When I Was Comfortable Enough to Laugh

MY girlfriend was rich. Ridiculously rich. That was the least repellant of her character defects. Add a cranial plexus of well-toned musculature between her adorable auricles and behind those lovely green eyes; a dollop of epicurean élan and a dash of indefatigable panache that could charm the last sparkle off a brand new set of designer teeth; a phenomenal figure that even an exquisite hourglass would find unattainable, for which it was necessary to invent non-Euclidean geometry in order to express its curves—then you can barely begin to get the most infinitesimal hint of the incredible magnitude of my odd little dilemma: I had to do it.
  Meche had a long healthy mane of ferociously red, superfluously straight, and perfectly frizzy hair, like a feathered Indian war bonnet made entirely out of freshly dry-cleaned and industrially steam-pressed grenadine. Red. Ché Guevara tee shirt red. Red like a mephistophelean mole on the Devil’s rosy red ass cheek. The color a guardian angel sees when he finds out that Lucifer’s on the loose. Red. Santa’s brand new pajamas before they hit the laundry for the very first time, and the thousand-watt bulb shoved up Rudolph’s happy old merry XXX-mas nose when he works as the doorman of a back-alley Amsterdam whorehouse. Red. Hoyle’s thirteen tricks shooting the moon through the heart with an uncut diamond solitaire. Red.
  It was direly straight, too.
  She had just finished washing it, had already wrapped and wound it up in a tightly whorled braid and erected it atop her head within a plush ecru towel, when, after having disappeared umpteen months beforehand (something she had come to do almost habitually over the dozen or so years we were together), she suddenly reappeared with ambition enough to prepare for me a gourmet multi-course meal; an amorous ambience of inviting strains of heady jazz music played on scratchy old vinyl albums; and the subtly wafting undertones of fragrant notes from imported sticks of exotic incenses moldering for good measure—then and there of all nights: the first night in I don’t know how long since even I had somehow found my way home.
  Beside the rakishly flattering cocktail dress—a scanty enamel-white affair like a porcelain version of the proverbial little black dress—which hugged her exquisite curves like a top-fuel racecar negotiating dangerous chicanes and hairpin turns, Meche wore nothing else, save for that alluring French eau de toilette for which she had always had an obsessive fancy, and a wry grin I recognized right off the bat. I could tell by the smile that she wanted to talk before getting down to the dirty business of knocking boots, or “bumping the uglies,” as Meche would often refer to it casually with a laugh and a sly smirk. After all, is that not what estranged lovers are supposed to do upon reuniting after prolonged stretches of separation? She had to be in a talkative mood, what with the handful of white powder—which I presumed to be several hundred dollars worth of premium label cocaine—she was snorting up her nose shamelessly and without regard for the idea of moderation or propriety. Furthermore, having watched this scene played out so many times in the past, it would be uncharacteristic of her not to want to talk after so many months apart and as many or more lines of good blow.
  Meche poured me a strong Caucasian, followed quickly by another and another. She inhaled a couple more lines of coke. Then the process repeated twice more. That look on her face told me everything: Meche wanted desperately to talk intimately over the fancy dinner she had prepared for me as if it were an ostentatious olive branch of peace being offered or forgiveness being asked. But I sat quietly, awkwardly, not wanting to talk, just sipping on Caucasians. We watched each other suspiciously for an hour or so; while she finished preparing and serving the gourmet supper, she tried several times to speak to me but I dismissed every attempt, pretending to tap my fingers and hum along with the McCoy Tyner record spinning on the turntable, or sneaking off to the lavatory.
  I returned from the head and she tried anew to spark up another conversation.
  Again, however, her attempt was in vain. Neither of us said anything at all until, eventually, we were sitting across from each other at the dining room table which Meche had inherited from some fabulously wealthy relative or other, both of us surrounded at the table by the gourmet meal she had cooked for me served in four full courses on her fine heirloom china (bequeathed to her from some other ridiculously rich relative). She muttered something. Then she rambled about something else. By then, I was already good and inebriated from all the Caucasians I’d been knocking back since getting home. Moreover, Meche continued to blather on and on and on and on and on to me for I don’t know how long; a drunk’s concept of temporal questions is never to be trusted completely.
  I lost myself in the Cuba-Libre-esque redness of a bottle of habañero sauce she had placed on the table in front of me in an egregiously gauche manner. No, it was worse than gauche: a gaudy bottle of hot sauce insouciantly standing amid an haute cuisine meal worthy of a table at Versailles, served on lavish gilded china. Additionally, Meche knew how perilously sensitive my allergy to the spicy components of chili peppers was. Soon, though, I could no longer help but to notice the abhorrent sound of Meche’s mellifluous voice radiating out toward me from behind the wan, gossamer veil of flickering aromatic taper candles licking at the darkness like so many famished tongues. Her voice wafted around the opulent floral centerpiece, which I knew—with almost metaphysical certitude—she had arranged with her own two hands some time earlier in the afternoon just for this occasion. We had been through this routine several times over the course of our checkered history together. There was little either of us could do to surprise the other. Meche’s voice filled the shadows in much the same way that a growing sense of ennui was beginning to imbue my soul. Finally, I could no longer pretend to ignore her.
  “Well, aren’t you just dying to find out where I’ve been?” she asked playfully.
  “Meche,” I told her flatly, “I’m not quite sure I even want to know where the hell I’ve been.”
  She laughed. As her slender graceful fingers began to fidget with the split-ends of the Bing cherry-red bangs dangling in front of her emerald eyes, she leaned toward me ingenuously, affecting an earnest air, as if that might induce between us more intimacy. “You know, one of the things I’ve always found sexiest about you,” Meche admitted, “is that funny way of yours of only being serious when you’re trying to tell me a joke.” She tittered nervously, still playing with the cerise tresses hanging before her face: somehow, she had confessed too much to me with that declaration. I was dismissive in my silence. Giggling, Meche airmailed me one of her sultry kisses, paying the postage with a suggestive sonnet spoken in a series of tawdry winks.
  “I wasn’t kidding,” I lied.
  “Me, either.”
  Touché, I thought. I was never good at getting sarcastic remarks past Meche.
  “You look . . . good,” she patronized.
  “Do I?” I squawked, hoping to deflect her attention; but in doing so, I failed to do what I had most desired to do: to somehow change the subject to something far less personal.
  “Yeah,” Meche agreed matter-of-factly. “You sure do.” This destroyed any chance I could have had to avoid the conversation I knew was coming.
  Oh, yeah? I said to myself. Well, I don’t have to mean what I say, either. “Thanks,” I protested with a surly nod.
  “No, really,” Meche begged my pardon. “Seriously. I mean it. Haven’t seen or heard from you in who knows how long, now; and—let me tell you—it’s crazy how you haven’t really aged at all. Well, not so obviously. Nope. Not one bit. And your dashing good looks—you know the looks that originally made me go crazy and fall hopelessly in love with you? —Well, they still become you, the way they always have—but haven’t fallen apart yet in the slightest way. At least not how I’ve been imagining they would. Yep, still got it. Any hungry little vamp’s heart would surely be all aflutter just looking at you, babe.”
  She blew a few strands of her strawberry-rhubarb-pie locks away from her face, smiled at me, lit a cigarette; and, winking again, Meche took a long slow pull from her Du Maurier menthol before continuing: “I have to admit, though, I had envisioned your face as much more gaunt somehow. Your eyes darker—both in character and color. Not to mention the dark circles and bags I had imagined would be surrounding and dangling below your eyes. I guess you could call it brooding—which, as you already know, is a trait I’ve always found so irresistible. Yes, brooding it is. And sharper, too. Or edgier, maybe. Your eyes, that is,” she explained, all the while toying with the henna-hued bangs dangling before her jaded (in both color and character) eyes.
  “Regardless,” Meche added, dispelling a platinum cloud of mentholated cigarette smoke with a wave of her hand and a prodigious sigh, “both eyes should be burrowed even further into the back of your skull than they already are now.” With irises as verdant in hue as two ampoules of pure, unadulterated chlorophyll, and both just as busy converting the dim candlelight into raw vivacity, her eyes sought out mine, furtively; her face took on a nebulous glare as she spoke. “Plus—and I don’t know why,” she chuckled, drawing again at the filtered end of her Du Maurier, “but I had totally convinced myself your hair—or whatever, if anything at all, would still be left of it—would be, should be thinning out, receding, maybe even balding like nobody’s business. In my mind, it had to be incontrovertibly gray.” With this, Meche exhaled a silvery cloud of grayish menthol smoke, as if to emphasize her point.
  I guffawed deliberately—whether I was supposed to have done so or not. She, for her part, answered my cackle with some kind of expectant gaze. “Knowing you, Meche,” I fawned, “you’re probably expecting me to take all of this like it’s all just one great big giant compliment, aren’t you?” Once again, I watched another attempt at humor turn to ashes right in front of me. Even with my utter lack of humor (at that particular moment, and in general, really), and her persistent manner of seldom acknowledging my sarcasm or hilarity, the statement—and the tone of voice in which I spoke it—was, in retrospect, quite funny.
  Nevertheless, neither of us was inclined to laugh, titter, or chortle. Nor did either of us let blemish our lips a smirk, scowl, or even a sneer: a deadpan remark—subtly devoid of humor—simply deflated in front of us as so many similar statements of mine had done so many times before. Moreover, we both knew all too well how I had never been good at telling jokes, relating humorous anecdotes, or being funny—no, not in the most remote senses of those words; so, because and in spite of this, I decided it was high time that I should drop at least one ridiculously hilarious whopper in Meche’s lap: “Meche,” I professed, “you haven’t the faintest goddam inkling of just how bloody fucking wonderful it feels for you to see me right now!”
  That was the most hilarious remark I had ever let spring forth from my tongue.
  Meche’s sly retort made my remark seem in comparison to be paltry, corny, humorless: “No, the pleasure’s all mine,” she corrected, and laid the remains of the Du Maurier upon the gilded edge of her dinner plate.
  She chomped on a forkful of tempura-battered plantains while I toyed with the food in front of me without appetite. Then she began to lecture me in a tenor which left plenty of doubt in my mind as to whom it was—she or I—she had originally intended to convince of this: “If you still look this damn good after so many months and weeks without having me around to pamper you, it probably means you’ve been living a little easier than you might otherwise be getting along. Yeah. Maybe for once taking pretty decent care of yourself for a change. Well, something or other along those lines, I guess. Roughly speaking, that is.
  “I mean, time’s obviously been pretty good to you—more or less, I suppose—my dear. Or have you found another hot little coed from one of your classes to do the job in my absence?” She asked this without any accusation apparent in her tone. “So, c’mon, now—you must’ve been up to something good or something you must’ve liked to have been up to all this time. Must have done something you’re proud of or excited about. Don’t you have anything splendid you want to tell me about? Even a little bit?”
  With that, I chewed apathetically at the broiled tilapia I had just bitten off my fork, and clanked its sterling silver tines against the golden rims of two of the plates laid out before me—just to buy myself another moment or two. Then I decided it might be in my best interest to compromise. “Why don’t you give me one of those fancy European squares you’ve got there, and I suppose I’ll tell you all about it.”
  “Everything?” she pleaded in a voice that suggested she was adopting a tack of coy resignation.
  “Yeah, everything.”
  Meche obliged, going so far as to light the Du Maurier for me; and I inhaled, feigning gregariousness, all the while pretending not to notice her. But try as I might, I couldn’t quite completely ignore her intransigent coquetry.
  “What’s the matter?” she demanded after a protracted spell of silence. “Pussy kitten’s got your tongue, my love?”
  I shrugged this off aloofly—or so I thought: “Now, what was it I was supposed to be telling you, again?”
  Meche shook her ecru-towel-turbaned head with more than a hint of sincere reproach for me on display. “It’s been such a long, long time, indeed.” Her demeanor told me clearly how she was . . . exasperated.
  I was surprised to hear myself ask aloud just how long it actually had been. Her lack of response told me how she was neither amused, bemused, c-mused, nor x, y, or z-mused with me at this point. Then, in the awkward disquieting silence that ensued, each of us attempted to outdo the other in a ludicrous competition of grotesque histrionic maneuvers, all intended to constitute a queer portrayal of how a couple of heretofore estranged lovers would appear as they both went on counting in their heads just how many days and weeks and/or months it had been since either of them had seen the other.
  Soon, I had pretended long enough. “Well, then, that should be about enough about me,” I concluded. “How have you been?”
  However, Meche had an uncanny inherent talent for instantly turning devilishly icy without warning; it was one of those freakish things she had always done best. Yet, I had never felt such a palpable spate of frostbite quite so piercing as this one. Nor had one ever afflicted me to such a degree as this; and, not once had an aftermath of any of Meche’s previous manifestations of dispassionate, chilling demeanor ever harbored quite such a conspicuously exhibited bent for what seemed to me to be an unmitigated case of some sort of vitriolic fever.
  “I can still get it wet when I want to, lover boy.” Meche waxed venomously stoic, spitting out each of the words joylessly, in a manner devoid of inflection, without one trace of humor, hubris, or humility in her voice. It was like listening to the sleaziest song I had never heard anybody not singing.
  Moreover, that remark surprised the shit out of both of us.
  Yet in the end, it was Meche who would be most surprised, most astounded, most shocked, when I suddenly stood up and lunged across the table—demoniacally—to stab that sterling silver dinner fork terminally deep into the flesh of her scintillating, slender neck, tacitly, ignominiously wanting just to let myself go and start laughing and cackling hysterically at the delectable sight of her aphrodisiacal physique beginning to bleed itself dry; but despite this almost irresistible impulse, I was then deriving far too intoxicating a thrill from having impaled her so deeply to have done anything other than stand silently beside her, drenched with her squirting blood, transfixed, and gawking. After a rather difficult struggle, a struggle which ultimately left me feeling intense pangs of lassitude as I endeavored to retract the fork from her throat, she convulsed, asphyxiating, gasping for air while the wound made a horrific sucking and slurping sound. I finally dropped the hoity-toity, sterling silver fork to the floor, pleasantly surprised to discover the gruesome cavity my attack had just rent through her. Meche’s thin, cocaine-laden, scarlet blood gushed and ejaculated from the horrendous gash in her flesh in viscous cascades and narrow streamlets, drenching her sexy little off-white cocktail dress and staining the sinewy shock of red hair suspended in front of her lifeless green eyes—eyes that had a glaze about them like shattered jade pottery just back from being fired in a kiln. And yet the torrents of fresh blood rushing from Meche’s neck, beneath the flabbergasted grimace of shock and terror plastered across her anemic face, all seemed eerily blue in comparison to the locks of murderously red hair they were erstwhile saturating; this was a shade of blue which impeccably complimented the azures and periwinkles beginning to tint her flaccid fingertips and dry, deflating lips.
  I felt a naughty little whim overcome me, an impulse to sardonically tell Meche how much of a pain in the ass I thought she was and always had been, and just how much of a royal pain in the neck she had never really known (or had ever had the chance to discover) that I could be, but I resisted. A moment later, I caught myself expecting her to have heard what I had been thinking and then offer some kind of raucous remark in response: sarcasm always had been one of Meche’s greatest attributes. But she just sat there, emerald eyes dilated with fear and permanently cast wide open, quiet, pale, and motionless, as if she were trying to hide in the dark from a coven of blind vampires with the scent of fresh hemoglobin on their tongues. Noting all of this, I imagined that this must be the way a Gorgon bitch’s optometrist most likely would feel after giving Medusa an examination for a new contact-lens prescription: the image fell upon my newfound sensibilities comically, as if it were the funniest joke I had ever heard (or told, rather) in all of my lifetime.
  Finally, though, because of and despite all of this, notwithstanding the sheer ignominy and brutality inherent within it, I must tell you that at that point I miraculously found myself feeling somehow overwhelmingly—for the very first time in all the years I had lived—comfortable enough to laugh.