YOUNG AMERICANS (Ж)

Tsunamis of iridescent green pain cascade across my temporal lobe, temporarily drowning out my habitual thought processes. I attempt to drive my new, old-fashioned, expensive, sparkling turquoise car in spite of the crippling pain, yet wisely decide that this would be tantamount to suicide, so I park it near some cheap live music venue.

A bevy of beautiful ladies standing outside appear to be awaiting my arrival. Of course, I’m sure that’s not the reality. I don’t want you to think I’m more self-absorbed and narcissistic than I really am. Truth be told, I am rather vain and lonely. Should an isolato like myself snort a line or two of some beautiful cocaine to make myself seem less morose?

When I enter the place I immediately feel like an outsider. I don’t belong here. Sometimes I wonder if I belong anywhere. The music is so loud I can barely hear myself think. Punk rock at its finest. This brand of local music seems to me to be incapable of evincing any coherent, intelligent, and abstract reflections on humanity’s problems. Maybe I’m just not really listening. I guess that’s the point.

The song abruptly ends and the lead singer addresses the crowd: “Hi, my name is Mark and we’re The Happy Chameleons. You may have noticed that our keyboard player Daniel is no longer with us. Unfortunately, he died of a fentanyl overdose. The funeral’s tomorrow. If anyone wants to attend, please let me know after the show . . . Now, I’m more of a happy-go-lucky swashbuckler as opposed to a somber eulogist, so we’re going to celebrate his death by playing a new song we wrote about snorting a line or two of some beautiful cocaine.”

A modestly attractive and elegant woman sitting beside me at the bar starts a conversation with me out of the blue. Her speech is redolent with hints of a Russian or Balkan/Eastern European accent. “I’m definitely going to Daniel’s funeral tomorrow. He was my favorite ‘Happy Chameleon.’ He wrote and co-wrote some of their best songs.”

“So how do you feel about the rest of the band?” I venture to ask.

“They suck. It’s all about flings and drugs for them. Very shallow and narcissistic. Mark’s the worst. He wouldn’t date me because I’m Eastern European. He told me, ‘I don’t date Asians, Sand People (for lack of a better term), and Eastern Europeans.’”

“Well, he sounds like a jackass to me.”

“He’s a douchebag, a cad, that’s what he is.”

Since I believe she may possess at least some familiarity with Russian literature, I can’t resist the temptation to bring up a character from Dostoyevsky’s worst novel, The Devils: “Like Stavrogin?”

“Yeah, Stavrogin without the brains. Although I guess Mark is a very good actor, a charmer, you know, awfully clever . . . To him I was just an invisible girl, I guess,” she seamlessly shifts to a self-pitying tone of voice.

I decide to follow suit by confessing something both unexpected and typical coming from a guy like me. “I didn’t realize how invisible I was until I went out on a date with him.”

“Him? Who?”

“Mark.”

“You went out on a date with Mark?”

“Don’t be so surprised. It was the only date I ever really enjoyed. Of course I didn’t have sex with him, inferior fool and coward that I am.” I down my last sip of bittersweet ouzo.

“Well, most people don’t even know what sex is. To them it’s just a means to an end, some sort of biological necessity. Sex doesn’t really resurrect anyone. Neither does romantic love. Too many people wait for something that will never come. Why not just accept the reality that some of us are just meant to be alone?”

“Perhaps those unlucky few doomed to loneliness should make love to one another at least once in a while. You know, maybe it would make us feel better.”

“Do you really think so?”

I feel the chemicals coursing through my veins

Drugs and alcohol are more than just thrills

Imagine me drowning in the L.A. rain

Or downing a bunch of your designer pills.

“I think I could write better lyrics than him, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure you could,” Nina replies in a suspect tone of feigned conviction. “So do you want to sleep with me?”

“Why not? I’m rich now. I might as well have sex with a woman for the first time. At least once before I die . . . What’s your name?”

“Nina. What’s yours?”

“Ivan.”

“So you use the North American pronunciation.”

“Well, I never learned Russian. My father was from Russia and my mother’s parents were from Israel.”

“Sounds like an interesting combination. I’m sure you identify as American.”

“I guess. Don’t you?”

“I fear I don’t belong anywhere. The years I spent in Russia were no walk in the park, although there are things I sort of miss sometimes. Unfortunately, Putin and Russia’s ill-fated path have turned ‘Russia’ and ‘Russian’ into taboo and dirty words.”

“And we’re the poster boys and girls, the representatives, for these horrific obscenities.” In my mind, I picture that Russian letter that looks like an insect.

“Surely you’re not.”

“I have a Russian name: Ivan Vaynerlov. I’m probably not pronouncing my last name correctly either.”

“No, you’re not,” she affects a sweet simper of a smile, and everything about her draws me in. I want to imagine that she’s a lighthouse shimmering in the distance and that only she can offer me solace and redemption. “We’re both castaways,” she says. She’s drinking a vodka tonic and stares at the band longingly. “They know what they’re here for; we don’t. We always expect someone else to rescue us from our shallow and mediocre lives, from our sloth and acedia, from our pain and self-defeat.” Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard them play a cover song. Let’s go dance.”

She dances; I just stand around awkwardly, barely even trying. We sit back down and she tells me more about her life, her past . . . . “When I was a high school girl in Russia, I fell in love with a Muslim Tatar who was a few years older than me. Perhaps there were at least some people who thought our relationship was an affront to propriety, while others were merely dismayed or pleased when our romance turned into a nightmare.

"One day we were walking after school and we discovered a small forest that we never heard about before. The memories and revelations that surfaced while walking through the forest made us question our love.

"I became jealous, insecure, and angry, while he became cold, violent, and indifferent. I had a nervous breakdown and never saw him again. I’m sure our love was ruined by the satanic environment it was destined to take root in; inimical, and vulnerable as it was to corruption, thoughtlessness, miscommunication, and social norms, our absurd and impossible romance was doomed from the start.”

I feel helplessly drunk and sentimental. “These tears are genuine . . . Or maybe I just drank too much. I wanted so much to be in love like you were. What if I’m too fucked up? Everyone hates me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I think you’ll hate me once you hear me talk more . . . . I didn’t tell you about this girl I knew when I was in college. I call her Jackie O. She didn’t even know what time she was born or how to pronounce her Polish surname correctly. She pronounced the 'w' like an English 'w'."

“Eww.”

“Yeah, exactly; she pronounced that part of her name “ew” instead of “ev/ef”.

“No, I meant the chicken wings—they’re disgusting.”

“Oh. Anyway, in Polish her last name ends with the two syllables ef-skee. A lot of Russian and Slavic names end like that.”

“Your name ends with lov. So do you think you could love me, Ivan?”

“I was talking about that ignorant and arrogant phony because she made such a big deal about how I have ‘a very Russian name’ and talked to me like I’m the poster boy for Russia.”

“But would you be happier if you were actually the president of Russia? Or would you be happier if you were in love with someone who also loved you? Do you believe in love?”

“I don’t know . . . Perhaps I look Russian, yet I’m not convinced I’m Russian in spirit; I don’t have a Slavic soul. For Christ’s sakes! I don’t even know Russian. . . . You know, Mark told his friend that I sent him ‘scary messages’ on Facebook. The truth is that I was scared of him. I envied his talent, his daring, his confidence, his bravado. Perhaps if I were a humbler and stronger man, we would’ve made love at least once.

“The truth is that I’m a weak man, a coward, perhaps even a paranoid schizophrenic. I believe I know things about Mark that no one else knows. Or perhaps I see things differently. And sometimes I’ve feared for my life and safety because of what I know. Perhaps one of those Hell's Angels will exact retribution in the form of a vehicular attack against my person leaving me crippled for the rest of my life. Can you imagine that?

“People think I’m a stalker… Fine, maybe since my adolescence I’ve had certain obsessive-compulsive and stalkerish tendencies because of my shyness and muteness or tonguetiedness, my lack of social skills…. Yet he’s the one who led me on and gave me false hope… He’s the one who lied to me….

"I guess that doesn’t make my ‘chasing’ after him okay (I just went to a few of his band’s shows)… My clueless and profane harrassment and emotional terrorism… (but it was never really like that; I was never angry with him, and he did become my friend on Facebook).

"Okay, fine, I threatened suicide in an online message once, but he didn’t even reply to that… Only an initial 'Ha' after the first show I went to. He smiled to me, said we’d meet again, lied to me online too. Lied to me in person again. Did I force him to do that?

"Maybe I’m no victim, but why should he get to play the victim? This guy who won’t 'date Asians, Sand People, or Eastern Europeans…' some victim, eh? I refused to have sex with a rock star and a beautiful Aryan 'crypto-Nazi' douchebag, so now I must be punished by the powers-that-be, Gestapo, the Securitate, the KGB, the FBI and CIA… Social engineering at its finest…

"Maybe Jackie O. put him up to this and/or told him bad things about me. I guess I had it coming. When I was young I liked No Doubt and songs like ‘Don’t Speak’, ‘Spiderwebs’, ‘Simple Kind of Life’, ‘New’, ‘Squeal’, ‘Stricken’, ‘Open the Gate’, etc. Well, they didn’t call the Internet the Web for nothing, am I right?

"Why is it so easy for me to do the wrong thing? Is it that I don’t have any values, self-respect, or pride? People have told me that I need to cultivate and nurture virtues and empathy within my spirit and life instead of stagnating and decaying as if caught in a morally tenuous spider’s web.

“I am weak. Sometimes I am tormented by angry, vengeful thoughts . . . . I will not let Satan win. I will sacrifice my life; it’s already ruined. I will go to Russia and become an Orthodox monk.”

Nina wipes her mouth with a napkin and tries her best to react to the onslaught of demented and raving lunacy I have foolishly spewed. “I think you really are crazy. Or maybe on drugs. Or both.”

“I’m not real, I don’t exist,” I mutter in a pathetic, unreal voice, echoless, lost on sacred territory. “I’m invisible. Nobody loves me. I wish I could die.”

I won’t apologize for my existence;

I am a perfect machine—an ineffable creation of science.