One night I met a girl named Elaine, who said, "Call me Clyde Drexler."  Her jeans were ripped kind of like how Clyde Drexler's jeans might be if he was homeless, but Clyde Drexler isn't homeless.  He's a millionaire or something because he was an amazing basketball player.  I think both me and Clyde Drexler would be upset if a shitty indie band began calling themselves Clyde Drexler, but I think it's bound to happen.  I don't think this girl was an amazing basketball player or a shitty indie band so I did not call her "Clyde Drexler."  I did not know why she wanted me to call her Clyde Drexler.  Maybe she was upset her real name was stupid.

 

 

 

Once I pretended I was Clyde Drexler and tried to jump off my bureau and dunk on the miniature basketball hoop hanging from my door.  I broke the bureau, the miniature hoop, and my wrist.  My father went bald, the tiny horse my mother had been hiding in the pantry for Christmas died, and the mailman accidentally gave us two Crate & Barrel catalogues.

 

 

 

I told the Elaine who wanted me to call her Clyde Drexler, "I hope you go bald."  She said, "What's bald."  I said, "Go to a barber and ask them what happened to the miniature horse."  She said she would and then vomited on Clyde Drexler's ripped jeans.

 

 

 

Later that night I called my mother and said, "Every girl I meet named Elaine is ugly."  I wrote my father a letter shortly after calling my mother and said, "Dear Father, I met another girl named Elaine.  Like the rest of them she was overweight and her laugh was annoying, but she couldn't help it.  I kind of pitied her.  When she was bothering someone else I thought, 'Poor girl.'  When she came back to talk to me I thought, 'Turn bald. Turn bald. Turn bald.'  Anyway, I wanted to say, 'Hello,' and if you find another baby in the ditch do not name it Elaine."

 

 

 

When my father finally replied to my letter a few years later he said, "I once slept with a girl named 'Elaine' in 'college'.  She had a plain face, but was not very overweight.  She asked me to call her 'Commodore Brown'.  I said, 'Fuck you, it's bad enough you're name is Laney Griddles Bunsky.'  She said, 'How did you know my middle name.'  I said, 'I read the letters on your desk from your father while you were in the bathroom looking in the mirror wishing your name was Cindy.'  She said she didn't like the name Cindy.  I said, 'Your father seems to think highly of her.'  She asked me not to talk about her sister so I told her, 'Your pillow has mold on it,' and I threw it out the window.  This got her excited and she said something about how she liked my unpredictability which was kind of odd.  I really wasn't that unpredictable considering I ended up sleeping with her, leaving before she woke up, and never calling.  I think I remember her calling me at some point and leaving an angry message.  I remember she said, 'I thought you were special, but you're a jingoistic tug-off like the rest of them.'"

 

 

 

 Sometimes babies are born.  I think everyone knows this.  What I meant to say was sometimes when babies are born they are delivered from a woman's belly.  I met a doctor who called this process, "portal hatching."  He was my dentist.  He was not very good with either teeth or babies.  He never told me half my teeth grew in backwards.  Two out of every five portals he hatched appeared to be empty either because he accidentally prescribed abortion pills in the second trimester or because he forgot to put the lead vest on his pregnant patients when he took x-rays of their teeth.  Once during a casual conversation following a routine cleaning he told me, "If I had a family I would name them all Elaine."  I wasn't quite sure what to say, but after a few seconds I said, "Isn't there a movie about that?"

 

 

 

Another time I was walking home.  Monotony existed in every crack of the sidewalk.  I looked up and saw a homeless person holding a sign and could relate to how a few bad decisions sometimes could lead to not showering, to being hungry, to begging me for change, to me saying, 'sorry, my pockets are empty,' to me wondering if the homeless person's name was Elaine, to me wondering what happened to that girl named Elaine who I went to elementary school with, to me wondering what happened to everyone from elementary school, to me being interrupted by the homeless person saying 'it's okay Poppycock Poppycock,' to me being curious about what exactly 'poppycock' meant, to me ignoring the armies of defective weekend robots loosening their business casual in the surrounding bars filled with manufactured-paint-by-number splendor and nuns of the cosmetic industry playing games and getting free drinks while they listened to unspoken whispers of 'Please let my dick crawl up in you tonight' and ignored the inexperienced ones who painted bull's eyes on their targets and missed completely which usually led to these rookies blowing out their brains at the end of the night with things they sometimes called, 'the AK-47' and finding crusted used tissues next to their computer monitors in the morning.

 

 

 

The girl named Elaine I knew from my elementary years happened to be the only person who ever loved me in second grade.  She was known as 'plump raisin' from time to time.  One time I heard someone call her "Ben Franklin's chubby revolver."  I'm not sure what they meant by that comment.  Sometimes at recess she would tell all the teachers on duty the two of us were married.  She tried to prove this by showing off a ring.  It was nothing more than magic marker lines drawn on her finger.  Luckily for me, I wasn't concerned with settling down to start a family at that point.  I don't think I even liked girls.  I was fortunate.  I ignored the cries from my supposed first wife.  I'm glad I didn't give in and agree to the marriage.  I don't know what I would do with that type of commitment in my life at the present moment especially if it was the result of a poor decision when I was seven.  Instead, I spent the majority of second grade recesses digging for treasure and throwing pinecones at people on the swings.  I fought a few invisible ninjas.

 

 

 

I had seen her sitting alone at the bar, with a glass of wine, and a book.  Empty stools told each other stories around her.  It was weird to see someone sitting alone in a bar reading.  Maybe she was sick of dating.  She had hit a rough patch, a succession of weirdoes.  The first admitted he got his hair highlighted every two weeks.  Number two maybe said, "I've been meaning to get one of those," when she suggested they exchange emails or maybe he said something odd like, "I lost my internet.  I couldn't find it.  Then my lawnmower broke again, so I fixed it and that's when I remembered that I had used my internet wire as a starter chord."  Weirdo number three might not have been much of a weirdo.  She probably fucked him.  He just didn't call and when she called him a 'Jingoistic tug-off,' he said, "I kind of have a family and I only slept with you so I could tell my son a nice bedtime story that'll make him grow into a strong young man."  Maybe she liked books and information and being studious for no reason other than being studious and because people often see pretty girls being studious and they wondered to themselves, "Why is that pretty girl being studious?"  Maybe she liked to be thought about.  Maybe she wasn't reading at all, her eyes scanning pages and forgetting them as she thought about something else.  I've never seen the inside of a girl's subconscious, but I imagine it looks like a simple card game with friends, until you look closer and notice that each of the cards has a reproduction of H.R. Giger's Penis Landscape on it and the girls are all wearing see-thru cookie jars on their heads with an infinite supply of ice cream flavored oxygen.  And if you dare to peek under the table you'll see that half the ladies have tiny midgets nibbling and whispering pleasurable secrets into their crotches and the other half have little puppies licking their toes.  Every twenty minutes the puppies and midgets trade places.

 

 

 

I left her at her spot, alone on the stool, and continued home.

 

 

 

When I walked through the doors of the bar five minutes later she was still there.  It was dark.  I thought, "Her poor eyes."  I was standing next to her at this point.  I did not know what to say.  I tried to lean over and see what she was reading.  She looked at me.  I was standing uncomfortably close.  She said, "Hello?"  I took a step back.  I said, "Hello Elaine."  She told me this wasn't her name.  I began saying, "Of course not.  Elaine is a stupid name," but she stopped me and held up a finger asking me to wait a second.  Her other hand moved back and forth across the page.  When she finished she looked up.  She said "Hello," again.  I did not know what to say.  "Ummm, nevermind," I said and walked out the door.  When I got home someone was watching a movie in the living room.  I stopped for a bit to watch and saw Emilio Estevez talking to Rob Lowe talking to Demi Moore talking to Judd Nelson talking Ally Sheedy and I said, "Oh, isn't that the movie where all the characters are named Elaine?"