The drive home was fast. I avoided getting a ticket by moving nine and a half miles an hour over the speed limit. As I curved and swayed with Laguna Canyon Road, it amazed me once again how the foliage lived. It was a competitive harmony, the kind of melody that produced the sweet green tension that stood proudly on either side of the snake-like road. Our so-called intelligent culture, our species could communicate with each other yet could not resolve differences, differences that seem petty in the face of Nature. Only the strongest survive. Our species argues over who is the strongest without acting it out. Our ability to reason is perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the human being; our inability to hinder jealousy slows us down to the point of regression. We are blessed and cursed at the same time. I’ve never been a huge fan of Shakespeare but he had something with his “star-crossed lovers”, only our bodies are Romeo and our minds Juliet. They are in love but are from rival families. That wicked, wicked thorn kills one while the other one searches for its own peace.

What was left of the sun fell quietly in a golden quicksand. The canyon held only sharp orange spears jutting out from the dark green brush mounted high along the road. Purple, indigo, deep blue, and a pale blue filtered smoothly across a palette that served as a plate for the stars. A main course was not far away.

I pulled in the driveway. It was dark. Directly above me was the faint Orange County skyline. Those same stars were much brighter in Flagstaff. They almost seemed closer; the night was black. Only the manufactured orange light of the lampposts broke through the black.

I tried calmly to go about my routine when I got home. I put my keys and wallet on the wooden ledge that led downstairs. But that’s as far as I got. I went to the phone and tried what might have been the number.

“Hello, Lily’s phone.” This must be her ‘roommate’.

“Uh, hi Lily’s phone, is Lily in?”

“Yeah, hold on a second.” More like fifty it seemed….

“Hi.” Hmm, not as enthusiastic as earlier.

“Hey, it’s Chris, what’s up?” I tried to sound as upbeat and carefree as I could.

“Oh, hey.” Pause. “We just finished eating.”

“Yeah, sorry. I went down to the beach and met this old bushy guy—”

“That’s cool. Hey, let me get your number. We’re in the middle of a movie. I’ll call you later.”

Shit, that was no good. “Cool, all right. Ready?” And I gave her the number.

“I’ll call you later. Bye.” Click.

I’m glad my tongue wasn’t on the phone; It would’ve stuck to the frostbite. That could have gone better. Was she mad? Had her ex just come and made her feel guilty for an hour or what? The direction my mind was heading was not a positive direction. I’d better find other plans for the night or I might go crazy. Have you ever acted like you weren’t waiting for a phone call? It’s even worse than actually waiting for the call.

* * * * *

Jim Briggens was a buddie from high school; the beginning of our friendship could be pinpointed to a night we were in cahoots on the ‘Senior Prank’. Along with eleven others, we had spent the night stroking 92’s of black shoe polish onto every door on campus, sandbagging the parking lot and leaving our general presence to be remembered. We were also the ones who had seen the ’91 guys’ bringing the toilet onto campus, dropping it several times. That was all in the past, however. Jim was taller than I was, about 5’9” and he had an all around sandy complexion: hair, skin, and even his eyes. He was a handsome in a beach bum sort of vein and he liked beer and good times; it seemed to be his mantra. He was popular with women but none of them admitted it, they’d just end up disappearing with him for two hours in the middle of a party. It was because of his views and the things he said. Jim had an uncanny knack for telling things as they were and he had a lot of experience in a lot of things. He never set boundaries for himself, and curfews were for other people. Others wished they had the ability to be as indifferent to social mores as he was but I just had fun with him I had left the chill of Lily and our short conversation for a jog along the creek that headed into Santiago canyon with Jim. He was always up for anything. The moon was off to the right of the horizon. It was a slight crescent that tenderly hugged the dark, mysterious portion that would become fully illuminated over the next two weeks. “I met this chick today down at the beach,” I said in between huffs. “She’s hot and seems cool but it seems too easy to be the chump, ya know and go for it.”

Jim reflected that for a moment. “Chump is too harsh of a word,” he said. “We use it but it’s more like a weakness we have. It’s too easy to give in like that and open your guts to a new chick. Some things just can’t be put on the line or even said, ya know what I’m sayin?” He paused, giving me a chance to jump in.

“I know but it’s hard—”

“That’s exactly why you can’t do it. Chicks are always having guys be the chump. We can’t control our emotions once she has us. That’s why I control my feelings” he said proudly and pounded his chest once. “I don’t like to be the guy that’s like all other guys.” I looked over at him and his head was bobbing up and down in rhythm with his jog. “Picture this: if you were a chick,” Jim said. “ Every guy spills his shit every time you give him some or tease him a little, Ok? And even though you can say it’s not a game, it just is. Check this out. Even as a guy, do you want a girl that’s like every other girl?”

“Only if she’s on Baywatch,” I replied but Jim saw I agreed with him.

“No, seriously,” he chuckled as we chugged along. “We want a chick that stands out in one way or another. It doesn’t matter how or why, but that she’s the one we think about when we leave the party or stumble from the bar,” Jim said, pretty much summing up his social life.

Thirty minutes later we had finished our jog and sat in the spare room next to Jim’s bedroom that had served as a small hotel room for years of sexual and alcoholic exploitation. “In a few years,” Jim said, “addition and subtraction will become obsolete. Exponents are taking over. Everything goes too fast and is too much now. We don’t have time to be ourselves anymore. It’s all spent working, and then catching up on things on the weekends.” He stood and paused philosophically. “It’s like our society is a 7-11 open 24 hours,” he said. I thought about that for a minute and then I heard a bell ring in my head but it turned out to be a timer. We were baking a couple of pizzas.

Jim had taken them out of the oven to let them cool and crisp. I began a soliloquy before Jim had returned because I didn’t want to lose sight of my bright, shining thought. “If we are truly aware of this ‘out of control-ness’, can’t we prepare ourselves mentally for it?” That wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to say so before Jim could reply I began another sentence. “I mean, isn’t it possible to change the course of events once those events are known?” My words weren’t having the effect I wanted. In life, by the time great thoughts have become words, they are not the original anymore. Then I tried again. “We are the only creature in the world,” I began boldly, “that is aware of our adaptation. Every other creature adapts naturally. Do you think that affects our growth as humans if we are conscious of adaptation?” The question’s meaning blossomed because Jim did not answer right away.

“Maybe,” Jim replied slowly, “ maybe not.” Pause. “Wow man, that’s a tough question. It’s kind of the chicken or the egg thing.” He began cutting the first pizza and the cheese began sliding with the serrated edge. I hoped that was Jim’s pizza; selfishness seeps into everything we do. I tried not to care and continued a course the conversation had been taking. I knew that a theoretical epiphany could be reached only if one stretched one’s hands far enough.

“How many generations does it take before a noticeable adaptation has occurred, you think? So many they can’t be pinpointed, right?” I asked him but I already knew. It could never be pinpointed, thus only guesstimated at best. “That adaptation,” I struggled to continue, “ is at the heart of a beast whose eyes we’ll never see. However, couldn’t it be possible…”

“That just thinking about the adaptation brings about a minute yet significant change?” Jim added and took a drink of water. “We’d never know, would we? It’s like,” he said and was getting excited now, “turning on the oven, feeling the heat, but not even knowing what the hell you’re cooking. And no matter what you cook, it won’t turn out right because you didn’t follow the recipe. But there’s no recipe,” Jim trailed off.

“But isn’t the fact that you find an oven and know there’s no recipe miracle enough?” I asked. “Hell, half the best things I’ve cooked were made up on the spot. It’s an improvisation of truths: some right and some wrong but every one a truth nonetheless.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jim asked. He often found me humorous probably but he also knew I occasionally let half-baked ideas out of the oven. Too quick to eat, I guess. Jim took a bite of his pizza and burned his mouth. “Shit!” Karma cleared its throat and snorted. That was one of the problems of Western society. We’re so intent on being the righteous one that we never see the forest for the trees. Every philosophy or course of action different from the almighty Democratic world is viewed and branded as wrong, even immoral. “Hey man, what do you think about this,” Jim began again as he carried some napkins back over to the table. “Somehow we, as people of Western society have lain down and have given up our right to voice our views. No, not voice,” he searched, “but include our views. The people on the television who have corporate sponsors to remember now feed us our views. Man, if they—”

“Whoa buddy, calm down. You gotta remember, the world was like this before us, man.” I took a gulp of water. “And it will continue to be like this long after we are gone to our assigned lots in the after life, if there is such a thing. It’s not worth it. I for one,” I said, “would rather live my meager existence than fight for someone else’s. It seems so selfish, I know, but,” I concluded, chomping on a bite of pizza. “Ah, store bought homemade food. What a novel American concept,” I ranted, hoping Jim had already thought of a new light hearted topic.

“No,” Jim said. “Today’s woman is a novel American concept,” he segued smoothly, cueing off of my dead-end digression. I waited patiently. “Well, check this out,” Jim said, “I met this chick the other night at DelRay’s while playing pool and before I finish my first beer, this girl is totally checking me out. She’s with some other dude but every time this guy goes to shoot, it’s on. Like so bad, I won’t even have to do any work for it.”

“Doesn’t that turn you off at all?”

“What?” For a brief second, I thought Jim was playing stupid because he liked the idea of somebody pointing out that girls hit on him all the time. Then he regained his dignity. “Kind of, but it makes it even easier to be the sweet guy and not the chump,” Jim said, and in his unfinished sentence one could see in his eyes that another day, another Jim had been that chump. I had forgotten about those days, they seemed so far away from him.

“You’ve been the chump before too, huh?” I asked, knowing only too well what the answer would be.

“Man, you know. Shit, I went out with Claire for like five years and even though I was an asshole sometimes, towards the end I really tried to make it work and she started to take advantage of it.” Jim was getting visibly worked up-no, that wasn’t quite right, but one could see that it made him slightly agitated to dredge up what he had clearly put behind him. It was obvious that Jim’s current attitudes were a result of his past, but hell, whose past didn’t color their present? “Anyway, I realized that although she didn’t like me being a jerk, when I tried to be the upfront, 90’s guy she changed and even assumed an upper hand.”

“Dude, no relationship should have an upper hand, “ I said.

“Yeah, on paper, but it just doesn’t seem to work out that way,” Jim replied. Chicks don’t want some guy to play the chump because almost every guy plays the chump.” If he was going to act like a whipped dog he would be treated like one. Aldous Huxley’s character, the vicious Lucy Tantamount rang appropriately in my head. It was clear Jim was talking about something he knew quite a bit about. I had a funny vision ofhJim in a lecture hall expounding on “Not Being the Chump”. He was fielding questions from males ranging in age from 18-25 and on the side dazzled a gallery of beautiful women.

Jim continued: “Too many guys get too horny in front of chicks they want and blow it. Chicks are sick of dealing and putting up with that shit.” He paused, gathered his plentiful thoughts and set forth yet again. “This is what I’ve found has gotten me more girls than any other way-“

“How,” I asked, almost drooling at the thought of receiving such a juicy nugget of information.

“I’m gonna tell you. All right, now check this out. For guys it’s a purely physical thing. Yeah, there can be emotions involved but it doesn’t have to be. It’s almost always based on looks. But for the girl, it’s different. It’s a mental thing. Yeah, there are some chicks that just want to fuck, but we won’t include them in this generalization.” He finished the last bite of pizza. “So anyway, I’ve gotten more girls by being the guy that‘s really cool, and acts nice to them but doesn’t try to get down with them. In fact, you act like you don’t even want them. I’ll tell ya, Chris, that works better than anything.” Jim sat back, pleased at his ability to spew out all of that information without losing his train of thought. For a person stigmatized with the label of Generation X, MTV had altered his ability to complete full thoughts. Not to worry, the listener being of the same generation had trouble listening. On topics like this however, I made an exception. How eager the hands that reach for love. Insightful lyrics from a dead man. It was apropos somewhere. .