Recklessness on My Behalf

I left Ireena’s apartment and decided to walk around the Wicker Park triangle area, which had a few good book stores and my favorite record store, at whose other branch I had bought the Of Montreal album I was listening to that morning. On the way I saw many varieties of people. Some were light-skinned, some were dark-skinned, some were tan-skinned, and some were skinned indefinably. Some wore headphones and some did not. Some wore coats and some did not. Some walked dogs and some did not. Some walked in twos and some walked alone and some walked in threes. Some wore Converse and some wore other shoe brands. Some wore knitted caps and some wore baseball caps and some wore nothing on their heads. Some were in the area to shop and some were in the area to drink and some were just there to hang out. I tried to make eye contact with almost everyone I came across and I wondered whether the people that stared back unfazed were single or not. I opened the door to the record store.
One guy working behind their counter said, “No I’ve never been asked out by a customer, but I’m sure it could happen,” to the girl working next to him.
I looked around for a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists record.
“Did you ever hear of those things ‘missed connections’ on craigslist?” the girl behind the counter said to the guy working next to her.
They only had Living with the Living and Hearts of Oak, and I already had both of them.
“Oh like when you see someone on the El and you imagine going out with them and marrying them and having this entire life together before they get off and you never see them again?” the guy said back to her.
I couldn’t believe that Shake the Sheets was so hard to find.
“Yeah, and people post on it, and they try to meet back up with someone they saw on the street and thought was hot. I read them all the time—they’re hilarious,” the girl said back to him.
I couldn’t even find it at Best Buy.
“That’s---,“ the guy said, and drew out.
Having caught a brief snippet of the conversation, I really thought he was going to say “pathetic,” and I was going to be embarrassed for having eavesdropped (but come on, they really were shouting out their conversation in a way that people usually don’t at other stores—this is the record store that inspired the film version of High Fidelity, for God’s sake).
“Sounds really cool. I’ll have to check that out sometime.”
I exhaled in relief, and then I saw Spencer.
He was looking for an LCD Soundsystem single that had just come out.
“How are you doing?” I said to him.
“Baked, dude. We had an awesome after-party last night. You should have come,” he said to me.
“Yeah well, I had obligations to attend to. Like sleep. I had to be at Ireena’s apartment at 10 AM today. I just got done interviewing her and Rory.” I explained.
“Oh right, don’t you want to interview me?” he said to me.
“No that’s okay. That was just for an article. Just spending time with you is good enough to be able to attempt to explain what life is like from your perspective. I don’t need to be all verbatim with you. You speak your mind, you’re not guarded so much that I have to be direct about it. I’m not going to ask you if I can quote you on that or not, because I just know what type of person you are.”
“Cause I really like being interviewed.”
“Well, you know, you’ve had your fill I think. Your whole mode of being is pretty shady.”
“That’s your fault, man.”
“I don’t understand, you were supposed to be going to jail, then you were forming some sort of appeal, and now you just tell people that things aren’t as serious as you originally thought, I mean didn’t you even have two different last names—Reynolds and Blackwell?”
“Continuity is an important thing in life. If I changed my name it would fuck all sorts of things up,” Spencer lectured.
“Are you selling drugs again?” I asked him.
“Yes I am, would you like some weed?”
“I would love some. How much do you charge for an ounce?”
“Oh man, I don’t usually deal in quantities that big, but for you, because you’re making me immortal, $350.”
“Sweet, can we do it now man?”
“Let’s check out.”
He picked up an LCD Soundsystem single and walked towards the counter.
“I had a friend who tried to make them happen,” the girl said to the guy working next to her, “He would try to look at people a certain way.”
“Dude, this new single is so good, like, I saw the video, I streamed it off of Pitchfork yesterday, and I just had to get it, like, today.” Spencer said to me as we waited.
The guy working behind the counter took Spencer and I walked over to the girl’s side.
“Do you have the Ted Leo album Shake the Sheets? I just couldn’t find it.”
She looked it up on the computer and said, “No, it’s not at either this, or the Broadway branch. It is at our downtown branch though. Do you want me to have it shipped here?”
“No that’s okay,” I said, “I’ll just stop by sometime when I’m down there. Virgin Megastore’s closing.”
“That’s right,” she said to me. “That’s probably why we’re getting so many applications now,” she said to the guy working next to her.
“Can I just get the new Of Montreal EP?” I asked her.
She found it for me, I made my purchase, I smiled at her, she smiled back at me, we made eye contact, and I walked out with Spencer.
“Okay I probably feel really flattered now,” she said to the guy working next to her as we walked out.
Spencer’s apartment was a five minute walk from the record store. When we walked up the two flights of stairs and opened the door, I saw the place was empty.
“Charles is still at Lauren’s,” Spencer explained.
He took out a bag of pot which looked like about an ounce, and he dumped it into a plastic bowl placed on top of a scale. He opened another bag and added a few more pinches of weed to settle on an even twenty-eight grams. He took out a new bag, dumped the contents of the bowl into it, rolled it up, zipped it tight, licked along the zipper and closed it into as tight a pouch of weed as possible. It looked magnificent and I gave him the three hundred and fifty dollars and I told him I wanted to give him a hug and he said, “Hug it out.”
Charles entered as we were hugging.
“Is this it, man? Is it the day you finally decided to come out?” he said to Spencer.
Spencer grasped me more tightly.
He said back to his roommate, slowly, “Yeah we just finished up here, and I’m really worried that I might never see this guy again, so I just wanted to express my gratitude, you know, with a BJ, and he said it was a really good one, and I’m just like, trying to draw out this hug as long as possible, because you know, people don’t usually tell me that I give really good blow jobs, and I just wanted to show him, you know, that I appreciate the compliment.”
Spencer slowly dropped his arms off me, and I turned to face Charles.
“Oh, it’s you,” Charles said.
“How was your time at Lauren’s?” I asked him.
“I don’t know if either of us will want to see each other again, but it was certainly one of the less monotonous nights of the year.”
“I heard you’re writing a book? So am I.”
“Oh really, what’s yours about?”
“It’s about ten different people in Chicago, but I never actually say it’s Chicago. They have to guess it, or know it. It’s about acceptable social behavior, or unacceptable social behavior. But it’s sort of experimental, which makes it weird. It’s like I never learned how to write a fluid fictional two hundred pages, so it was the next best thing I could do.”
“Oh, that sounds pretty good. Anyways mine is a personal history, and I have just finished writing the portion where I became orphaned to my grandmother. I lived with her for seven years until I went to college.”
“Check that, dictating,” Spencer said from across the living room, where he was breaking up weed to roll into a joint, “And speaking of which, you can start writing it yourself, I’m temping again.”
“You are such a little bastard Spencer!” Charles shouted, “How could you quit at such a vulnerable place for me! Do you know how much easier it is to write if you have someone else in the room with you, listening to the things you say, validating them with a response, or sometimes another opinion? You have been so helpful to me! I swear I could have made the bestseller list with you! And you were going to be listed as a collaborator! You were going to play a large part in something great! And you threw it all away for what? To be a weed seller! Now come on, you’re telling me you honestly can’t devote an hour or two a day to listening to me talk and typing what I say?”
“No man, I felt really awkward the whole time actually.”
“What if I raise your wage to ten dollars an hour?”
“It’s not about the money, it’s about the time. I’ve got to live my own dream, not somebody else’s, man.”
“Oh, well I suppose you’re going to start your own history now then?”
“I think I will,” Spencer replied, “My pseudo-criminal history would make for pseudo-shocking non-fiction.”
“Guys, I have a dilemma,” I announced to them.
“Whoa chill out,” Spencer said, “Take a seat.”
I sat down and Spencer sat down next to me and Charles sat down next to him. Spencer lit the joint, took a hit, and passed it to me. He hit play on his stereo and we were listening to the single he just bought from the record store. I passed the joint to Charles.
“Okay so tell me if I am crazy or not,” I started, “When I met you at the record store, Spencer, this girl and this guy working there started having this conversation about missed connections. It started making me really uncomfortable. It’s a way I haven’t felt in a while. Like, when you’re in a room with other people having a conversation and you’re not hanging out with them, but you’re hearing every word they say very clearly, and you can’t help but think they notice, but then you think maybe they’re doing it for a reason, like they’re trying to get your attention in this really indirect way. It was weird when I used to feel that way all the time, when it basically became impossible for me to speak, but it taught me a few things—namely just how nasty and mean people can be. But this time at this record store, I felt really weird because it was this girl telling this guy all about missed connections, and he had like never heard of them before, and I know what she’s talking about, and I’m just trying to appear interested in finding this Ted Leo album, and finally I go to make my purchase, and she’s the one to take me, and she’s more friendly with me than normal, and I know because she’s checked me out before, and she smiles at me as I leave, but then when I walked out the door it seemed like she said something that kind of overrode everything.”
“What did she say?” Charles asked.
“I can’t remember exactly but it was just like, less encouraging.”
“Yeah that may all just be in your head, man,” Spencer said.
“Well if you worry about the weather, then you picked the wrong place to stay,” James Murphy sang.
“I don’t care. I know there was some special significance attached. She definitely wanted to have a missed connection with me,” I resolved.
“Check it,” Charles said, walking to his bedroom to retrieve his laptop for me. He brought it over, I checked the web page, and I saw nothing which could have possibly been in reference to me. I told them there was nothing about me, and Charles told me to post one myself. At first I shook my head no, but together Spencer and Charles convinced me that if I didn’t do it, I’d definitely never get the chance to go out with her. They argued that she had given me all the necessary information, had practically begged me to post one about her, because she recognized the awkward final exchange inherent in the on-the-spot flirtation. They told me that what she was doing was actually rather futuristic and sophisticated and in a way, a throwback to more innocent times, where something so unthreatening as an electronic message on a potentially unread web page could be compared to an earnest, “May I have this dance?”

You were working at Reckless. I was looking for a Ted Leo album. You were talking to your co-worker about missed connections on craigslist and I couldn’t help but overhearing. I tried to pretend like I hadn’t heard anything, but I think I might have been blushing when I went to go check out. We had a little conversation about Virgin Megastore closing. You were really cute. I wish we could hang out sometime and get to know each other better.

I posted it and told Spencer and Charles that I had to get going, I was supposed to meet a friend at 2:00. We slapped hands and pulled them back through a handshake of sorts right before I left.