The Spectacular Now

The first order of business is to punch up a little Dean Martin for mood music. There is no better introduction to a session with the brown bottle. Dino is the Man. I have the essential collection—“Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime,” “You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You,” “Love Me, Love Me,” “Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me,” and my theme song, “Ain’t Love a Kick in the Head.” Smooth, smooth stuff.

Now, I’m on record about how I hate the clothes I have to wear and sell at Mr. Leon’s, but if I could wear a tuxedo all the time like Dino, I’d do it. That’d be the only fashion statement worth making. And out of all the Rat Pack dudes, Dino was by far the coolest. The Rat Pack consisted of these ultra-suave playboy singers from back in the days before the hippie bands changed everything—Dean, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. These guys knew how to party. They tore Las Vegas to pieces.

I watched a biography of Dino on TV, and there was this woman who said, “Frank Sinatra thought he was God. Dean knew he was.” How about that? I mean, the dude had panache. They also said the whisky glass he waved around while he sang was actually filled with apple juice, but I never did believe that.

So here I am—Friday night—waving my own whisky (no apple juice) glass around, crooning along with Dino while Jennifer Love Hewitt’s spanktacular br**sts cruise majestically across the TV screen. I could be thinking about a million things but for some reason Commander Amanda Gallico pops into my head.

Since she’s Aimee’s big hero, I figure I ought to go online and study up on the intrepid commander a bit so we’ll have something to talk about Saturday night. See, this is part of my grand master plan for Aimee’s inner makeover. She needs to know that her dreams are important. And I’m not being fake about this either. Space travel, super-intelligent horses, working for NASA, owning a vast ranch—you really have to admire dreams like that.

I had big dreams once myself. I wasn’t much into science fiction, but when I was a kid and still heavily into baseball, I used to pretend I was Rocky Ramirez, all-time major-league MVP. The Rockinator wasn’t a real baseball player. He was my own concoction—a center fielder with superpowers. For example, he could run a hundred miles an hour and even fly if he had to. Plus, he wielded a nine-hundred-pound bat. It never crossed my mind that the major leagues would probably ban him, even though he didn’t take steroids like everyone else.

But my number one biggest fantasy was that my parents would get back together. I dreamed that one so hard that sometimes I’d have to go look in the closet to see if Dad’s stuff was there. Then we moved in with Geech, and damn, my heart went splat on the carpet when I saw his stupid striped shirts and cheap slacks hanging up where my dad’s jeans jacket and Levi’s should have been.

That type of dream just kind of wears out with time like a favorite old T-shirt. One day, it’s nothing but tatters and all you can do is throw it over on the rag pile with the others. Still, I can’t help looking back every now and then at how it used to be.

Summer evenings in the backyard, all of us together. I must’ve been three or four and my dad would grab my wrists and swing me around and around in circles. When he finally set me down, I couldn’t do anything but stagger from the dizziness. I loved it.

And one time, we made a fort out of lawn chairs and blankets and sat inside while Dad told werewolf stories and Mom leaned into his side, looking at him like he was the original Mr. Wonderful. It seems like it’s always summer in my memories of those days. The cold memories—the fighting memories—when those start to creep in, it’s time to move on.

Chapter 28

Commander Amanda Gallico is no challenge for Google. You’d be amazed at how many sites there are for her. I never heard of her before, but someone sure has. Before hitting the fan sites, I browse the more official sites—the bookstores, the author’s page, sci-fi magazines, even a Wikipedia entry. The more I read the more I like this space chick.

Sure, she’s brave and has a big rack and all, but she’s also a philosopher. According to Wikipedia, she believes that humanity has wasted too much energy chasing after power. They’ve made the mistake of thinking that power over others and leadership are the same thing.

As I read, I can practically hear Aimee explaining it in her soft marshmallow voice. We’re riding together through cyberspace and she’s going on about how, according to Commander Amanda, the drive for power is not as super-evolved as the drive for well-being. Deep down, women know this, see. Nurturing is their natural gig. They’ve seen how ultimate power has pushed dickhead dictators—like this Hitler-type dude, Rolio Blue, of the Dark Galaxy—into some kind of raging, slobbering paranoid freak while any sense of well-being flies completely out the old spaceship porthole.

On the other hand, a true leader, like Commander Amanda, doesn’t seek power over others. Instead, she’s out to lead them into greater and greater prosperity, both inside and out. So instead of going all crazoid and unraveling like Rolio Blue the evil douche, she gains more and more inner strength. Book after book, she becomes more amazing as she searches for the Bright Planets system where she’s going to build a whole new super-evolved society that’s like one big, blooming family.

Now, if you ask me, that’s some pretty deep stuff. I wish I had a blaze to smoke to go along with it. Maybe then I could almost believe Amanda Gallico was out there, coming to save me and Earth from its own Rolio Blues.

Who knows how many whiskies I’ve put away or how long I’ve been surfing through fan sites, message boards, blogs, and so forth. That’s how it is online—there’s no time in cyberspace. It’s almost like everything physical evaporates, and it’s just your mind and the different sites floating in a void. For some reason, this makes me feel really close to Aimee. I know her mind’s floated in and out of these same sites tons of times. She knows everything about the Dark Galaxy and the Bright Planets system up and down and back and forth. I can feel her here—this real gentle presence—just like Commander Amanda Gallico, searching for a place to flourish.