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