Constance and the Genius

I had to interview this playwright who was a celebrated genius and a notorious lech. I insisted on being allowed to take along my secret weapon, The Advance's staff photographer, Gerri Stanley. The thing about Gerri was that she was very attractive--heck, even I could tell that she was so hot she practically left scorch marks on the floor where she had stood--and I hoped that this would serve to draw Danny McBride?'s attention away from my big-butted self.

"Danny McBride? is unattractive," my editor, John Downs, informed me. "No photograph of him will be attractive, so you might as well take a Polaroid of him yourself."

"Sir, this is not about making Danny McBride? look attractive," I said. "This is about protecting me from his villianous clutches."

Downs scowled at me. "You're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. Remember when you broke that piano player's nose and he almost sued you?" He looked almost fond of me as he spoke, although he had threatened to fire me at the time.

"He was old," I replied. "Danny McBride?'s only in his thirties."

"I'd be glad to go with you," chimed in Gerri, who was standing next to me. She added dreamily, "Danny McBride?'s a genius."

"Fine, take her with you," Downs grunted resentfully. "Just get out of here."

When Gerri and I got to Clyde's, the neighborhood bar where I was supposed to meet Danny McBride?, she got out of the car saying for about the fiftieth time, "Ooooh, I don't understand how the guy who wrote all those sensitive plays can be a perv. Maybe it's not true," she continued brightly as we walked in through the front door.

I was only half-listening to her. I had problems of my own. I was going to have to go into a different line of work if I kept getting sent into bars like this. For convenience's sake, I usually turned down drinks with the explanation that I was an alcoholic, but this was not fair to real alcoholics. Real alcoholics needed AA and plenty of help to quit boozing it up. I was nothing more or less than a girl with poor impulse control and a tendency not to stop after one drink, but after twenty, and I had quit drinking because it was costing me too much money. It was, I reflected, a shame that ex-lushes did not have a culture and support network of our own. I smiled, imagining groups like Lushes Anonymous, and children's books like, Mommy Doesn't Have A Disease--Her Impulse Control Is Just Lousy.

I was interrupted in my reflections when I practically stumbled over Danny McBride?, who was getting up to greet us. He was indeed unattractive. He had a peaky face, like my friend François, but unlike Frankie's face, McBride?'s was marred by what appeared by to be a permanent leer.

"Helloooooo ladies," said McBride?. "Nobody told me you were little girls."

"We're not little girls," I snapped. "We're both thirty years old, for crying out loud." This was something of an exaggeration. I was twenty-six, and Gerri was only twenty-four.

"Well, can I buy you grown-up ladies a drink?" McBride? asked.

"If I start drinking, my hands get all shaky and I can't hold the camera," Gerri replied.

"I'm an alcoholic," I chipped in pleasantly.

"So am I," crowed McBride?, raising his glass, "but I don't let that stop me!"

Gerri and I looked at each other. She made a quiet noise that sounded suspiciously like a stifled sob.

McBride?'s latest play, Girls in the Field, was all about his respect for the power of women--a respect which clearly didn't prevent him from continuously and badly hitting on both the female person who was getting paid to ask him questions about his play, and the girl photographer whose unpleasant job it was to take pictures of him. He also continued drinking heavily throughout. As I was getting ready for the handshake and thank-you-for-your-time routine, Gerri poked me in the shoulder and whispered, "He's turning blue."

"He's not turning blue," I hissed. "That's just his natural skin tone."

"He wasn't blue when we first came in," insisted Gerri. I had never her seen panic like this before. She was usually a very take-charge type. "We can't just let him die! Everybody will think we killed him! Everybody knows how we are, Constance! Rowdy girls out for justice against the great big sexist man machine and all of that!"

"I like rowdy girls," McBride? slurred, and then fell out on the floor. "My, what a nice big butt you have," he said, gazing up the length of my jeans into my pitiless eyes, and then he appeared to lose consciousness.

"Constance!" Gerri wailed, pointing.

"All right, so we won't let him die," I said disgustedly. "When similar situations occured in my reckless youth, Frankie took me outside for a breath of fresh air. Come on, McBride?, get up," I told him sternly, poking him with my foot.

"I like girlsh who wear shneakers. It makes you look yooouthful," McBride? mumbled, taking hold of my foot.

"Stop it," I replied irritably.

Between the two of us, Gerri and I managed to steer McBride? out onto the sidewalk. In the light of day, I could see that he really was turning blue, which didn't stop him from taking one of Gerri's sleek black pigtails and putting it in his mouth.

"That's it!" I shouted. Pushing him onto the bench outside of Clyde's, I pulled his suit coat off his back and went through the inside pockets until I came up with his address book. Waving under his nose, I screamed, "If you don't cut it out right now, I am going to call your wife. RIGHT NOW!" I got out my phone and waved that in his face too. Now that he was too drunk to leer, he almost looked cute. "I have it on very good authority that that woman worships the ground you walk on. I'm sure you'd like to keep it that way."

McBride? stuck his chin out defiantly. "Rachel and I have an open marriage," he announced. "She believes in free love. She had tons of girlfriends when I married her. So did I. She wouldn't care if I slept with both of you right now."

"Oh really?" Gerri smiled prettily, taking my phone out of my hand. "In that case, if you don't cut it out right now, I'm going to call your wife and ask her out."

McBride?'s eyes opened very wide. I imagined he was weighing the appeal of a boozy, peaky-faced intellectual with an overactive id against that of a raven-haired lady photographer with snake hips and a straw Stetson. "You wouldn't dare," he said.

"Yes I would," Gerri replied coolly. "If you gallantly apologize to my friend and me, of course, I might reconsider."

"All right," McBride?, suddenly sober, said peevishly and quite insincerely. "I'm sorry."

"GALLANTLY," Gerri repeated, holding her hand out to me for the address book.

"All right!" McBride? cleared his throat, then said solemnly, "I would like to extend my heartfelt apologies to both of you patient and professional ladies for behaving in so beastly a fashion this day."

"That's better," Gerri said happily.

"Drink is a filthy thing, Geraldine," I said to her later, back at the humble offices of The Advance, as I poured myself a cup of foul, black, office coffee. I was trying to cut back on the massive amounts of caffeine, but I felt I deserved a reward for not leaving Danny McBride? on the floor of Clyde's to be trodden on by neighborhood drunks. I looked sideways at her and added, "I must admit, I didn't know you swung that way."

"I don't," Gerri said. "Well, I haven't in a long time. But since I'm all hot and stuff, I thought it would be an effective bluff. And it was."

I sat down at my desk and said, "I hope Downs lets me interview a lady next time."

"Woman," yawned Gerri. "No, womyn with a y. We can't back down from our feminist stance now."

"Oh, shut up," I told her.

She smiled wistfully. "Just think, Danny McBride?, sensitive playwright and all-around genius, is probably puking up his liquid dinner right now, and getting ready to climb in his little bed, where he'll have nightmares about cowboy-hatted lesbian photographers running around with his wife."

"It's so sad," I said. "Do you think if we were geniuses, we'd be jerks too?"

"Probably," Gerri replied with a little frown. "I heard that being a genius, like, hurts. I guess it's like when your shoes are too small, so you yell at everybody to take your mind off the pain."

"My shoes are usually too big," I said.

"Well, see?" shrugged Gerri. "That's why you don't know what it's like to be a genius."