Super Born: Seduction of Being (3 page)

He greeted me with an endlessly pumping
handshake that proved tough to break. After a minute, I pulled away
and we sat at a table in the middle of the bar.

Jones gestured with open arms to the room
around us. “There, do you see?” he asked.

I looked around, not wanting to feel stupid or
intimidated right away…I’d save that for later. “Just what am I
looking at, Professor?” I asked, opening up my laptop and trying to
look professional.

“
Just look, look my friend. Tell me
what you see.”

I looked around the bar. “Well, over there I
see two young men. One is trying , to ‘pull’ the ‘push’ door to the
backroom—with no success, I might add. The other guy is standing
too close to the men’s room door and is repeatedly pulling it open
into his face. Over there, I see a guy trying to get onto a bar
stool and, every time he does, he slides off onto the floor…what
assholes!”

“
Good, good,” said Jones excitedly.
“And in the backroom, can you see what is happening there, my
friend?”

The lights were starting to come on in my head.
“I see five more guys back there. Some are wearing leather helmets
with antlers on them, and another has a rifle.” There was a loud
roar as the rifle fired. “And that guy just shot at the guys with
the antlers! Holy crap, let’s get out of here!”

Behind the bar, the grizzled old barkeep just
shook his head and continued rinsing out glasses, unfazed, as the
gunshot rang out.

“
I assure you that we are quite
safe, my friend. This curious male-only activity is called the
Antler Game. They have been doing it for years and no one has ever
hit anything…ever, not even a hit song…not even a.…”

“
Okay, I get it!”

“
The odds of one of them shooting
and hitting a target is about the same as you winning the
lottery…twice. Now tell me what else you see.”

“
Man, that guy is a lousy shot! He
wasn’t even close!” Just then a different man took hold of the
rifle and began the Antler Game over again. The men wearing the
antlers scurried randomly around the backroom with beer bottles in
hand, some hiding behind others while the rifleman tried to decide
which end of the rifle to use and how you loaded the bullet, only
succeeding on occasion. Most shots ended up lodged in the floor or
ceiling, although the man in one beer poster on the wall seemed to
have three nostrils and big zit on his cheek. “Holy shit! Somebody
should call the cops!”

“
These men have been doing this a
long time now. It’s tradition in this part of town. I doubt the
police would even come. Would you say that is odd?” inquired
Jones.

“
Odd? It’s freakin’
unbelievable!”

“
And, my friend, can you describe
these men?”

I looked around the bar. “Yeah, they’re all
young men, maybe late twenties, early thirties.”

“
Good, good. And what would you say
about the women?”

I didn’t see any. I thought,
There are no freakin’ women here. What kind of
crappy dump is this?

Jones could see my bewildered face as I panned
across the bar. “No, no, look over here,” His finger directed me to
a booth next to the front door.

Kaboom! There sat a luscious,
long-haired blond, early thirties, with shining gray eyes.
“My God!” I was startled. “Where did she come
from?” My eyes locked with hers, and I felt the strangest warmth of
connection with her. The air between us felt balmy, fluid, and
expectant. I had seen attractive women before, but this one made me
feel something electric and special.

Then, as the tension between us
built, her eyes suddenly flashed right at me, blue, then green,
like the rotating light of a lighthouse. I had never seen anything
like it. Then her eyes flashed at me again. My jaw dropped a bit
and I remained speechless for a long, thrilling moment.
Holy beaver balls!
I
thought to myself.
Did that really just
happen, or was that another trick my imagination was playing on me,
like the time I thought I actually paid my rent on time?

She gave me a quick smile of
acknowledgement, as if saying,
Hello, this
way to heaven
. Instinctively, I turned
toward her and stood up halfway, all the while feeling something
growing and determinedly trying to escape from my pants. I looked
over at Dr. Jones, who had also lost his cool—he too was
half-standing and looking at her.

“
Did you see what her eyes just did?
Did you?” I asked Jones full of amazement.

Finally Jones responded, “Oh yes, her hazel
eyes are lovely.”

Hazel? Hazel, my ass. They’re gray
and they flash like mofos
, I thought to
myself, before realizing how crazy that sounded. Sure, she was a
lovely woman, and sure, she had five empty Miner’s Lite beer
bottles on her table. Sure, those eyes melted me as she took a
long, sensuous sip of beer—sure, she had an amazing effect going on
in my shorts, and sure, her smile was like an angel’s. But those
factors alone could not explain the dazzling effect she had on me.
There was something else about her that drew me in like a
discounted beer display.

Jones, ever the man of science, regained his
composure, began to sit down, and with his hand on my shoulder,
gestured for me to sit as well. “Now, now, let’s not forget that we
are here to promote a great discovery.” He turned his head to the
side and said, “Excuse me a moment.” He mumbled “Think of sports…
Hillary Clinton naked,” to himself, He turned back to me, but he
might as well have been on the moon. I couldn’t take my eyes off of
her.

“
My friend! My friend!” he said
loudly, shaking my arm. “You must be careful. A woman like that
could fry you like an insect! Believe me, I know.”

I gave him a smirk of disbelief,
then began to wonder,
Do they really fry
insects in India? Flour, a little salt…Oh, yeah, focus. You’re a
journalist, type something on the laptop.
Finally there was enough blood in my brain to rejoin him at
the table. “Okay, what’s the point, you give dating advice now
too?” I asked while typing
I’m fucked…I’m
fucked…
over and over on my
laptop.

“
Do you see that woman? What is
wrong with this picture?” Jones asked.

“
Not a thing, Doc, not one stinking
thing.”

“
Wrong! Look again. Do you not find
this woman attractive?”

“
Ohhh yeah.”

“
I do as well, but there she sits
alone. A room full of drunken young men and a desirable female with
five empty lite beer bottles on her table, but there she sits
alone. How can this be?”

“
I can fix that,” I said.

“
No, no, this is a scientific
experiment, and you cannot alter the controlled conditions we have
here. Sit there, my friend, and I will tell you what it is that
you’re really seeing, the forces that are at work in this
place.”

Jones pulled a folded map out of his leather
briefcase and unfolded it on our table. “Do you see all of these
numbered locations on this map, a map of Scranton,
Pennsylvania?”

I nodded.

“
The small numbers here,” Jones
added, pointing to various locations on the map, “are radiation
readings for each of these sampling locations I have taken. This is
the radiation level of the soil sample on the epsilon ray scale…I
see you are puzzled, my friend.”

Not really. The whole time he spoke, I was
checking out the blond and she was flirting back at me like we were
getting it on from twenty feet apart. But I did get something about
radiation, samples, and epsilon rays, whatever the heck those were.
Focus was a distant memory. Had Jones said something? Whatever. Now
I wish I had really been listening that night—but the view, oh the
view of her shining gray eyes, lips that shimmered in the light of
a Miner’s Lite beer sign, a glow of anticipation surrounding
her.

“
Epsilon rays are a rarely monitored
type of radiation whose properties and frequencies are largely
unknown. They are nearly unmeasurable in nature, so contamination
of this magnitude can only be man-made. Epsilon is particle
radiation, so I suspect they learned how to make some sort of beam.
Do you see that the radiation levels are highest in the center and
slowly lower as you leave the city? Just where do you think the
highest recorded level is, here at the center of the circle?” He
dropped his little finger dramatically on the center of the map.
“Here, the highest levels are right here…and here is O’Malley’s
bar, where we sit at this very moment!”

It was certain that something
strange was going on. How or why it was happening, I still couldn’t
say, but man, I was sure it was happening. As I looked around at
the guy on the floor in front of the men’s room—who had literally
knocked himself out by opening the bathroom door repeatedly into
his own face—and another round of the Antler Game and idiotic
laughing arose from the back room, I began to think that this funny
little man had truly uncovered something. When two pairs of young
men began a “Chair-idiot” race (a Scranton original, with one man
on a wheeled bar stool and another pushing him around the room)
that ended in a tragic crash of both the bar stools and a tableful
of men, I was certain. Unfortunately for both of us, this type of
story required a real journalist, not a little-published freelancer
whose biggest breakthrough article had been on the health benefits
of drinking beer (a subject near and dear to my heart). But,
glancing over at the blond as she downed a light beer in one tilt
of the bottle and then licked the bottle’s rim, I was in love,
L-U-V, and convinced myself I could fake the journalism
part.
I’m fucked, I’m fucked,
the laptop glowed.

“
What exactly do you think is
happening here?” I asked, trying to seem professional while also
halfheartedly beginning to take notes between quick glances over at
the lovely blond..

“
Don’t you see? Isn’t it obvious, my
friend?” asked Jones, frustrated that my intellect could not keep
up with his.

I began to smile and nod, then stopped and
said, “Sort of,” stroking my goatee.

“
Sort of? Sort of?” He began digging
through his case and pulled out page after page of calculations and
graphs. “You can see from these figures that I have calculated the
half-life of the epsilon radiation and thereby pinpointed the exact
year this environmental tragedy took place. It began,” he said
running his finger over a page, “in 1969 and continued through
1981, peaking in 1976. Do you see now?”

All I could do was rumple my face, embarrassed,
and try to listen while I ran my fingers through my long, dark,
disheveled crop of hair, as if trying to stroke my brain to life. I
began to wonder if Dr. Jones hadn’t been sniffing some of this
epsilon radiation himself. Was it time to play my
stupid/intimidated card already?

“
During that time, the area outlined
on my map was exposed to massive amounts of epsilon radiation. This
caused the soils to be contaminated for years. Obviously, all young
men born in that time frame show reduced functionality disorder, or
RFD.”

“
RFD?”

“
Yes, as you can see, they are
morons!” He gestured to the men around us. A young man had fallen
over the bar, and now just his legs were showing, dangling over the
bar. We watched as the barkeep tried to pull him up. “Their
judgment and ability to react to their environment is dramatically
impaired. How else can you explain young men in the prime of their
lives, incapable of even noticing a woman like that, let alone
approaching her?”

I glanced over at her as she texted on her
phone and thought that approaching her sounded like a good idea, in
fact the only idea I had in my head. But instead the men around me
played around like juveniles. “So, the radiation made all the men
born in this town develop RFD?”

“
Yes, yes. But there is more, much
more. The epsilon radiation has turned some of the women here into
superwomen. It has had the opposite effect, based on the chemical
makeup of estrogen. Their powers begin to emerge as they reach
their sexual hormonal peak in their thirties, and their estrogen
levels power them like nuclear reactors. So you end up with a woman
like that one over there, at the other end of the scale, with
heightened senses and abilities.”

I nodded, but my thoughts were on a different
track. “So you’re saying that she’s totally
unsatisfied?”

“
Yes, yes, that may very well be
true. How can she be, by such men as these?” said Jones, gesturing
around the room. One man stuck between two bar stools moaned for
help as another round of shots went off, and the old barkeep ducked
behind the bar, shaking his head.

Then the years of being a cynic crept up on me.
“Superwomen? Come on, really?”

“
Proof is it you want? Well, try
these shoes on for size, Mr. Doubting Thomas,” Jones said, digging
for more papers and pulling out a picture. “Take a look at that
Mister!” he said excitedly, pointing at the picture.

“
What’s this?” I asked, Jones’ build
up making me expected more than a photo of the 1972 Russian women’s
Olympic team.