Love Monkey

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

—H
EMINGWAY,
The Sun Also Rises

M
y day.

8:00
A.M.
Arise.

8:00–8:15. Light stretching. Don't forget those hamstrings. A few push-ups to warm the blood.

8:20. Out the door, hit Central Park Reservoir. Do six laps. Pace: seven minutes per mile. That's ten and a half miles in seventy-five minutes.

9:45. Back home. Shower, reread
The Brothers Karamazov
(“Grand Inquisitor” episode only).

11:45. Call Mom.

12:30. Lunch. Grilled quail, wild rice, spinach salad, fresh-squeezed oj.

1:00. To the Met. Check out Vermeer exhibit. Strike up conversation with cute twenty-five-year-old Dutch graduate student I meet standing in front of
Woman Wearing Doily Around Her Neck
; obtain
her numerals, agree to meet for drinks at the Carlyle “early next week.”

4:00. Back home. Work on my novel till dinner. One interruption: call from superagent.

8:30. Quiet dinner with a few friends at Le Bernadin.
No really, fellas, it's on me.
They all know about my huge advance. We laugh about it.

11:45. Village Vanguard to hear some jazz. Exchange dirty jokes with compadres, trade saucy banter with cocktail waitress who, as I sweep out the door, slips me her digits.

2:00. Cab back home, practice piano for half an hour, and so to bed. If can't sleep, read a chapter of that John Adams bio everyone's talking about. (Was he really cooler than T. Jefferson?)

That's what it says in my Yahoo! appointment book for today, anyway. But back here on Planet Manhattan, I creep out of bed as dawn breaks over Honolulu and skulk in the shower for forty-five minutes. (I know it was forty-five minutes because I had Pink Floyd's
The Wall
in my Raindance CD player, and I got all the way through disc one.) Then I pick, off the floor, a few more dead flower petals from The Dinner and plant myself on the sofa that still bears my ass print from last night, surrounded by my twenty-first-century entertainment-and sodium-delivery devices: four fiendishly over-complicated, girl-proof remote controls; two near-spent crinkly bags of salty snacks. There's a white crumb on the couch. I am too civilized to just leave it there, so I pick it up. And I put it in my mouth. Pfft. Dandruff. At
best
.

Some notes on me.

The name is Tom Farrell. I'm from That generation. You know the one I'm talking about. The one after the one that discovered the Beatles and nonbinding sex, the one before the one where seventeen-year-olds asked to be excused from Phys. Ed. so they could launch their IPOs. Yeah, that'd be us: the Lamest Generation.
Cultural anthropologists of the future will remember us primarily for nonblack tuxedos, Valerie Bertinelli, and Men at Work. Our grandfathers won World War II. We can't even tie a bow tie.

I'm not in great shape. I do, occasionally, complete one gasping lap around the reservoir. When I run, it's prose in motion. My abs are a one-pack. My arms are steamed licorice. My teeth are carved of wax. I've been compared to a redheaded Winnie the Pooh, an Oompa Loompa without the self-tanning lotion, a slightly elongated Teletubby. For one formative grade—fifth—I was known exclusively as “Doughboy.” The first time some playground wit poked my tummy hoping to elicit a girlish giggle, it was funny. The 100th time it was less so. By the 500th time, I was developing a complex, and at 603 (I counted, oh how I counted), I entered therapy. At 607, my late father opened a glassine-windowed envelope, began a five-second argument with my mother (“What the hell is this shit?”), and therapy was concluded.

I'm defiantly average, studiously okay, the Gap of bachelors. You know how when you go into Duane Reade and there's a generic product next to the one with a logo and a memorable back story of amusing and informative TV commercials? IBUPROFEN. MOUTHWASH. ANTIHISTAMINE. That's me: the man without a brand. The one you would never pick after you won the lottery. I contain all the same ingredients, and I'm a bargain. But I have no shelf appeal. If someone saw me in your medicine chest, you'd
die
.

I'm thirty-two, as healthy as any other Spam-raised American male. I look pretty young. Hair is disappearing from my scalp, but fortunately it hasn't deserted me: It's just relocating to my nostrils and ears. My face—my patriotic mug of red hair, white skin, blue eyes—is doing okay. I have no laugh lines (what's funny?). I'm not short, not really. I stand the Minimum Acceptable Height for an Adult Male. (Some celebrities I know to be shorter than myself: Redford. Stallone. Pitt.) But the only way I could ever be labeled tall
would be if I became a Starbucks beverage. I don't play sports much anymore, so I compensate by watching extra sports on TV. Australian Rules golf, anyone? Need a rundown of the favorites at this year's Tour de Luxembourg?

I have a one-bedroom apartment, a refrigerator containing (solely) beverages and condiments, a Manhattan-sized mini-microwave deployed only for popping corn, a supply of Cheez-It crumbs that I store under my sofa cushions, stacks of dusty black stereo equipment, and an increasingly avalanchable Matterhorn of CDs. (Single women in their thirties accumulate cats; I stockpile home electronics.) I've got the requisite panoply of Banana Republic shirts in assorted colors (dark blue, light blue, blue). I own forty-three T-shirts. I watch
The Simpsons
3.7 times a week, and I floss 3.7 times a year. When the house lights go down before a rock concert, I am often the first to shout, “Freebird!”

My most time-consuming hobby is collecting ex-girlfriends. When I'm feeling nonwhimsical, I call up selections from my personal torture jukebox. E-6: Tess. The girl I left behind after I worked at a stuffy newspaper in London for a few months. She hated America despite never having set foot here. She still hasn't, as far as I know. C-11: Judy. First girl I ever slept with, incompetently. She married a Japanese guy, moved to Kyoto, and had twins. Do you think I still have a chance with her? Then there's A-2: the one who almost did it to me. Betsy, my Betsy. Dated her up to and beyond (although not much beyond) the all-defining two-year mark. She knew me better than anyone else ever did. That was a feeling both excellent and scary. In the end I just couldn't handle the idea that my sexual scorecard would be stuck at four for the rest of my life. I was twenty-four. She's living with some guy now. He's an easygoing, jolly, kindhearted fellow whom I would like to strangle in his sleep.

I've been thinking about this guy who wrote this book. It's about a regular, warm, flawed fella and his girlfriend. It goes into his longings
and his needs and his fears and how he keeps screwing up in lovable ways. The whole story is told in Top Five lists. Every girl I know has read his book, and they all want (or think they want) to meet a guy like the guy in the book. More specifically, they want to meet the guy who wrote the book. What must a party be like for him? He must get home from the pub and empty his jacket pockets and go: whose phone number is this? And why is it written on a pair of panties? He wrote the world's longest personal ad and got paid for it. They even made a movie out of it: the movie consisted of good-looking people reading the Top Five lists from the book.

So I reflect for a moment about improving my relationships. About the secret sorrows of men and the stated needs of women. About longing and forgiveness and how wise people learn to love each other's imperfections.

And I conclude: I better get cracking on some Top Five lists.

I don't have a girlfriend now: I played the field, and the field won. This makes me slightly suspect. What's wrong with me? Am I gay? (I wish: nonstop guiltless action, plus you get to be good looking and tasteful, and all you have to do is wear a condom, which I seem to end up doing most of the time anyway. A lot of vaguely intellectual feministy New York girls seem to think the Pill is a male plot to give them cancer or something, a conspiracy they discuss over cigarettes.) Am I unable to share my deep feelings? Do I lack any deep feelings in the first place? Am I just picky? Possibly. But at thirty-two it starts to hit you: there is a fine line between picky and
loser
.

Despite my flaws I have had a more or less standard number of girlfriends. I have dated three different Jennifers, which puts me slightly below average for a guy my age, and two Asian girls: way below average. I have dated girls who quote Joni Mitchell and girls who quote Madonna. Girls who cry inexplicably and girls who go all Women's Studies on you if you call them girls. Girls who like to be taken to flashy parties and girls who like to stay home with Fred
Astaire. They all have two things in common. Every one of them was better looking, for a girl, than I am for a guy. And every one of them has improved me in some way. (A few personality renovations I owe to them: stopped wearing white crew socks with my khakis; began wearing belt every day; stopped wiping nose on sleeve when anyone is looking; learned key girl terms, such as mule, bias cut, empire waist, blowout, etc., essential to understanding most girl conversations.)

There are advantages to girlfriendlessness: no one to monitor alcohol consumption. Breakfast cereal: not just for breakfast! Can watch midget boxing if I feel like it. Very little time wasted discussing one's emotional issues and picking at one's family-inflicted scar tissue. If want sexual experience before I go to sleep, no need to be nice to hand all day. During, need not feel obliged to call out my name; afterward, not required to hold myself for one to two hours.

But then again. Boxing is boring. My hand never dresses up nice to get my attention. There is no one to make sarcastic comments to while watching TV. And in Singleland, you hardly ever get to ask: did you just fart?

About the emotional crap. I have no objection to talking about myself. (Why should I? I certainly have no objection to talking
to
myself.) And it's not like I don't have issues. They're just hidden in back. They're back issues. Would I be a more fully rounded human if I dusted them off once in a while? One of those poets they made us read in college said to know yourself was the highest achievement. What if your true self is a slimy little reptile? Is it really such an accomplishment to let it out to go slithering into the punch bowl?

Surely there is one way to find the answers for which I strive. TV.

Flick, flick. News on the latest local massacre, that scary sitcom about high school, Charlie Rose (is he on at all times?), the Argument Network, Always Pantiliner commercial, the Hitler Channel, Natural Disaster News, the Boring Channel (sea turtles and coral), the
The Breakfast Club
Channel, Tampax commercial (always reminds
me of the old joke: Father says to his ten-year-old son, “What do you want for your birthday, son?” Kid goes, “Tampax.” Father goes, “Why Tampax?” Kid goes, “Because then I can do anything. I can go swimming, I can go dancing, I can play tennis….”), the Fishin' Magician (they still make those?), the Bands-on-Drugs-but-Very-Sorry-About-It Channel, what appears to be yet another MTV spring break show (wasn't spring break, like, four months ago?), the People-Talking-Very-Seriously-in-British-Accents Channel, and, ah!, wot's this then, gents? The Cartoon Network.

A Bugs Bunny retrospective. Bugs is standing on Elmer's head, rubbing the hair tonic in really good with his big rubbery bunny feet. The hair starts to grow. Elmer, observing developments in a hand mirror, is elated. Petals pop forth. No! That wasn't hair tonic, it was fertilizer! The kind that grows flowers on scalps! Now Elmer is very, very angry, and reaches into the back of his shirt, where he has been keeping his musket the whole time. How clever of him to have armed himself for his barber's appointment. But I know what's coming. In the next thirty seconds, Bugs will momentarily baffle him by dashing out of the scene, returning dressed as a girl (a girl bunny, though), and giving Elmer flowers and candy, thus wowing Elmer and causing him to present Bugs with a wedding ring, which in turn will inspire Bugs to don wedding regalia. Bugs and Elmer will find a minister and say their vows, but Bugs will carry Elmer up a stairway to their honeymoon suite, which of course will not be a suite at all but just a door leading into empty space. Bugs, lifting Elmer over the threshold, will then drop him to a nasty and violent death, which is really not very fair treatment for a guy who has just made a serious commitment to you despite the obvious hurdles involved in an interspecies marriage between a homosexual gun nut and a transvestite anthropomorphic rodent who barely know each other, at least within the context of this cartoon. That's marriage for you, folks. Who needs it?

Five hours later, Yosemite Sam is firing a cannon at Bugs when the phone rings. I am vaguely annoyed because I want to see what happens, although I admit that the smart money's on Bugs to find an even bigger cannon, catch the cannonball in his cannon, and fire the cannonball back at Yosemite Sam, leaving him with a singed mustache and soot-blackened face. I feel bad about this, but I plan to quietly rejoice when Sam recuperates the next second.

The phone. It could be an important news bulletin from an acquaintance. It could be one of several cute girls I know, although that's really stretching imagination to the warranty-voiding point. It could be a long-lost pal from high school. It could be one of the impossibly witty and lively guys I know, offering an outlandish good time.

But why take a chance?

And as the phone rings for a fourth time (my machine picks up; the caller hangs up), it hits me: twenty years ago on a Saturday morning, I would have been doing exactly the same thing, with only two crucial differences: 1) There was no Cartoon Network, so Bugs was only on from ten-thirty to noon, when my Hoover-wielding mother would forcibly evict me from the living room and urge me into the backyard where my psychotic older brothers awaited, daydreaming of complicated tortures; and 2) I ate my Cocoa Krispies out of a plastic
Empire Strikes Back
bowl instead of the glass one on my lap right now. (Don't think I don't miss it.)