Conversations and Spin
written by: Chris Gee
“Hey, Fellas! What’s going on?” It is Tuesday lunchtime, and here is Doug.
He has unknowingly interrupted an elitist snob conversation by walking in uninvited.
Max makes his way forward from the far end, tossing a football to himself. “Your name’s Doug, right?” He passes between his lieutenants, two sitting per dorm room bed. Each lieutenant resembles Max in haircut and skin tone. Each one dressed as if heading to or coming from the gym.
Even with the window shade up, more light enters from the hallway. Doug’s brown eyes must squint against the darkness to see inside. “Yeah, man. From last night’s pizza thing. Saw your door open and figured best be a neighbor and say ‘Hi’ and ‘Hello.’ Anyone else from the Valley?”
Max stops when close enough to Doug. “You were talking with the latecomer. That girl?”
“Oh yeah. That was Spin. Found out then her and Monica are my neighbors.”
One bed’s worth of snobs does a poor job of stifling snorts and chuckles.
Max barks back without looking, “Gents, pipe down. There’s a lady’s man among us!”
Doug corrects him while rubbing the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t say all that.”
Max continues, “Well, today’s your lucky day. You’ll find out from others on campus that our families are a big deal. Multi-generations of who-who’s. Each semester, we extend our wealth of opportunities only to starters able to PROVE themselves worthy. A challenge, if you will.”
“Wow! I knew when I saw you guys—”
“Not so fast, Tonto.”
“I’m not Tonto. I’m Doug.”
“Sorry. Doug. What I was going to say … you got game?”
There was an uncomfortable pause from Doug as his eyes crunched the question. “Do you mean jimmies? Only the one my uncle gave me when I turned fourteen. Here on me somewhere–” Doug pulls out his wallet.
The bed-seated Max clones cannot contain tear-leaking laughter.
Max stops his game search by putting a free hand on Doug’s shoulder. “That’s fine. Keep your gun in its holster. So, your challenge then is … to get with Spin.”
“What?”
With a hard pass to his center, Max winds Doug using the football. Then, Max says, “Now, don’t embarrass me in front of our crew. Clearly, you’re the right man for the job, so Good Hunting,” while waltzing Doug backward out of the room.
They slam the door in Doug’s face. As he stands stunned, their laughter bleeds out from its grill hole and cracks. While his one hand cradles the “Prop. Of UCLA” stamped football, Doug’s other hand rubs at tender abs through his vintage long-sleeve Mr. Softy T-shirt. Every one of his dark, floppy curls suggests a different way to go.
It is Tuesday night, and here is Spin.
Full of energy and ‘Monsters of Rock’ bravado, she freely charges around her side of the dorm room, fingering and fretting her ESP LTD-KH202 electric guitar. Batteries, Bluetooth transmitters, and the like ride her shoulder strap, allowing her to play without wires. And she has not dressed to impress. For bottoms, a pair of standard boring gray sweatpants. For tops, Aunt Mildred’s ‘Winger’ T-shirt. She has cut off the sleeves so her electric green tube top can shine through. A matching electric green scrunchie ties back her mousy brown hair, keeping ANC headphones in place. Her forearms glisten as it’s her practice and workout in one.
Spin has an old soul. Certified by the vintage posters and magazine inserts hanging about her side—likenesses of Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde, Bonnie Raitt, and Dolores O’Riordan dominate. Each one sending inspiration forward to do it her way, come hell or high water, tearing it up with their signature ax, hair flying, and dripping with sweat.
Midterm exams for four of her core subjects are up tomorrow. Medical textbooks are spread out across her bed. Because Spin has a photographic memory, she does not have to study. Frustrates and alienates her from other classmates. One look at anything written, and she has a complete recall of text and diagrams. This includes sheet music.
Loafers naturally wander by their room. They gawk too long at Spin’s time warp. Then, fire jovial cracks at Monica, her roommate. About her shortness. About her wearing kid-sized Miraculous Ladybug sweats. Their final crack against her oversized bifocals always turns fatal. These are glasses Monica only wears to bait prejudice. When they fall for it, she strikes with Koreatown-thug profanity so vicious that visitors run in fear out the door. It is always a great show for Spin.
When it’s just the roommates, Monica sits at her ‘K-Pop’ decorated desk, feet dangling above the floor, and cursing away at whatever extra credit assignment she took on. This is the real reason Spin must wear headphones. Between them exists a respectful balance. Spin guitar-dancing around barefoot, sporting toe rings. Monica lining up lattice, vectors, and ciphers.
Enter Doug, flip-flops flapping, also wearing gray sweatpants. Sleeves also cut off. Like, today. The Tide detergent-branded T-shirt shows off too much of his flab. His putrid cologne wafts in a second before him, sending the roommates’ harmony into cardiac arrest. “Hey, now.”
Spin pulls off her headphones from one ear and gives him a death glare for interrupting. She softens quickly, remembering Monica once calling him a chubby Clark Kent and remembering Mom retelling her first meeting with Dad, him being a walking block of raw material. Unfortunately, Monica has a more tragic reaction, as she is allergic to most mass-produced colognes. She coughs and sneezes almost at once. “What… do… you… want?”
“I saw your door was open and…” Doug, as manly as possible, places one forearm against the door frame. Through a jagged sleeve cut, his milk-white bare chest betrays a hairless nipple. “… and… was wondering…”
“Far out, Doug, what’s that smell?” says Spin, both hands cupping her mouth and nose, leaving her guitar to dangle. Monica has transitioned to lobster red from all her sneezing.
“Nothing but my special mix. A little bit of this. A little bit of that.”
“Monica, you want him to leave before he kills you?”
Poor Monica cannot even talk and can only nod yes between sneezes.
“Beat it, Doug. And next time, keep your mixes in their bottle.”
Doug left with his eyes twinkling as he heard her say next time.
“… so, wait, you’re only attending D’GSOM to pursue your music thing?”
It is early Wednesday morning, and here is Doug, listening to his neighbors through an opened vent near the ceiling. His roommate has dropped out, giving him the freedom to erect the most unstable pyramid of campus-issued dorm room furniture possible. Once at the top, he used his trusty pocketknife to remove the grill and soundproofing from a vent shared with Spin and Monica. And like stealing ripe cherries, he can hear everything said between his neighbors.
Mindful, a six-year-old aiming for a high-kept cookie jar, could have built something better.
“Crazy, huh? Parents would only pay for a ‘real degree.’ Not music.”
Doug’s pyramid creaks and shifts a touch. With effort, he rebalances.
Sniffling, Monica carries on. “… and while you bring home A’s…”
“… I’m free to hunt out gigs. Using here for room and board.”
“… except…”
“Yeah, I gotta launch before MS2. No way in hell I’m working a cadaver. I’ll lose my lunch on the spot.”
Monica stifles a sneeze but presses on. “I don’t know. Like, I’m not one to crush a dream. But taking on the music industry today… this way… seems so analog?”
“Trust me, this is a ‘starting with me’ thing, knowing the world would be a better place if more people followed their heart. Saying all that, I’m not a crackpot. It’s session musician gigs first. Gotta sort pay AND get my foot in some doors AND go through some hard yards AND…”
Both girls laugh on cue, ending with a big, lung-emptying sneeze from Monica.
Half of Doug’s pyramid falls away. In a panic, he grabs onto the grill hole. His ex-roommate’s sled base chair and three-drawer chest crash to the floor with awkward thuds. He shows enough sense not to call out for help. Instead, he does his first pull-up in years back to the grill hole.
Spin asks once his commotion settles, “Reckon puppies raised Doug?”
Monica’s sneezing picks up. “Maybe puppies… living… at a… dump. You know my… cousin, a… third year, says… them Phi Psi boys are… doing… Babe Bets… again.”
Doug hears someone jump out of bed. Then, he gets the shock of his life when something heavy bashes the wall between them. Spin shouts, “Doug! Drop what you’re doing and take a shower!” He lets go, bringing down the rest of his ghetto pyramid. He only stops tumbling when his eye connects with an armrest.
“Hold the elevator!” It is Thursday afternoon, and here is Doug with a black eye. He has just walked into the elevator, munching on something puffy and cheesy. On hearing the scream, his greasiest digit slams and holds the door open button like a kung fu master.
Spin enters, huffing. One hand alighting her padded guitar. The other keeps an army surplus knapsack on her back. Before Doug can let go, a thinner-than-a-rail Sikh sporting a deep purple dastār steps in and between them.
Doug turns to Spin and greets her in a deepened voice. “Hey, now.”
“Hey, Doug. Is that breakfast, lunch, or dinner?” from Spin, eyeing his bag of junk food.
“Uh, I’m just holding it for a friend.”
“Did your friend ask you to hold some between your lips? You’ve got cheese dust everywhere, man.”
The banter is too much for the Sikh. He drops his head to chuckle.
Doug wipes himself down, matching a bear pulling off cobwebs. “Hey, I was wondering, could we meet up for food or something?”
Spin takes her time studying his half-raccoon look, then answers, “Sure. You free to meet at Back on the Beach, up from Palisades Park? Tomorrow, high noon. We’ll go Dutch.”
“Wow, really? I mean, yes! Yes, I can!”
“Great. See you then,” from Spin, exiting after the elevator’s sight-impaired ding.
The elevator travels on and reaches the Sikh’s floor.
Doug bobbleheads a cheerful, “I have a date.”
The Sikh looks back over his knapsack to Doug and says with clarity, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, bro.” Then exits.
This leaves Doug alone. After a minute, noticing the elevator not moving, he says out loud to no one, “My floor was Spin’s!”
It is Friday, about fifteen minutes before high noon. Doug almost waltzes into the restaurant, thinking himself ahead of the game. Except Spin was already there, seated with her attention toward the bay. Her bits have jammed up the window side of her bench seat. Recognizable knapsack. Gigbagged guitar. Southwestern-style sweater coat, heavy on scarlet and black. She even wore her hair down. If Doug knew any better, he could say she styled it tousled. And she wore this faded, thick, blue and white striped blouse number. It brightened the room in a way without bringing attention to herself.
“Hey, now,” from Doug. Besides his curls still not aligned and black-eye turning blue, he has groomed well for a daytime version of himself. Sporting an oversized blue-and-white checkered button-down casual shirt in old man blue jeans.
“Take a seat. Was just watching the storm roll in.” And, true to her words, sky-filling gray-to-black clouds approached from the north. It was the type of brewing storm that robbed the place of its ambiance. “Will lengthen the lunch.”
Doug sees her guitar while taking a seat. “You know, I was in a band once.”
“For real?”
“Well, marching band. I was on triangles.”
Spin briefly bit into her lower lip to check herself. “Tell me about it.”
“Oh, it was the worst, being on mano-percussion. It’s the one instrument you can’t hide a flub from. Come in too early; everyone knows it. Come in too late; you get nasty stares from all directions. Had to quit as the pressure was affecting my studies.”
She wanted to laugh for two reasons. For one, he compared playing triangles to playing guitar. For two, how his voice deepened at the end of that last sentence, having all the energy of him spilling a bottle of testosterone onto the table. Of course, he kept going with other useless truths, taking this proverbial dirty rag of ‘ick’ and wiping bigger and bigger circles, forcing her defenses up. She knew better than to take him on before she ate something.
Doug, by comparison, sat rather chipper. He’s onto remembering his other two dinner dates. Well, his attempted dinner dates. Both were planned meetups at his hometown diner. Both girls literally ran away when they saw him in the parking lot. He always felt it was that Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean tux his mother, Delores, strongly suggested he wear. The one with the pink shirt and red bow tie. Gifted on his eighth birthday. The good woman had patched and re-patched it over the years against his growth and pudge. Spin was still there when the food arrived. It had to be that bad-luck tux. So, he asks confidently before stuffing a fully loaded hot dog into his mouth, “Do you come here often?”
“Hope not. It’s my break-up place.”
Doug coughs out in shock. Most of his chew smashes into his plate like an unexploded mortar shell, sending a few French fries to the floor.
None of his dramatics stop Spin. She continues to fork through her Santa Fe Salad, saying near the end of his fits, “Maybe don’t take such a big bite next time.”
Tests of lightning dance outside the restaurant. Outdoor patrons rush in on the first drops of rain, holding onto whatever drinks they have, grumbling fresh complaints with whoever will listen. Customers and wait staff close windows in a tizzy. Yes, the weather change has become a great unifier of people! Somehow, a mom and her boy make it through the storm survival din, finding a free table behind Doug. As they sit down, the boy watches Spin lean over her gear to close the last window. The sight of her sheathed guitar mesmerizes the boy.
Thinking no one’s watching, Doug pokes at the mess on his plate. Spin saves him with, “I wouldn’t. That would be downright disgusting.” He pushes his plate toward the aisle, blushing from being caught.
Doug tries to recover. “So, I hear you have a photographic memory? Like you remember everything you’ve read?”
“Yup.”
“So, what’s an example?”
Spin puts her fork down onto her salad and pushes the plate toward the window. With half of her face catching daylight projection of rainlash, she leans forward hard, putting her clothed breasts above the table. Then stares hard at Doug, reciting, “Principles of Social Psychology. First International HSP Edition. Chapter 7. Liking and Loving. Initial Attraction. Although it may seem inappropriate… people are strongly influenced… by the physical attractiveness of their partners… a field study in which college boys and girls were randomly paired with one another… found that the only important determinant of participants’ liking for their date was his or her physical attractiveness. Bold-emphasis-start. None of the other characteristics—even the perceived intelligence of the partner—mattered. Bold-emphasis-finish.”
This recital overwhelms Doug. Mouth left gaping. A bus hitting him would have been better.
Spin, seeing the neighbor boy staring, sits upright again and focuses on the last bits of her salad. “Or, how about General Practice by John Murtagh, from Chapter 113, Disorders of the penis? Circumcision is generally a safe procedure, but there are risks of minor complications and some rare but serious complications. In newborns, because of their small blood volume, any bleeding is of major concern, and blood loss over twenty-five milliliters can be life-threatening. A bleeding circumcision site–”
“Okay! Okay! Stop! Heavens, I get it!”
Rains die off. Winds pick up, whipping the beach into an apocalyptic blur. On each crack of thunder, restaurant lights flicker, sending out ‘ooh and ah’ from the patrons.
Doug enters a strange cycle between slouching and sitting upright on repeat. Clearly, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Spin took this clue and asked for “Separate checks, please,” when a waitress dipped in to clear away plates.
“So… I mean, I don’t know… Like, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but there was this Babe Bet. Before I knew it, I had joined in. But now I’m sitting here thinking… wow, she is so out of my league, and really… what WAS I thinking? I’m in a tub, and here comes the waterfall, and I’m going over, and whatever.”
Throughout lunch, Spin’s demeanor matched a cat playing with a trapped mouse. But this, at its core, unsettled her. “Are you for real? You and your boys have put us ladies through a freakin’ roller-coaster week of harassment, and… now you’re saying I’m out of your league?” Crimson warmed her cheeks.
“They’re not my boys. Well, not yet, anyways.”
“Right. That’s problem one. You, blindly marching on, potentially damaging our lives… for a bet? For complete strangers? Are you that hard up for friendship?”
“Well, saying it like that—”
“And there’s problem two. You, not knowing you’re on a rat wheel! Every time you ‘deliver,’ them boys will just spin it faster and faster. I mean, what the hell, Doug?”
So intense was their discussion that they hadn’t noticed the return of the Californian sun nor the exodus of patrons for the patio. Spin continues. “… then there’s problem three. I once read a Bob Marley quote, him saying, ‘The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her.’ Tell me you know what that means.” Both of her feet, donned in worn and weathered L.A. Gear whites, shook from adrenaline, matching the action of a drummer riding double bass pedals.
“I mean… Well, I suppose… I mean, I guess…” He floundered on, then fell silent, gulping like a fish pulled from the safety of its water. Even his eyes went all spacey, with no focus.
Spin knew the look from her babysitting gigs in her hometown. Like a lie was brewing. Yet, again, she checks herself and gives the kid behind him a hello wave. The kid doesn’t wave back, but doesn’t leave her lecture either.
“Hi, my name is Spin. What’s your name?”
“My name is Joey,” from the little boy. This snaps Doug back as if he had this talking parrot on his shoulder all the while and did not know it.
“Pleased to meet you, Joey. That’s your mommy, yeah? You’re out protecting her?”
“Yes. And, yes.”
“This here is Doug. Say ‘Hi,’ Doug.”
Doug welcomes the distraction and turns to the crasher. He puts out his hand for a high-five, saying, “Hey, little man.” Joey stares long at both Doug and his waiting hand but does not budge. It is the hardest thug hint Doug has ever received. He drops his hand from embarrassment.
Spin sits further back, giving her enough room to cross arms and legs. “Joey, do you think Doug would protect his mommy?”
Joey looks at Spin. Then looks at Doug. Then, he looks over at his mom. Then, he looks back at Spin and says, “I do not know Doug. I hope he does.”
“Honey, leave them alone and finish your lunch,” from Joey’s mom, who, without looking up from her smartphone, rattled his kiddie plate. Joey disappears by sinking down.
When alone again, Spin picks up where they left off. “You haven’t answered me.”
“Yeah.”
“Which means…”
Spin waited longer than she should for some sort of anything from Doug. Mindful of the time, she stood up and put her jacket on. “I’m thanking you since I’m nailing this audition with anger. When you figure it out, you know where I am.” Once redressed with guitar in hand, she gives a goodbye wave to Joey, then exits.
Not long after, a powerful blast of sunlight shines right into Doug’s eyes. He squints through it, catching briefly the tail end of an amazing rainbow, linking the restaurant to the storm heading south. “Spin!”
Doug runs out in his weathered, sockless Hush Puppies, mindful of deep puddles everywhere. He sees Spin talking into an open car window. When she used a quick head motion to throw free and unbridled hair out of her face, Doug finally got her and smiled. He watched Spin in her ride-share merge into Route 1 traffic.
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