Number Theory
(Love is Just a Numbers Game - Book 1)
by
Rebecca Milton
***
Copyright 2014 Rebecca Milton - All rights reserved.
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Number Theory
They say, and who “they” are is the greatest mystery of the universe. I often pictured a room full of men, yes, men, because men make the rules, don’t they? Men decide what we can do with our bodies and how we should dress and... no, please don’t get me started on that whole bag of eels. With beards. Bearded eels. That’s not supposed to be a sexual or anatomical reference. If I wanted to say penis, I’d say penis. Or dick. Or Johnson. The men in the room I picture, the ‘they’ of legend and song, are men who sport long, untamed beards. Like Walt Whitman. Only, Walt wouldn’t be in that room, telling women how to dress. He’d be telling men how to undress. But I digress. So, the bag of eels would have beards. Bearded eels.
Men.
Point being, what I started to say is that they say there is someone for everyone. Someone, some one individual who is for, meant to be, set aside for some other individual. That’s a nice notion, isn’t it? A warming thought when things just absolutely stink, and there seems to be little to no point in… Well, anything. You can at least comfort yourself with the notion that somewhere, there is someone just for you. Very comforting medicine. Especially when taken with copious amounts of wine or whiskey or opiates or... ice cream.
When the fog clears, when you wake in the morning, pee, drink a glass of water to try to clear the fuzz from your mouth and your brain, and you look in the mirror, this question will sometimes arise:
What if the someone meant for me is in prison? Or on an ice floe never to be found? Or dead? After a night of assuring yourself that you are not destined to be alone and lonely, that there is one person out there just for you and fortifying that assurance with multiple glasses (read: bottles) of wine or whiskey or a couple (read: fistful) of pills, you have to ask this type of question, don’t you?
I mean, the someone for everyone, is a jolly, happy, romantic, I’m going to break into song on the subway, fairy tale, kind of a notion, but, is it scientific? No, heavens no, there is no science behind it at all. There are no men and women in lab coats firing couples at each other in CERN’s large Hadron collider, following the now-particulated remnants of the people, seeing if they couple with other particles in a meant-for-each-other manner. There are no labs in the frozen wastelands of the poles, coring the ice to find examples of meant to be together peoples at the bowels of the earth. No, that would be insane, a waste of time and money, and a complete waste of energy. Like sea monkeys. Still, we cling to this notion as if it were proven and given the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Actually, when I say we I mean... me. Also, when I say cling I mean... well... cling really sums it up rather nicely. Huh, look at that.
Bananaway... What was I saying? Right, yes, someone for everyone.
In the past year, I had gone to four weddings. Three of those weddings I was part of, meaning I was an honorable maid, a member of the bride’s retinue, and to the other one I was a date. I was with a man who asked me to accompany him to the wedding of his friend. I went because I liked this guy, and I believed that this date to a wedding was a good idea. I believed, I suppose that we would go, he would see the whole, you know, standing up there professing undying love and attaching jewelry to that vow and be moved. He would maybe drink a little. I would, certainly, drink a lot.
We would dance and laugh and eat, and the magic of the entire situation would permeate his mind and emboss our relationship with a glow of romance that would then send him into a flurry of wants, including - but not limited to - buying me a ring, meeting my parents, getting a house for us to live in together, marrying me, getting me pregnant and growing old together. I was not asking for much.
Most of the wedding went the way I had hoped. When I say most, I mean I drank. A lot. The parts that didn’t go as planned were these parts:
He was in love with the maid of honor and took me to the wedding so that he could go and not look like a total loser being there alone. Another part that did not go exactly as I planned was the dancing part. I like to dance. I am a good dancer. I’m not talking ridiculous, stilted, arm flapping dancing. I can really dance. I have had lessons. I took dancing lessons in order to meet guys... who... would... maybe... be the one. Okay, anyway...
I can dance. And I was planning on showing my skills, using my Terpsichorean splendor to perhaps seduce my date a little. I mean, what man can resist a woman who can really dance? Turns out the answer to that question is: a gay man. Gay men cannot resist that, and there were several of them at the wedding so, needless to say, my dance card was full. Not with my date, however. Why, you ask? Even if you didn’t ask, I’m going to tell you.
My date - we’ll call him Bradley because, his name is Bradley - decided that the dance floor was the perfect place to accost the maid of honor and open his heart to her. Seriously. I am not kidding here.
He took me to the dance floor, we did one turn and then, he broke from me, dropped to his knee and, in front of God and the seven-tiered wedding cake, he told this poor, unsuspecting woman that he was in love with her. Just imagine her horror, her shame, her discomfort at that moment. In the middle of her best friend’s wedding, a man drops to his knees, on the dance floor, in a really nice suit and just spills his ever lovin’ guts to her. Imagine her absolute, unadulterated mortification.
All right don’t waste your time trying to imagine any of that because... there was none of that. None.
She squealed like a school girl, got down on her knees and kissed him. Just like that. She dropped down and kissed him. Then
she babbled on about him being The One, and how happy she was and... sister, it was repulsive.
I took comfort in an open bar and the continuing company of well-built, exquisitely dressed men who moved me around the dance floor like a princess, a damn princess. Bradley apologized to me, sincerely. I forgave him mostly because I was drunk but, also, because I hoped that, if I was nice to him in that situation, it would make me more worthy to have my one someone sent to me. From on high. Or wherever those things come from.
In retrospect, I should have drop-kicked Bradley’s nut sack and left him incapable of seeding his perfect someone. But I didn’t.
Someone for everyone.
***
Henry was my neighbor for some time. A quiet guy. A shy guy. Sweet though. Pleasant, polite, held doors, carried bags if I had too many. He was a mathematics professor at Columbia and some sort of renowned genius on the subject of... well, math... of some sort. But, not just, you know, everyday math, adding, subtracting and the basic stuff that I did so poorly with in school.
He was into the dark math, as I call it. Equations with letters and symbols instead of numbers. Really heady stuff that, once or twice he tried to explain to me, and I blacked out. I’m not kidding. I literally blacked out from absolute boredom. He started in on it, the beauty of math, the fact that math was in all things, and all things could be reduced to math and, not ten minutes into it, I blacked out. Now, the half bottle of Irish whiskey I had guzzled before he began his little lecture may have been a mitigating factor but, still... boring.
He loved it though, that all things can be reduced to math. Truly, he not only believed this, he proved it. Not to me of course, but at his work and at conventions or gatherings of math fanatics. He would prove, with chalk on a green board, how the world, all the world, could be reduced to mathematical equations. Patterns, he said, if you reduce and graph, you find mathematical patterns in everything. He was sweet and got very, very excited when I listened to him. He would start to jabber, and his hands would flit about like birds. He made me laugh, but then again, I didn’t. I never laughed at Henry. He was too delicate somehow. I had this feeling, this gut feeling that, if I had laughed at him, when he was going on about his math, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. He would crack right in two and die.
One night, Henry knocked on my door. He was all kinds of excited. He had done something, proven something, and he had been given an award. I found out later, in doing a little Googling, that the award was very prestigious, and Henry was…well, famous. At the time, I had no idea. I thought he was just Henry, the nice guy who lived across the hall. So, it was a Saturday night and, as usual, I had no plans, so I invited him in, and he sat on my couch and told me about his proof and his award. He named names that - and I could tell he was disappointed - I didn’t know, but he named them anyway. Powerful minds, he said, giants in the field. As he went on, I pictured gigantic men standing in fields with blackboards and books, shaking the clouds with their voices and numbers, letters, symbols raining down on the earth. I may have smoked a bit (read: a pound) of hash before Henry had knocked on my door.
Anyway, after a several minutes of his excitement, I asked him what he wanted. His answer almost broke my heart. He wanted to celebrate but, he didn’t know how and he didn’t have anyone to celebrate with. Suddenly, Henry, this genius man, was just a lost little boy, with no real friends, sitting on my leather couch, his hands folded politely in his lap. I stared at him for a moment, my mind a combination of pity and…well, hashish.
He got uncomfortable, then stood up and started to leave. I knew I couldn’t abandon him, not that night. I told him to go home, put on some comfy party clothes and come back in two hours to celebrate. He looked a little confused but, also, there, under his pale skin and his controlled, mathematical veneer, I saw a twinkle of joy. He smiled so softly, the Mona Lisa would have looked at it and thought, right, that’s how it’s done.
I called everyone I knew and told them I needed them. I have friends. Good, good friends that will come when I need them. I don’t abuse this gift. I wasn’t one of those pathetic girls that calls her friends when she gets her period or has a bad date. I did my drinking, sulking and self-pitying – and smoking - mostly alone. So, my friends knew when I called and said I needed them, it was serious.
Within one hour, my apartment was full of people, food, booze and other manners of recreation, chemical and biological. I briefed them all, told them to make a big deal of Henry because, and I meant this, he was a big deal. Someone had picked up the cake and the tubes of decorating goo. What the hell that stuff is, I will never know. Probably the food the room of bearded men we call ‘they’ subsists on. My friend Maury, an artist, went to work on the cake and created a beautiful piece, an homage to math and Henry.
At precisely the two-hour mark, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and there was Henry wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Everyone yelled Congratulations, Henry, and I swear, the poor guy burst into a laughing/crying fit like I have never, ever seen. I pulled him into a hug, whispered that we were all there to celebrate him, and he held me so tight.
It was a great night. My friends were gracious and took turns sitting with Henry, listening to his math joy. They really did like him, because Henry is a truly likable guy. He drank, and he laughed and when the night was over, after everyone had left, he sat on my couch and his smile... I could have read a book by it, it was so big and bright. I walked him to his door, across the hall and, he kissed me. It was tentative, cautious, tender. I let it happen because it was his night, and when it’s your night, I think people should do what they can to make the night as special as possible. Within reason. Henry was reason personified so, I had no worries.
When the kiss ended, and his heart was pounding hard enough that his Hawaiian shirt was dancing, he thanked me. I didn’t know if he was thanking me for the party or the kiss, but it didn’t matter. He looked different. He wasn’t that lost, friendless little boy on my couch any longer. I told him it was my pleasure and went home.
I meant it, you know. I meant that truly. It was my pleasure to make Henry smile. To celebrate his achievement. Yes, I wasn’t completely sure what his achievement was all about but did that matter? Here was a guy, a good guy, with a need to shout to the heavens look at me, look at what I did.
It’s those moments, when you need to shout that loud, that far, that you sometimes discover your voice just isn’t loud enough, just doesn’t have the... the oomph to reach the ears of God. That can be a hard thing to deal with, all that shouting to do and no voice to do it with. Henry deserved to be heard, so I helped him pump up his volume. And I was happy to do it.
***
I didn’t see Henry for several days after his party. I worried a little, I usually saw him almost every day. I assumed he was being lauded by his peers, and that was a nightmarish image - a room full of math men, yikes - so he was probably busy.
A week after the party, on a Friday night, Henry knocked on my door again. He was excited and nervous. I invited him in, except I really had no choice, because he sort of pushed his way into my apartment. He had me sit on the couch and, he gave me a presentation. He gave me handouts, and he had a chart that he stuck to my wall with that blue, sticky stuff. He started talking, quickly, passionately.
Slowly, like stepping out of a fog, I realized what was happening. Henry was proving to me, mathematically, that we were meant to be together. He talked for about forty-five minutes. Thankfully I was not chemically altered in any way because, heaven help me, I would have seriously blacked out on this one. When he finished, he put down his laser pointer - yes, he had a laser pointer he used to emphasize certain points on the wall chart - and stood silently staring at me.
When you’re younger, and no one wants you, and you get rejected when you take a breath and risk it all to ask a guy out because, if you wait around for him to ask you, you will be a gray raisin in a rocking chair on the porch of the forgotten old folks home…
; When he says no or, laughs, which is what he did, you have a choice. First, you can take it, turn it into rage and spend the rest of your days getting revenge. Second, you can take it, hold it inside and let it fester then spring it on someone, some unsuspecting, some undeserving, poor fool who has taken the courage. Or third, you can forget about it. Take it in stride and say, well, that’s what happens to me. Go home, cry into your pillow, sing Beatles songs into a hairbrush, write in your journal, know that it will build character and then, with time, dates, back seat wrestling matches, fighting to protect the sanctity of the bra and regions beneath, you forget about it. You forget about it until it suddenly snaps back into the present at the most inopportune time.
That time had come. I wasn’t interested in Henry as more than a friend. There was no spark when he kissed me. He was sweet but, beyond that, there was nothing there. I felt sick. He was a good man, a decent man and yet, I was not interested in him romantically. I had no real reasons beyond I just wasn’t feeling it. I recalled my moment of bravery, and how Stephan Mercer… That was his name, I didn’t think I’d remember that... Anyway, I remember him laughing at me when I asked him out. He was a monkey of course but, right now, I admired him. He didn’t care. He had no guilt, no remorse. He thought he was awesome and so, when a not-awesome-enough girl asked him out, he just laughed. I did not feel like laughing at Henry. I did not see Henry, this moment, as a way of assuaging all my girlhood angst about men. I was deeply, deeply sick about what I knew I had to say.
He waited, smiled and then asked me what I thought. I hesitated. I couldn’t figure out how to even start. Then, he asked me if he should dress up when he presented his findings. He asked if he should bring flowers when he gave his presentation to her. He asked if he should do it at her place or invite her to his place. It slowly dawned on me that Henry was using me to rehearse asking out another woman. I wasn’t the one.