Dealbreaker: The Goatee

And how it can lead to the end of everything.

by Alexander Maksik

May 16, 2007

It was around the time I had my first real job. At least that's what I thought it was. A real job. I had a desk with a computer on it. And a telephone. I had business cards. In the morning, Monday through Friday, I drove across the city, parked in an underground garage, bantered with the parking attendant, waited for the elevator, complained about how slow it was and rode to the fifth floor where I knew my desk was waiting for me like a loyal dog.

For a while, I loved the job. It made me feel like I had somewhere important to be, and then after being in that important place for nine hours, it felt okay to come home and recover from a long day of doing critical and exhausting things at the office with a pizza and a bad movie.

Working made me feel better about not working.

That's the advantage of working. It makes you feel less guilty about throwing your time over a cliff and murdering it.

I was feeling good. Strong. Purposeful. Adult. I even had the Sunday Times delivered to my apartment. I made a big deal about how much I loved to drink my coffee and read the Sunday Times. I told people, anyone who would listen, about my morning routine. I'd just throw it in for no real reason.

"How are you?" someone would ask.

"Oh, I'm great," I'd say. "On Sundays I sit and read the Sunday paper and drink my coffee."

I imagined getting a puppy so that it could crawl around on the bed with me while I read the paper. On television people were always reading the paper with their puppies.

Maybe I'd find a girlfriend too. She'd wear one of my shirts and the sleeves would be too long. She'd have her cute little glasses on her nose, her hair in a messy nest on top of her head, a pencil holding it up and she'd be lost in some fascinating article about air pollution while she absent-mindedly stroked the puppy's head.

"Would you like some more coffee?" she'd ask.

"I'd love some, darling." And without even looking up from her article on how sick our water is making us, she'd pour me a perfect piping cup.

I could see the steam rising.

I felt like a real man. A guy with a job. I felt in control. I had business cards. I was so in control that one Sunday, after deriving enormous pleasure and satisfaction from reading the Sunday Times, I got out of bed, took a shower and shaved a goatee. How much more manly could I be?

God, I was happy.

Thus, my goatee period began.

A few days in, returning from lunch, I got into the elevator at the same time as a beautiful woman. At the time I called beautiful women "girls."

"Dude, I met a really hot girl." That's what I'd tell my friends.

This particular girl was really hot.

We were standing there in silence the way you do when you're on an elevator with a stranger, pretending that the other person doesn't exist, pretending to, say, convert nautical miles to millimeters. As the elevator creaked along I suddenly found the courage to talk to the hot girl. Maybe it was the goatee, maybe it was the business cards in my briefcase. Maybe it was because I had a briefcase. Whatever it was, I turned and said, "You know, on Sundays, I sit in bed and read the paper. Drink coffee. Enjoy the day."

"Here. I'm back."

There was a long pause.

"But I don't think I want to see you anymore," she said.

I didn't have anything else to say, so I said, "Okay." And then I heard the lonely sound of her receiver being returned to its cradle.

I lay in bed watching the fish swimming through the asbestos cheese.

I touched the center of my chest. I imagined I could feel a small, heavy marble composed of panic and depression somewhere behind my sternum. I was having trouble breathing.

At five it had grown to the size of a small whale. I knew that if I didn't move I'd be suffocated under its weight.

I got dressed, got into my car and drove ninety miles an hour up the empty 405 freeway to her apartment. I parked my car, used a credit card to break into her building (a trick which worked precisely as it does on television). I marched up the stairs and down a long hallway to her apartment, Suite G.

I knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again.

Nothing.

And then, encouraged by my skill with the credit card, I kicked the door in.

Well, I tried to kick the door in.

It didn't work. The door didn't budge. The door was supposed to explode inward. There was supposed to be a crunch and a crack and whatever was hidden on the other side of the door would suddenly be revealed. But no matter how hard I tried, the door stayed where it was.

And then I saw myself. My eyes were red. I'd been up all night. I was half-stoned. I was that guy in the hall terrifying the neighbors, pounding on some poor woman's door. I hated that guy. It wasn't romantic. It was pathetic.

All of a sudden I was so tired.

I leaned my head against the door and quietly said her name.

"Jenny," I whispered.

I closed my eyes and wondered how I'd gotten there. How had I gone from being a man with business cards to a man who couldn't even break down a door, who, even in a fit of passion, couldn't even get in the room. I walked through the hall, down the stairs and out of the building. I got into my car and drove to work.

No one was there. I sat at my desk staring blankly at the wall. My eyes hurt. I'd been crying. I was absurd.

Then there was a knock at the office door.

I blew my nose.

"Come in," I said.

The door opened. It was a cheerful woman who worked down the hall. She was holding a bouquet of cookies, a dozen chocolate chip cookies on long green sticks arranged to look like flowers.

"Would you like a cookie?" She asked.

I looked at her for a moment longer than might have been normal.

And then I said, "Okay. Sure. Thanks."

She handed me a cookie on a stem, smiled and said brightly, "Have a nice day!"

I sat at my desk and ate the flower. It was the size of a Big Mac. There were paper leaves glued to the stem.

When I finished eating, I got up and left. I drove home, walked out to the beach and sat there for a long time.

Pretty soon after I finished that cookie I quit my job. I realized eventually that I really didn't care that much about Jenny. She was a catalyst. When she left everything seemed to go with her. I'm not sure why I went nuts. I loved the idea that I was a man with all the things a man might have a career, a car, an apartment, a beautiful girlfriend, some money, business cards. But it turns out that a goatee to a twenty-five year old man is what a Corvette is to a fifty-year old man: a sure sign that your life is a fraud and that you'd better do something fast.

©2007 by Alexander Maksik and hooksexup.com