Frankensteining

Now, before we begin, I need for you to understand that what I’m about to tell you isn’t a particularly easy thing for me to admit.  It goes against my most basic survival instincts.

So don’t look at me while I’m talking.  Look at that wall across the street over there, the way that the dusk shadows crawl across the green brick ‘round this time of day.

Yeah, I think I might like the guy.

Greg.

I know, I know.  He wasn’t overly difficult for me to snag at the start, which always turns to a negative later on when you’re left wondering what sort of idiot would have fallen for your lines.  In addition, yeah, his musical tastes lie rotting somewhere along the road from Mediocre to Abysmal, that stretch where you’d never want your 1970 Sonic Plymouth breaking down.

And I haul out my guy checklist, the one I store in the back closet of my noggin, and it’s well-thought-out.  An aerodynamic thing of intrinsic beauty.  Anyway, I pull it out and start going over it, and it’s clear he doesn’t completely measure up to the entirely hypothetical males that I’ve Frankensteined from parts of other guys I’ve met and/or imagined over the years.

For example, I know guys who can add bigger series of numbers in their heads than Greg can.  Can I just let this go without comment?  His vertical jump isn’t as high as this one guy I talked to for a while back in Austin.  His right dimple?  Not nearly so cute as a guy I saw in the downtown tunnels last week.

Deaf/dumb/blind/plays-a-mean-pinball?  After careful consideration, I have decided to cross those off my list of requirements altogether. 

But Greg… Well, Greg… He holds up pretty well, even against the most fantastical of imaginary competitors.

Like this other night, I’ve gone vrooming off to meet a couple self-proclaimed Thanatonauts from online, vroomed off and vroomed back again, and I’m sprawled out across the couch in my hip urban bachellorette pad, babbling about it.  ‘Cause these guys, they kill each other for fun and sport, only it’s just temporary, ya dig?  They fancy themselves adventurers.

And Greg seems less alarmed by it all than one might imagine.  He doesn’t get jealous that I’m meeting new and exciting people from online.  He doesn’t even forbid me to see them again, which is too bad, because I think that would sound hysterical, a once-in-a-lifetime spontaneous one-liner. 

“Adri, I forbid you to see those darned Thanatonauts anymore!” 

Greg, you know, I might not go so far as to say he understands how my head works, but he gives it enough berth for it to feed.

Still, I’ve known men with a more encyclopedic knowledge of psychedelic folk music. And he is unable to levitate himself the way the man from my dreams can.

A slow learner, he’ll sometimes still let me drive.  The other night, and I’m going down to the store on his motorcycle for late night caffeine.  He updates his last will and testament, calls his mother to say he loves her, stoically hops on the back of the bike while I start her up, and he’s clutching me all the way.

And I swear to you, hand on heart and needles in eye, this old dude was nowhere near me when I took that corner in the parking lot.  It was an entirely respectable turn.  I would have taken my grandmother on a turn like that.  But still, I shut down the bike and Greg gets off and I hear Old Dude screaming my way.

He’s old, and he has a sort of Slavic accent and an unhealthy egg-shaped nodule of nondescript growth swimming under the skin of his forehead. And, sure, he’s got a walker, but he’s screaming like mad, and some of it I’m even following.  “She needs learn to drive! Do not you try and protect her!”  he spits out at Greg as Greg steps between the two of us.

And Greg, shrugging, he steps back.  “Fine, but it wasn’t her I was trying to protect.”

“You!” he curses me as I move to remount the bike.  “And where do you go you think you are?”

Me:  “You were making so goddamn much noise over there, I was going to start the bike back up and have a second go at ya.”

And this stuns him in place long enough for Greg and I to take our leave and head into the store, but then we get back out and the motorcycle is lying on its side on the ground.  Old Slavic Dude’s car is still sitting there.

Greg:  “He has a walker.  How did he even manage that?”

Me: “Oh, hell no!  I’m going back in to find Gustav.  It’s going down…”

I stomp back into the store, but Mister Greg, he stands calmly next to the motorcycle and he waits for the sound of approaching sirens or gunfire, helicopters, maybe a SWAT team or two.

And he waits and he waits, and he gets no sign of what might be happening inside until a heavyset woman with multiple chins and a marked limp bounds out into the parking lot looking for her SUV.  She looks Greg up and she looks Greg down and she glances at the motorcycle beside him.

“You need to tell your lady-friend that if she doesn’t learn herself some manners, someone is going to come and shove that motorcycle up her ass someday.”

Greg keeps smiling, rocking back ‘n forth on the balls of his feet.  “Yep.  I see you met my girlfriend.”

Ya gotta love a guy who doesn’t let this kind of thing faze him.

So don’t tell him I told you this, but I’m thinking of keeping Greg around for the time being.