Iris Has Free Time (31 page)

THE LAUGHING GAME

 

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your college roommate May

PLAYER THREE: Your college boyfriend

PLAYER FOUR: Your boyfriend’s roommate

 

When your freshman dormitory closes for June, invite Player Two to spend two weeks with you at your parents’ house in Long Island in order to audition for Broadway musicals. Between making home movies in your backyard starring the two of you as you talk about boys, pick up a copy of
Backstage
and discover an open call for
The Scarlet Pimpernel
happening in the city tomorrow!

Take the Long Island Rail Road into the city with your tap shoes.

Hand over your headshot and résumé, take a number, and learn the routine. Get cut the first round and say to Player Two, “So, what do you want to do now?”

Go to lunch with Player Two at The Cottage near Union Square, a Chinese restaurant you’ve heard serves unlimited free wine with lunch. High-five after the waiter takes your order and does not ask for ID. Surprise the whole staff as you request yet another and yet another full carafe. Stumble out of the restaurant three hours later.

3:00 PM. June. The sun in full fire. Walk. Hold up Player Two as she sways beside you. Walk. Trail after her as she spots Victoria’s Secret on Fifth Avenue, runs inside, yelling and excited. In the cool fragrant store, see the shop girls coming toward you with assorted lace, saying, “sale sale sale,” their faces floating in a black void. Say, “okay okay okay,” and hand over your parents’ credit card.

Outside, with your shopping bag full of assorted thongs, which you don’t wear but bought as a joke, nod when Player Two says she feels sick. Say, “Don’t worry. I’ll call a cab. We’ll go right to [Player Three’s].”

Rush hour. Watch the cabs fly by. Turn your back on Player Two to hail more aggressively. Turn around again and find her lying on the pavement, asleep. Try to pull her up as a car stops short of running her down. Try to pull her up as she says, “I need to sleep, Iris. Just let me lie here for a while.” Drag her down the block until a female police officer sees you both, hails a cab for you, and gives you stern warnings about all the things you’ve done that you must never do again.

Give the driver Player Three’s address in Hell’s Kitchen—“Fifty-third and Ninth!” Try to roll down the window before it’s too late. Tell the driver you’ll pay for the mess. Tell the driver to just stop yelling already. Pay. Pull Player Two out of the car. Prop her up on Player Three’s stoop and ring the bell. When there is no answer, sit down beside Player Two and feel the sun hot against your skin. Shut your eyes and fall briefly asleep.

Wake up when a young man taps you on the shoulder, says you’re pretty and asks for your phone number. Say, “I can’t give you my phone number. I don’t even know you. I’ll give you my mailing address and you can write me a long letter stating your intentions.” Argue with him for a while about the best way to reach you. Drift back to sleep.

Smile when Player Four comes home and finds you and Player Two dozing on his stoop. Smile when he says, “What a surprise!” Say, “I know you weren’t expecting us until tonight, but [Player Two] got sick, and I didn’t know where else to go.” Turn to Player Two, peaceful now, covered in vomit. Help Player Four bring her inside.

Take your shoes off. Feel the linoleum tile of Player Four’s kitchen, cool and sticky against your feet. Drink Coca-Cola and talk with Player Four while Player Two takes a shower. Give Player Three a smile when he walks in, after Player Four says, “Look what I found.” Kiss Player Three.

Retire to Player Three’s room for a nap. Before you do, call your mother and say, “[Player Two] and I are going to stay the night at our friend Marcy’s.”

In Player Three’s bed, which he’s separated from the rest of the room with police tape, beneath a small poster of The Wu-Tang Clan and another of Harvey Keitel, beside the bureau where an E. T. puppet sits lifelessly, kiss Player Three. Turn your face modestly as Player Two and Player Four pass through the room on their way to Player Four’s bedroom in the back.

In the kitchen, two hours later, with the linoleum sticking to your bare feet again, pass the bong to Player Two, who’s just announced, “I’m not drunk anymore,” who says, “Sorry for throwing up on your jacket, Iris,” who’s saying now, “Let’s play a game!”

Listen as Player Four gives the instructions: “It’s harder than you think. The object of the laughing game is to make your opponents laugh against their will. You’re it, until you can make someone else laugh; then they’re it. Got it?”

Let “rock, paper, scissors” determine that Player Three is “it.” Sit on the floor of the living room beside the dark TV. Watch the silent straight faces of Player Two and Player Four as they watch Player Three in eager anticipation. Watch Player Three disappear into his bedroom and reappear a few seconds later, confidently holding the E. T. puppet from his bureau. Watch as E. T. begins an impersonation of Robert De Niro, before Player Two bursts out laughing. Watch as Player Three says to her, “Now you’re it.”

Watch Player Two stand up and begin to make farting noises with her hands and her face, and then begin to turn red from the silence with which she is received. Watch as she yells, “blooby blabby!” and pulls her cheeks away from her face with her fingers and shakes her head pathetically. Cringe as you witness her humiliation. Have mercy, stage a rescue, force a laugh.

“Ha!” she says triumphantly, pointing at you now. “You’re it!”

Stand up and walk around the room. Think. You’ve always been funny. You make people laugh all the time. Try to say something witty about the nature of games in general. Feel the words crumble as you say them. Try something else. Again, something else. Feel your throat run dry. Laugh nervously. Think.

Look around the room, at Player Two, Player Three, and Player Four; silent, stone faced, and sadistically smiling, respectively. Look directly at Player Two, recite an inside joke, a line that always makes her laugh when you’re alone. Say in your best Scottish accent, “I discovered the cure for the plague of the twentieth century and now I’ve lost it!” Watch her face register nothing as she leaves you squirming in the spotlight.

 

DRINKING GAME #3

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO: Your boyfriend Martin

 

Get drunk with Player Two and his law school friends in the middle of the week. Go to work the next day hungover. When your sixth-grade students notice the scent of whiskey issuing from your pores and wonder aloud about the odor, tell them to “spell it.” When they ask, “What do you mean spell it, spell what?” Tell them to “identify the variable.” When they ask you what
variable
means, tell them to “look it up.” When they find out what variable means and ask you to repeat the assignment, tell them to “rewrite the equation.” When they ask you what an equation is, tell them to “spell it.” Hold your head in your hands and rub your temples.

When they ask why you decided to become a teacher, tell them to “look it up.” When they ask you if you want to have kids of your own one day, tell them to “spell it.” When they ask you how they’re doing in your class, tell them to “identify the variable.” When they start screaming because Mario and Peter are fighting again and Mario’s gotten hold of a chair, tell them to remain seated until the end of June. Wrestle the chair away from Mario. Tell Peter to sit down. Quit your job and apply to graduate school.

SOLITAIRE

PLAYER ONE: You

 

After you graduate from college, begin lingering in bookstores, searching for the one book that will tell you all you need to know. Decide you can’t find it because it doesn’t exist. Decide you must write it. Think about what you must write on the subway. Think about what you must write on walks by the Hudson River. Think about what you must write when you meet up with friends who tell you stories about their day—about the argument Jacob had with his roommate regarding whether or not to hang their pots and pans on the wall in the kitchen, how he hung them without asking her, how she took them down while he was out. Sit down at your desk and wonder how to begin.

Write a short story about a dog whose owner is unhappy with his recent dental work, how his dentist makes perfunctory fillings and how the effects of the dentist’s bad work trickle down, affecting the owner’s sloppy care of his dog. End the story with each character looking through a different window but finding that through each, the trees outside are all barren. Have the dog start when he sees a squirrel but then give up before even setting out, recognizing the futility. Look away from your computer screen. Wonder if you haven’t taken a wrong turn in your writing. If this is really what you wanted to say. Rewrite the story this time from the dog’s perspective.

Enroll in a creative writing course for adults at the School of Continuing Ed. Raise your hand and ask the instructor a question about how to get published. Concentrate really hard when he answers, “Look up the address of some literary magazines and send your stories to them. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope.” Write down, “self-addressed stamped envelope” in your notebook while mouthing the words.

Go home and rewrite your story again, this time from the perspective of one of the perfunctory fillings. Compose a cover letter to a literary journal you have no interest in reading. Lick the envelope. Stare at it. Think about the things you must write, the things you must say. Email your instructor. Tell him you’re considering various graduate programs in creative writing. Would he recommend you?

POSTAL POWWOW

PLAYER ONE: You

PLAYER TWO, PLAYER THREE, PLAYER FOUR. . . : Everyone in line at the post office at midnight

 

Familiarize yourself with the taste of envelope glue as you prepare to send applications to twenty different graduate schools scattered across the nation. Make a chart listing the deadline for each. Wait until the end of the very last day to mail them, and then race to the twenty-four-hour post office on Thirty-fourth Street. Rush up the giant stone steps, past the large Greek columns and, once on line, tap your foot nervously. Watch the clock, the minute hand racing you slowly to midnight. Think: You must get that postmark!

Walk across town on Thirty-fourth Street after, imagining your future in Minnesota should you be accepted. Notice the garbage on the sidewalk, the dim storefronts, the street lights lit as if only for you.

See the same faces at the post office again next week. And again the week after. Start to enjoy it, the panic, the urgency, the desperation of others like you, trying to escape their lives through an application to Iowa or Missouri or San Francisco. Read a biography of Fitzgerald while you wait on the long line for Window Three. Remember how you embarrassed yourself at a party last weekend when you got too drunk. Read of a depressed Fitzgerald crouching in a window at the Princeton club, joking pathetically that he would jump. Think: Well, at least I didn’t do that! Imagine meeting Fitzgerald at a party today. Imagine him snubbing you. Look up. It’s your turn at Window Three.

PIÑATA

 

PLAYER ONE: You

 

Open your mailbox. Open it again. Open it again. Now watch as the confetti of rejection letters rains out.

Pretend you’re not ashamed when your parents ask if you’ve heard back. Tell them your work is modern, experimental really, and as a result, easily misunderstood. Say, no, it’s not a sign you should do something else. Write a short story about the post office at midnight. Write a short story about the School of Continuing Ed. Make notes for a whole bunch of new short stories you have in mind. Get a new idea for a novel! Watch TV and cry inexplicably during a commercial for Dannon yogurt.

Take a nap.

Wake up and work on your cover letter to the magazine you’ve decided to send the dog/dentist story to. After reading a Faulkner novel, you’ve rewritten it to include five different perspectives, one being a retarded character named Benji. It’s completely incomprehensible now, which pleases you, because how can anyone tell if it’s bad? You’re sure your story will be accepted this time, and published, provided you get the cover letter just right, which is why you’ve been working on the cover letter for months.

“Best wishes?” or “Best regards?” Your closing line will make all the difference. You’ve read as much in back issues of
Writers’ Market
and
Poets and Writers,
magazines you pore over at the Mid-Manhattan Library. Decide you need a break. Walk to the Mid-Manhattan Library and read another issue of
Writers’ Market
. Then borrow twenty-nine VHS recordings of movies you’ve been meaning to see. Put
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
back when you are told the limit is twenty-eight. Go home with your hands full.

Take another nap.

Go downstairs, collect your mail, and find a letter of acceptance to a Master’s program in Humanities from your alma mater. Call your parents and tell them, “Great news!” you’re going back to school. Decide to do it all differently this time—join a club, learn a foreign language or two, purchase a college sweatshirt, and write a novel on the side.

THE LET’S-THROW-MAGIC-MARKERS-AT-MY-CEILING-FAN GAME!

PLAYER ONE: You