Straight No Chaser

To Aaron

1. your first black eye: did you give it or get it?
got it. for three days i looked like a plum tree.

2. is it always better to be safe than sorry?
i have no idea, but i hope so, because otherwise i've wasted a good twenty-one years being primarily safe. with a few key, probably very stupid exceptions. for example, the other day, when aaron was hating his life, i really should have called him. really should have. just, you know, on the off chance that he might have benefitted from the healing power of my voice. i tend not to envision the worst-case scenario, when people start talking like that--one of the few ways i'm not particularly safe--and i was sorry, afterward, that i didn't. i wanted to talk to him. i still do.

3. do you look at someone's mouth or eyes when they are talking to you?
neither; i'm a nose person. i have a problem with eye contact, i avert when possible, but i also hate staring at a speaker's mouth, because there's that perpetual danger of spotting a hijack tooth or a scrap of leftover spinach or something.

4. if you were around secondhand smoke enough, would you be swayed to smoke?
aaron, i think you asked me once whether i'd smoke with you, if we ever hung out/got married. i love you, but the same answer (a resounding no) applies here. i think i'd lose respect for myself if anything ever swayed me to voluntarily take up smoking.

5. do you think anyone can be an actor?
if paris hilton can be an actor, then anyone can be an actor. if renee zellweger can be an actor, and respected in spite of how ugly she is and her playing each role in exactly the same way, then anyone can be an actor.

6. okay, what song are you listening to now?
the inverted version of john coltrane's "naima," which, though rewritten quickly for copyright purposes at the vanguard recordings, is probably my absolute favorite piece of music, ever. i always think about how i should make aaron a mix cd; how i'd have to try really hard to keep it tailored to his personal tastes rather than letting the extent of my own creep in. i think "naima" would be on it either way.

7. do you talk just to hear yourself, even when you're alone?
yes. i test out small pieces of stories, ninety-five percent of which never get written down. so many of them just sound better than they look on paper.

8. do you think you'll ever visit the clinton library?
i'd love to. aaron, want to go?

9. do you emotionally hurt people on purpose?
not only do i not do it on purpose, i also seriously doubt anyone cares about my opinion enough for me to hurt their feelings by accident, either. one of the first things i remember marcus telling me was that he has a very thick skin; jabs and insults don't bother him because he knows who he is on the inside, blah blah blah, and that the only thing that would really sting would be for someone who knows him well (me, for example) to call him self-centered. he said that would really tear him up, really cause him to rethink things. well. i did, once, accidentally, during a fight, and he didn't even bat an eyelash. didn't faze him in the slightest. so, either i pronounced the words wrong, which i doubt, or i am just emotionally impotent. sigh.

10. would you date a minister?
maybe not. i don't think a minister would date me, either, but that's beside the point. it would be pretty stupid of me, after all i've learned these past two years, to enter a relationship with another completely public persona. similarly, i do not think things would last between aaron and a nun. correct me if i'm wrong.

11. on vacation, do you usually take more pictures of landscapes or buildings?
landscapes, but they usually take the camera away from me, because i also take pictures of things like shark sacs and dried-up jellyfish, when left to my own devices.

12. do you think pit bulls should be illegal to own?
no, because if we don't keep them domesticated, then what, they just run wild? aaron, tell the story about your hamster ball again, please. small miracles like that would never happen in a world where pit bulls roamed freely.

13. are your parents willing to help you through college?
they value education more highly than almost anything else, and they've always made it clear that they intend to support us both as needed, for as long as we're in school. with our scholarships, though, we earn our own tuitions, and i use work money for my tiny expenses. everything else is all them. they're completely willing, is the short answer.

14. is it obvious that one of your family members did drugs in the sixties?
what aaron was saying the other day, about living in a post-indulgence haze, all that applies on a huge decades-long scale to my uncle. he did heroin in the sixties, and today he makes faces and twitches and always acts as though he'd rather be someplace else, scratching his biceps.

15. do you think people worry too much about being open-minded?
no.

16. are you offended when you see a visitor in your country wearing a crest of their flag?
why would that be offensive? i wouldn't care if a citizen wore another country's flag, either. a flag is an inanimate symbol. patriotism is a subjective ideal. actions speak louder than crests, et cetera. aaron!! we forgot something important!!!

17. would you rather master one language, or learn two languages and be average in them both?
i could study english my entire life and never "master" it. in the scheme of things i'm probably not that much more fluent in english than i am in spanish, so, that one. average in both.

18. do you think that jesus was just a magician?
i think aaron will be a magician if he figures out a way to save my life on the island. and no, to the jesus thing. i seriously doubt any cheesy magician is or was powerful enough to secure the worship of the next hundred generations of followers.

19. should freak dancing be banned from school dances?
you know, i gave a fuck in high school, when jared's editorial came out, and i will again when my own kids hit puberty, but i really, really don't give a fuck right now. i honestly don't think freak dancing makes kids any more or less likely to have sex after the dance is over, and trying to keep our kids' minds pure just for the hell of it is futile, so i wish they'd just stop talking about it.

20. if fox created a sitcom starring jennifer lopez, would you watch it?
yes, and so would you, and that would bridge the culture gap. we would both think it was absolutely the worst thing ever.