May 31, 2007 (revised June 11, 2007)
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Zane Brogden literally walked into my life when he walked into the shop that afternoon and started looking around. I couldn�t stop looking at him as I stood behind the cash register. I didn�t know his name yet, just that he was the cutest guy I�d ever seen; his lithe figure and porcelain skin made me glad I�d listened to my gut and turned down that lamp-shop job, despite the actual cappuccino machine in the lamp shop�s break room.
Anyway, after a minute or two, he walked up to me.
�May I help you?� I asked.
�Yes, you may,� he replied. �Do you have any carburetor fluid that smells like patchouli?�
�Excuse me?�
�Do you have any carburetor fluid that smells like patchouli? In large economy size, preferably.�
�Is this a type of lube?�
�No, it�s just carburetor fluid that smells like patchouli. I thought my car engine should smell like the Summer of Love for a change. You know, to liven up the driving experience?�
�Mm-hmm.�
�So, do you have it? The carburetor fluid that smells like patchouli?�
�Uh, we don�t sell automotive supplies here, sir.�
�You don�t? This isn�t AutoMan Empire?�
�No. This is F-Natural.�
Zane widened his eyes. �Well, so it is,� he said with amazement. �I was wondering what someone as unbelievably sexy as you was doing in an auto shop. Someone as sexy as you belongs in a sex shop!�
�Well, thank you. You�re very observant.�
I knew a relationship had just begun between us.
Six months later, we were still together, but I knew we shouldn�t be. Other than our physical attraction, we had nothing in common. In fact, I�d grown to hate him when we weren�t in the bedroom�or in the shower, or on the couch, or behind the couch, or under the pedestrian overpass at the park, or in the dank bathroom downstairs at Club Cochlea during the Boysenberry Tart Experience show.
And I had a lot of reasons to hate him. For starters, we shared an apartment, and he could barely pay his tiny portion of the rent each month (and hadn�t paid any rent at all the last two months), but he had plenty of money to buy the junkiest junk over the Internet�in particular, every copy he could find of that wretched seven-inch single, �Sgt. Pooper�s Only Farts Club Band.� I didn�t know how many copies he owned, maybe fifty or sixty. He called them �collectors� items of the so-bad-they�re-good variety,� but he probably really bought them just to piss me off. And I didn�t know where he kept them, either. I said I would smash every copy that arrived at our place, so he rented a post-office box and a storage unit, money for those types of rent, of course.
Also, Zane was a huge supporter of George W. Bush, again to piss me off, apparently. He, Zane, would insist he wasn�t kidding when he would call Bush �a decent dude,� �a truthful dude,� �the dude America needs.� Zane even dressed his stuffed pet hamster in a tiny version of Bush�s mission-accomplished flight suit, complete with bulging crotch. (Another great Internet buy�only fifty-nine ninety-five, including shipping.) Not that Zane was right-wing�he had no serious interest in politics and had never voted, but he told me that if he had voted three years ago in the 2004 presidential election (the first election of any kind he�d been old enough to vote in), he would have picked Bush. �Parties are much better under right-wing administrations,� Zane said. �The right-wingness, like, makes our fun more taboo? More thrilling?� I said that in that case, Zane could go to great parties forever, since that presidential election had probably been the last one President-for-Life Bush would ever permit. Zane told me to stop worrying, worrying causes AIDS.
Then there was his disrespect for my veganism. He ate meat, which I could have lived with, except that he ate the smelliest, ugliest, greasiest microwave meat dishes, at least at home. They usually involved, ugh, pork, and would smell almost as bad as the cheap cigarettes he would smoke. Worse, he�d cook his meals inside my microwave, the only one at our place, causing the healthy vegan dishes I would cook to get contaminated with slaughtered-animal particles. He couldn�t even clean out my microwave after using it. When I�d ask him to clean it out, he�d say �Clean out ze microwave, you �orrid leetle meat-eatair!�
Which brings us to the biggest reason I�d grown to hate him. I was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, but I moved to the U.S. with my family when I was a year old. I�ve lived in the U.S. for almost my whole life and don�t speak with a French accent. I�ve never spoken with a French accent. Yet Zane would imitate me like I was a newly-neutered Pep� Le Pew: high-pitched, spastic, and in throbbing pain. It was good-natured ribbing at first, but not as good-natured by the 648th time. When I�d tell Zane to stop it, he�d say something like �Chill out� and rub my shoulder in that sensuous way that made me forget my irritation toward him. Sometimes I hated my damn hormones.
The night of our six-month anniversary, I picked him up in front of Coffee Clutch, the coffeehouse where he worked with Garrick Moyes, a sedated-looking guy I�d met a few times, just exchanging hi�s, I didn�t really know him that well. Zane sat down next to me, and I started driving toward the amphitheater; we planned to celebrate our anniversary by going to the Lick the Scarf concert.
Five minutes into our journey, he said �You might find this interesting. At work today, Garrick said he was in love with me�.He said he�d been in me for quite some time.�
�Well, that is interesting,� I said after a few seconds, �but why are you telling me this? To make me jealous?�
�No, just to impress you. Don�t worry, I don�t love him. I�m not gonna run off with him or anything.�
�Why not? He seems like a nice guy, and he�s not bad-looking. And you probably have more in common with him than you do with me. So why don�t you run off with him?�
�Well�because I love you.�
�Really. You love me. You sure about that?� I didn�t feel like celebrating a relationship I felt like ending. Maybe if I passive-aggressively picked a huge enough fight, he�d end things. I also felt lazy that night. �You�ve probably never loved anyone in your life other than yourself.�
�Oh, snap,� he said in a bored voice.
�Do you even love your sister?�
That got him. �What the fuck?! Of course I love my sister. What does she have to do with anything?�
His sister was Kassie Brogden, who had received that severe beating at the sports bar a few months earlier.
�Well�� I said. �Did you visit her in the hospital?�
�No, I hate hospitals. They�re, like, fucking corpse factories.�
�Okay, have you visited her outside the hospital?�
�What is your problem tonight?�
�My problem�is this relationship.� So much for passive-aggressiveness. �Why do I have a relationship with someone I don�t connect with? With someone incapable of love?�
�Oh yeah? Are you capable of love?�
�Yes.�
�And do you feel any love for me?...Did you ever feel any love for me?�
A moment or two of silence.
�You know,� Zane said, �I really don�t care if you ever loved me, or if you believe I love you. But I do care that you realize I love my sister. Especially after all she�s been through�Plus, when I came out, she was the only family member not to treat me like Osama bin Dover.�
Zane paused. He must have thought I would laugh at that Osama bin Dover line.
�Stop at that Food Family,� Zane said.
�Huh?�
�Stop at that Food Family. I wanna prove how much I love my sister.�
TO BE CONTINUED
The Cary Grant of pigs would have appeared in this story, but he was too busy makin' bacon with the Ferdinand Carlton Gilverstoney of cross-eyed wallabies....Fiction, Home.
� 2007 David V. Matthews