I write a Craigslist personals ad for my friend.
It’s okay. It’s an okay ad.
My friend agrees to meet with one of the men who reply. That is the deal. Fine. She chooses the one who describes himself as “crazy smart.” A worrisome sign, I think, but fine. Maybe he is.
Finally. It’s the day of the date. It is the day of the mutually agreed upon date for drinks. It’s fun. It’s fun the way getting ready for prom is fun. My friend is excited. She’s got her date hair. She’s got her date outfit. She’s talking about date things.
Time passes.
It’s 4 p.m. “I think I may be getting stood up,” she updates me. “I still haven’t heard from him.” There’s a palpable feeling of lameness in the air.
I tell her of also getting stood up by a Craigslist douche. We laugh.
Time passes.
She gets an email. He forgot.
Then this picture arrives somehow. This picture of a cat, the most perfect picture really, of a cat in a T-shirt identified as such in an email with the subject line, “Cat in a T-shirt.” Her brother took the picture. The best part, she tells me “is it’s not just an Internet cat. This is a cat across the street from my brother.”
It’s probably one of the most amazing pictures of a cat in a T-shirt ever taken.
Time passes.
There is the question of the douche. How to respond. Does she give him another chance. “Fuck that,” another friend offers. Agreed. But still. What should she do.
“Email him the cat,” I say. “The picture of the cat.”
“Just the picture,” she says. “Yes,” I say, “just the picture. No explanation.”
She does.
Time passes.
Finally. There is one new message. The reply is what you might expect. Somewhat quizzical, but friendly, probing. “Where,” it says, “is that picture from?”
Fine. Fair enough. But now there is the new question. The new question of how to respond to the douche’s new reply.
“Send it to him again,” I say.
“The same picture,” she says. “The same picture,” I say.
I don’t think I have ever been so excited about anything before in my life.
Time passes.
It is time to check the email in-box again. There is one new message.
“Are those,” he writes, “your animals?”
**AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD**
Thanks. Thanks for reading this story. Now, I’d like to tell you, this was a wonderful experience for so many reasons I probably don’t need to explain. But, I think what made it the perfect experience was the idea that this guy, this guy with the baseball cap that covered something on his forehead that he didn’t like, this guy who blew off my friend for no good reason, is now most certainly overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, obviously, by a veritable spectrum of emotions, ranging from amusement to pity to confusion to fear to intrigue to the perfectly logical belief that he now has a psychotic Cathy cartoon on his hands.
It was his ginger delicacy, the flourish of patronization, the light brush of kindness with which you treat the slow that was implied in every syllable of his second response that made it so great.
“Are those your animals?”
The fun, the great fun, was knowing that he was wondering, his fingers nervously, hesitantly typing on the keyboard with the trepidation with which one might reply to a pissed-off Kim Jong-il trying drag for the first time, exactly how to reply to this poor woman who didn’t know how to deal with being stood up.
“Are those your animals?”
Because let’s face it. It was code.
It was code for the dialogue he was having within himself as he fully imagined her life, a life filled with rare and beautiful Precious Moments figurines, slavishly saved for, purchased and positioned—even though she’s plum run out of space on the coffee table near the TV stand near the TV trays (one day I’ll buy real furniture! aaaaaacccckkk!). The autographed copy of the Special Director’s Cut Extended Edition DVD of “Beaches” she bought one madcap, let’s-go-for-it!-fueled night on eBay after an extra helping of Entenmann’s orange sunshine cake and too much cherry diet Dr. Pepper. The stack of clipped Dilbert cartoons resting precariously near the teddy bear collection pouring onto the mishmash of self-help books (one day I’ll get organized! aaaaackkkk!). The awkward and indignant and at this point no one close to her really wants to bring it up anymore trading of Beanie Babies dolls that continues long after the collectors’ magazines begin coming sporadically and then bimonthly and then simply not all. And finally. More than anything else, a life touched—made deeper, the way sadness makes everything deeper—by betrayal. A crazy wide-eyed betrayal (oh don’t even get me started!) that this great nation may have given up on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” long, long, long ago but she sure as fudgesicles will not.
“Are those your animals?”
It was code. It was code for, “Are those your friends?”
And it was so wonderful to imagine him picturing her child-like, lollipop-sucking naivetee, her grubby tiny-fingered wilfulness, her sand-kicking insistence that he should very well understand the message being sent to him by this picture of a Cat in a T-shirt.
I like to think of him. I like to think of him trying to stop thinking about the Cat in the T-shirt, then thinking about it some more, then managing successfully to stop thinking about it for a while, and then finally deciding that the message was in fact so very clear. It had been clear all along. It was her way—her most special, most super snugly, most laced up with a ribbon on top cozy nighttime jammies way—of saying, “Oh gosh. Don’t you worry about me, mister! I think I will find plenty to keep me occupied tonight.”
