Iris Has Free Time (30 page)

After a couple hours of writing, with a first draft before me, I stopped to brainstorm a title. “Iris’s Science Corner,” I typed up at the top, just under “Second Base,” thinking perhaps this piece might help me break into science writing. Imagine my name in the
Scientific American
! My dad would be thrilled.

Before closing my computer, I checked my email: a message from Glen. “How was the movie? Sorry I couldn’t go with you,” he wrote, as if I’d even asked him to. He is always doing this, revising past events according to how he would prefer them to have happened. As if I don’t have my own memory, too.

But then, I often revise things about him to include in my column. I suppose everyone does this to a greater or lesser degree, whether they are writing or just talking to their friends. For example, I wasn’t in Florida visiting my parents when I saw
The X-Files
sequel. I lied. I was in Florida, but I was there alone. My parents were in Greece for the summer, and instead of visiting them there, I went to their place in Florida to spend four months by myself during hurricane season. Having just turned thirty—yes, I lied about that too—and having just stopped drinking, not cut down—that too—I went there “to finish my novel” (a phrase I’ve been using for the last seven years in a more or less unwitting lie) in isolation and to continue writing the column I’d been hired to write five months
after
I got sober, the column that would detail my sex life as a binge drinking twenty-eight-year-old Manhattan girl-about-town.

 

Einstein’s theory of special relativity is often explained with an anecdote about time-traveling twins. One twin is sent into space, traveling at the speed of light. (If you could travel faster than the speed of light, physicists say, you could, theoretically, travel through time.) When he returns to Earth, he finds his twin brother much aged while he has not aged at all because for him, time had slowed. Einstein tested his theory by measuring the ticking of a clock in motion compared to the ticking of a stationary clock, proving that a clock in motion ticks slower than a stationary clock. The heart is a clock, too.

This is what it’s like when you write about yourself: You split yourself in two. There is the you who is traveling—not precisely at the speed of light but at the speed of memory, which is even faster—and the you moving through time normally whom you can visit at any age. The two of you live at different speeds and occupy different dimensions. “Iris” has free time. I don’t anymore.

So it wasn’t exactly a lie, my saying I was twenty-eight, for one version of me was. And when I insisted
The X-Files
piece was fiction, I had been telling my mother the truth, too. Unobserved and by myself in Florida, watching storm warnings on TV and writing stories about the alien assault on Glen’s pubic hair, I was like Schrödinger’s cat before you look inside the box, paradoxically alive and dead at the same time. Twenty-eight and thirty. Drunk and sober. Ruining my life, trying to save it.

 

Just before I went to Florida, I was dating the Glen I’ve written about and often talked to him about my column, hoping he might read it but unable to come right out and ask him to. I felt conflicted since writing about sex is sort of shameful and low, and yet, it was the first thing I’d done since college of which I was proud. I wanted him to see me and felt I was somehow more there, in my stories, than here, right in front of him. So, I’d drop hints and say things like, “I have to go home and work on my column,” or, “I got into an argument with my editor about the title of last week’s column.” But he didn’t seem at all interested. He pretended he was interested, but I’m pretty sure he was just making his actor’s listening face and nodding his head.

I hadn’t started writing about
him
yet because I was still catching up on older stories. But when I did eventually write about him later, after we’d broken up, I wondered, if he were to read this—Are you there, Glen? This is you!—would he recognize himself? In my column’s comment section, a reader asked how Glen felt about my writing, if the column was affecting our relationship—if my observations had influenced the outcome of the experiment.

My findings are as follows: When I write, I feel as I did when I was a kid at the movies with my parents, when everyone was facing forward and I was facing back. When I write, it’s like I can go anywhere in time and stop everything for a moment, just freeze the scene. I can walk around everybody, walk around Glen, see him stuck in mid-action, about to kiss me goodnight, about to walk away after a tiff outside of a restaurant, about to exit the bathroom shiny and return to the table where I’ve been waiting for the last fifteen minutes, reading the TV guide on my phone.

I step outside the moment, and everything in it becomes clear. I see him, but I can also see myself finally, too, my eyes fixed on him as usual, fixed on his eyes and where they are looking, concerned again too much with what he’s seeing, with what he’s thinking. It’s one of those moments during which I felt myself in full eclipse, one of those moments when I thought I had disappeared. But there I am in plain sight. There I am. The cat is alive.

A COMPLETE HANDBOOK CONTAINING ALL
THE GAMES PLAYED IN THIS BOOK, WITH THEIR
RULES, REGULATIONS, TECHNICALITIES, ETC.

It were indeed to be wished that less time was killed. . . .

“A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN AT BATH,”
HOYLE’S COMPLETE HANDBOOK OF GAMES

AWAKENINGS

 

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: The Bastard Felix

 

After smoking some very strong pot, notice Player Two hasn’t spoken or moved in quite some time. Instead of saying, “[Player Two], are you alright?” Pick up the Beanie Baby your mother gave you for Christmas, the one resting on your bookcase that you don’t know what to do with. What’s a grown woman of twenty-five supposed to do with an adorable small stuffed dog? Throw the adorable small stuffed dog at Player Two and watch his arm shoot up suddenly, just like the catatonic patients’ arms in that sad movie, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, about that hospital where people fell asleep for twenty years. Say, “Felix! Felix! I have an idea for a game!” Sit down and feign catatonia. Say to Player Two, “Now me!”

 

DRINKING GAME #1

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your college roommate May

PLAYER THREE AND FOUR: Two girls from your dorm

 

Meet Players Two through Four at a bar where you accidentally have one too many. Discover how witty you are after three. Discover your heretofore untapped leaning capabilities. Take up smoking.

Talk about boys in the dining hall with the other Players the next morning. Refer to them as “men.” Say something wicked, then leave the table to get more fro-yo. Return with a smart remark about the “man” who got your phone number last night.

Go out for drinks with the other Players again. Have one too many on purpose. Discover how witty you are after four, five, and then six. Discover older men who find you fascinating. Discover you have this in common with them; you find you fascinating, too! Catch sight of yourself flirting with one in the mirror behind the bar. There’s something about you, isn’t there?

Notice he’s not too attractive. Humor him and give him your number anyway. Humor him and agree to go out with him when he calls. Humor him and meet him for drinks during the week. Humor him and let him kiss you. Humor him and go home with him that night. Humor him over eggs in the morning. Prepare to humor him when he calls. Wait for him to call.

HIDE AND SEEK

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your friend Caroline’s brother, The Captain

 

At the studio apartment of Player Two’s sister who is out of town, count to five with your eyes closed. Now yell from the bed where you’re sitting, “You can run, but you can’t hide!” Open your eyes. Spot Player Two crouching nervously between the refrigerator and the dresser. Run a few steps and touch him on the shoulder, then say, “Tag, you’re it!” Look around as he counts to five. Scan the 275 square feet frantically as your time runs out. Now make yourself small inside the bathtub in the kitchen.

SCARY ROOMMATE

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your college roommate May

 

When Player Two is studying, stand partially obscured by the door to the living room, so that one eye is visible and the other is blocked. Wait patiently for Player Two to look up and see you. Laugh when she starts screaming. Return to your own homework. Scream later when you’re watching TV and are startled by Player Two’s one creepy eye staring out at you from the closet.

 

DRINKING GAME #2, ROXANNE/RED LIGHT

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your boyfriend Martin

PLAYER THREE: Rachel, a girl Martin knew in high school

PLAYER FOUR: A plump girl in a pink cashmere cable-knit

PLAYER FIVE THROUGH PLAYER NINE: Five twenty-four-year-olds in an East Hampton mansion

 

Turn your head from right to left in order to take in the enormity of the “house” you’ve just pulled up to. Hop out of Player Two’s jeep. Ask Player Two, “Whose house is this again?” “[Player Three’s], a girl I knew in high school.” Nod. You met Player Three before at Player Two’s friend’s rock show in the city (Player Two’s friend is the son of the world’s most famous concert violinist); they all grew up together. That night, at the show, you could tell Player Three liked Player Two, but you weren’t worried because Player Two was
your
boyfriend, because you knew he liked you and not her, and because you were wearing such cute vintage pumps.

Feel your used pumps sink into the gravel driveway as you approach the large forbidding front door. Notice Player Three’s bare, perfectly pedicured feet when she greets you. Take in the pearly ease of her smile. Reciprocate awkwardly when she gives you a kiss on the cheek. (You and your friends don’t kiss on the cheek.) Follow her long legs from room to glorious room as she makes some joke about her and Player Two being “Jewish WASPs,” a joke they both laugh at, which you don’t quite get.

Arrive in the dining room where six Players surround a long banquet table with a small CD player placed purposefully in the middle. Offer your name. Accept a beer. Take a seat. Don’t be shy.

Ask in your friendliest voice, “What are we playing?” Listen to a plump girl in a pink cashmere cable-knit summer sweater (Player Four) count out the players on Team One and Team Two. “You’re Team Two,” Player Four tells you last. “Team One has to drink every time Sting sings ‘Roxanne.’ And Team Two, every time he sings, ‘red light.’ Also, ‘Ra’ counts, Team One!”

“Could you?” Player Four asks, before you realize you’re closest to the CD player.

Nod. Reach over. Press Play.

PS4 STRATEGO

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Mario, a fourteen-year-old boy in your sixth-grade class in the South Bronx

PLAYER THREE: Jade, a twelve-year-old girl in your sixth-grade class in the South Bronx

PLAYER FOUR: Mario’s father

 

When Player Two refuses to sit down, get your gradebook and write a zero next to his name. Stand in the center of the room while you do this and wait for him to notice. Write very slowly and deliberately. After Player Three says, “Yo, Mario, she givin’ you a zero!” look up from your gradebook. Stare Player Two down as he ambles slowly toward his desk, then sits
on
the desk instead of
in
the chair. Say, “You want another zero, [Player Two]?” Don’t say anything when he responds, “I’m sittin’, aren’t I?”

After school, pull out your roll book and find Player Two’s home phone number. Go to the teachers’ lounge and dial the big beige phone. Wait for Player Four to pick up. “Hello, Mr. Mojica? This is Miss Smyles, Mario’s teacher. I’m calling to talk with you about Mario’s behavior in class today.” Listen for a few seconds to a string of Spanish words you don’t understand, some yelling in the background, a long call: “Marioooo!”

Listen to another voice say, “Hello?”

Repeat, “Hello, this is Miss Smyles, Mario’s teacher—”

“Hi, Miss Smyles, this is Mario. My father don’t speak no English, but you can talk to me and I’ll translate.”

Clear your throat. Say to Player Two, “Mario, I was calling to talk with your father about your disruptive behavior in class today.”

“A’ight. I’ll tell ’im.”

“Thank you Mario.”

“See you tomorrow, Miss Smyles.”

Now hang up. You lost.