Allison, a college classmate who’d recently moved to San Francisco, was cute, enthusiastic and full of big ideas. A sexy art student who invited me to parties and then hung out with cooler friends, she loved to take pictures of beautiful people and was constantly devising plans to take over the art world. She was fickle, like Holly Golightly, but hot, like Lauren from The Hills.
Conversely, I was a Waspy, 25-year-old character out of a Wes Anderson movie. Years of Sunday school and hanging around with my mom and sister taught me a courteous way of dealing with the ladies. Born of intellectual parents, I preferred harmony to conflict, and so I generally went with the flow. For example, if a girl asked me out for a drink, the proper answer seemed to be “yes.”
In this case, what Allison wanted was for us to go to a seminar on the future of cyberspace. It seemed like a flimsy excuse for us to get together, but I went along with it. I guess that it was just meant to be a preamble for the rest of the evening, and I was right. As we walked out of the auditorium, I suggested we get a drink.
We went to a place with white tablecloths and nice lighting, which was really only a dressed-up community center. We talked about music, friends from college, old professors and so on.We had two beers each.
After the drinks, it was still only 10, so I asked her back to my place. In retrospect, this was a poor decision, but at the time it seemed charming. Maybe sometime I could try it on someone I was actually interested in.
We were both big music fans so, once we got back to my apartment, we listened to records for about an hour, hardly conversing at all. This included Stereolab, Guided By Voices, Weezer and other great indie bands from the late ’90s. It was nice having a girl in the apartment, but did I really want to seduce Allison?
I don’t know what Allison was thinking, but I was busy figuring out how I was going to get her to leave. I had to get up early for work the next day, and so I left her in my room while I went to brush my teeth.
When I got back, she lay sprawled on my bed, pretending to be asleep. I could see where this was heading, towards the inevitable meaningless hook-up. But did I want this? No. It just seemed too easy. Every human needs to do what is necessary to find
someone to love, but this wasn’t what I wanted. For the whole evening, I’d been the passive yes-man; it was like my father used to say: “when you follow your heart, life is an adventure.” Life should be a search for meaning, not a victory by forfeit.
“You have to go,” I told her. As Allison sheepishly picked up her things, my nice guy instinct, produced by a childhood surrounded by women, kicked in once again. I couldn’t let her walk alone in the middle of the night, so I walked her to an apartment she was house-sitting, six blocks away.
Allison’s apartment lay to the north, but as we left my front door, we walked south to the one she was taking care of. We walked for a while, and then I dropped her off and came back to my place. But on returning, I made a terrible realization: I had left my keys on my night table and none of my roommates were there to let me in.
I went to the back entrance to see if someone had left the back gate open. I twisted my arm around to try and unlock the gate from the inside, but couldn’t reach. Then I looked up at the spikes that dared me to climb over them.
Then, bizarrely, I heard Allison’s voice calling from behind me. This was crazy. I couldn’t escape her! She proceeded to explain that the owners of the apartment she was taking care of had arrived home early, and she was walking back to her own place. She added that, if necessary, I could stay with her.
It was time to make a stand. I looked around for a means of escape. I noticed that our building was being repainted and a scaffold led 30 feet up the side of the wall and over the gate. Although dangerous, I could climb up and over the gate, then jump down into the backyard. It was an 8- foot drop to the ground, which would be painful, but necessary.
As I climbed and climbed, she stood below, calling out, “Are you sure this is a good idea? Be careful! Call me!” She seemed genuinely worried that I might die. I looked down at the pavement, thinking about the words of my father. As it turns out, he was right.
Stephen Vesecky is a writer and musician living Brooklyn. You can find some of his thoughts on important topics at http://sv68.wordpress.com.
