Last night, in a fit of pique, I called up my pal Rodney Rattle, the man who has it all down, the guy who knows who he is, who he isn't, who he was, conversely wasn't, and who he wants to be more than anything else. Truth be told, I dropped my phone and it landed on the bookpile, ricocheted off my weathered copy of Whittaker's Almanack, and when I lifted the phone from its happenstance tumble there was Rodney, "Hello? Hello? State your name please," and I was interlocuting, whether by grace or chance, for hours through the ghostly night, overcast and orange with reflections of streetlights.
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Figure of speech
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I guess Rod was pretty wound up too, or that cabin fever's brought him down, or that he gets mighty lonely out there in his freewayside wall-to-wall condo because the dialogue had legs, hours long, the winter extending his typical tendencies. To listen to him: he's obstinate, steadfast, firm, indefatigable, resolute, solid as a rock, set in his ways as a broken down bathroom scale. You can't reason with the guy. For example just last night I told him, "Rod," I said, "honesty isn't always the best policy." I told him, "You can't go around telling women: 'I need to be with someone who shares your character traits,'" I said. "It's not romantic. It's not a pickup line. Please, just try and play the game, go through the motions, make jokes, talk about the weather. It's not dishonest to charm or smile," I said, but he wasn't having any of it. He's obsessed with local politics, the civic transportation grid, and whether or not our tax dollars are being put to their best use. He wants to argue about the crosswalks on Washington Avenue, whether they're too frequent or painted so as to cause a hazardous glare, or else it's the horrible timing of the traffic-congestion control lights along the interstate. He can't for the life of him figure out why he has to wait five seconds if he gets on at 35th Street, but twenty seconds if he gets on at Hiawatha, and at eight o'clock on a weekday no less, and above all, he wants to find someone who'll go out to eat with him at Cafe Zagreb, because they have "by far the best chicken fajitas," though I keep telling him it's a Czech bistro, and that he couldn't possibly know about fajitas anywhere else if he doesn't think outside the Zagrebian box.
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Courtship
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But with women, too, he's inflexible, always inviting them on the first date to come over and look at his barbed wire collection. "If they don't share my interests, they're not the one for me," he explains, before his taste monologue, which goes, roughly: "I have very unique taste. I'm not like everyone else," he says, "I don't know how people stand small talk. It's so incredibly boring!" Latest case, he took a girl to the Convervatory and went on and on about the beauty of asexual reproduction, and how while pruning might seem violent in the short term, over time it was healthy and made the specimen hardy, sexually proclivitous (his word). Maybe I'm selling him short, maybe there's someone who'll take to this treatment, and find it all charming enough to follow him home and look at his barbed wire, all mounted on old wood boards, neatly labeled and arranged chronologically by region of origin. But if so, it sure wasn't Phoebe, the girl from Sales. I guess it's been going around the breakroom, and Rod's having a hard time of it, lurking inside his cubicle, refusing to pop out.
He's got himself figured out, though. Just ask him about his favorite music (Abba) or his favorite color (teal) or his favorite kitchen utensil (can opener) and he'll tell you exactly why he likes it, and why you should like it, too. He'll argue with you seemingly forever, trying to convince: "Barbed wire is the world's most practical invention," he'll say. "For the cost of a cup of coffee you can cordon an acre." Or, "Without doubt, it's the can opener that holds the most isolated utility value -- or IUV, if you will -- because no other kitchen utensil can open a can." I try in vain to make a case for the
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Ever defiant
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spatula, but he decries, "spatula, schmatula, anything can spatch-ul if you try hard enough. Give me a butter knife and I'll give you a pancake. Find me a utensil that can can-open in a pinch, and then you'll have your case." For Rod, a can opener is a pair of mental nuchuku, and neither whisk nor sifter, neither shrimp fork nor egg slicer, not a grater, vegetable peeler, or spoon will stand in his way.
How Much for Your Indexical?
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