BUGSPRAY

He’s just finished telling her his thoughts on Gödel’s ‘Incompleteness Theorems’ (revolutionary…revelatory beyond words, really…proof, beyond any doubt, that shadowy figures stalk the gloam at the edges of our epistemological perception…) when he reaches for the bugspray. He’s sort of looking at her out of the corner of his eye to gauge her reaction, which is one of courteous interest (he thinks). But he’s not ‘looking’ looking at her, because she’s wearing her bathing suit, and he doesn’t want to leer, or stare, or in any way come off as some sort of perv.

They’re sitting on the front porch of a rental cottage on Lake George. It’s August. When he’d met her at the bar last night she’d said: you seem really smart. When she’d said this his torso had been sprawled across their table in a heavy forward lean as if he were defending a single-leg, and he’d been very close to her, and his perspective was the whole of her face, which at the time had appeared as a dim blur in the low light. Until she’d said those words. You seem really smart. And then her face resolved in pixel-perfect clarity, and he immediately sobered as if he’d been dunked in cold water, and the effect was such that it almost ruined his balance, and he recoiled from his sprawl and suddenly stood at his full height and, like, nodded. Not long after that her friend tapped her on the shoulder and whispered something in her ear, and then she (the girl he was speaking to) gave him a kiss on the cheek and left. But not before leaving her phone number on the tab’s receipt, blue ink imbrued under a limewedge stain. And he stared at the number and thought to himself: Don’t fuck this up. Please do not fuck it up.

The following day she agreed to come to the rental cottage where he’s staying for the weekend with a few of his friends. And so far it’s been going well. He thinks. Although, when he thinks about it more, whatever meretricious charm he’d employed last night had forsaken him, judging from her various microreactions, her guarded, closed posture, and her reluctance to smile a full smile or laugh an uninhibited laugh. And, potentially, the only way to re-secure his mojo was to recreate the sorta attitude he’d sported when he’d met her, which was one of cocksure arrogance, of rakish confidence. In order to effect this he’d been surreptitiously chugging beers in the bathroom (which, inevitably, caused him to frequent the bathroom at regular intervals, and kinda tipped her off to what he was doing, although she didn’t call him out on it), and was growing steadily drunker as the afternoon progressed. He’s actually pretty fucking drunk right now, if we’re being real. As a consequence, he’s grown more confident in purporting a facade of intelligence, although if he really thinks about it he’s not even sure if what he’s said about Gödel, whose incompleteness theorems he’s mostly unacquainted with (but can still summarize quite succinctly (he thinks) from having read their associated Wikipedia articles a few times) is true. He can’t even really remember what was said, if he’s being honest with himself. If he’s really, like, actually being honest with himself, he’d be the first to say that: no, I’m not smart. He was never talented in school, although this never convinced him of his own mediocrity—plenty of dumbass kids actually turned out to be geniuses (e.g., Einstein, Tesla). He’d maintained some level of self-assurance regarding his own intelligence up until he attended grad school, where basically his whole sense of self-identity was eradicated when he’d met actually intelligent people, people who when they’d talk to him would have to didactically slow their words and, sometimes, explain things using their hands, real logicians for whom syntax was understood as easily as the spoken word. He suddenly recalls a moment in which he was sitting alone in his dorm, staring blankly at the wall, reconciling with his inadequacies for the first time in his life, wondering with genuine fear what could possibly be next for him, and then he shakes the memory away—he physically shakes the memory off of him as if it were an assailant (which causes the girl to jump, a little bit). No. Not right now. He will be smart for her. He’ll be whoever is required, he tells himself as he uncaps the bugspray and begins spraying his chest, his arms.

Then the air is filled with the scent of lemon, of citrus, of pesticidal bitterants. A cloud of vapor rises from him as he continues elaborating on Gödel, which he does without trying to sound too desperate for approval. At some point between reaching for the bugspray and applying it he notices she’s retrieved her phone from the sidetable, sees that it’s clutched in her right hand, and he understands that she’s probably internally debating on whether it would be rude to check it. He ups the ante: Wittgenstein. (Most people are familiar with the Tractatus…but, personally, I believe his more interesting work occurred later in his life—Philosophical Investigations, of course… ‘language games,’ what a funny little idea…)

He sprays as he talks. Wide plumes in X and Z arcs about his body. Shoots a cone overhead which falls gently to rest as spangles on his back. The meat of him glistens redly in the brutal lakeside humidity—any discerning insect would cut a wide berth to avoid him. All that’s left now is the ol mug, and so he points the spraycan at his face, thinking nothing of it. Her eyebrows assume the Universal Shape of Concern, an upward lilt. As he continues pontificating on Wittgenstein, who is, he debates internally, a more household name or garden variety philosopher who this girl might have already heard of, she forms a question on her lips, which he ignores. Then he discharges a thin stream of the stuff directly into his eyes.

Two seconds elapse in absolute stillness. The girl puts her hands to her mouth in shock. He drops the can. His eyes are closed. He actually doesn’t make any sort of involuntary vocalization, or anything like that. His breath catches in his throat, no oxygen, just a caustic mist. He swallows, and then he sits like this for a second, processing the pain. He blinks rapidly—he tries looking around. It’s like he’s seeing the world through waxpaper.

You need to go wash your eyes out, she says urgently. He looks at her. A dark face set against a background of virid green. She looks like some sort of alien. He wishes he’d seen her this way from the beginning, just a tenebrous mass, featureless and blank. He wishes, suddenly, to be veiled from the world in the same way she is veiled from him now—to be shrouded in a caul through which all information could be filtered—to be protected this way. The tears roll down his face unchecked. To sit like this for just a moment.

Uh—what was I saying, he says.