Adam Levin - Hot Pink

You were the person who introduced me to the Marx Brothers — you had everything on tape — but I pretended I knew their work to impress you, and dismissed it on the grounds that the Three Stooges were better. That was Tom’s opinion and I looked up to Tom. He was a couple years older than me and full of answers. One time I asked him when I’d stop hating my father. (“As soon as he stops being a cock about your friends, or you become a cock and ditch them like he wants you to.”) One time I asked him to explain, in plain language, the difference between signs and symptoms. (“You can observe others’ signs, like their swollen labia, but not others’ symptoms, like the butterflies in their stomach or their tingles or whatever.”) Another time, right after I’d sent you the one I’d written, I asked him what he thought about love letters. (“This poet called Don who my cousin used to know wrote the greatest one ever, but he gave it to the wrong girl — some dumb, heartless cunt who wasn’t even that hot — and she didn’t respond and he killed himself.”) Then one time I asked him if he thought gay men pretended their penis was someone else’s when they masturbated. He said that he didn’t know for sure, but the question was a good one, and he supposed that they probably tried to pretend at one time or another. Then he told me that that was like the Stranger.

“That book?”

“You wind a rubberband around your wrist so your hand falls asleep.”

“Oh,” I said. “Does it do the trick?”

Tom wished to God he knew, but there were never any rubberbands around when he needed one.

I’d been out with you the night before. I took you to see an action movie. You were still an athlete. You were training for U.S. swim team tryouts and I smoked a lot of cigarettes. I had parked on the roof of a four-story lot and, after the movie, you said we should race back up to the car. You thought it was funny to make me run. The race wasn’t close — you spared no effort. You were still hunched over, breathing audibly, hands on your knees, when I finally got there. Your hair was tied back with a cloth-covered rubberband the color of a robin’s egg. I pulled it off your head to announce my arrival — I could hardly breathe, much less speak — and you spun around and grabbed me, both-handed, by the ribs, and you pressed me to the wall and I pulled you to the concrete and… I’m sure you remember. But you forgot about the rubberband, never asked for it back. Probably because you had many such rubberbands. They come in packs of ten, twenty-five, and fifty, these rubberbands. They tend to have a gold or silver thread running through them. You know the kind I mean. The one I’d taken meant nothing to you.

It certainly meant more than nothing to me, though apparently not enough, or too much to admit. Maybe some combination. I don’t know anymore, I probably never did, but Tom was my friend, and I was young and in love, he was older and not-so, and your rubberband was wrapped around the lighter in my pocket. I handed it over.

“Stranger, here I come,” he said.

“Wait,” I said. “Actually…”

“What?” Tom said.

“Never mind,” I said. “Nothing. Let’s invent the religion.”

We’d often talked, at the diner, about inventing a religion, but we never got the chance. We’d be too hungover or wouldn’t have a pen or by the time we’d get enough coffee in us to begin we’d have to head out for work. That day was no different.

“Tomorrow,” Tom said. “We’re already running late.”

That night I met you for sushi on Division where before me was set a miso soup I hadn’t ordered. You insisted I try it, but I didn’t understand how to eat soup with chopsticks, so you showed me how to drink it straight from the bowl. A beige drop on your lip became a line on your chin and you wiped it away with the cuff of your hoodie, your thumb hooking through a tear in the seam, its chewed-looking nail and bright pink quick.

“Come on,” you said, tilting your face to my bowl.

Through the broth I saw the tofu. White cubes of paste, flaking. Mealy chunks of wet cadaver. A substance I’d managed to dodge for years. I hefted the bowl to my mouth and I drank until there was nothing left to drink.

The cubes stayed stuck to the bottom, a blessing.

I asked you if you’d gotten my love letter yet. I asked roundaboutly, weenieishly — how else would I have asked? No one ever accused me of being too direct. I said, “How was your experience at the mailbox today?”

You told me my letter had arrived, that it was typed.

I said, “Yes, but how was it?”

“ Typed ,” you said.

“I signed it by hand.”

“There’s no other way to sign a letter,” you said.

“Would you have preferred a duck? Should I have given it to your buxom office-mate instead?”

“A duck?” you said. “I don’t work at an office.”

You didn’t get my meaning — how could you have, really? I didn’t feel like explaining. Doesn’t matter, I thought. Had it been the letter you deserved to receive, it never would have gotten to you — you were not the wrong girl.

The following morning, at the diner, Tom reported on the Stranger. “The first few times it works pretty well,” he said. “I think after a break it’ll work well again. For now it’s lost its charm.”

I asked him for the rubberband.

He gave me a pink one.

I said, “This is pink. It’s not the one I gave you.”

“The color,” he said, “doesn’t make any difference. After work the other day, I tried the one you gave me — the blue one. Then I went to the drugstore and bought a twenty-five-pack. I tried green and red and orange. The best time was with red, but only because I’d learned the trick of it by then and I wasn’t too chafed. It was my first exercise in mastery, and so it was the best.”

“And after that?” I said.

“I tried yellow this morning. Yellow was good, exactly the same as red, really, but not as good as red. Tomorrow or the next day, for the sake of science, I’ll try the rest of the colors — there’s still purple and black and white and pink — but I’m sure they’ll be the same as the red, and just as good. The mind does not forget the mind and the hand does not forget the hand, but the mind forgets the hand and the hand the mind or some shit.”

I told him to give me the blue one.

“The blue one’s gone, dude. I threw it away. I’m telling you, though — the color doesn’t matter.”

I explained why it did.

He said, “Sentimental value. You should have told me that before I jizzed all over it. She must really be something, this girl,” Tom said. “A firecracker, huh? Atomic pussy. A real hot number. A whip-cracking piece. I hope I’ll get to meet her.”

“Come out with us tonight,” I said. “I think we’re going bowling.”

“I’m in,” said Tom.

Then I asked him for a pen to invent the religion with.

“Okay,” I said. “I think first of all it’s good to come up with a fetish because—”

“A fetish?” Tom said. “Like sucking on toes?”

“Like a totem,” I said. “Some kind of object to worship.”

“Oh,” Tom said. “You know, that’s not bad. The religion catches on, we could get rich selling them.”

“Selling them?” I said.

“The totems,” Tom said. “Trademarked totems. Little keychain totems. Idols sewn into the garments of every last worshipper. Make a fucken mint.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I—”

“No. It’s good — totems. It’s a great idea. But so the first thing we need is to come up with the bad guy. The guy who the totems protect you from, right? Yeah. That’s good. Let’s start with the bad guy.”