The Brave Swine

She arrives as a piece of pop art, unaware of her obscurity at this kind of party. So I pester my artist friends for a name, asserting their worthlessness as they recall recent trips to the MoMA and draw a blank on the exhibit in question. Warhol is mentioned, but I know better. I may be uncultured, but something so obvious would be a letdown.

When technology fails, I resort to spies. They do their job but leave me feeling dirty, like I cheated. And I did cheat. So she sees through me, partly because I want her to.

“Roy Lichtenstein,” I say somewhat absently.

“Did someone tell you?” she responds, smiling. She's trying to be kind. She doesn't want to insult me, but the knowing is in her eyes. “You're full of shit,” is what she's thinking. And I don't blame her. I am full of shit. But it's well-intentioned shit and I think she can see that too.

In less than ten minutes, I'm in love. That’s the third or fourth time today... and it's still early.

Before too long I'm trying to see myself in her writing, despite never having read a word. My egotism rages and I want her to take this conversation to bed instead of me. I want her to carry it back to California and afford me the attention I crave. And I’d imagine she understands this. After all, we're both writers. We couldn’t be more transparent. We're looking for inspiration in each other’s vanity, taking mental notes and collecting the evening as a fictional and sensorial account that will appear more attractive to our respective readers.

And somehow she calls me brave, in a passive kind of way. Like she’s looking for a more appropriate word but can’t quite find it. Still, she calls me brave. Twice. So I can savor her sweet accent as the word dances off her tongue and massages the air between us like the beautiful mistake it is.

“That's really brave,” she says vaguely. And I melt like the proverbial snowball in hell. But I want her to know it's true. I want her to know that I'm not quite as intimidated by her as I seem. So I give the piece she'll never write a title: “The Brave Swine.” And I picture her smiling coyly as she writes it.

When I finally find her poems—her conditions—I want to associate them with a taste. I want to head west instead of east and rip Lichtenstein off her body. I want to show her that passion isn't just for the foreign—that Americans can lust and live and fuck like Chilean authors or Thom Yorke.

Instead, we’ll just be characters for each other to tamper with, one-dimensional compositions that fill some kind of role on a page or blog or memoir. We’re mirrored representations of love for the only thing that really matters. And it’s both sad and beautiful.