Rant

‘“Hipster” “Love”” By Joe Eichner

 GUY, mid twenties, average build, at a fairly nice restaurant in New York City, presumably sitting at a table outside of it. He wears black sunglasses, a faded vintage t-shirt and blue jeans, and sits opposite APRIL, who wears a Bob Dylan concert t-shirt, large, oversized glasses and an airy skirt (presumably from some Asian country) that adds to her ‘hipster/hippie’ look.  She wears no makeup.  They are both young, white, and look poorer than they are.  The lights open slowly to chatter from the restaurant, and we see GUY and APRIL with the understanding that they’ve chatted for a bit already.  GUY has a beer in his hand and is smoking a cigarette.

GUY: My favorite book? I don’t know. Kinda sorta hate that question. (Laughs softly)  How do you go about answering a question like that?  There’s so many good books but of course when you get asked the question the only ones you can think about are other peoples favorite books.  I almost always feel like blurting out, “The Catcher in the Rye,” but then I stop myself; I really liked “Franny and Zooey” better, right?  I mean, “Catcher in the Rye”—could you be more cliché?  But then again, lately, whenever Salinger comes up numerous people (women, mostly) have said, “Franny and Zooey” and I’ve nodded in approval, and thought to myself, “wow, she really gets it, she’s really something.” Then, knowing this, I’ll take the girl out on the date, under the pretext that she’s somehow ‘different’ or ‘indie.’  When I inevitably ask her which Bob Dylan album she likes she’ll inevitably reply, “Blood on the Tracks,” and my stomach will flip, cause of course “Blood on the Tracks” is my favorite album of his too, and what are the chances that a girl not only appreciates Salinger’s deeper cuts but Dylan’s too? 

We’ll chat over cocktails or something—no—cheap red wine—go to some poetry reading somewhere, maybe even an open mic, one where people snap after people read, and perhaps she’ll go up there too, and I’ll jealously look on, wishing I had the courage myself to do it, and she’ll go up there and barely whisper something into the mic, apologizing beforehand—“I don’t really have anything prepared—I mean, well, I didn’t really think I was gonna do this—but, well, here goes!”—and then she’ll proceed to produce barely audible whispers and discuss various abstractions and images like “dirt under a politician’s fingernails while he mixes his stew” and reference various hallucinogenic drugs –“the clouds, transparent yet lucid, transient yet alive”— and I’ll look at her and think, “Wow, this girl’s really great—I mean, you’ve got to give it to her, she’s got something there with that whole fingernail motif” even though all I’m doing is justifying it in my head because I haven’t slept with her yet, and I feel guilty for not really even listening to the poem at all but instead having my eyes trained on her breasts (braless, no doubt) and thinking about how after sex we might smoke a cigarette in bed and, feeling empowered, I might grab my own poetry notebook from the drawer by my bedside and read her a thing or two while she nestles her head under the nook of my armpit, after which she’ll smile and say quietly, “that’s amazing” and I’ll say, “No—it’s nothing really,” all the while thinking, “Wow, she really gets me.  Finally someone gets me.  She really sees my work as something special, and—gosh I can’t get that fingernail thing out of my head.” 

            The problem with this is that at some point she’s gonna say something like, “I really like Lady Gaga—she’s so out there” and I’m going to want to disagree with her—“she’s not really saying anything,” I’ll want to say, “She’s just weird for the sake of weird”—but we’ll be holding hands and walking to breakfast after we’ve just spent the night together and I’ll only hint at my distaste. “I don’t know,” I might say, under my breath, and she’ll go on, about Gaga’s originality, about her mix of music with performance art, about her legion of fans, and I’ll say “But what about Marina Abromovich? Didn’t you hear about that thing where she just sits at a table in a red dress and stares at people for months upon months?” And she’ll say, “No, I haven’t heard of that, but have you heard about James Franco? How he’s playing himself on General Hospital—or at least, a mystique of himself, “Franco”?” Then I’ll say condescendingly “Sure, I’ve heard of James Franco,” and then she’ll go on more about Lady Gaga—how good she is on her acoustic sets, blah blah blah, and I’ll say, “Well maybe she’s just more musically intelligent than Madonna, but, nevertheless, nothing very new,” and the conversation will stop. But I’ll have given up something—that belief I’d held deep down that no, not everything is good.  Not every piece of pop art bullshit is really good, not everything can be redeemed by saying, “Well, look, I mean it’s popular—look how many people like this—you’ve gotta give her credit for that.” 

            And I know this isn’t a good thing to say on a first date—I mean, here I am, ranting about how much I hate “Franny and Zooey” and Lady Gaga and Salinger and Dylan—and it’s probably coming off like I’m just some cynical, pretentious guy who thinks he knows better than everyone else.  Well to that I’d say that I don’t hate “Franny and Zooey” as much as I hate the idea of liking “Franny and Zooey” as an alternative to liking “Catcher in the Rye.”  It’s become cliché to not be cliché, hasn’t it?  I was in a frat once—in college—well—duh it was in college—and no—don’t think of me as that, you know, that guy who says he’s in a frat and mentions it only to—you know—say, “Well, I was in the frat, but, I didn’t really like it all that much.  I was more into Russian Literature and musical theater.” Don’t think that—cause I’m not that guy—I’m no Zac Efron—I mean, sure, back then I liked all the kids in the frat and they were nice and we were friends but it wasn’t like I acted completely like I was morally above it—I just did it in secret, you know, writing poetry and going to art galleries with various—well—don’t get mad at me for saying this and don’t judge me but—girls who thought that being into artsy stuff and being in a frat was cool or something.  Girls whose favorite Salinger book wasn’t Catcher or Franny, because they’d copied off the nerd in the back of the class when it came to Sophomore year book reports.  Anyway, what I hated about the frat was that kids who really did “frat hard”—kids who went to the gym twice a day and tanned on their dorm porches and had ESPN on in the background at any given time and wore polo button down shirts and backwards hats—I hated when they’d say, “Brooo, I’m fratting so hard right now,” and with the hand not holding a red solo cup high five a fellow brother, as if “fratting” were somehow ironic.  Like making fun of the cliché frat kid could somehow excuse actually being one. 

APRIL starts to say something, interrupting him.  He starts to say he’s sorry but she tries to speak at the same time.  This awkward moment goes on for a bit.  The waiter comes by and they both order elaborate espressos.  Silence and the sounds of the restaurant fill the space.

            I’m sorry.  Sorry for talking so much—well no I’m not sorry—but—well—I wonder if maybe we’ve gotten to the point as a society where irony itself is ironic, so that nothing anyone says is truthful at all anymore.  There are so many freakin’ resources and articles and research projects saying this and that, and it feels like no matter what someone says there’ll be someone else saying the exact opposite.  It’s like there’s no truth left and so people are afraid to be who they really are— to be full, opinionated versions of themselves, complex identities that defy all stereotypes.  It’s like instead we just act stereotypically but with a self-awareness that makes acting stereotypically ok.  It’s like there’s nothing real anymore.  Nothing original cause technology and computers and shit make it the impossible easily and readily possible.  

Have you read that John Jerome Sullivan essay? About reality stars?  He says something like—and I’m paraphrasing—he says something like reality television is real because people are aware they’re people acting on a reality show—they’re knowingly acting like how they think they themselves would act on a reality show.  That probably didn’t make sense, but I’d had that thought before.  And Jonathan Lethem, have you read his essay on plagiarism?—gosh you probably think I’m so pretentious right now—but, forgive me, he says something—and I’m paraphrasing here—he makes the argument that all art is just copying something else, and making it new—that all art is plagiarism in some way or another, and so for someone like Salinger to not let them make a movie out of “Catcher in the Rye” is a shitty thing (another reason why I hate “Franny and Zooey” or, well, the idea of “Franny and Zooey”—the idea that an artist would give something so wonderful to us only to close us off to it).  And the cool thing about the essay is that he’s plagiarized the whole thing, that he’s just paraphrasing other stuff for the whole frickin’ time, kinda like how I am now—you know, just sputtering off philosophical quips to you from various prominent essay writers and making it seem like I’m smart, like I can actually do something, anything about the conundrum, like I’ve got something of my own to offer—which I really don’t.  I mean, I’ve spent this whole time with you talking about how much the idea of a book pisses me off, a book that I actually really like, and how my whole life is some great existential conflict. 

            It doesn’t feel real—that I’m doing this—I don’t even know why I am, why I would do this to a girl on a first date.  Maybe I’m trying to push you away because I sense that you’re the type of girl who would love “Franny and Zooey” and “Blood on the Tracks” and maybe I think that somehow we should be in love because of that, that if you are that girl I should somehow romanticize our lives as if it’s some movie—or some play where I go on and on about how life these days is just so ironic, and empty, and how I feel lost in it all, and how I’m so deeply afraid of having the slightest chance at falling in love; and then you might feel bad for me and want to kiss me and that will be that.  Because I think, deep down, that love is just the same something two people create in their minds, that love is just another plagiarized art piece founded upon total and full mutual collaboration between two people trying to be one.  Maybe I’m afraid that love is ironic, or that the idea of love is ironic, and that we’ve seen love happen on tv shows and in books and in plays that to not be in love might be better than actually being in it; and maybe I’m afraid that if by some chance you say you like “Franny and Zooey” more than “Catcher in the Rye” that I’d come up with this whole thing about how much I should love you when in reality I’d end up just pushing you away, acting like how a guy should act in love when really I’m acting like the guy who’s in love but doesn’t believe in love, and so just wants to ruin it all. 

Silence.  There is a clinking of forks and plates, and a server brings the coffee—espresso for him and cappuccino for her. 

APRIL: I was actually going to say that my favorite Salinger story was “A Perfect Day for Banannafish” (Pause.)

GUY:  If this were a play I’d kiss you right now.

Silence.  She sips her coffee, he looks off in the distance, pondering.  Then he grabs the tablecloth from under the table, spilling their coffees, and launches himself over the table, presumably, to kiss her.  But as he does so, the lights promptly go to blackout.