What happens if, after Rick tells Geoff, “Lucky for you, guy,” Geoff offers to help look for the guy?
If Geoff offers to help look for the guy, Rick should say, “Thanks for the offer, but this is our thing, guy.” It should be noted that this is another opportunity for Rick to make Steve feel important, thus engendering group cohesion. If Rick wants to make Steve feel important, he should wink at Steve while voicing the second clause (“but this is our thing”).
What happens if Geoff, in the course of playing The Guy, beats Rick and Steve into submission?
In this case, Geoff will have become the man. Steve will be the first to admit it. He will say to the man (formerly Geoff), “You are the man.” And Rick will apologize to Steve and Jenny. He will say, “I’m sorry.” And then he will say the same to the man, and add, “I mistook you for someone else, and I have failed my friends. I hope you will take my place by their side in this noble search for justice we have undertaken.” Then Rick will slink off, never to be seen by Steve or Jenny again, lest he risk becoming Geoff, or worse, the guy, and Jenny will ask the man to be Rick, and so will Steve. If the man accepts, he will be taken to the men’s room to practice Tableau. If the man refuses, then he will be pleaded with by Steve and, if he still refuses, he will be bid peace and farewell, and Jenny and Steve will bid one another peace and farewell and go away from one another forever, or a very long time, long enough to heal and to acquire the hope that is necessary to found a new team.
Can the guy be the man?
Yes. Whether or not Geoff remains Geoff or becomes the guy (whether by sassing Jenny or having, as his person, done something brutal to her person or to someone he thinks she is), he gets to be the man if he beats Rick and Steve into submission. It is only fair.
What happens if Rick says that Steve is Geoff?
If Rick says that Steve is Geoff, then Steve has to go away forever, never to be replaced, thus dissolving the team, unless Jenny rebuts by stating that Rick is the guy, in which case Steve can:
a. tell Jenny to keep her mouth shut about Rick, because Rick is the man, at which point Rick has the chance to revoke Steve’s Geoffness by stating, “I made a mistake. I’m sorry,” and thus re-cohere the team,
or
b. agree with Jenny that Rick is the guy and state that he (Steve) is in love with Jenny, effectively dissolving the team, then move forward to attack Rick for being the guy, and then:
i. get beaten into submission by Rick, and left there by both Rick and Jenny, who will have gone their separate ways,
or
ii. beat Rick into submission, thus exposing the lies upon which the team and all its many games were predicated.
HOT PINK
My friend Joe Cojotejk and myself were on our way to Nancy and Tina Christamesta’s, to see if they could drive us to Sensei Mike’s housewarming barbecue in Glen Ellyn. Cojo’s cousin Niles was supposed to take us, but last minute he got in his head it was better to drink and use fireworks with his girlfriend. He called to back out while we were in the basement with the heavy bag. We’d just finished drawing targets on the canvas with marker. I wanted small red bull’s-eyes, but Joe thought it would be better to represent the targets like the things they stood for. He’d covered a shift for me at the lot that week, so I let him have his way — a triangle for a nose, a circle for an Adam’s apple, a space for the solar plexus, and for the sack a saggy-looking shape. The bag didn’t hang low enough to have realistic knees.
When my mom yelled down the stairs that Niles was on the phone, I was deep into roundhouse kicks — I wanted to land one on each target, consecutively, without pausing to look at them or breathe, and I was getting there; I was up to three out of four (I kept missing the circle) — so I told Cojo to take the call, and it was a mistake. Cojo won’t argue with his family. Everyone else, but not them. He gets guilty with them. When he came back down to the basement and told me Niles was ditching out, I bolted upstairs to call him myself, but all I got was his machine with the dumbass message: “You’ve reached Niles Cojotejk, NC-17. Do you love me? Are you a very sexy lady? Speak post-beep, baby.”
I hung up.
My mom coughed.
I said, “Eat a vitamin.” I took two zincs from the jar on the tray and lobbed one to her. She caught it in her lap by pushing her legs together. It was the opposite of what a woman does, according to the old lady in Huckleberry Finn who throws the apple in Huck’s lap to blow his fake-out. Maybe it was Tom Sawyer and a pear, or a matchbox. Either way, he was cross-dressed.
The other zinc I swallowed myself. For immunity. The pill trailed grit down my throat and I put my tongue under the faucet.
“What happened to cups?” my mom said. That’s how she accuses people. With questions.
I shut the tap. I said, “Did something happen to cups?”
“Baloney,” she said.
Then I got an inspiration. I asked her, “Can you make your voice low and slutty?”
“Like this?” she said, in a low, slutty voice.
“Will you leave a message on Niles’s machine?”
“No,” she said.
“Then I’m going away forever,” I said. “Picture all you got left is bingo and that fat-ass Doberman chewing dead things in the gangway. Plus I’ll give you a dollar if you do it,” I said. “You can smoke two cigarettes on that dollar. Or else I’ll murder you, violently.” I picked up the nearest thing. It was a mortar or a pestle. It was the empty part. I waved it in the air at her. “I’ll murder you with this.”
“Gimme a kiss!” she sang. That’s how she is. A pushover. All she wants is to share a performance. To riff with you. It’s one kind of person. Makes noise when there’s noise, and the more noise the better. The other kind’s a soloist, who only starts up when it’s quiet, then holds his turn like it’ll never come again. Cojo’s that kind. I don’t know who’s better to have around. Some noise gets wrecked by quiet and some quiet gets wrecked by noise. So sometimes you want a riffer and other times a soloist. I can’t decide which kind I am.
I dialed the number. For the message, I had my mother say, “You’re rated G for gypsy, baby.” Niles is very sensitive about getting called a gypsy. I don’t know what inspired me with the idea to have my mom say it to him in a low, slutty voice, but then I got a clearer idea.
I dialed the number again and got her to say the same thing in her regular voice. Then I called four more times, myself, and I said it in four different voices: I did a G, a homo, a Paki, and a dago. I’m good at those. I thought I was done, but I wasn’t. I did it once more in my own voice, so Niles would know it was me telling people he’s a gypsy.
My mom said, “You’re a real goof-off, Jack.”
Cojo came upstairs, panting. “Tina and Nancy,” he said.
I thought: Nancy, if only.
Cojo said, “They might have a car.”
It was a good idea. I called. They didn’t know for sure about a car but said come over and drink. I kissed my mom’s head and she handed me money to buy her a carton of ultralights. I dropped the money in her lap and pulled a jersey over my T. Cojo said it was too hot out for both. It was too hot out for naked, though, so it wouldn’t matter anyway. Except then I noticed Joe was also wearing a jersey and a T, and I didn’t want to look like a couple who planned it, which Joe didn’t want either, which is what he meant by too hot out, so I dumped the jersey for a Mexican wedding shirt and we split.