Wordsmoker

You see a guy on the dance floor. He likes to dance in this pure kind of way, his eyes closed, ecstatic in the music. He’s not cruising like everyone else. His abandon invites your abandon, you dance too. With your eyes closed. Though you sneak peeks. Soon enough, you are dancing together, and this is how you meet. He tells you his name is Omar. You exchange numbers. Later in the week, you meet up, talk all night. At some point, you say, “I can’t believe I don’t even know your whole name.” He gets bashful, seems reluctant to tell you. “You’ll laugh.” “I won’t!” I won’t, you think. “My name is Omar Sharif.” You laugh.

*

Your best friend tells you that he must have been joking. “He doesn’t really joke like that,” you say. Your friend insists. “Come on, he told you his name was Omar Sharif? He’s not even Arab, it’s probably something long and Bengali and he just figures it’s easier to give the white guy a name he can remember.” “It’s actually ‘Bangla’” “What is?” “Bengali. They say ‘Bangla,’ not Bengali.” “This guy is just feeding you lines. I bet he’s from Ottawa and is just fucking with you. Ask him why the red circle on the flag is off-center, that’ll stump him.” Later, you catch yourself watching him as he sleeps to see what language he speaks in his dreams. You listen for a Canadian accent in his sighs.

*

You get an email from your best friend. “Is this your boyfriend?” And a link.

*

You are talking about movies and he mentions Erin Brokovich and you admit you’ve never seen it. “You haven’t? Everyone’s seen that. Julia Roberts!” “I know, with the cleavage. I remember the ads. I just never got around to it.” “Well, it’s good. I mean, I liked it. It’s a good movie. I like Julia Roberts.” “Really? “You don’t?” “Well, I don’t dislike her.” “Everyone likes Julia Roberts.” “That seems like an overstatement.” “You just don’t like romances. You aren’t romantic.” “I do too like romances!” “Like what.” “I don’t know. Um…oh! Dr. Zhivago.” “Is that good? I’ve never seen it.” “You’ve never seen it?” “It’s really old!” “But you, of all people…” “Who’s in it?” “Okay, now you’re just fucking with me.”

*

You get an email from your best friend. “Is this your boyfriend?” And a link.

*

“Why did you want to know my whole name anyway?” “I’d told you mine, I thought it should be even.” “Well, now you know. And you can’t google me. I’m not on Facebook anyway.” “I didn’t ask you so I could google you!” “I don’t even have a cell phone.” That night, you leaf through 50 pages of google results and learn a lot about bridge.

*

You get an email from your best friend. “Is this your boyfriend?” And a link.

*

You remember watching Lawrence of Arabia with your grandmother. You were in junior high, maybe. All that sand, the horizon slicing across the frame. Peter O’Toole like a reanimated Greek sculpture, all ivory and linen, and Omar Sharif his photo negative, precise features with dark points, like a Siamese cat has dark points, chiaroscuro setting off the curves of his nose and mouth and jaw. “Oh, we thought that Omar Sharif was so handsome,” your grandmother says dreamily, half in her memory, half in the present. You think about your grandmother as a young woman, giggling about Hollywood stars with her friends. “He was a real star. Just took your breath away.” She grew up in Minnesota, a small town near Duluth filled with “Scandahoovians” like her (like you, too). She would have been a young mother when Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago came out, throwing dinner parties in San Francisco and having coffee with the other young mothers in the neighborhood. Playing bridge. Did they go together, groups of ladies off to the matinee? Did they rotate who would watch the kids? Or did she watch them as dates with your grandfather, shoulders resting familiarly against each other as they gazed up at the screen filled with burning sand or blowing snow? Julie Christie’s face framed in soft fur, creamy in the cold. Did your grandmother imagine herself as Christie, her beauty set against the harsh winds so like those of her youth, warmed by the handsome hero’s dark-eyed gaze? Did she watch half-submerged in memory then, too, thinking back to when she first caught your grandfather’s gaze, the way he looked at her, then looked again? It takes your breath away, all this remembering. You look over at your grandmother, seeing the young mother within the dear old lady sitting on the couch, her needlepoint forgotten on her lap. You are remembering this when your mouth is filled with the erect penis of Omar Sharif.