Billy Bavaria and The Sound of Music

Some years and life-stages after the Delirium epoch became a thing of the past, I still count Billy Billionaire as one of my most favorite humans on the planet. To that end, we've stayed in touch the way you might imagine staying in touch with a wealthy, hedonistic septuagenarian of the Rat-Pack era might entail: Billy Billionaire occasionally transglobally drunk-dials me to belt out some long-distance Sinatra; I occasionally day-call him back and get rather rapidly hung up on, as Billy Billionaire is invariably operating at full steam in some philanthropic or art-collector-world social engagement or courtside-spectating a high-profile sporting event. And every six or so months, I receive an invite and accompanying plane ticket offer to come share martinis with him in Aspen or LA or Hawaii or on a sailboat afloat somewhere in the world.

Being as how upward of 40 years passed between our respective birthdays and we mostly frequent the sort of upscale locales where the high-stakes Hollywood-type long-con is ubiquitous, we also tend to garner a lot of judging looks from bystanders who likely think they are witnessing a May-December gold-digging effort in full swing. The truth, though, is this: my association with Billy Billionaire has platonically outlasted a litany of actual romantic Billys who have come and gone over the years. It has made me both much more aware of, and critically skeptical of the sort of social pressures that dictate who should have what sort of affiliation with whom (here's a spoiler: they're all bullshit). And, my friendship with Billy Billionaire has brought me into the yearly-reunion orbit of several absolutely amazing women, who I completely adore and would nowadays classify as some of the most solid girlfriends out there (unfortunately, way out there, geographically speaking).

And, it's been a fucking fun friendship (I like to think for both of us), so when you boil it down, that's not a bad deal at all.

(To be fair, the glares may have been less about the age difference and more about the bicycle being ridden inebriatedly into the bar, Billy.)

So one time, long ago and far away, Billy Billionaire and I and two of the abovementioned gals - I'll call these lovelies Ms. Boston (the sexy fashion model) and Ms. Backwoods (the Amazonian beauty) - went on a boat trip. Not just any old boat - no, Billy Billionaire had an attack of nostalgia and decided to charter his own good old familiar Sailing Yacht Delirium, which he had sold several years prior.

This is the story.

***

Holy shit, she was in shabby shape.

From the end of the dock, she still showed the lines of the elegant old racehorse she'd once been. But on closer inspection, as we took off our shoes and stepped aboard, it was painfully clear that she was hurting for maintenance. Everywhere, there were over-worn cushions, threadbare seams, unpolished stainless, unshaved teak, unbuffed waterlines, unscrubbed exhaust and docking smudges. It was a little bit like finding a former showring champion put untended out to pasture, bony and ungroomed and long in the tooth. This sort of neglect would never have stood under Billy Billionaire's benevolent reign.

(Well this should be a fantastic ride!)

That was the vessel. Now, if you can take that mental image and lower your expectations just a touch more from there, you have our Friendly Charter Crew.

Exhibit A: the Mate. She is no less than 50 years old, a chain smoker, an obvious and only semi-functional alcoholic, covered in questionable tattoos, and unkempt in even the most generous sense of the word. She has the voice of an angel, if that angel's throat had been stuffed with gravel and sawdust and beef jerky and then baked at high temperatures for several hours, has a laugh that would shut a junkyard dog right up, and exhibits a passion for actually working on-deck that rivals that of a sloth with mono. She is the epitome of a Leather Handbag. She is immediately amusing, but (or possibly because) she is also utterly useless.

Exhibit B: the Chef. He is a strangely-mannered, socially-awkward little Austrian fellow with a shrill voice, an unsettling way of moving about very quickly like one of those spiders that jumps unpredictably everywhere instead of walking with its eight goddamn legs, and body-language that Billy Billionaire quickly pegs spot-on as follows: "I'm pretty sure the small Nazi is going to try to kiss me. Or kill me." The Chef, too, clearly has no ambition to expand his duties beyond the galley, which arrangement all of us actually prefer.

Exhibit C: the Captain. His name is Dusty and he is squishy and easily sunburned and he is just terrified, *terrified* of Delirium. Incompetent is too gentle of a word, so I'll put it this way: Dusty is in so far over his head that it's unclear if this man has ever been at the helm of another vessel in his life, or if perhaps he is just a middle-management financial-sector-type guy who had a mid-life crisis in Fort Lauderdale and hasn't quite figured out how to get himself back out of this particular jam and into something more suitable, such as used-car sales, yet. He has no concept of the physics involved in the docking of a boat, nor those of casting off lines in sequence to leave a dock. He does not seem aware of the series of tasks necessary to raise the sails. He is absurdly afraid to take the boat into anchorages, even though they are well-charted and deep and Billy Billionaire and I have sailed to each of them innumerable times before on this very boat.

He also, of course, does not receive any assistance whatsoever from his two crewmembers - and I know from years of physical experience that Delirium often takes two strong and competent bodies to safely maneuver in good weather. Billy Billionaire, because he is a wonderful reader of people and also a hilarious asshole, picks up Dusty's furtive trepidation toward All Things Sailing before we even leave the dock, and gives us all a wide-eyed "heeere we go!" smile and wink-wink-wink-WINK-WINK. He insists on calling our Captain "The Duster," which Dusty does not like but about which he can't really do anything. Another thing The Duster doesn't like is when I offer to help with docklines, but he doesn't have much choice about this, either, since his other two crew are already nowhere to be found when the time quickly comes to leave port.

Where Delirium's current ownership ever found such a band of incompetent misfits, I honestly have no idea. But fuck it - ahoy! All aboard! Anchors aweigh!

(Unclear if this .gif is of our hapless crew, or of Ms. Boston, Ms. Backwoods, and I at the exact moment our carriage has arrived.)

Several alarming things happen in rapid succession: the boat's entire hydraulic system goes kaput (or, more honestly, was probably already fucked before our charter began) as the mainsail is halfway up the mast, and there is no winch handle aboard with which to manually continue raising it. The engine has already been cut when this happens, and requires a crew member to go belowdecks to be restarted, but The Duster politely declines my offer to perform this task and instead, announces that no big deal, we'll just drop anchor. This is also a catastrophe because the anchor chain will not feed out of its locker at a rate of more that one painstaking goddamn link at a time, because of corrosion and a broken guide-pipe, which means we are drifting, anchor not up but anchor not down, either, blinking at each other and stifling laughter like shitty children in church. Meanwhile The Duster, already bright pink and sweating profusely in what is clearly a years-old Delirium polo shirt that is two sizes too small (a leftover from my era aboard), is toeing the line of panic up at the bow, wrestling with the dangling anchor, which is probably 75 pounds of galvanized steel and which, due to mild waves and aforementioned physics of which The Duster's grasp is woefully deficient, is swinging with a distinctly axe-like chopping motion into the hull.

But The Duster has a Plan-B (or -C or -D or -WhateverLetterWe'reOnAlready). He springs into action and hauls the dinghy up alongside the boat, jumps in, and unties his tethering line, on his way to a heroic anchor-debacle rescue.

Except after he launches himself, the dinghy doesn't start. The Duster levels a stare of dull sorrow at us, his passengers lined up on the edge of Delirium, the distance between us widening lazily as he drifts away, with a look on his face that I can only describe as utterly deflated. You can just tell that nothing this wholly demoralizing ever used to happen in his cubicle-farm job.

(Accounting department Teambuilding Day was always such a hoot, eh Duster?)

Speaking of deflating and the inflatable-pontoon dingh--No. No, you know what? I'm getting distracted here and this story, much as it could continue to grow like some sort of sad, sad superhero among stories were I to set it free, isn't about The Duster. Miraculously, and unbeknownst to him, The Duster had someone else on board who would soon divert the harsh spotlight from even his incompetence.

This story is about our odd little chef.

This story is the story of Billy Bavaria.

***

Things first started to get a little weird when I noticed that Billy Bavaria was sneaking extras onto my plate when he brought the china up to the table for every meal. A little homemade chocolate candy here, a heart-shaped bit of cream-puff there - all things he would set before me, in front of Billy Billionaire, Ms. Boston and Ms. Backwoods, without a word of explanation.

Naturally, because my abiding love for Punchin' Judy has done nothing for my self-esteem if not for digging deep, permanent holes in which body-image-based self-loathing has been the hardiest weed to take root, I at first assumed these little additional tidbits might be Billy Bavaria's way of trying to fatten me up and push me onto the "No Longer Needs Buoyancy Devices" passenger-safety-watch list.

(Someday you will eat those words, Judy. Unless I get to them first.)

But then he began doing things like winking with each delivery, and then intently staring into my eyes for as long as possible while backing away toward the galley, as if maybe he was casting some sort of witchcraft spell that would steal my soul later in the night. This, of course, did not go entirely unnoticed or at all un-latched-onto-and-then-underhandedly-encouraged by the rest of the gang. The most ripe-for-humor wild-card thing about it was, though, that while Billy Bavaria displayed this undue fixation with me, he also seemed to have an insatiable urge for physical contact with Billy Billionaire. None of us knew what to make of it, other than an unending and escalating series of inside jokes. And so that is exactly what we made of it - and how.

Our week on Delirium generally looked like this:

Me, darting back and forth across the length and beam of the boat and up and down the mast as The Duster glumly and relentlessly sets us up for our next narrowly-averted sailing catastrophe. Me, scrambling to keep us from crashing into such wily objects as docks or other boats at anchor or large stationary islands, all the while also doggedly avoiding the accursed experience of eye contact with Billy Bavaria, who would invariably pop his head abovedecks to do the Dahmer-stare at me in action and who would occasionally come up behind me when I was working a line or otherwise occupied with a task from which I couldn't physically depart, to whisper compliments and to mention his desire for a sailing ladyfriend on his own small liveaboard sailboat in the Dutch West Indies. Me, in what retrospectively just had to be the world's most annoying attempt at helpfulness, starting so many conversational sentences with The Duster with the words Y'know, just a suggestion, but when *I* was on Delirium, we used to... 

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang raptly looking on, like front-row ticketholders at some sort of Captain-Ron-Meets-Cirque-du-Soleil show, in emotional states ranging from horrified breath-holding to hysterical under-breath laughing. And throughout, The Leather Handbag could always be seen, a slouching, haggard fixture at the stern of the boat behind a panicked Duster, intently dragging on her fifth cigarette of any given hour and gazing obliviously off toward Give-A-Fuck Island, which was always geographically situated in the exact opposite direction from the action of whatever current crisis The Duster had managed to create in that particular fifteen minute block of time.

(To be fair, thick clouds of smoke *can* be disorienting.)

So over the course of our charter various ports and beaches and coves were visited, several tan lines were created, endlessly-compounding jokes of the sort that left us all chronically breathless sprang to life (to wit: to this day, Billy Billionaire and Ms. Boston and Ms. Backwoods and I all still reflexively refer to this sailing trip as "The Voyage of the Damned"), and innumerable cocktails were consumed. Perhaps needless to say, while The Leather Handbag had shown enough restraint to wait to partake with us until approximately 4 pm on our first day out, after this zen-master-like exertion of willpower, she was quite possibly never truly sober aboard for the remainder of the week. This meant we did a fair amount of our own cocktail-fixing from that point on, but somehow, we persevered. In fact, so inspiring was our perseverance that one evening about halfway through the week Billy Bavaria, who had initially announced that he was something like ten years sober, invited himself to join us for a high-octane nightcap.

(This... is... cool with you guys, right? (*asked Billy Bavaria, never))

Of course shit just rolled downhill from there.

By which I mean, our time as paying guests on Delirium was the most ridiculous, horrendous, shockingly unprofessional shit-show of a charter I can imagine (and that's saying something after years in yachting). Also, it was simply the most delightful charter ever.

***

Suddenly our final evening had arrived. As it's customary for guests to treat their crew to a restaurant dinner ashore at the wrap-up of a charter, Billy Billionaire booked a table for seven at a local joint. We all dressed up and trooped in, and the martinis began to flow. Clearly, tonight was going to be do or die for Billy Bavaria, and so I made very certain not to be stuck sitting anywhere near him. Instead, Billy Billionaire and I escaped to one end of our long, white-linened table, while Billy Bavaria was pinned at the other end, next to Ms. Boston.

Martinis were ordered. Bread was broken. Abs were worked to their limit via laughter. Other patrons were overwhelmed and likely offended. And once the details were all a bit blurred, we trooped back to Delirium, where the party continued in proper Billy Billionaire fashion. At one point, as I began to confusedly put myself to bed in Billy Billionaire's stateroom, I was blessedly intercepted by Ms. Boston, who gracefully escorted me to our shared cabin. Lights out.

(I feel you kid. I feel you.)

In the morning, Billy Billionaire and Ms. Backwoods take off for the airport first thing, leaving Ms. Boston and I to breakfast and pack up for our own respective flights home without them. I wake to Ms. Boston's stirring in the opposite bunk, and her sneaking out the door for coffee. Then, the next thing I know, our cabin door has burst open again and in one blink Billy Bavaria has scuttled across the room, locking the door closed behind himself and landing in a crouch next to my bed.

(Agghgggagguhuhghaaaaahhhh!!)

I have quite possibly never felt more trapped in my life. While I'm struggling to keep what few linens are in use on a boat in the tropics clutched resolute between us like a shield, Billy Bavaria is reaching for my hands, which are also propelling me backwards in the bed toward the aft wall with surprising speed and force, hangover considered. And as he is pawing for my wrists, he is laying out his offer to me:

Susie, you have to come home to my boat with me. I am in love with you. Step aboard, my princess.

Being as how I was at most 35% awake, I honestly can't remember exactly how I responded. But "step aboard, my princess??" I can say my reply entailed some form of a confused and gutteral waiyghhhh, whuughh? and then, in rapid succession, no. Nononono.

Billy Bavaria seems shocked.

You are confused. We are soul mates, Susie. I KNOW we are soul mates! You will live with me.

Again, Nononono. Whuck-No!

Now Billy Bavaria wants answers.

Why would you not start this life with me? Why would you fight destiny? I will fill my whole boat up with fine liquor for you, if that is what it takes. You WILL BE MY BRIDE.

Well now hold a sec, the gentleman *does* make a seductive offer. But still, Nonononono. UhaaanhauhNO.

And finally, because my brain has at last turned over and the engine has caught and is now fully firing and has simultaneously remembered I am not wearing pants and also processed how many boundaries are being flagrantly broken in this room and not by me, GET OUT OF HERE. NOW. GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT. GET! OUT!

(Time to floor it.)

Billy Bavaria stares me down in trembling silence, his face maybe five inches from mine and frozen in an expression that is at once shocked and enraged, then retreats in another fast-motion leap. I scramble out of bed once the door clicks shut to throw the bolt behind him, truly shaken. What. The. FUCK?

When Ms. Boston returns, I tell her a quick summary, after which we both state the obvious out loud, essentially in tandem: We have to get the FUCK off this boat.

***

Imagine the way you might pack if you have been ordered to evacuate your house because of an all-consuming fire sweeping toward your neighborhood. Imagine how you might gather your possessions if you had just heard the alarm begin to sound that indicated the final rover was about to depart from the suddenly catastrophically-crippled space station you used to call home. Imagine how you might throw your life into a bag if you had witnessed the haunting mushroom-cloud flash of nuclear Armageddon, and were subsequently counting down the precious few moments remaining in which to get below-ground. Ms. Boston and I put those scenarios to shame.

But in the midst of this flurry, we began to hear something strange.

Is that... music? I asked Ms. Boston, cocking my head.

Ms. Boston listened and made an involuntary face, much like an infant first tasting a lemon (but sexier, because this is Ms. Boston). If it is, it's nothing I would ever EVER listen to, she said with a look of disgust.

It got louder. It began to drown out our packing. It became an almost unbearable racket. And finally, in part because my goddamn freediving fins were still on the back deck of the boat and had to be fit into my bag, but also because what the eff?, I threw open our cabin door.

I was met with the sight of Billy Bavaria, seated in a chair in Delirium's main salon. He was pointedly facing directly toward our door, blasting James Blunt, mouthing the words, and there were rivers of tears streaming freely down his face. 

You're byooo-tih-fuhhl... (tears and unmistakably homocidal glare during other awful James Blunt "lyrics")  'cause I'll nevehhh bee with youuuhh...

This was just fucking fever-pitch insanity.

(Yes, for GODSAKES, I said James fucking Blunt - the man has LOST IT.)

I accidentally made eye contact one last involuntary time, whilst slamming the door back shut immediately. Fins be damned, nothing is worth that.

***

Later, after Ms. Boston and I had literally fled down the dock - our carelessly-stuffed baggage in tow like that of refugees desperate to make the last boat out of Cuba - to the marina office, a thoroughly defeated Duster shuffled down the dock to join us, carrying a shopping bag of lukewarm canned beer he had salvaged from somewhere in the galley. With his bloodshot eyes averted, he let out the sort of inadvertent sigh that communicates nothing if not an utter and complete Oh FUCK this shit, popped one open and drank half of it in a single long pull, and only then, as if an afterthought, wordlessly offered us each a tepid can. He hadn't even bothered with coozies. Right then it was clear: The Duster, more than anyone I have ever before or since witnessed, had reached the end of his rope. The Duster was done.

This... said The Duster, dropping his head to his hand for several seconds of disheveled, morose silence, ...this is... the worst thing I have *ever* been involved in. I am truly, truly sorry.

I'm not entirely certain, what with the mild PTSD from the morning's earlier events clouding my attention to detail, but I'm pretty sure The Duster and Ms. Boston and I silently warm-brew toasted this proclamation as if it were a solemn oath. 

***

I hope, for The Duster's sake, it remains an unbroken - nay, unbreakable - record.

In Search of Billy Vila

I like to think that I'm pretty competent at life in general.

I'm all for women's lib, job equality, labor undivided by gender and all that shit - I mean, I did spend some pretty impressionable years of my life crawling around in the dirt with an M-16 over my shoulder and I loved it. So yes, yes sure, "We Can Do It" is damn right - I'm walking proof. I've always tried my best to impress on all the young little Susettes I've mentored, taught, or coached over the years that we Susies should definitely be prepared and more than able to do for ourselves and find our own meaning out in the world.

(Better be making me a sandwich while you're telling jokes, Billy.)

But.

Here's why I know I am just completely fucked if I end up alone: cats are terrible at operating power tools, and I suck at true Billy stuff.

Ironically, this came to my attention in the kitchen one day, when my garbage disposal just... stopped working. Honestly, this was just the latest in a string of Billy things that have gone unfixed, untinkered, uninstalled, and just generally undone in my life over time. For instance, I've lived in my place for a year now and there is still a weird floodlight-y fixtureless bulb inexplicably dangling from the ceiling in my dining area, which would take all of four seconds to swap out with something actually useful that did not, say, burn one's retinas with the searing light of 10,000 suns every time one accidentally flips the wrong wall switch. All I need is a ladder and like two screws and one tiny iota of homeowner's motivation, and this eyesore is no longer scorching dark soot spots into my walls whenever an unsuspecting guest helpfully attempts to turn on a light. But you know what?

I just don't do it.

Instead, I never, ever use that lightswitch. The dining area is a Dark Space. This is my solution.

This is partly because places like Home Depot, with their annoyingly-manly warehouse ambiance and their high shelving system designed to completely emasculate anyone under 5'5" and the sheer essence-de-Billy that a high concentration of their products are bathed in (read: I do not have any idea what that item name is even supposed to mean, let alone what it is for or if it is anywhere in the general conceptual vicinity of whatever it is I came in here looking for so y'know what? I'm just gonna grab this Gatorade and get out of here), just make me want to freeze up and wait for a forklift to mow me down like a baby bunny in the aisle. I just know those orange-aproned smug bastards are watching my bewildered wandering on the closed-circuit system and laughing, hopefully accompanied by ad-lib mockumentary David Attenborough-style narration (which is exactly what I would do if I was ever hired at such a place, until I inevitably got fired for not knowing what the fucking fuck anything any customer ever asked me to direct them toward was, which dismissal would likely occur in under 39 minutes).

(Excuse me? Where are the male cans?)

Another factor in this digging-in-of-heels is that I've just sort of refused to amass the requisite tool repository, in part because I am loathe to spend money on things I do not enjoy using, but also because that set is something a husband should come with. Think of the household tools as the Billy side of the dowry.

Is this shitty, lazy, sexist living on my part? Maybe. I do have in my possession a couple hammers, a tape measure that no longer self-retracts, several tubs of spackle in various states from fully-hardened to completely petrified, and a handsaw with a blade so rusty that angry tetanus colonies are actually visible to the naked eye on its surface, but this is the extent of my home-repair kit. So sue me: this is just not an area into which I am interested in taking the solo plunge, and besides, why buy piecemeal when you're in the market for the aforementioned complete set?

Anyway, one day the sink disposal did exactly nothing when I flicked the operative switch. Naturally, I flicked it a couple more times just to be sure, then turned off the water and walked away, thinking to myself, maybe it'll start later.

I know this is a rather illogical thing to think, because of the whole "magic not existing" part about the way the physical world works (sorry about the spoiler, religious folks). But without a Billy on-hand to make said "magic" happen manually, the disposal was pretty much out of my control. I mean, I can't even put a couple screws into my benign ceiling, and this thing has moving parts that could conceivably chew off my arm Fargo-wood-chipper-scene-style? I don't think so.

(So is this "Pete" guy single, or...?)

So about a week and several hopeful-yet-disappointed switch flickings later, the water drain-time had begun to slow noticeably. Again, at first, I continued along the track of "ignore and hope for Billy-less best," but alas, it did not improve.

I did try one solution, likely mentioned by some Billy in years past, which finally dawned on me a couple days into the disposal's labor strike: I located the circuit breaker panel (proving here that I am innately good at Susie stuff, I had arranged a leaning shelf worth of books and plants and photos over that big battleship grey bitch upon move-in and had forgotten about the existence of that weird door). And then, I actually found the correct switch for the disposal (labeled by the previous homeowner as "Disposal," coincidentally), and with an immense amount of hopefulness, I had flicked that switch, too. And you know what?

Nothing fucking happened.

(Flick it again, Sam.)

So, I did what single Susies have done since time immemorial, when Billy-stuff in their lives has steadfastly refused to just fix itself: I called my dad. He suggested I look for a reset switch on the actual disposal, which I had actually briefly done on the day it crapped out and which switch I had also flicked hopefully, several days ago. But, without more promising options, I gave it another shot, thinking maybe there was perhaps another switch yet-unflicked (about as likely as finding a lamppost in the forest at the back of your wardrobe, but whatever - Let Us Pray). Unsurprisingly, though I again found the dirty Billy-ness of the ugly under-sink pipe-y space - exactly the sort of space I avoid at all costs in my house/life (thank god I don't have a garage) - I did not find a portal to Narnia or another magical switch.

But just as I was crawling back out from the cabinet doors in defeat, you know what else I found?

I found the goddamn plug of the disposal, which had somehow been dislodged from the socket.

(Brain: also apparently unplugged.)

I also found that I could really, really use someone just a little more mechanically-skilled in my life.

If he was good at running his fingers through my hair at night and making me laugh in the mornings, I might even be inclined to make him a sandwich or two.

Kryptonite, Part II

If you were to have performed an engineer's safety inspection on my relationship with Billy Basement, it would never have been opened to the public, because the underlying Susie-Billy Basement infrastructure was founded on some pretty trigger-happy math to begin with. For example:

(Why isn't this working?)

Billy Basement wasn’t a traveler and I was fresh off the boat, literally: I met him mere months after throwing down an anchor in a landlocked life after years of vagabonding adventures aboard Delirium. Billy Basement owned a standardized little place in the ‘burbs while I’d spent my entire adult life moving cross-country on a yearly (at maximum) basis. Billy Basement saw not only his parents, but his entire extended family, at least once a week - not a one of whom, out of four currently-surviving generations, had ever moved away from the metro area where Billy Basement and I resided, while my own Solo clan is a pretty globally far-flung family, even by modern mobile American standards. Billy Basement liked to stay on the couch and Netflix, while I liked... well, just about anything but that. Billy Basement held a job he was already, in his twenties, pretty sure would be the very same one he’d work until retirement, while I was still constantly ditching my latest daily grind on a whim, keeping my longevity record among the ranks of the continuously-employed at just under a year, and bouncing on to the next in my string of tabula rasa do-overs unscathed.

So yes, in the rearview, there were some serious oversights in calculation from the get-go, and they didn't exactly add up any better with time. In fact, with a little distance and a lot of armchair phychologizing by various Friends Like These, I can admit that the basic chalk-outline of why the FUCK I was with him looked something like this: stability.

Billy Basement wasn’t going anywhere – and at that moment in time, after having spent years doing 100%, exactly, unfailingly the opposite, I think I really believed on some level that I was ready to just sit down, so to speak, and join predictable mainstream audience society, too.

("My Very Long Nap: The Billy Basement Story")

To bring the metaphors into the home-life arena, Billy Basement was sensible beige aluminum siding that would responsibly tone down whatever HOA-approved, muted-primary-color paint shade a less buttoned-down neighbor might get cuh-RAY-zee with on their faux shutters. Billy Basement was microwaved Boca Burgers for dinner, because real meat was too messy to cut and cook in the kitchen. Billy Basement was a redundant land-line telephone like your grandparents still have for dialup, just in case his cellphone wasn’t charged (Billy Basement was also a cellphone charger assigned to every room, in case his battery got low during, say, a particularly long Battlestar Galactica marathon). Billy Basement was a system of timers on various house lights so robbers would think he was home at 7 pm every night, except also, in the spirit of abovementioned redundancy, Billy Basement pretty much was home at 7 pm every night, like clockwork. And Billy Basement was a teetotaler, which clearly Just No.

(Well the last thing I need is fat children!)

Billy Basement also wasn’t particularly social outside of his comfort-zone of fellow band members – a trait that I finally made him confront head-on after we’d been together for an entire year and he had weaseled out of every single invite or request for his presence at any event in my own pre-Billy-Basement social circle. It's like you have an imaginary boyfriend, commented one girlfriend jokingly, after the fifth or so time he'd ducked out on group plans at the last minute (a comment which made me cringe, in large part because, as Punchin' Judy helpfully articulated in retrospect, it suggested that my imagination, insofar as boyfriend character creation and development, was abysmally dull). It was time.

In my life, there exist a handful of Billyvillians who’ve stayed in touch since high school days. Now, plus a growing cohort of permanent significant others, we tend to gather once a year or so for a wedding, the hometown summer festival, a new-spouse or new-baby meet-n-greet, a housewarming, a group lake-camping trip - really any legit excuse to get together and catch each other up. And so, one year in, as plans began to circulate for a housewarming/hometown get-together, I downright voluntold Billy Basement to suck it up and make an appearance.

He’d gotten his way about a lot of things over the last 12 months – I’d given up a pretty choice uptown apartment and moved into suburbia with him, I’d quit my bartending night job because the men-chatting-me-up element of it made him unbearably sulky and accusatory, I'd relocated my day job as a gymnastics coach to a new and, although much more competitive, less personally appealing gym on his side of the city, I’d become damn near vegan to cater to his own semi-pushy squeamishness, I’d spent endless hours with his shitty nieces and nephews and insufferably yuppie sister who insisted on calling me by his ex's name and then saying "Oopsies!" (the second half of which was the truly intolerable offense), and mingling with his long-time pals at far too many poorly-attended band gigs, and - no really, believe it! - I’d stopped drinking entirely for the last nine or so months. All of these things were born out of Billy Basement's requests, suggestions, naggings, or guilt-ings, but they were all voluntary. Look, I even exercised enough self-restraint to not surreptitiously put the dude's overalls - yes, overalls - into the Hefty-bags of Goodwill-bound stuff we cleared out of his house when I moved in (though there was no way I could hold my tongue when he actually wore them. No way). I was trying, dammit! And now, I wanted him to have to try for once, too.

(Yes I know dear, but you can't wear them to my friend's house so turn off Caprica and go change.)

Of course, no sooner was Billy Basement's verbal agreement to come with me to Billyville that summer made, than an old ghost, heretofore off my radar for most of the last year, started pinging texts my way to see if I would be in attendance and to say he hoped so.

Seriously, after a completely incomunicado trip around the sun, now when I'm just testing out the H-bomb of a Susie-Homemaker life, this? What the fuck, Billy Builder?

(Sort of gives new meaning to "tailspin.")

***

We're at my friends' house - the same friends whose wedding I went to as Billy Builder's new date maybe half a decade prior. I've brought my own goofy cans of bullshit diet energy-drink so I can have something besides booze to cheers with, there is a fire hopping in a firepit out back and there is food spread out on the countertops and there is music and there are are various-shades-of-drunk friends everywhere, with the occasional stray kid darting from room to room. I have not yet spoken to Billy Builder, beyond a passing hello and a brief introduction from which both Billys found a polite reason to rapidly redirect their attentions. Billy Basement is doing OK at people, and I am done with my girlfriendly preliminary-integration-helper duties. I wander through a kitchen full of familiar faces and walk out to the garage, where there is an auxiliary restroom I'm hoping to snag. And out in the workbench area, by the couches-and-beer-fridge man-corner, are The Mover and Billy Builder, who both call me over. And then The Mover exits stage-left. And then Billy Builder closes the distance between us and touches my waist, then moves his hand to my arm with a sort of gentle urgency, and looks me in the eye, and takes a nervous breath, and starts to talk.

What did he expect from me? I can't really say. Here under a fluorescent shop light, face to face, I am thinking that on the other side of the door is my boyfriend - a truly boring guy, yes, but one with a good heart who is currently adrift among strangers. On the other side of the door is conversation with staccato bursts of laughter that I can hear over the hum of the shop light and the words tumbling out from Billy Builder's lips, which are nearer to mine than I ever thought they would be again. On the other side of the door are some of my closest friends, who are also some of Billy Builder's closest friends, some of whom have said point-blank to me that Billy Builder is the worst thing that I could do to myself, and some of whom have said they'd always hoped  Billy Builder and I would wind up together in the end.

And here on this side of the door, in an entirely separate dimension, my thumb has dented my drink can without my realizing it, I have stopped breathing, and I have so many words spinning at once in my head that none of them are coming out. Billy Builder has fallen silent after delivering every single "I'm sorry" and "I have to say this now" and "I miss you" and "I fucked things up" and "I think you're the only one" I ever woke up heartbroken by dreams of hearing his voice saying, and I'm a goddamn mute. His hand on my wrist is the only solid thing left in the world that's not shaking in increasingly unstable oscillations while the shop light in the rafters is buzzing to crescendo, like the sound of a spinning saw blade ripping something in half.

On the other side of the door is my life three minutes ago.

And on this side is my life now.

(All aflutter.)

***

We are rescued from our own feedback loop somehow. Maybe someone comes out the door, maybe somebody calls for a toast, maybe some kid comes running through the garage to jump on the couch with shoes on. It doesn't matter. Something snaps us apart and then I'm next to Billy Basement, I'm hugging the hostess goodbye, I'm getting in the car, I'm looking out the window at the flickers of weeds and future roadkill in the periphery of the high-beams as Billy Basement and I head for the highway. 

I find myself staring at him and he's a stranger at the wheel in the dim dashboard glow. He's absently humming a little tune to himself that I almost start to recognize, but then Billy Builder's heroin voice is filling my head like a spreading pool of something thick and warm and comfortable, drowning out everything if I just close my eyes.

Billy Backpfeifengesicht's Handy How-To Guide to Dating

Let's get this out of the way. It's not a drunken typo up there in the title. It's German, because they have all the really good words:

(Oh, the people you'll meet!)

So, say you got the number of a friend-of-friends Susie at a barbecue a while ago, and you've asked to meet up with her for summertime drinks.

It's a good idea for you to text her "Wherever you're feeling, just let me know!" while you're making arrangements - that way you can get a feel for the kind of place she might like, and hey, the pressure's off - you won't be responsible for any flopped locale choice. Women love an easygoing guy who's interested in their preferences.

Has your Susie gotten back to you on the establishment? She has? If she's proffered a hip-but-low-key joint, and an alternative in case you're less into having 20-something amazing local beers on tap and more into food or wine or whatever, then now is the time to shoot both of those down. Do not feel that you need to make any compensatory suggestions of your own. Just include several frowny-faces in your texted response to her voicemail. Women love men who can express their emotions.

After a day of silence, fire up your text-fingers again. Just because a Susie is being a normal grown-ass adult and has broken the talk-barrier by calling you (and speaking with your voicemail), doesn't mean you have to return suit and put on your big-boy pants to call a Susie back. Keep riiiight oooonnn texting. Women love a man who's dependable.

(See above for  recommended "sext-face.")

Ah! So here you are, at your scheduled meetup, because your Susie is a forgiving gal who also sort of has a morbid curiosity about how rom-com-esquely bad a date with you will really be! You've grabbed a patio table, which is a smart move because it's a beautiful day crowded with sun-seeking pedestrians in your city. Do not under any circumstance wave when your Susie strolls up, exactly on time and visibly trying to weed your location out of the melee. If she does not appear to spot you on first scan, give a whistle. A whistle. This will attract any self-respecting woman's attention immediately. After all, dogs are your best friend if you're any kind of MAN, so she should count herself flattered to be addressed in a like manner - women love subtle compliments.

She has located you, navigated the crowd, and is now standing at your table? Wonderful! Do not arise on "hellos," do not even make a cursory attempt to half-stand in salutation, and certainly do not give her a greeting hug or even a handshake. Do not remove your sunglasses. Do not hand her the beer menu you have already perused, sitting idly in front of you. "Gender equality" killed chivalry, amirite brah? Even the genderless type of good old-fashioned civilized human-to-human manners are kind of for little girls and pussies, eh? Instead, since there's no table service out here, let your Susie know what you'd like her to order for you when she goes inside to procure her own pint. Women love feeling needed and competent!

(When she carries back two waters AND two beers, she's just showing off. Don't even comment.)

Ahh, so here we are at the meat of the date: the part where you two will get to know each other with conversation and, if you are lucky, a little witty banter. Wait, did I say lucky? I meant unlucky. Here's how to deal with a joke you don't get or a literary, political, current-event, or pop-culture reference you are going to be clearly a little insecure about having missed: get snotty. No really, don't charm your way outta shit. Just throw out juvenile potty-humor-level comments and try to make it sound like a stupid thing to talk about because you probably know more about it than her anyway, because penis. Women love a man who owns a conversation!

This is your time to shine, and to do so, you must impress her greatly. When she asks what you've been up to since you last socially ran into each other a mere week ago, you should fabricate something humble but believable, like "oh, just... teaching myself new kinds of quantum-math." It's OK if you cannot explain any further, not with a single related vocabulary word, even if she pokes around a little looking for details and seems slightly amused, because trust me, by now you have made enough of an impression that she will for sure quote you verbatim in her blog and besides, girls and math? Ha! Your secret's safe, Einstein. Women love a smart, smart man!

(So maybe you should've been "teaching yourself" "new kinds" of reflexes instead.)

If you really want to heat things up, go for politics, even though she jokingly reminds you it's one of the Big Three to handle with care in polite company.

Universal health care? Living wage? Pay equality? FUCK THAT NObama bullshit. Especially if you're a smug born-into-the-upper-class white dude in America who's pretty much never faced any adversity beyond Ohhh noes beer pong moneys are low and my parents shut off my credit card!, let alone actual systematic discrimination, abuse, harassment, or even any single situation in your entire fucking life where you were not the entitled majority, your scoffingly-certain assertion that these things don't really actually exist for anybody here in the States is sure to make your Susie swoon. You can seal the deal by proudly declaring that you're a social Darwinist oh and also, who even cares (refer back to scoffing approach), but pshhh no, you've never read any Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, or even, ohhhh say... Darwin. You don't need books because you have sarcasm and volume, so don't get sucked down the hysterical rabbit-hole of socio-economics and history and facts and shit. In fact, don't listen to anything - just keep talking. Women love a man with strong convictions.

(I'd like to solve and say "THIS FUCKING BILLY," Pat.)

By now she won't even be able to sit still - you've hit all the buttons in the book in the twenty minutes you've been romancing her, my friend. Now's the time for you to just sit back and watch the dividends on your dating prowess come rolling in. If you've played your cards right, your Susie's given you the breathless  "hold on a sec" index finger and has gotten up and is heading inside to the counter to get you another beer, even though her own has barely been touched. Women love a man who fosters their nurturing side.

(I'll be needing another drink to even handle this level of sexy.)

Oh, but wait. Through the restaurant's plate glass windows, you can see that she's ordering... shots! Boom, looks like someone wants to get this show on the road. You're in there like swimwear. And out comes the wallet to settle the tab. This chick really gets what "women's lib" is all about, which is rare these days with all the femiNazis running arou--hold up. Hold. UP.

She just slammed a shot with the bartender, without even looking outside at you. They appear to be sharing some sort of joke.

(Oohhhkay, Kutcher, you got me. Where're the cameras? Hello?)

When she walks out the door and coyly exits the patio without actually glancing back in your direction, you should *immediately* text her this exact sentiment: WTF? :'-(  You should do this so quickly that you will be able to watch her receive said text as she walks away across the pedestrian square. You should thereafter fire off a  :-( ?!?!, again quickly enough that you will be able to see her shaking her head in bemused disbelief upon receipt. And now she's actually physically chuckling out loud as she walks out of your view.

NAILED IT: the number one thing women love is a man that makes them laugh.

Goodbye to Billy Bittersweet

It's well over a decade ago, and I'm in the company car with yet another Billy. He's not even my project - he's my coworker DelValles's Billy - a good-looking semi-punk of a kid who I catch looking at me just a half-second too long every time I say something. Somehow I've ended up working this contract more than DelValle has this last month. It happens like that in Army Recruiting, sometimes.

(Goddammit, DelValle, that's my trick.)

He's leaving tomorrow, this Billy, and I'm taking him down to his hotel room in the bowels of Los Billgeles to await the early-morning ship-out. We haven't been driving too long - we're still on the 101, with a generally-brain-fogging slog through the Valley on the 405 ahead of us. The sun is going down late, it's summertime-hazy, and we're zipping by strawberry fields and factory outlets and scraggly palm trees that haven't been groomed for varying amounts of time just over the "too long" mark. I love this place, southern Billifornia, but for most of my year in recruiting, I'm not even really conscious of it going by. Not like now.

Some of the guys are quiet, and that's OK. I'm comfortable owning the conversation and serving them up their share as I shuttle them south into the city and their big, looming futures. If you make the drive down the coast often enough, with enough Billys, the talk generally falls into a standard holding-pattern of routine topics that change very little. You get so you know what sorts of things will come up almost before you're on your way, just by how the kid's parents say goodbye. The humor might change, the faces might change, the traffic might change (HAHA no it won't!), but the general skeleton of the trip's the same. It's the same drive over and over, chewing up countless five-hour blocks of this, my twenty-first year. 

Eventually it just gets easier to embrace a sort of numbness than try to make yourself care about every face, every question, every four-year contract you set into motion. Recruiting is a fucking exhausting revolving door of people, an 80-hour workweek blur, a year where you'll never talk to so many people for so much of your day, yet feel so goddamn lonely all the time. Mostly, though, I've discovered how not to mind it, because times like the drives, I just don't even really live through it anymore. I bounce through it without realizing it, I chatter without really absorbing any of the kids' hope or fear or regret or boasting or whatever, and it's for the best. It's self preservation. Whether you care or not, they all sail over the edge, they all turn into ghosts one way or another, sooner or later. And they're just fucking kids. They'll be fine. Just like you were - you, who can't even remember your recruiter's name just now.

(Me, on hearing there's no cake in boot camp)

But this Billy isn't one of those kids. He's a little older, and conversations with him are always of their own breed. The first time I talked to him, engaging him in the office while DelValle was out on a call, I was shocked and actually a little irked at the way he subtly managed to run the conversation. This was my job -  I was the professional meant to be running that fucking show from the first handshake all the way to the boarding call bound for Basic Combat Training and he was just a fucking recruit and really, at the end of the day, what the shit, I was young and dumb but he, he was just a high school skater who was more clever than DelValle, for sure, but could barely pass a standard drug-screening UA - a failed-once-and-might-not-graduate-again-this-year who lived every minute of his punk-ass days by the grace of rich parents in orange grove country, up the San Guillermito Valley. 

But also. 

Also, it woke me up in a way, because all of a sudden there I was paying attention and genuinely laughing. I was recruiting, yes, but also with DelValle's Billy, I was Not Recruiting. It was real interaction. I guess that can come from surprising sources.

(I meant enlist! Enlist! Haha, I can't believe you thought I said kill.)

Anyway, I've grown to like him. I think it's because we've made this drive a few times, DelValle's Billy and I, what with him coming up hot at the last minute on the piss tests. In fact, I've probably spent more time in the car with this kid in the last month than I have in the same room with my but-for-logistics ex in the last three. I still live with the dude in a tiny little SoBil studio, we dance silently around each other without touching or making eye contact in the mornings because there's only the one bathroom, and I get through that without really living it, either, and that's also probably for the best. The futon is fine. Nothing could keep me awake by the time I get home at night.

So DelValle's Billy is telling me about flying prop planes out of the San Guillermito airstrip with his dad. He mentions he called the office the other Saturday looking for me, wanting to see if I was serious about taking him up on a previous offer of a free ridealong on one of his practice flights. I was probably busy, I say, and he nods his chin upward almost imperceptibly, like young confident Billys do, and says I guessed as much, but man, sure wish you coulda gone.

He laughs and shakes his head and I think to myself yeah, I wanted to go, and then in my head I privately replay how instead, when DelValle took the call, I whispered to him to tell his Billy I was out at the community college on an appointment. And I think to myself how after DelValle hung up, I shrugged at him and rolled my eyes and then suddenly felt like I might choke if I didn't quietly get up and walk out of the office and back down the hall to the bathroom, where I locked the door behind me and stood there in my uniform, looking down at those awful regulation black-patent heels and that stupid green polyester skirt I ironed every goddamn morning. I think, here at 65 mph with DelValle's Billy next to me, about that dirty, scuffed-up bathroom linoleum where I stood there just breathing in and out and shaking with my palms pressed on my forehead, fingers curled like hooks, not sure why I was suddenly so upset and frustrated and terribly, terribly sad.

(In space, no one can hear you curse.)

The sky is filthy: blood-red smog blocks our view even as we tunnel out of the Sepulveda pass, where a business-as-usual mesquite brush fire this dry summer on the northbound hillside has traffic coagulated to a dehydrated ooze. Jetliners are plowing their noisy way through the air above us, and once we turn off the freeway and into the tangle of the city's inner-workings they seem to hang, sluggish and unmoving, surreal and low over the boulevard ahead.

We pull up to the hotel and I shut off the car. It's late enough in the day that the air-conditioner chill is able to linger awhile even without the engine blowing. I lean my skull back on my headrest, and I want to close my eyes but out of the side of my field of vision I catch him looking at me like he does, just a little bit too long, and he sees me do this. And something about this specific quarter-of-a-second lodges somewhere in me like shrapnel: that image becomes a sharp unextractable foreign object that to this day, not often but every now and then, maybe at night when I turn over on it wrong in my sleep or something, still aches like a scar. He's got a tiny silver stud in his left ear and it flashes in the orange sodium glow of the evening's first streetlights as he glances down and then back up at me. Tomorrow's drill sergeants are going to destroy him if he doesn't take that out by morning.

I think to myself, we're here.

I think to myself, again.

And I think to myself, I probably will never see DelValle's Billy again. 

And then I'm surprised by the realization, not just a string of words occurring to me but an actual feeling, that after all the other kids I've driven over this cliff without a second thought, it's really too bad, this time around.

My head feels like it's made of steel, the headrest is a magnet, and the force required to separate the two to turn and face him as he grabs the door handle is like ten years of tiredness all at once. Recruiting'll take it out of you if you let it, sure, but fucking life: that's the exhausting thing. I don't have any energy to spare on it. I have so many more Billys I still have to find, charm, cajole, convince, sign and seal and deliver, forget. The meter never stops running.

(Clearly not L.A. because green lights.)

I blink at him. You want me to walk you in?

Nah, he says, I know where to go. And I know he does, which is a relief. I hand him his papers full of DelValle's signatures and DelValle's recruiter ID number, and they weigh a hundred pounds. He takes them and holds them in his lap with the sort of quick breath you take before saying something, and I catch his eyes wandering on my face again while he pretends to leaf through the packet.

And me: I look away.

And then he is standing in the parking lot, a rush of balmy, exhaust-filled air settling in his empty seat. The trunk closes with a hollow jolt and DelValle's Billy raps on the roof of the car as he shoulders his duffel, facing the back window with one hand up in a poor civvie half-salute. And waiting.

I turn on the ignition and pull away and in the rear view, we watch each other shrink for a few seconds before he turns away and walks out of the sudden red splash of my brake lights, toward the automatic doors.