Perspective
“Perspective,” was what he had said. That was the word that had made Linda fall in love with him. She’d been sitting in some blue collar bar in Panama City, Florida, on a hot August evening, with her shorts and sleeves each rolled up as high and tight as possible, trying to ignore the stale cigarette air and the come hither stares.
He’d been shooting pool in the corner of the same bar, on the same hot August night, wearing a loose fitting t-shirt that revealed his thick arms, full of tattoos and scars.
Linda was eavesdropping on his conversation, mostly out of boredom.
“You see, Paully boy,” He paused, in order to wind up his shot. “Pool is all about perspective.” Nick snapped his cue and sent the blue two ball flying into the far corner pocket. “You can try to take all of your shots while standing up, with an objective, bird’s eye view of the game. But anyone who knows anything about pool, knows that your odds of success go up as you lower your eye—and your perspective—to the same level as both the ball and goal. You gotta keep your eye on the level with the goal. Then you set back—” Nick hurled the cue back behind his body, and gave it a quick snap “—And you let ‘er rip!”
With many loud, succinct clicks, balls tore across the green velvet table as one solid ball fell into each of the side pockets, and another one snapped into the far corner.
Linda by this point was impressed. She had stopped eavesdropping on these two men’s conversations and turned around on her bar stool in order to watch the men play.
Nick noticed Linda’s placid, tan thighs and her dark, intriguing eyes, so he winked at her, and then continued on with his game.
“Ya see that, Paully? Any old asshole can come into a bar and wax pool knowledge and skill, but only with age and experience comes the knowledge and perspective required to succeed in the grand circuit of Florida Bar Pool. And that’s how men like me get by in this world. That’s why men like me consistently beat young hot-headed boys like you. ‘Cause we know about the importance and impact of good, patient perspective, and that’s the only real thing you ever gotta go out and get in this world.”
Linda felt her pulse thicken, and this excited her buzz. She turned around to the bar and ordered another double gin and tonic.
“Here, let me pick that up,” Nick said. “I’m Nick, what’s your name?”
***
Nick wasn’t good at second dates. He didn’t really believe in his culture’s ideals of romantic love, so he wasn’t good at pitching a clever romantic date in order to keep a woman interested in him for longer than one night.
Luckily for Nick, an old friend of his had just gotten engaged, and Nick was invited to the engagement party.
So Nick had arranged plans with Linda to come with him to the party, as his “date.” Linda opened the door wearing a smooth, tight black skirt that dipped around her knees as she walked. She wore a tight fitting (but by no means trashy) turquoise V-Neck short sleeved shirt barely tucked into her skirt, and a lone silver amulet of some sort dangled around her neck. This amulet lured all of Nick’s attention towards her well defined neck, and the way it met her sharp, attractive face.
Nick, on the other hand, was wearing his usual attire: An old Dos Equis t-shirt he’d once won at a bar contest, a pair of black jeans cut off below his knees, and a gold hoop earring in his left ear.
On the car ride to the club, Nick and Linda shared amusing anecdotes in an attempt to breach the gap that existed between their physical attraction and the biographical details necessary to ‘get to know someone else.’
Nick was finishing a funny story about his friend George, the man who was getting engaged, as he pushed open the front door to the club in order to allow Linda to enter ahead of him.
A vaguely familiar hair band song from the eighties was screeching through a PA system as Nick and Linda entered the club. Most of the room had a blue or pink hue to it, due to the seemingly endless pipe-like fixtures of neon lighting that surrounded the walls and ceilings. In the center of the club a large stage was raised. A fairly sizeable crowd had assembled around the stage.
Nick and Linda pushed their way towards this stage, and Nick thought it a little odd to be hear someone from the crowd say, “Oh man, I wish I could lick that whipped cream!”
“I’d trade licks with her, anytime!” Someone else agreed.
The frenetic energy of the club was off the charts. Everyone seemed to be uncommonly hyper and drunk. Optimism and good spirits abounded, and only Nick and Linda wore smiles of confusion on their faces—just what kind of engagement party was this?
Suddenly one of the obviously drunken patrons of this club turned around and pointed at Nick and Linda. “Hey, everyone—Georgey Boy—Look, it’s Nick! And he’s brought another stripper for us! She’s a hotty! Check her out!”
Linda blushed, and pushed her shirt down in an attempt to accentuate the fact that she was not—and had never been—a stripper. But before Nick could begin to make sense of the situation, a few of the men had already grabbed Linda, and were thrusting her onto the stage.
Two strippers surrounded George on the stage, who was duct taped by his arms and lugs to a simple wooden chair. The strippers each wore thongs, and faint trails of sticky whipped cream surrounded their tight, bouncy breasts, some of it also clinging to the ends of their long, stringy blonde hair. These girls smiled as Linda came on stage, and they both pointed to a bowl of cherries on a stool.
Linda had no idea what was going on, but she was determined not to embarrass Nick in front of all his friends. Linda felt that this moment could serve as an example of her own charming, well defined tenacity.
George’s best man in the wedding, a fellow everyone called Harrick, was now holding Linda with one hand, and one of the strippers with his other. “Okay everyone. You know what it’s time for now! It’s time for the cherry race! Which one of these two beauties can tie a cherry stem quicker, with just their tongues? Any takers, any bets?”
The entire room began to cheer and whoop, with a few men calling out for Linda to bare it all, and strut her stuff. Just as Nick was about to climb up on the stage and pounce on Harrick, Linda put up a hand of protest and began to speak.
The entire audience hushed, waiting to hear their newly found goddess speak some words of wisdom.
“Um. Hi. I’m Linda. And I am Nick’s date. I’m not sure if I was supposed to come here tonight, but I am here, and I’m glad to meet you all.” Linda nodded towards the man tied to the chair. “I’m gonna assume that this here is George, the man of the hour. Nice to meet you George!”
George nodded back at Linda, but couldn’t speak due to a sock that was stuffed in his mouth.
“So anyway, I’m sure that I am not exactly as well qualified for this challenge as these other two ladies are, but I’m willing to give it my best shot. So if you like an underdog, I suggest you bet on me!”
The crowd let out an unanimous cheer, and several of Nick’s friends began to clasp him on the back, asking him where he’d found this amazing girl. All Nick could do was shake his head with amazement, and blush and smile.
“Look at her tie that cherry with her tongue!” Someone said.
“Holy shit, man, I’d let her tie ANYTHING of mine with that tongue!” Someone else added.
An hour later, after Nick had properly introduced Linda to George, Harrick, and a few of Nick’s other close friends, Nick and Linda had left the club to get some coffee and dessert at a local diner.
At the diner, Nick still felt a buzz from earlier, and could swear that he was hearing something like bells and whistles in his head.
Linda had already begun to fall for Nick the first time she’d met him at the pool hall. Now it was Nick’s turn to gush, and Nick felt an immense relief as he swallowed most of his misogynistic pride and began to admit to himself—and to Linda—that he was beginning to feel like beginning to fall for a girl like Linda.
***
Nick was a man of his word, and so he kept his engagement promise to Linda. But who could have imagined that Linda’s dream honeymoon would be to visit some frozen river in the woods, during the middle of winter?
Marriage was supposed to be about compromises made out of love, but this camping trip seemed less like a compromise and more like a death march.
As Nick and Linda hiked down from the road and along the trail to the river, Nick was surprised to find himself feeling peculiarly calm. His muscles began to relax as he took in the sights of snow laden branches with icicles dripping like candle wax towards the ground.
His heart grew warm even though the outside air was thin and chilled his bones. Linda shivered, so he gripped her hand and gave it a squeeze. Then he helped ease her over a tall log that was magnificently suspended in a mammoth snow drift.
Nick had spent almost all of his life in Panama City, Florida, so he’d never seen a frozen river or lake before. The phenomenon sent shivers down his spine, and he felt a weighty, intense rush of pleasure, as he gazed at this majestic view.
Nick looked at the frozen river and marveled at the thick sunburst clouds of white ice that were suspended just like ice cubes over the once free-flowing river. But what amazed him most was the haunting, distant murmur of the water that still flowed beneath the thick, frozen ice that lay suspended above it. This very still picture, when juxtaposed with the rambling, babbling noises of the river, created a swelling, psychedelic moment in time that forged a strong impression in Nick’s mind.
“What’s the matter?” Linda asked.
“Nothing,” Nick said. “Everything is perfect. Just right. I wish things could stay like this forever.”
Linda smiled as her husband squeezed her hand in his. “But if things never changed, then how would you gain perspective?”
Nick tackled her in the snow. “I’ll give you perspective,” he laughed.
***
Even though he was more than fifty years old, and had long ago traded in his motorcycle for a two door economy car, Nick still dressed like a blue-collar biker. He still wore t-shirts that weren’t even popular when they were made, years before, and he rarely remembered to trim his graying twisted facial hair.
But Nick was a “bleeding heart liberal,” and his life motto was appearances can be deceiving. To know Nick was to know that he would be forever trying to prove to both himself and to the world this oft heard, but rarely realized idiom.
Nick and Linda were in New Orleans, on a vacation and standing on a street corner a few blocks from Bourbon Street when Nick saw a girl who looked as if she were barely twelve years old, smoking a long thin cigarette. The girl was wearing a fancy white debutante dress, and she seemed to be ignoring an even younger girl, who was wearing a pink ballerina’s outfit and mimicking modern dance moves with a fire hydrant.
This fantastic sight caused Nick to feel a severe pang of pity for both girls, but also a strong contempt for his society—a society that allows for young girls to go unnoticed as they smoke cigarettes on the street—a society that lacks strong parenting and a sense of communal concern for the well being of everyone.
“Excuse me,” Nick said as he approached the smoking girl. “What’s your name?”
The girl briefly glanced up at Nick’s eyes, and then looked back down towards the ground. She blew a strong stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth, and flicked some ash onto the ground. “My Daddy tells me not to talk to strangers,” she said.
Nick smiled at the young girl, and her defiant nature. Something about her body language and sense of autonomy reminded him of himself, when he was much younger. “Well, I’m Nick,” he said as he extended his hand out for her to shake. “And I guess you don’t have to tell me anything about yourself. But, you know, I just wanted to make sure that you and your sister were, um, doing okay.” Nick felt like an old man. Here he was, trying to connect with a young girl, and everything he could think to say sounded cliché, like something his own father would have said.
The girl rolled her eyes once more, and let out a sigh, as if she were now thoroughly annoyed by Nick. “Look, Nick, is there something that I can help you with? Are you lost or something? All the beads and bars are back about two blocks behind you, on Bourbon Street.”
Nick was caught off his guard. He hadn’t expected to melt all of this girl’s icy defiance in one swift sentence, but if anything, this girl seemed to be genuinely reviled by his good humored approach to speaking with her.
“Um, Nick, Look, that lady over there—”
The girl pointed to Linda, who was waiting for Nick to return from across the street.
“—I think she’s waiting for you. And unless you really wanna conduct your business with me out here, on the street, and in front of her, I suggest you get moving.” She blew out a full plume of smoke right into Nick’s face. “Go back where you belong, old man, with the rest of the tourists.” She ended her speech with a sinister giggle.
Nick was humiliated. He looked once more at the younger girl, who had not even noticed him, and then back at the older girl. He was about to try and redeem himself, when he realized that the situation was futile. This girl wasn’t just a young girl smoking a cigarette in New Orleans; she was a young prostitute, clearly hardened beyond her years by her role in the ceaseless business of selling sin. She was an entrepreneur.
As Nick walked away from the girl, he tried to pull himself together, for Linda’s sake, and for their vacation’s sake, but it was a struggle. Nick knew that appearances could be deceiving, but he had never extended this logic to the realm of innocent looking girls.
Nick took his sunglasses from his pocket and used them to cover his eyes, so that he could hide his depression and frustration from Linda.
***
“You’re drunk, Nick. You’re fucking drunk!” Linda screamed. She was sure that she was waking up most of the other campers, but she was worried that Nick was going to make an even bigger scene.
“No…Not. Not true, not true. I swear. Swear to god. Saw a boy, naked. Standing on fucking water. Not swimming, not treading, not sinking, not floating, but fucking standing on and walking on water…jus like Jesus Fucking Christ hisself!” Nick sighed and rubbed the skin that extended from his chin to his ears.
“Honey, look, you have to understand—”
Suddenly Nick began to scream aloud: “Don’t patronize me, Linda! Don’t you ever patronize me, and I won’t condescend to you. Cause I’m a man of my honor, a man of my word. I’m a man of my…” His voice trailed off as he rubbed his eyes deep into their sockets.
Nick was so concerned with being taken seriously by his wife that he was delivering each of his sentences as though he were standing trial, and these were his closing remarks.
“Look Nick,” Linda said, “I believe in you, but I just don’t think that we need to do anything about this boy you saw. Leave him be for now. We can check back in the morning. It’s getting real late, and we’re supposed to be on a vacation; not fighting like at home. Let’s both crawl into our tent and do something.” Linda attempted to rub her hands across Nick’s broad chest, and down to his belt, but he pushed her away.
“You just don’t ever fucking believe me! Ever! I can’t believe that I married a woman who has no faith in her own husband’s perception and perspective!” Linda was sure that by now, the entire campsite was listening attentively to her husband’s loud rants.
All that Linda could think about was her husband’s obsession with perspective. It was always coming back to that damn word. It seemed as if their entire lives were always revolving around the subject of perspective.
Linda began to wonder about the decisions she’d made, and their binding effects as she crawled, alone, into the tent to sleep.
Nick stayed outside. He stared intensely into the dim remains of the camp fire and he continued to explore his new perspective on miracles and their possibilities. He was so consumed with his own drunken thoughts that he didn’t even notice Linda’s absence, nor did he hear her as she cried herself to sleep that night.
***
Nick wanted to have children of his own, someday, but he knew he was going to have to wait a little longer, now. He felt that he wasn’t ambitious or selfless enough to properly handle the ridiculous responsibility that raising a child in the 21st century would demand.
How could he teach his child about animals at the zoo, when global warming, oil spills, and other man-made disasters were threatening to exterminate hundreds of plants and animals each year?
How could he teach his child about love and compassion, when the world was full to the brim with hatred, violence, confusion, and enmity?
How could he possibly prevent his own son or daughter from making the same mistakes as he had?
What about that little girl in New Orleans and her little sister with the ballerina outfit? How could he stop his own kids from smoking cigarettes, abusing drugs, giving into senseless violence? How had he stopped himself?
Nick felt as though his lifetime had given him more than enough of what he liked to call “fucked up shit,” but his mind could barely imagine how much more fucked up the same old shit could get in the next twenty years. Could he really bring a child into a culture and a world that Nick barely understood himself?
But what could Nick do? He was a humanitarian living in an inhumane society—a society that feared more than anything else the dangers of tolerance, compassion, sharing, and love. Nick lived in a society dedicated to the principles of individuality and competition.
Nick felt trapped by everything but Linda and he wished he could tell her this. He wished he knew where to write her, but he’d burned that bridge, and no apology would ever undo the past.
Nick felt like he had finally grown up, because he now knew for certain that he had no agency for social change, and he had wasted his formative years neglecting the only agency for change that he had; the ability to change himself.
But he also knew that he had the perspective it took to see the world for what it really is: an illusion of order, an illusion created to keep most people from having to face their deepest and darkest perceptive hunches.
Nick sometimes felt as if he were cursed with the ability to empathize with others’ pain and misery. Nick could feel the post man wince as he repeated the same meaningless task for hours each day, just as Nick could see the resentment the bartender felt as he served another unhappy patron a drink that was designed to keep the blues coming, not to take them away.
But Nick wasn’t upset with the world so much as he was upset with himself. Because Nick knew that the only thing he wanted, and the only thing he ever had that was worth keeping was Linda, and now she was gone.
Nick had lived his life thinking all along that it was a journey, with no obvious destination to strive for. But here he was, unable to sleep more than a few hours a night, because he was consumed with regret and loneliness. Nick turned over one more time in bed, hoping that this new position would allow his mind to finally rest. It didn’t work, he instead rued the fact that no amount of perspective could ever prepare you for everything that lay in wait for you. Nick got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights because he knew where everything was.
