfriends dancing in my head, I returned to my local open mic. The performance poets were steadily squeezing out the literary poets, as they so often do in Atlanta. As always, I gave them my full attention, because that's the polite thing to do.

There was one relative newcomer who ran his own open mic night, on a different weeknight. His open mic was unrepentantly performance-oriented, as was his own work. He brought two female friends, who shared the unusual first name of "Queen." His own name was Muslim.

He stood up there for a good fifteen minutes, insipidly rhyming his way into our hearts. Every few minutes, one of the "Queen"'s would say, "I-aight," encouraging him. (Needless to say, she did not offer this encouragement to any other poets.) This continued for a while, until he launched into a long poem about what his woman wants.

But that was just a trick, gentle reader. For the poem was in fact a clever ruse, and solely an exploration of what he wants. He was using an imaginary female protagonist to justify his likes and dislikes. He likes women who do whatever he wants, and consider it their purpose in life to raise his sons. He doesn't like women who deviate from this plan, and he likes even less men who don't strike him as masculine.

Now, in all my years of doing this, I've learned one thing above all: poets are no more intelligent than anything else. This man is a fucking moron, but he is an artist. He's an incredibly shitty artist, but he's still an artist. A poetry read is not, in my opinion, the time or place to discuss human rights. In short, I felt that it would be inappropriate for me to stand up and give him the bitch-slapping he so justly deserved.

Queen I-aight, however, was already being vocal. So whenever he said something offensive about women, she said, "Whuut?" in her best sassy voice. "I-aight," she would say after every innocuous couplet. "Whuut?" she continued after every obnoxious one.

Her commentary was not enhancing my evening.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of torture, it was Queen I-aight's turn. She stood before us, in all the garb of rebellion and revolution. Her head was shaved. Her attire was masculine, even macho. Her body was unapologetically stout. She got up, and recited a number of poems about the necessity of freeing black women from the oppression of the white man.

Horseshit, I attempted to thought-project to her. Ever hear of The Invisible Man? White men don't notice you. They glance at your shaven black head and quickly look the other way, and for that you should be grateful. Your oppression stems from black men. Specifically, that piece of misogynistic, chauvinistic shit that you spent the last fifteen minutes encouraging. You want to start a revolution, start by punching him in the mouth the next time he tells you you were designed to be a baby factory.

And that was when the irony caught up with me, and my story came full circle. There I was, at this very same poetry read, angry at a woman for making bad choices in men. Her suffering, I concluded, was her own fault, for associating herself with men who could only cause suffering. I resented my role as a Rock of Gibraltar, but not only that, I had come the conclusion that I could steer women's lives better than they could themselves. I had become the pandering pussy from part one of this article. Hubris always kicks you in the ass.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.