I knew at 3 years old Smoky the cat was there for me. I knew at 4 I had thinking to do. At 5, my color was blue. At 6, my number was 22. At 7, I'd marry an Indian princess when I got big. At 8, I'd be a big game hunter when I got big. At 9, I'd be a Minnesota Viking when I got big. At 10, I'd run away before I got big. At 11 I learned--the hard way--I'd best wait till I got big to run away. It was settled; at 18 I'd leave home and my life would begin.
Who knew so many numbers were involved in what I knew? Something, for a guy who refused to give math the time of day.
For the next several years I knew nothing, for I was going in, coming out of puberty. By the time that storm blew over, it was 1968 and I found myself in a rock band. This afforded me the luxury of being discerning where girls were concerned. Where my band buddies were banging every groupie who leaned on an amp, I only chased after the girls who knew better than to mess with a musician.
When I graduated highschool at 18 it was 1971 and the cut of girls I chased were concerned with something called The Equal Rights Amendment. I didn't know what that meant, exactly--I was caught up in something called The Draft. August 5th rolled round and I pulled number 101 out of the hat. It was close, but due to something called de-escalation, instead of dying for nothing in Vietnam, I got to start my life.
I quit the band and off to college I went. Again, unlike my band buddies, I had no notches carved in my gunstock. I couldn't put my finger on it, exactly--why I hadn't jumped on the girls begging me to bang 'em, but I just had a sneaking suspicion to do so was to have notches carved out of me.
A new number came to me driving to college. The number 7. That's right, I was to sleep with no more than 7 women in my lifetime.
"Choose wisely," I had said heading for the state line.
I broke from my autobiography. No, I knew a whole lot more, but sleep reminded me I needed some now. I rolled over on my futon. "Nope," I told myself, "that's all you know. Now, go to sleep."
I opened my eyes. I knew I was 46. I knew I'd been with six women. Time to step up to the plate, cash in on number 7.
"Choose wisely," I said, getting up to pace.
Pacing my apartment was a challenge. The four steps East, the four steps West, was more like turning circles. Dizzy, I sat down on my chair of power, stared at my phone.
"Call, Deirdre, call."
A year ago, I kept running into this tall blond at matinees. In time we started going to matinees together. In more time we started going to dinner before the movie, then out for a pint after. No, these weren't dates. How could they be dates? She wasn't my type. I wasn't her type.
Something, though, how Deirdre and I got along. We could talk about anything, agree or disagree, but never did we fight. Why? Because of one little act left out of the equation--sex. That's right, without the impeachments tied to sex we never felt the need to fight.
Oh, great; now I was thinking about sex. I got up and paced.
A good way to stop thinking of sex is to think of something serious. So, I thought of my Great Work, that novel I'd been sent down to write.
Dizzy, I stumbled over, picked up my journal, wrote, "At 46, I knew it wasn't so much that I'd failed to pen my Great Work as it was my muses who had failed me."
I set down my journal, stepped over, opened my drawer of treasures, dug out my photo of a pair of eyes a girl had once sent me. At the time, the girl had been my girlfriend. The eyes were her way of telling me she was no longer my girlfriend. But the eyes Stephanie had sent me, weren't her own eyes. They were the eyes of a muse of mine.
"No, Gia," I said now, staring into Gia's eyes, "no muse ever failed me more than you."
I recalled then, the Saturday I'd brought home the biography of Gia Carangi. I couldn't read much that day because I had a dinner date with Stephanie. But I'd read enough to know Gia was gold where muse material was concerned.
Driving over to my girlfriend's, I thought how tragic that Gia had died--died so young. More tragic still, that I had not crossed paths with the super model when still alive. No, had I gotten the chance to pass a word or two with her, I most likely would have saved her. After all, we writers of Great Works had no little way with words.
At the restaurant, Stephanie could hardly eat for all she had to say about our future. I could hardly eat for the pad and pen I kept digging out that I might jot down yet another high-octane idea for my Gia-fueled Great Work.
A recurring problem I had with girlfriends was that I was too truthful. "What are you obsessing over now?" my girlfriend asked. "Gia," I answered. "Gia Carangi. Here, let me get her."
Perhaps it was in bad taste that I ran out of the restaurant, grabbed my Gia biography out of my glove box. Perhaps it was in bad taste that I set the book up on the table so my date and I could feast on Gia while we dined.
Sunday I read the entire biography. Turned out, as a muse, Gia fell short. No, it wasn't that she was a lesbian--I had a long history of getting crushes on lesbians. What killed the muse in Gia was the fact that she was a womanizer. How could I, a higher male, pedestal a girl who behaved in the very manner I most despised in my gender?
A week after our threesome dinner date, I got some mail--a big manila envelope from Stephanie. In it was a break-up essay and some eyes ripped out of Vogue. "Here's your dead Gia," the essay ended. "Hope you two live happily ever after."
And, oh, how those ripped-out eyes of Gia spoke to me. No, few eyes in our time could speak like Gia's. "I trust that you will love me," Gia's eyes were saying.
But, wait; a new know had just come to me. No, it wasn't Gia herself who was saying, "I trust that you will love me." It was a force greater than Gia.
I ran over, picked up my journal, wrote, "And God came down--not to look out for Gia; but to look out from Gia. 'I trust you will love me,' God had said through Gia. But mankind loved Gia's surface too much, and the God inside Gia died."
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