3. The death of intelligence

“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.” --Robert Anton Wilson

Even before Jen and Becky got back to the table, they could tell Chase and Skipper were arguing. Skipper was gesturing energetically with his hands, looking much the same as he had on his cell phone except now his mouth was full of pizza. Chase’s muscular forearms were spread across the table in the studied manner of an underworld negotiator making it clear he meant business.

“Chaos, chaos,” Skipper was saying in a disgusted voice as Jen pulled out her chair to sit down. “Why do you hate chaos so much?” They’re arguing about Groundbreakers, Jen thought, and Skipper’s against it. She tallied one point in Skipper’s favor.

“It’s disorganized,” said Chase.

“Hey,” said Becky abruptly, in an overly loud attempt to distract them from their argument. The waiter, who was setting little pink jars with lit votive candles in them on each table, started and blew one out accidentally. Embarrassed, Becky lowered her voice a bit. “You ate all the pizza!” she said in a quieter but still accusing voice. She stood next to the table, surveying it, her hands folded over her slim hips.

Jen looked at the table. The pizza tray had one full slice left on it, plus a number of discarded crusts in a pile. Next to it was Jen’s salad, barely touched, and her gin and tonic, half-drunk and watery with melted ice.

“Skipper ate it all,” Chase said. “He’s got no manners.” Skipper shrugged indifferently. He was wiping his face and hands with a pink cloth napkin.

“Besides,” Chase said, “we saved you a piece. How much were you planning to eat, anyway?” He looked up at Becky. Jen waited for Becky’s retort—after all, Becky had no reservations about eating, and she stayed thin no matter what. But Becky just looked embarrassed and sat down.

Crap, she’s into him, Jen thought. In the fifteen or so years she had known Becky, Jen had never seen her acquiesce so readily to anybody. I hope they’re not falling in love, she thought with a shudder. She imagined having to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with this guy, the lazy Sunday mornings when he would cook breakfast with Becky in his-and-her bathrobes, his parents visiting the house. It was all too gruesome to bear.

These thoughts about love reminded Jen of what she was supposed to be doing. Her plan had gone horribly wrong, and now she was most likely stuck with this frustrating crew for the rest of the night. She looked at Skipper and wondered seriously if she could substitute him for Chase in her plan. She gave some thought to his credentials for the job of making Bradley jealous, compiling a brief checklist of what she knew about him. He worked in some type of important business; that was good. She wondered what kind; she would need to find that out. He wasn’t famous; that seemed like a negative, but could actually work in her favor; he would be mysterious. He lived in San Francisco, not Los Angeles; that made him exotic. He knew Chase from “events” of some kind; that would mean Bradley knew him, too, since he and Chase were party friends. He wasn’t as good looking as Chase; but based on his brief comments about Groundbreakers, he seemed smarter. He might do, Jen speculated.

Chase and Skipper argued a while more while Becky surreptitiously polished off her slice of pizza and most of Jen’s salad. Soon after Jen started on her second gin and tonic, Chase suggested that they continue their conversation at a trendy little sports bar down the road. Jen knew that she had to go to support Becky, but she wasn’t sure yet how she felt about being on a de facto double date with Skipper. She had been trying to follow his argument with Chase to see if she could pick up any clues about his job, how much money he made, or what kind of house he lived in, but the tedious conversation took a lot of energy to pay attention to, and her head was getting woozy from the gin. Her thoughts kept wandering to Bradley and the new girlfriend. Jen had never met her, but she knew a lot about her, or at least about what she looked like. She was young, too young to be worrying about things like marriage and children and settling down. Not as skinny as Jen. But with a larger chest and sluttier clothes, always wearing things like tiny shorts and shaky stiletto heels. She can get away with that at her age, Jen thought. How old was she, anyway, twenty-five?

Jen was getting deeply depressed. Refocus your attention, she thought. She looked around for something to direct it to. There were Chase and Skipper one-upping each other in a very masculine attempt at cleverness. And there was Becky watching them quietly, picking at Jen’s salad and nodding her head when Chase made a point. And there was her gin and tonic, looking sparkly and festive with its green lime twist. Jen decided to focus on that.

“Look how pretty my drink is,” she said cheerfully, pointing at it. Skipper and Chase stopped their argument mid-sentence and turned to stare at her. Even Becky looked startled.

That must have been a weird thing to say, Jen thought. She must be drunk. It made sense; except for a few bites of salad, she hadn’t eaten solid food all day.

“Let’s take this conversation to the Game” Chase said, rising from the table. For a moment, Jen couldn’t figure out what this statement meant. Then she remembered that it was the name of the bar Chase had suggested earlier.

Chase and Skipper went off to shower and change while Becky and Jen sat quietly by the pool, finishing their drinks and dwelling separately and silently on their preoccupied thoughts. Then the four of them drove two cars a mile down the road, Chase and Skipper leading the way in a vehicle designed to look like an armored tank, Becky and Jen following in Becky’s car, which was as tiny as Chase's was large, but equally trendy and expensive.

The Game wasn’t crowded yet, and Becky and Chase found seats at the bar, where they resumed their earlier conversation about their individual self-actualization plans, huddled together with all the manic intensity of horny teenagers. Jen and Skipper left them alone, carrying their drinks to a quiet table in the far corner of the bar. Jen had ordered a third gin and tonic and a bottle of water to help her sober up a little. Skipper was drinking something pink and frothy. He had changed into a pair of skinny dark pants and a yellow cowboy shirt.

They sipped their drinks quietly. Jen wanted to find out more about Skipper’s job, but she knew asking him would sound like the dullest type of small-talk. But I really want to know, she thought to herself, so I can decide if I want to sleep with you. If she could just say it like that, it wouldn’t sound so boring.

“So, Chase told us you work in business,” Jen said, giving up on any type of inventive delivery.

“Doesn’t everyone work in business?” Skipper asked. Jen laughed, but Skipper just sat there looking somberly at his ridiculous fruity drink.

“Well, then, what kind of business?” she asked.

Skipper shrugged evasively. “I buy and sell things,” he said.

This guy was frustrating. Jen added a tally mark to her “cons” list.

“And you organize some kind of events?” she tried again.

Skipper laughed. “Is that what Chase said?” Jen nodded, annoyed. She found it remarkable that just an hour before, this taciturn man had been waving his arms around in an animated debate with Chase. She couldn’t get more than five syllables out of him at a time.

“Well, do you?” Jen asked impatiently.

Her obvious annoyance seemed to loosen Skipper up; he suddenly looked much more engaged.

“Yeah, I organize parties,” he said, smiling now.

“Like weddings?” Jen asked. There were a lot of kinds of parties.

Skipper laughed again. “No, like in warehouses, with electronic music.”

He organizes raves, Jen thought. She thought of the few she had been to with Becky years ago. The music made her want to snap somebody’s glowstick in two and gouge both her eardrums out with the pieces. That was it, then; this guy was a definite “no.”

It dawned on her suddenly what kind of “business” Skipper must be involved in.

“So when you say you buy and sell things,” she said, “you mean illegal things.”

Skipper laughed heartily, as though he were really enjoying himself. Jen was pretty sure that the more irritated she sounded, the happier Skipper became. As though trying to annoy her further to maximize his pleasure, he didn’t answer her question but instead changed the subject.

“I guess I don’t need to ask what you do,” Skipper said with a slight leer. “You’re famous.”

“I suppose,” said Jen, embarrassed. She never liked talking about her job, especially with regular people, who would only think she was spoiled if she complained about how stressful it was to have her every move watched. She imagined which of the regular questions Skipper would ask next: Which film was her favorite? What was it like working with Famous Actor X or Famous Director Y? Or the worst, especially at times like now when she didn’t know the answer: What would her next project be?

But Skipper’s question was in fact totally unexpected. “What is your philosophy of acting?” he asked her.

Jen was struck silent. In all of her years in Hollywood, she had never been asked this question, and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to answer it. Normally she would come up with a joke to dismiss such an oddball question. But for some reason that she couldn’t quite identify, she very much wanted to provide an acceptable answer. Her mind began to race as she tried to think of a philosophy of acting, any philosophy of acting. She knew she had read articles on theories of acting in college, before she dropped out. But she couldn’t remember what they said. She had done that exercise where you pretended to be a chair, but she couldn’t recall what it was supposed to mean. As Skipper looked expectantly across the table, Jen began to have the uncanny memory of being at a job interview, uncanny because she had never in her life actually interviewed for a job, but had only pretended to do so a number of times in movies.

“I don’t really have a philosophy,” she said finally, giving up. “I usually just go by instinct.”

“That’s too bad,” Skipper said.

His smugness made Jen indignant. “What’s wrong with following your instinct?” she asked.

“It’s always good to be conscious of your own philosophy,” Skipper said. He picked up his frothy drink and sipped it loudly through a long, clear straw, looking at Jen over the top of the glass.

Jen felt that this conversation was like a game of tennis, and that she was losing. She tried to lob his serve back at him.

“Don’t you think living by a philosophy is a little,” Jen searched for the proper word, a word her last acting teacher had always used to describe an exaggerated performance, but it wouldn’t come to her. She settled for the best approximation she could think of, “fake?” As she spoke, she could hear her words slurring, the consonants imprecise and uncertain, hurting whatever credibility she was trying to salvage in this game.

“You think it’s affected?” Skipper asked, smirking a little. Damn, that was the word! Advantage Skipper, she thought.

“Maybe,” she replied, sipping on her gin and tonic to hide her embarrassment. She tried to maker her mind a blank so he wouldn’t read her thoughts any further.

Skipper leaned in closer over the table and looked intently at her. His eyes, which she hadn’t noticed before, looked strikingly dark and deep in the dim bar lighting.

“Everybody lives by a philosophy,” he said. “It’s just that most people don’t pay attention to what it is. They go through life making decisions based on a set of unexamined principles.”

Jen thought about this for a moment, trying to figure out whether it applied to her.

“I believe that the only way to take responsibility of your life is to commit yourself to a single, coherent philosophy,” he continued.

“So what philosophy do you live your life by?” Jen asked.

Skipper looked at her very seriously.

“Zen Buddhism,” he said.

Chapter 4:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/04/iv-resistance-without-fighting.html

2. The first impression

“Few have strength of reason to overrule the perceptions of sense, and yet fewer have curiosity or benevolence to struggle long against the first impression.” –Samuel Johnson

Late Friday afternoon, Becky drove Jen to a tennis club in Beverly Hills where Bradley’s friend Chase spent weekends. Jen didn’t know Chase very well, which made him the perfect target for her mission. Furthermore, Jen had always had the impression that Chase was kind of a playboy. Every time Jen had seen him at a party or out somewhere, he always had some woman hanging around him, a different one each time, and sometimes more than one at a time. Jen felt pretty confident that she could get him drunk and convince him to come home with her; then, with any luck, someone would see him leaving her place in the morning, or, even better, get a picture of him.

When they arrived at the club, Chase was playing tennis against a gangly, young-looking guy in odd pink shorts. Chase was easily dominating his partner, who was panting heavily, heaving his skinny limbs reluctantly across the court with a lot of exasperated huffing every time the ball came to his side. Chase’s performance suggested that he knew he had an audience. He made a show of landing last-minute backhand shots and jumping up like a basketball player to return shots that would have been out of bounds anyway. Every time he jumped up high, his right arm swinging in the air, his shirt would rise up to show a bit of his unnaturally tan and muscular stomach, a move that had to be premeditated. That’s a good sign, Jen thought to herself, watching with Becky from a bench on the sidelines since she didn’t like to play. She had considered using the treadmill inside the club while she waited, but she didn’t want to get too sweaty. Still, sitting outside in the hot glare of the cement courts, she began to feel warm and a little dizzy.

When Chase and the stranger finished their match, they came over to greet Jen and Becky. Jen introduced Becky and tried to give Chase a hug, but he had already stuck out his hand to shake hers, and her waist collided with his fingers as he pulled his hand back.

Up close, Jen realized that the skinny kid’s shorts were covered in an Escher-like pattern of interlocking pink and white flamingos. This matched his overall appearance of being some sort of floppy rag doll, with his skinny body and large, sheepish face. Next to Chase’s chiseled superhero jaw line, the kid’s head looked round like a cantaloupe. They both belonged in comic books, but drawn in very different styles.

“This is Skipper,” said Chase, pointing at the owner of the shorts. “He’s down visiting from San Francisco.”

“Pleasure,” said Skipper, extending his hand to Jen and then to Becky and shaking their hands rather stiffly. He was still panting a bit.

After a moment of awkward small talk about the nice weather, and a round of predictable jokes about how the weather was always nice in Los Angeles, Skipper’s cell phone, which was housed in a holster stuck precariously onto the waistband of his shorts, began to ring. It was playing one of those pulsing, spastic techno songs that made Jen think of a hundred rubber balls bouncing around an enclosed parking lot.

Skipper pulled the phone out of its carrier and looked down at it, frowning at the number on the screen. With his head bowed, Jen could see that his wispy hair was already thinning on the top of his head, despite his baby face.

“Gotta take this,” he muttered, walking to the far end of the court, where he paced back and forth for a while, his hand to his ear.

“Is his name really Skipper?” Becky asked in an overly dramatic whisper.

“No, his name is Andrew or something,” said Chase. “He just likes ‘Skipper,’ not sure why. Interesting kid,” Chase concluded, looking over at him. Skipper was still pacing, gesturing angrily with his free hand like a day trader in a movie, his officious mannerisms making a striking contrast to his zany clothing.

“What’s he so pissed off about?” Jen asked. “He’s not a stockbroker or something, is he?”

“Yeah, he’s something like that,” Chase said in a vague, evasive tone. “He’s in some kind of business.”

“What kind of business?” asked Becky, who had majored in economics in college.

Chase hesitated. “I don’t exactly know,” he said. “Something with a lot of buying and selling, always on his cell phone, you know…” Chase trailed off uncertainly. “Plus he organizes events,” he added, his voice suddenly more committed and cheerful. “That’s how I know him. He meets all the beautiful people.” He winked at Jen. Becky shot Jen an exasperated glance. Jen ignored both of them and kept her face blank.

“Let’s get a drink,” said Becky, sounding annoyed.

The three of them walked towards the little ritzy café by the swimming pool. Jen and Chase walked close to each other, Becky a bit behind. Jen felt pretty sure that Chase knew why she had planned this visit, and that he’d be amenable after a few drinks. But she also felt less than sure that she could go through with it. She hadn’t spent time with Chase in at least six months, but she had felt some kind of continuity in their acquaintance because she always saw him on the cover of magazines, usually looking healthy and tan as he enjoyed a shirtless run with one of his male actor friends. The magazine covers had seemed cheesy enough, but Chase was even more annoying in practice than in theory. She certainly didn’t feel attracted to him at all. And yet, she told herself resolutely, she needed to look past those visceral, physical fears and concentrate on the task at hand, because it was really important that she sleep with him, or at least give the public the impression that she had slept with him.

It was at times like these, when she needed to really focus on a goal, that Jen’s yoga training proved invaluable. With a deep inhale, she calmed her panicky nerves; with an exhale, she released all of her self-doubt as to whether she could rise to this occasion. Thinking of Becky, she devised a mantra to accompany her breathing: I can do it, I can do it, she told herself over and over.

As they reached the bar, Jen was a bit calmer, but her earlier dizziness was turning into a headache. A man in a blue jumpsuit, kneeling on the edge of the patio, was straightening a drainpipe with a small mallet, making rhythmic metallic clanking noises. The café was piping trendy dance music onto the patio, the beats clashing with the uneven banging of the hammer. For a moment, Jen wanted to just leave and go home, but she reminded herself that all of this annoyance was for a greater good. Thinking of her substitute yoga teacher, she decided that she had to ignore the pain in her head and focus on her plan for ten minutes. If she could get through ten minutes, she could get through anything.

She looked at her watch. It was 5:50. The three of them sat down at one of the patio tables to have a drink. She was not going to think about her headache until six.

“Do you guys want to order food?” asked Chase.

Becky nodded yes, while Jen said, “No,” aloud.

“Oh, come on,” said Chase, smiling condescendingly at Jen. “You should eat something.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” asked Jen, trying to keep her tone more on the light and playful and less on the I-hate-you-you-overtanned-idiot side.

“What have you eaten today?” he asked.

Jen rolled her eyes. Because she was very thin, she got asked this sort of question all the time. People imagined that she must starve herself, when in fact she just maintained a healthy eating and workout regimen. However, on this particular day, she had been doing a cleansing fast which restricted her diet to water with maple syrup and lemon juice. She usually only did this fast every Monday and Wednesday, but sometimes added Fridays if she needed to look cute for the weekend.

“That’s none of your business,” Jen replied.

Chase seemed to be about to shoot back some kind of sarcastic retort, but just then the waiter arrived, and Chase interrupted himself with a little hiccup. The waiter was very strong and athletic-looking, with the muscular arms, lean abdomen, and bowlegged gait of prizefighter. His face, on the other hand, was so young and babyish that it looked photoshopped on, like the body had gone through years of rough experience that the face was just catching up to. Jen thought he was ridiculous, but Chase greeted him like an old friend, beaming at him and grabbing his giant bicep in an affectionate gesture.

“What took you so long?” Chase asked, smiling.

The boy smiled back politely as he asked for their order. Chase ordered for everyone without consulting them: a pitcher of microbrewed beer with four glasses and a large pizza covered in arugula and prosciutto.

“Also,” said Jen, “I’d like a salad.” After his comments, she wanted Chase to see her eat something, but there was no way she was going to break her fast with pizza, even if it was covered in a bunch of yuppie greens. “With no goat cheese or bacon,” she added.

Realizing she might need a drink, she also ordered a gin and tonic, a drink rumored to have zero carbs.

Chase gave the waiter a friendly wink, as if in apology for Jen’s order. Jen noticed him watching the waiter as he hurried back inside the restaurant. She wondered if Chase knew him from outside of the club.

“What’s with your order?” Chase asked her, turning his head back to the table. “Don’t like bacon?”

“I’m a vegetarian,” Jen told him, which wasn’t true, but she hoped it would stop him from further scrutinizing her diet. She looked down at her watch; it was only 5:56.

“Sounds like a lot of mind-havoc to me,” said Chase.

Jen looked quickly to Becky, whose eyebrows were raised in an expression of open, pleasurable surprise. A lot of people in LA went to Becky’s self-actualization seminars, but very few of them had the same particular area of focus as her.

“You do Groundbreakers?” she asked, the excitement in her voice barely restrained.

“Oh yeah, I love it,” replied Chase. “Totally changed my life.”

“Mind-havoc is one of my major renovation areas,” Becky said, breathlessly. “It’s, like, all over my self-awareness blueprint.”

Jen flinched a little at the Groundbreaker’s jargon, which Becky usually kept smartly to a minimum around her.

“Oh yeah, mine too,” said Chase. “I used to be knee deep in mind-chaos. I’ve been stripping it out of all my support structures; I think I’m getting close to where I can start rebuilding.”

The man fixing the drain stopped his hammering, looked up, snorted loudly and audibly, and then looked back down at his work.

“My coach says I need to focus on what I want, not on what I think other people want me to be,” Chase continued.

“Oh my god, so do I,” said Becky, sounding like a teenager on a cell phone. She scooted her chair a little to the side so that she could look him more fully in the face.

Ten minutes later, Becky and Chase had established that they had been at many of the same seminars and events, including the one just this past week, that they both had liked the female guest speaker from India but not the male doctor who had presented on “emotional dry rot,” that their coaches were friends-of-friends with each other, that they both took the same vitamins and supplements, and that they were both certified as yoga instructors. By the time their food and drinks came, Jen’s ten minutes of involvement had long expired and she had completely shut out their conversation. Instead she was doing seated meditation exercises, focusing on the rhythmic beat of the techno music and its intermittent alignment and discord with the throbbing in her head. Whenever Chase or Becky seemed to be directing a comment at her, she nodded in a gesture of empty agreement.

Skipper returned to the table shortly after the food arrived.

“Asshole,” he said, pointing at his phone as he sat down, scraping the feet of his metal chair across the concrete patio. Without any further niceties, he pulled a slice of pizza from the tray, took an enormous bite, winced as it burned his mouth, and washed it down with a huge swig of beer from Chase’s glass.

Becky coughed loudly. Then she stood up from the table and coughed again. “I think I need some cough drops,” she said to Jen. “Will you come with me and get them?”

“I’ll go with you,” Chase volunteered eagerly, jumping up.

“Actually what I’m really getting is tampons,” Becky said. Chase sat back down, waving his hand in a gesture of mock dismissal.

“Carry on then,” he said.

Jen and Becky walked across the deck of the pool to the club’s little convenience shop.

“What is it?” Jen asked her when they were out of hearing range.

“I’ll tell you when we get inside,” said Becky under her breath.

They entered the store, a wave of cool air-conditioning hitting Jen as the electronic doorbell ding-donged to announce their arrival.

Facing the door was a rack of tabloid magazines. Jen automatically scanned the covers for her own face, finding it quickly on one of the trashiest ones at the bottom of the rack.

“Heartbroken Jen flees to Michigan,” it said.

“What?” said Jen aloud.

“Don’t look at those,” said Becky, who had walked on ahead to the other end of the little aisle and was holding a small packet of cough drops.

“Why would it say I’m moving to Michigan?” Jen asked.

Becky gasped and dropped the cough drops on the ground. Jen watched her lower herself into a perfect, easy squat and then pop up smoothly again, holding the packet.

“I don’t know anyone in Michigan,” Jen continued.

Becky interrupted her before she had finished. “Don’t read that garbage,” she said, walking over to Jen and pulling her away from the magazines by the arm. “I’ve got something important to tell you,” she added, once they were back by the cough drops.

“What is it?” Jen asked, absentmindedly picking up a box of sugar-free mints for herself.

Becky paused for a minute. Then she began speaking very quickly, as though she were trying to get all of her thoughts out before Jen interrupted.

“Listen, I know you came here to sleep with Chase but I think I have a real connection with him and I don’t want you to do it, you owe me, I got that magazine for you and I was sooo tired and I have always done every favor you asked me to.” Becky paused to take a breath.

“Becky,” Jen said.

“And I really like this guy and you just want to have some kind of revenge sex with him and I don’t disrespect you for that but I never meet anyone I like and I never ever ask you for anything.” Her face was red and flushed.

“It’s fine,” Jen said. Becky paused, breathed deeply, and threw her arms around Jen like Jen had just given her the best present of a lifetime, instead of a crappy white elephant.

“You’re the best,” said Becky, giving her a little kiss on the cheek.

Jen wanted to think that she was doing Becky a favor, but the truth was she had already decided she wasn’t tough enough to go through with her plan. Since the moment they had walked away from the table, Jen hadn’t wanted to go back and face the unappealing prospect of how she would spend her evening. There aren’t enough gin and tonics in the world, she thought to herself. Jen hated to admit defeat, but frankly it was a huge relief.

They paid for their mints and cough drops and walked back past the pool towards the bar. “You can have the other one,” Becky said in the no-nonsense tone of a legal negotiator.

Jen snorted as though this were funny, but in fact it wasn’t a bad idea. That kid seemed annoying, but there was no way he could be more annoying than Chase.

Chapter 3:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/03/3-death-of-intelligence.html