Sex & the Scene of the Crime

The philosopher and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said – or at least he’s credited with having once said – “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  

I submit to you that Ralph was right. I submit to you there’s nothing wrong with changing one’s mind, even about the biggest things in life. And I submit to you that for those of us who are thinkers, theorists, sages, and scholars, it is only to be expected that we should occasionally approach a given situation on one path, only to soon find ourselves upon a very different path indeed once we reach the other side.

I will, however, qualify these submissions by adding that there are probably more opportune and less opportune times at which we great thinkers of the world can be moved to completely change our impressive, impressive minds.

For example, lying in bed beneath the body of a red-blooded American male, having been, er, freshly boned, so to speak. This would be a poor time for one to decide that one has no interest in dating, no interest in relationships, and frankly, absolute zero interest in getting boned.

And so it is with the greatest sadness that I, your humble heroine, admit to you that this is precisely the predicament in which I found myself after a particularly ho-hum blind date recently.

Yeah, I know.

Shut up. Don’t judge me. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, and it’s at least ten times less respectable than anything I would ever dream of. 

Anyway, so I lay there for a little while, contemplating how I might extricate myself from under this aforementioned red-blooded American male without waking him and risking having to have another go at it.

[Involuntary shudder]

To this end, I proceeded to engage in a series of decreasingly graceful maneuvers, at the end of which I had accomplished two things: 1) I had managed to free myself and now stood next to the bed, bathing in the glow of my newfound physical autonomy; and 2) I had the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do that was likely to wake this guy up from his chemical slumber for the next few hours.

I was, therefore, free. Free of my date’s body, free to make noise and tromp around the strange dark house at will, and free – of course! – to act upon my newly formulated desire not to date, not to enter into a relationship and not, under any circumstances, to get boned.

Exercising this freedom, I soon found myself locked in a bathroom, dialing my cell phone. “Harry, hi. What are you doing?”

Harry is the private investigator and odd jobs man hired out by my law office when we find ourselves in a particularly tight fix.

“I’m working, Adri,” he replied. He sounded groggy. Groggier than usual, even. “I’m sitting outside a hotel taking pictures of someone’s wife getting boned.” There seemed to be a lot of that going on. The boning, I mean. It was really catching on like wildfire.

“Wait,” Harry said with a yawn. “What the hell time is it? Where are you?”

Well, that was an easy one. “I have no idea where I am,” I replied instantly. “I’m gonna need for you to come pick me up right now.”

As Harry was quick to point out, this paradox presented us with a series of obstacles. But after feeling my way through the unfamiliar house, using the light from my cell phone screen to guide me, I eventually located a stack of the red-blooded American male’s mail. Now I knew where I was. I was quite impressed with myself. I should’a been a spy, I thought gleefully…

Harry decreed that the address in question was far too far a distance from my house to be traversed on foot at… at… let’s see… three o’clock in the morning. And so it was that Harry announced that presently, he would throw everything back into his van and be on his way to come rescue me.

But if you can remember back a ways, we’ve already established that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with a change in plans. Some changes in plans, in fact, are veritable revelations.

Me: “Wait! Wait, Harry. Do you have fake blood in your van?”

Harry: “Of course!”

Me: “How easy is it to tell fake blood from real blood?”

Harry: “Well, not so easy on film. Easy in person, though, because it doesn’t coagulate and it tastes like syrup.” As it turns out, fake blood tastes like syrup because, well, it’s syrup. For the change of plans I was planning, this would not do.

“Okay,” I started pacing around the bathroom, thinking out loud. “Harry, my roommate has a cage full of rats to feed her snake. I’m gonna need for you to bring me a bowl or a bucket of the blood of those rats.”

Long silence. “But Adri… How am I going to get the blood out of the rats?”

This was a ridiculous question, in my estimation. “Now Harry, what do I pay you for?”

Harry, exhaling loudly, groaned: “To get the blood out of the rats without having to ask you how.”

One thing about Harry: He always comes through for me.

*          *          *          *          *

One hour later, and I was sitting in the passenger seat of Harry’s beat-up white van, peering through binoculars to see what I could see through the hotel window. Harry was still on the clock for his wife-spying gig.

He twisted around in his seat to look at me. “So, your blind date guy is going to wake up and find you gone and his bathroom covered in blood and unidentifiably squishy body parts?”

“Yep.”

“Won’t he try to call and check on you? Call the police? Make sure you’re not… not… you know, dead and murdered and hacked to pieces?”

I handed Harry back the binoculars, shaking my head. “No way.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him you didn’t want to see him again?”

I lit up a cigar. “This makes the same point with less ambiguity.”

“That was a first date?”

I glared at Harry. I said: “Yeah, I know. Shut up. Don’t judge me. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, and it’s at least ten times less respectable than anything I would ever dream of.”

There’s not a damn thing wrong, in the end, with deciding that one is better off on one’s own. There’s nothing wrong with acting upon that decision in the best way one knows how. Right?

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said this: “Solitude is impractical yet society is fatal.” At least, he’s credited with having once said that.

And I submit to you that Ralph was right.