A Sardine on Vacation, Episode 8
Love's Tropism

One member of the Logged-in Public has written:

Frank Weathers phoned me when he saw the column online the other day. I was afraid he would take offense.

"Do you think I came off well?" he asked.

Given the opportunity to create a reality within Frank's mind, I responded that he had the most legitimate reason for wearing a hairpiece. Protecting his scalp from the sun. Not that anyone has seen him without the toupee in the last three years.

"You get used to having it up there."

That should have been the end of it; however, I met Frank at the bar the next night and Joe T. was bartending. Joe only followed sports and hadn't read the column.

"Well, Joe," said Frank, "our little fish here has made us famous."

"What?"

It's nothing, I mumbled. What about a drink?

Frank had print out the column and laid it on the bar. Joe moved back to the cash register, leaned on it, and read.

His expression didn't change in the next five minutes. He ignored calls around the bar to refill some drinks. When he gave the pages back to Frank, Joe T. said to us:

"It doesn't really look like a Chia pet, does it? Do either of you have a mirror?"

He ran his hand over his hair and aimed the crown of his head toward Frank and me.

"Writer's license to write stuff like that," said Frank.

"I hope none of my girlfriends read that thing," said Joe.

"You could write about Joe's luck with women," said Frank, elbowing my fin.

Yes, Joe T. wasn't shy reminding his friends whom he had bedded lately. Frank continued:

"Maybe the Sardine will someday write about Mr. and Mrs. Joe."

Joe scowled and poured us our drinks finally. What Frank had said was akin to jinxing Joe, as one might hex people by telling them that they hadn't had a car accident lately. Despite what was said about his hair plugs, Joe's confidence with women had truly been bolstered by his new look. He might not have been getting as lucky as he would have everyone believe, it was certainly better than his college years when he couldn't lose his virginity fast enough. Finally, at the age of twenty, after many close calls, he made his first conquest. In the weeks afterward, he would introduce himself to strangers as follows: "I'm Joe T. and I just got laid."

What Frank meant by "Joe's luck" remains a slippery proposition. Did he mean "bad luck," implying that Joe could do anything to his hair and it wouldn't helped him get a woman? Or that Joe needed more than new hair to attract women? Then, again, "his luck" may have included questionable choices regarding the looks and personalities of his many girlfriends. Not that Joe would have noticed, too interested was he in parading them around town and the bar.

Observed closely, his relationships with women the last ten years fell into a pattern. The first three to six months were heavy with sexual action. Exhaustive action. Joe making up for those lost years of no or little sex. No-one-could-ever-find-Joe kind of action.

Then the next few months doubts creep into his mind. Did he love her enough? The "enough" was a psychological necessity. He couldn't admit that he was no longer in love.

Arguments with his girlfriend increased. Finally, they separated. A week later they are back together. A two-week stretch of heavy sex. More arguments. The arguments reanimate his doubts. Joe would talk the relationship to death with his friends. Then something happened to him.

An uncontrollable urge.

An urge that could best be described a tropism.

He would try to get together with one of his former girlfriends, preferably the one immediately preceding his current one or one of his self-styled "ideal" girlfriends (one that he hadn't taken to bed), and pour over with her his tribulations.

Behind this move, of course, Joe wanted to take them to bed. One or two he actually did, although he claimed that he had no such intention. But who said tropisms were intentional? Did baby turtles scamper toward the ocean because they understand why they had to go there?

Who hasn't suffered love's tropism? I recall an excruciating evening after a college girlfriend ditched me (the one who liked the smell of my pillow). I phoned someone I had dated in high school. Her sister answered. Gwen was in the shower, I was told, she would call back.

I should have known that the sister was offering a reprieve to the upcoming humiliation. I would have been wise to have said, No, forget it.

I was deluding myself that I wanted a friend to talk to, deluding the knave within me. After we talked for ten minutes, she had the better sense to end the conversation before that knave made some foolish request, such as meeting her for a drink.

When Joe was breaking up with his first sexual partner, he tried to go back to the girl he had taken to the junior prom, an aforesaid "ideal type." He had seen and spoken to her recently. He drove to her house at midnight on a stormy evening; the wind was blowing thirty miles per hour. The house was dark, her car was in the driveway, she was the only one home. He tossed pebbles at her window for five minutes.

It should be noted: the tropistic urge manifests itself most when a person is drunk, and this goes far to explain why Joe had decided to climb a flagpole that rose eight feet from her second floor window.

He carried several pebbles as he shinnied up the pole oblivious to wind, rain, and the gradual tilt of the pole. Three-quarters to the top, beside the window, he dropped the pebbles. Soon the pole was leaning further askew than the Pisa tower. He started to inch down, falling the last eight feet onto his back.

No one heard him cry out. In a few minutes he slunk away and returned to the bar where he had started the evening. A few days later he learned that the object of his desire was staying over a boyfriend's house that night.

The Sardine's essays, articles, and stories have appeared around the Internet in the last few years at 3 A.M., Facets, Eclectica magazine, Fiction Funhouse, The Fiction Warehouse, 5_trope, and several film journals. Who and what he is probably will be revealed at various points through the articles appearing at this site. If you want to reach him, his address is popesixtus@aol.com.