Thursday November 19, 2009

Track #2: How an Inside Joke became “July 4: Easter”

On September 19, 2003, my wife and I went on your first date. It was a marathon. In what will probably sound like a parody of New York dating circa 2003 twenty years from now, we went to see George Saunders read at The New Yorker Festival, then saw Lost in Translation. Somewhere in there we ate at a diner and drank bubble tea. But it didn’t go well. Let me clarify: I thought it went fine. I went home knowing that I would ask her out again. Alexandra, however, went home skeptical. I had talked too much and listened too little. I was nervous, I guess, and—I cannot lie—I like to talk. The date went well enough that she planned to grant me a second, she explains today, but she was concerned.

Our second date was two days later, September 21, 2003, but only because I accidentally trapped her socially—like something out of Curb Your Enthusiasm. After the questionable date of the 19th, I called and asked if she would like to go to the Book Country book festival the next day. She wasn’t so excited about seeing me again—and she was somewhat freaked out that the Talking Guy had called so soon—but she was already planning to go to Book Country. She couldn’t very well turn me down and risk seeing me there. (Thanks, Larry David.) So she agreed, but brought a friend as cover.

Something, however, had changed. Maybe I was rested or had had less coffee or was just a little more relaxed, but by the end of the day, she saw things my way. We shopped all day, she dismissed the friend, and we watched the Emmys. I asked when I could see her again and she gladly flipped open her calendar and booked me on the next available date. We’ve been together ever since.

Still, every year that two day window between September 19th and the 21st causes me low-grade dread. I think about how narrowly things worked out—and how easily they might not have. I don’t like to think about this for very long. As a joke (a nervous joke, perhaps), I started calling September 19 “Good Friday” and September 21 “Easter”, to be funny, just between us. “July 4: Easter”—track #2 of Cassingle, which originally appeared in the debut issue Twelve Stories—is based on this joke. I wrote it because it occurred to me after several years that this joke was so inside and idiosyncratic, a story based on it would be novel, if nothing else.

The similarities end there. (I hope.) The relationship described in “July 4: Easter” is not the least bit cute. Both the narrator and Karen (his girlfriend) are grotesque, and the enforcement of the Good Friday and Easter of their relationship is no joke. The story was fun to write, though. It involved scrutinizing an ecclesiastical calendar and rotating the dates the correct number of days. The whole project felt pleasingly Borgesian and a little ridiculous. That’s a good combo in my book—and I’m sure Alexandra will soon agree.

Tomorrow: “The Guest” and a tribute to all the couples I have dated over the years. (It’s not what you think.) Download Cassingle, which includes “July 4: Easter” and four other stories, as a free e-book or pdf.