mike lee

The Algebra of Losers

Opening scene: It is early morning in the Lower East Side of New York. The date is November 11, 1991. First, the sun rises over the gateway of the Manhattan Bridge, silhouetting the pigeon sitting on top of the arch. Then the camera pans across the rooftops before it flies away, looking in a northerly direction against the battleship gray sky. 

Eventually, the camera settles on our main character, which is me, standing with his back to the camera, on the rooftop of the tenement where he lives. The camera slowly shows him wearing a tank top and shorts, standing on the rooftop edge. A yellow Pyrex bowl and a small mirror sit on the ledge in front of him.

As the camera moves closer to the character on the rooftop, it becomes clear that he is shaving. Then the camera moves to the side, catching the main character in profile, focusing on his head and shoulders. Drops of shaving cream drop from his face with each arm wave.

Off-camera, he mumbles to himself. So this is the life, he says. He is reenacting a scene from James Joyce’s Ulysses; while this action is utterly the epitome of pretentiousness, he always wanted to do this.

The lens goes out of focus, and the screen cuts to black.

* * * *

Cut to a photograph of a woman. Voiceover: I woke up that morning from a bad dream––I am staying in a house similar to my grandparents’, a trailer in the mountains of North Carolina. It is a shotgun house with a hallway that is very narrow. It was the morning, and I was hiding under the covers because my then-girlfriend and her new boyfriend from Philadelphia were making noise in the front room. She walks in to see if I am there and, though I know she knows I am there, she pretends that I am not. I peek through the covers, and I see the guy she’s with. He looks like a particular movie star, except that the fellow from Philadelphia is taller with receding brown hair and black frame glasses, making him appear older than his expected age. He is wearing a dark brown suit under a tan trench coat. They spent the night together in the house I slept in. 

My ex-girlfriend is suddenly on the telephone, telling her sister about the fellow from Philadelphia. She tells her he has political aspirations. 

Finally, they leave and I get out of bed. I have my clothes on, and I leave the house. I walk to some reunion held at my old newspaper job when I lived in Texas. I arrive early to drop off a story. As I am turning to leave, I run into my editor. He asks if I am going to the party. I angrily say no and leave.

I walk to a street fair. I am back in New York.

I see my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend at a jewelry stand a block from me. I turn around to leave because I don’t want to meet him. I walk over to the Strand and buy a couple of rare books. I spend too much money. 

End of dream.

* * * *

The next scene shows the main character, dressed and ready for work. He turns to the camera and delivers a monologue: “I live the life fraught with a self-induced mishap, purposely missed opportunities, and a tendency toward laziness taken sometimes to the extreme. It’s a miracle I have accomplished anything in my life. I should’ve done more, better sooner, but this is the life I live and I accept it, albeit begrudgingly. I turned into a decent human being, despite myself. While this is perhaps accidental, I am not that calculated, and I move ahead doing better than some but never reaching my potential. A biographer would have fun researching my life, but that would only be if I became famous. I doubt I will ever be famous, so I will lie to my children instead, if I ever have them, telling tall tales regarding my past as they look at me with eventual disbelief. The trouble is that I am always only too easy to figure out. I am lost in a world I never made and in a state of constant adaptation. With that, the story changes.”

* * * *

The character tells a story. The night before, I spoke with Antonio. He is still skidding off the edge of wellness; it is at the point now where his T-cell count will drop too far down and will be primed for the nastiness. But he already seems prepared for the worst.

Over the telephone static, he said, “Now you can say that you know someone who has full-blown AIDS. I will be a name on a square on a big fucking quilt. Lourdes will sew it. By the way, she is asking about you.”

“This is not a pleasant thing to brag about, you know. Tell Lourdes I said hello.”

“Sure, it’s all the rage over here. Imagine what fun you could have if I came down with something horrible like Kaposi’s sarcoma. Ugly purple splotches, tasty fucking stuff. Woo hah.”

“Nice to know that you have such a great attitude.”

“Dude, you mean towards my death? Don’t kid yourself. I am fighting this, but it’s only a matter of time before I am gone, and I am not going well.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. I caught myself too late. No, I do not. I do not know. I do not understand. This is beyond my skills to comprehend.

I tried to dog paddle out of the situation. “The miracle is that you have managed to hold on for so long,” I said. Antonio was diagnosed two years ago. 

“Yeah,” Antonio said, sighing. 

“You made it this far.”

“Belatedly.”

“This is true.” However, I think I was too honest in the circumstance.

“I just wish I could’ve done more with my life,” he said. “We should have started that band. Or I went ahead and stayed in school. Or, whatever, anything, I could have done not to sit here knowing the inevitable. IN EV ET A BULL.”

Sad to say, this is also true, but I did not respond. 

We mutually changed the subject to banalities until our goodbyes. I hung up.

Cut.

* * * *

Second monologue. Alone in the office: “The world brought weirdness to my life when I least expected it. I broke off the relationship with someone who hates men and is confused about her sexuality, and a woman who is a hard-core feminist has asked me out for a date. My ex-girlfriend dumped me for a geek from out-of-town––that fellow from Philadelphia––and I work at a job I hate. But I love living in the city and, with this job, I can pay the rent and have enough left to have a facsimile life. Unfortunately, the country is in a recession, and I will not find another job anywhere near as good.” 

Cut to the main character on a word processor, a Macintosh CII. He works for a second-rate men’s sophisticate, commonly known as a porn magazine. He writes incidental copy, edits, and works with the art director on the pictorials, known in the trade as “girl sets.” He is writing about Bridget, who is featured in five pages. He makes up a biography about her as he goes along. The rough galleys of her pictorial are beside the computer on his desk. He briefly glanced at them and began to type.

He writes: “Bridget is our most beautiful, sexiest winner of our amateur contest. Since then, this stunning blonde has continued her modeling career in moving closer to her goal as an actress. And at a statuesque 5’10”, with a stunning 36-28-36 figure, Bridget is a screen goddess of the future.

A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of those baseball Twins––who, by a combination of speed, excellent and natural talent, pulled off one of the most significant come-from-behind victories in World Series play last fall––Bridget knows what it takes to attain her goal through hard work and natural talent. Her breathtakingly good looks are never enough; she works out regularly, takes care of herself, and studies hard at acting.

And like those fabulous Twins, Bridget has come out a winner in all of her endeavors. “Winning the amateur contest was a great turnout,” she exclaimed. “It realized my secret exhibitionist fantasy.” She was so wonderful that we took her on a personal tour of our offices, during which Bridget wowed staffers with her stunning curves and vivacious personality––and why not? She has legs women would die for, and she loves to show them off by going out and wearing dresses that, as she says, ‘come up to ‘there’ and ‘watching all the guys who can’t have me eat their hearts out.’

A true individualist, Bridget prefers to stay in the friendly confines of Minneapolis. She loves the city because it’s clean and relatively crime-free.”

The main character stops writing and bursts out laughing. Then, he turns to the camera and says, “There is no way I will have a normal relationship.”

He returns to writing and finishes the copy to hand to the editor before lunch.

He thinks about his mother and how she always had the look of wounded pride while she worked as a clerical typist for a doctor. She had more potential, but she never voiced it. Based on his observations, his son swore he would run as far from that as possible, not knowing that the straight-line curved into a full circle. When he figured it out, he knew he had to get out of the weeds and shed the stupidity before it enveloped him and grew old, when he’d stare into the mirror and see his mother instead.

* * * *

Third monologue: I do not mind not being in a relationship because I know true loneliness and desperation. When I was eighteen years old, I lost my best friend, my girlfriend, and I left high school under a cloud within a few weeks.

I recall the day I pulled my notebooks out of my locker, all the ones that contained my poetry, unfinished stories, and my journal. I tossed the sheets, handouts, and other debris into the garbage at the end of the hall. Then I went down the staircase and out the door. Simple as that. I do not remember if I spoke to anyone on my way out.

I climbed up the hill that rose alongside the building, crossed the highway at the top, and turned to look back below with sadness. Suddenly I felt giddy, lightheaded. I thought that the future lay ahead, and I had an idea about where to go for the first time in my young life. I would get my GED and then go to community college for two years, earn enough credits to go to the University of Texas and finish my degree and, in the meantime, work very hard on my writing. Yes, I have wanted to write since I was six years old. I am now eighteen years old, and it feels like a good time to start. I vowed to work right away that night on my mother’s old Smith-Corona.

Little did I know then that I was in the habit of looking to miss a second chance. I was only too happy to be like no one else. However, to be an individual, it is best to use one’s exceptional abilities. Unfortunately, I failed to do that.

So I am left with nothing but meaningless excuses.

I remember when my ex-girlfriend left. She and I had finished moving into separate apartments and had met to turn in our keys to the landlord and get the cash deposit to split it between us.

I wanted to talk to her, but she stepped to the curb to get on the bus, her back turned away. So I didn’t bother to say goodbye.

The steam rose from the street, and she stepped through it as she got on the bus. I watched it pull away, disappearing into the heavy Brooklyn traffic. I turned, walked to the station, and got on the subway to my apartment on the Lower East Side. I had boxes to unpack. I was alone again, solitude not by choice.

Shit.

It was when the fist met face, then face hit the wall. The wall got the better out of the deal.

Fade.

* * * *

The camera shows the main character riding the train home in the subway. He stands, holding the pole, looking through the window as the stations pass. The commute is nearly forty minutes from the D at Columbus Circle, transferring to the F train at Rockefeller Center, riding it to the Second Avenue Station.

* * * *

The main character has dinner at the Ludlow Street Café, directly across from his apartment. He believes himself an uncomfortable neurotic and considers calling a woman a friend set him up for a date. But he feels a sense of dire foreboding about her. She seems a little off or out-there and yet not in his league. Also, he would have to tell her what he did for a living. That could mean unpleasantness.

He has a ticket to the Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians show at the Roxy tomorrow night, and his friend Dave invited him to a poetry reading afterward, held in Brooklyn. There were more opportunities, he thought. So he turns to the camera and addresses the audience.

“There is always a tomorrow.”

He finishes his garlic-basted grilled chicken breast with asparagus and asks for coffee. After paying the check, he leaves the café, crosses the street, and after a pause to check his mail, he enters the building.

Fade to credits.