"Half Dreaming" - a Tuba Story

He could only think about two things. Will's predicament and the course his own love life was taking, or, not taking.

Tuba hadn't had a girlfriend for two years. Will told him that he should enjoy his life, regardless of women.

"You've got friends, right?"

"Yeah. I've got some good friends," Tuba said, and thought about Tatsuo and wondered if they were friends at all.

But there was Stacy and there was Max, both close friends for the last few years.

"Well," Will was saying, "Just enjoy the fact that you are healthy and young and unburdened. Don't feel guilty for not having a girlfriend. I know that's the kind of thing that runs through a lot of people's minds - 'if I don't have a girlfriend or if I don't have a boyfriend, there must be something wrong with me. Everyone else has someone.' That's a bunch of bullshit. Just look at your friends."

"Yeah. You're right."

Tuba watched Will getting excited and felt embarrassed for both of them.

What Will didn't address was Tuba's sense that life was passing him by. As much as Will might say about embracing life and taking it as it comes, and appreciating what you've got, he had a child on the way. He was engaged to a beautiful woman. He had an interesting job too. And what did Tuba have? No girl and a job moving boxes of food around in a prison.

In the question of a girlfriend, Tuba felt there was a hidden knowledge. If he had a girlfriend, maybe he wouldn't be happy, automatically, and it probably wouldn't last, but he would know something that he didn't know now.

He didn't know if it was true, but the idea occurred to Tuba that a person's relationship to themselves and to the world brought on wisdom, if anything did. And people relate to themselves through others. An unavoidable contradiction.

While Tuba considered the intricacies of these revelations Will kept lecturing.

"If you just quiet that part of you that wants approval, you'll see that you don't need approval at all. It's alright to say yes to yourself without anyone else saying anything. You don't need to be between a woman's legs to be a good person, Tuba."

The more Will talked the less Tuba listened, until Will did stop, watching Tuba who sat absorbed in an odd torpor, his mouth hanging slightly open. In the quickness of the silence, Tuba had an epiphany.

Stacy.

Her name hit him like a thunderclap.

As if the sky had split the name came leaping down a ladder of clear California daylight. Tuba felt his head reel with the knowledge that he was in love with his friend Stacy. He had been in love with her all along.

Will, who had paused in mid-sentence with his hands suspended in a now obscure gesture, watched Tuba stand up in the halo of this personal news flash.

"What? What is it?"

"I've got it," Tuba said in giddy disbelief.

Will turned away and rubbed a hand through his hair in grief. He knew what had happened.

"It's Stacy," Tuba almost shouted.

Defeated, Will asked, "Oh yeah? Stacy, huh?"

Tuba stood in the middle of the living room of the apartment and looked like he would start to do a slow spin, like a character in a musical standing under the spotlight about to start singing about flowers and birds and love.

Instead of spinning, he headed for the door, no shoes on, half-dreaming.

Will stopped him, "Tuba. Shoes. Maybe you should hold off on what you're about to do. You might want to think this one over."

Tuba stepped back into the room and slipped his shoes on, but he was unaware of what he was going to do and couldn't make any sense of what Will had said.

He rushed outside to look for a pay phone.

If he had been thinking, he would have just borrowed Will's cell phone.

After walking three blocks from campus in one direction and not finding a phone, he backtracked and found a phone a block in the opposite direction.

His mind was full of the idea of Stacy, and being in love with Stacy, and how this love would change everything that needed to be changed so that he could know the answer to the question behind his anxiety, which he was not able to articulate, which had something to do with being satisfied with life and something about not letting the world pass you by and something to do with sex and something to do with meaning and something about living life instead of living the history of a life...

It was all in a swirl in his mind as he put change into the phone and dialed the numbers to Stacy's office.

He asked for Stacy Harper and was put through.

"Hello," came her voice, just like it usually sounded.

"Hi. Is this joy, joy and beauty?" He asked, his voice thinner than usual, he noticed.

"Ah. No, this is Stacy Harper..."

Oh no. That wasn't funny at all. Right before he spouted that stupid sh*tty line, he had thought it would make her laugh. Now he was at a loss.

"Is that you Tuba?"

"What? Oh, hi, Stacy. Yeah. It's me. Sorry I got distracted."

Now she laughed. He could hear her smiling. She's glad to hear from me. It's not too late.

"It's good to hear from you," she said. "I wanted to hear about your trip and tell you something too."

"The trip is going pretty well. The weather is perfect here," he said looking up into the infinite crystal blue depth of the sky. "I'll be here for another week or so."

"That's what I was wondering. I wanted to see when you'd get back because I want to throw a surprise party for Max at your house."

Tuba said nothing as he was thinking about how to phrase his epiphany to Stacy. Should I just say, I love you. Or, You know Stacy, I've been doing some thinking and I need to tell you how I feel about you. You know, life is too short to keep things to yourself. Sometimes you've got to take a chance. No. That wouldn't work. It shouldn't be a confession. It should be an invitation. Maybe, Stacy, what do you think about you and me? That was better.

She was talking again, "If it's alright with you, I mean, it's Max's birthday on the seventeenth this month."

"What day is it today?"

"It's the fifth, I think," she said.

"I'll be back by then. I've got to be at work on the fifteenth."

This was not going how it was supposed to.

"So you're alright with the party idea then?"

"Sure. That'll be fine," he said without enthusiasm. Then he imagined greeting guests at his house with Stacy, an arm around Stacy's shoulder and found the idea terribly exciting. "Yeah, let's do it."

"Ok. I'm really glad you said that, because, well, I've got something else to tell you. I don't really know how to say it. Max and you and I have been friends for a long time. But when you left for your trip, Max and I spent some time alone together and, kind of, well, discovered each other."

"What?"

"We discovered each other, I said."

"Stacy, what does that mean?"

"I guess it means we're dating."

"You're dating. You and Max are dating. Dating, well, that's...that's, ah...something."

He felt the blue of the sky crushing him, falling down on him and flattening his head in a vice-grip. His feet began to hurt and when the phone started beeping to say it was running out of change, Tuba thought the noise was coming from inside himself, that he was running out of some vital fuel he needed to live.

He managed to say, "Got to go Stacy, phone time is running out here. Congratulations. I'll talk to you soon."

He heard her begin to give an apologetic goodbye then the phone cut out. Tuba stood with the receiver in his hand for a full minute, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

Empty, he re-placed the phone and turned to walk back to his brother's apartment, watching the sky for a sign, but it too was empty of all but the color blue. For an instant, Tuba felt sadly at one with the world, part of the big blue empty. The sadness was sweet, true, and universal.