Emerz Biopic

"Man on Wire" says Emerz, drawing question marks on his chin. "Unauthorized biopic?"

"Why not?" I say. Like, who hasn't wished that they could still feel that monstrous breeze?

Mayer Seating Tests Emerz' Team Aniston Status

"This is important," says Emerz. "I mean, the second row? In front of God and everybody?" He has Toni dialing her godfather's contacts. Full-steam ahead on this one.

"Since when does John Mayer get Jack Nicholson's Oscar seats?"

Spectator Sports, Spring Break '09

Emerz followed my advice and now he's hooked. Sometimes I forget about his addictive personality and introduce him to what would be a benign or even positive influence for anyone else and he turns it into an excuse to trip the blinds and hit the message boards and splash photos of Aimee Teegarden all over his desktop screen saver. I mean, remember when we had a Bangbros password?

But this is a good time to get into Friday Night Lights. Smash is gone, safe at school, Saracen is demoted to part-time QB and full-time BF, Riggins is experimenting with the power of his position and home-ownership. The economic climate of Dillon, Texas allows the show to delve into and comment on things as they are right now. Emerz prefers The Real Housewives of NYC. After all, he expects to be one someday. But for now he's slumming it and enjoying it, the pick-up trucks and Applebees and soft-serve smiles.

Emerz has time for this because Toni is busy planning our Spring Break. Spring Break '09, baby. Last year I spent Spring Break speed-dialing drug dealers and slipping in and out of cabs, looking for the last laugh of the night. This year we are going to Atlantis. I tried to invite Kenzi, but she's going to a Club Med somewhere with her grandmother. We'll be swimming with dolphins, she'll be swimming with some guy named Dolph.

After Saracen and Julie roll to the ground by the lake and make things official, the whole show took on a glow, that secret glow that follows any non-regrettable devirginizing. The whole world has opened up to the two of them, and no one's the wiser. Making furtive eye contact in the dusty church, that glow seemed to spread to Emerz' den as well. After all the windows are nothing now but thin cracks of afternoon light. We've got tears in our eyes. My Summer Glow moisturizer got in mine; I don't know what Emerz' excuse is.

Driving Mrs. Emerz

Toni gave Emerz a split-heart pendant for Valentine's Day, 14 karats. Awkward, I gave him nearly the same thing. A chain of broken-heart-shaped charms around Emerz' neck, one soon to green after a shower or two. "Semi-charmed kind of life," says Emerz.

Emerz wants me to teach him to drive. He's got a new S4; a triumphant, sneaky purple, with a tight gearbox that Emerz can't make heads or tails of without wince-inducing grinding noises and knee-bruising stop shorts after stalling out. We take to the streets. I'm driving, he's riding shotgun, fiddling with the balance and fade. I take the corners hard, squealing, fishtails and exhaust and skid marks marring the quiet of the vacant summer neighborhoods dotting the Connecticut coast. "You see that?" I say, pushing and pushing, feeling the G-force settle in my stomach. Shuttered clapboard houses blur out the tinted windows. "You see that? That's how you do it." Emerz grips his seatbelt, rethinking the purchase. Maybe next he'll get the Mini-Cooper. He hears they are surprisingly roomy and spry.

Later, we watch Days of Thunder in the den, dazzled by the careening curls of Kidman, tight and sprawling and golden in the dusty light of the hospital, in the clinical light of the racetrack.

"That's a woman in love," says Emerz, after she issues another ultimatum to Cruise; young, dumb and full of...himself.

"You're the expert," I say.

Toni's in Southampton with her godfather, admiring the cold winter surf, discussing a possible summer position at Christie's, overhearing two twenty-something male assistants canoodling on a back porch. Emerz and I prefer the shapely and shiftless Long Island Sound to the endless expanse of the Atlantic. Call us pragmatists--we like to see what comes next, what's speeding around the corner. We like to know we're not alone. We like to be able to water-ski most anywhere, shredding over ferry wakes, twisting between lobster buoys, skipping over schools of blue fish. We forgive the oily sand, the murky beaches, the possible Plum Island fall-out, the yahoos on jet skis, the occasional power plant. The preemptive penicillin makes my skin sensitive to sunlight. Good thing the sky is dust gray, empty and dull through the moon roof.

Emerz climbs into the driver's seat, pops the clutch and we stutter back towards home. We watch The Door in the Floor, Something's Gotta Give and Cruel Intentions, admiring the colors; the green of the high hedges and rolling lawns, the blue of the ocean and sky, the crisp white of Bridges' and Keaton's and Philippe's untucked Oxfords, but telling ourselves we've made the right decision. To celebrate I drive us to Dairy Queen. It's closed, which we suddenly realize we knew it would be.

A Late Lunch at Emerz'

We make Lean Cuisine Spa Classics. Kenzi eats Toni's after Toni complains about the texture of the pumpkin ravioli. We've been watching a gay man's Youtube channel of cats sneezing for most of the afternoon. Kenzi's car won't start. This is after the GFE, upstairs. Thank God Emerz' parents are in China; Kenzi was loud, an over-the-top attempt to mask her contempt. I've never liked that. Emerz and Toni seemed annoyed when we came down the stairs, but Kenzi and Toni have been at it all day, like a rabbit and a snapping turtle caged up together, sharing the same water bottle and pellet tray; Toni's red-eyed stares and Kenzi's rough neck and darting tongue.

The GFE, well, short on the cuddling, if I was to write a review. You pay for the cuddling more than anything else. One hundred dollars worth of cuddling, with an amateur, I would say buys you four to six minutes. Kenzi shrugged out from under my arm after maybe two-and-a-half, and then its off to the bathroom: Scalding hot shower, knees to the chest, rocking back and forth. What else is new. I'm doing the same thing, only in the master bath, with the Jacuzzi jets and Epsom salts. Kenzi doesn't know what she's missing, for once.

It's only after the tow truck arrives and we wave good-bye from Emerz' drive-way that my blood pricks a bit. Like, what did I expect? It happens all of a sudden even though Toni says finally. She's exhausted, brushing the buttery pages of my Men's Vogue with a credit card, looking to salvage the rest of the night. Emerz locks the door.

"Leave it open," I say. "Just in case she needs to come back." Emerz tosses me a bottle of preemptive penicillin and double-bolts it.

Emerz Meets My Girlfriend

I'm looking for my own Toni, on the Internet, if that's okay with you, Emerz. "You're not the only one that can take down the nerd's hair and unleash the hipster," I said last time we spoke, a very one-sided conversation with a seemingly distracted Emerz and a strange squelching sound coming from somewhere.

I find a girl on craigslist who looks to fit the bill. She does the girlfriend experience, she says in her email to me. Just needs a hundred dollar donation. She's trying to put herself through art school. Not all of us just get whatever we want, I tell Emerz when he raises his eyebrow upon hearing of this stipulation. Not all of us drive candy-glossed European whips. Not all of us buy bling ironically. Not all of us can handle a full-time girlfriend's tics and habits, like the way Toni sometimes scratches her arm until it bleeds, or the way Toni never wears pants, or the way she is always snapping pictures of herself on her phone and then uploading them all over the place, or the sheer volume of ADD meds she inhales through her nose every time she goes to the bathroom, getting my Men's Vogue all orange and dusty, or the way she always asks the guy at Hollywood Video rambling questions about anime, or the way she made us watch those home movies of her and her friends riding around the Hamptons in a Jeep.

Some of us recognize necessary needs, and identify solutions, such as this girl from the Internet, Kenzie, with her Honda hooptie parked in Emerz' driveway, next to the candy-glossed Europeans, and the crisp scent of Menthol that follows her into Emerz' den, or the twenty pounds she seems to have gained since leaving the Internet and entering our lives.

Emerz tries to pulls me aside after everyone is settled and watching Friday Night Lights on DVR. "Wait a minute," I say, waiting for the spine-melting theme song to begin, waiting for Riggins in the rain, outside the bus, proving his worth. Emerz could stand to watch a little more Friday Night Lights, humble human drama that it is. Not all of us can meet our girlfriends in a pottery class our fifth year of college.

Emerz' Girlfriend

Her name is Antonia. Emerz calls her Toni. She's Julian Schnabel's goddaughter. Her father opens restaurants and his father-in-law closes them. Her father sails boats, her mother sinks them. They all have JDs but no one practices. She dropped out of Dwight because her science teacher was stalking her. She either designs jewelry or models it. She loves to take pictures of food, but rarely eats it. She has huge eyes that she must paint with a roller. She's not wearing pants, just tights and one of Emerz' striped Oxfords draped over her tiny frame. Emerz is wearing a Rehab Is For Quitters shirt, unironically.

Emerz and I leave Toni to her phone and the muted TV and go into the kitchen for Perrier and goat cheese. Emerz' house feels incredibly cold, and there's an oppressive citrus smell.

"Any questions?" says Emerz.

"Let me guess," I say. "She's a cutter?"

"No," says Emerz.

"Stapled stomach?"

"Nope."

"Recent Proactiv purchase?"

"No."

"Her brother just drowned? Recently sober? Recently off-the-wagon? Body dysmorphia? Sex addiction? Mormon? Pills? You write her papers? She borrows your car?"

"Well, all of the above, obviously," says Emerz, like, love ain't free.

Emerz' 25 Things

1.) I spell it "moslem." 2.) I have unlimited text messaging and anytime minutes 3.) I've never been to a museum 4.) One time I saw a guy drown and this other guy could've helped him but didn't, and then I invited the non-dead guy to a party at my house and put on "In The Air Tonight" really loud. And we all danced all night. 5.) There's a video of me online trying to use chop sticks 6.) I've danced with the devil in the pale moonlight 7.) I voted for a genuine war hero with a proven track record 8.) My Dad owns, among other things/people, Harrison Ford (the car dealership, not the actor) 9.) I've recently been introduced to overstock.com 10.) Plan B is expensive 11.) My nutritionist has huge tits 12.) I treat objects like women 13.) My "o" face varies between a menacing scowl and a smug smirk 14.) I own many guitars that I do not know how to play 15.) Iused to be into stuff pretty bad stuff. Like, throwing Dobermans at old ladies, and coldcocking redheaded dudes just for the fuck of it 16.) Once I thought I had mono for a whole year, but it turned out that I was just really bored 17.) I own a home in a non-extraditing country (try to guess which one!) 18.) I'm allergic to socks 19.) I've adopted a Zen approach to spin class 20.) John Mayer's old stuff is pretty good 21.) Phone sex is better when you're both in the same room 22.) Girth should always be more important 23.) I once drank two Red Bulls and then passed out 24.) I'll listen to anything except country 25.) Leaving Las Vegas was based on me. The Elizabeth Shue part, anyway

Emerz Makes a Connection

Every time Emerz answers his phone nowadays I hear heels clicking on cobblestones. I hear the tinkle of dangling earrings. His voice sounds different; muted, subdued. Emerz has a fucking girlfriend. I can see him now, walking to Geology in his wax jacket, jingling the coins in his pocket, meeting up for drinks, eating outside, brunching constantly, jetting out for the weekend to fucking Jupiter Island or wherever she's from.

Well well. Congratulations. I've got a contingency plan for this scenario. Hatched it after the Great Betrayal of '02. Kept it in a folder marked confidential in my floor safe, under my collection of literary erotica. Congratulating myself on thinking ahead, I whip out the old bunny stew recipe.

Emerz Crosses Quad, Enters Imaginary Elevator

"Did you watch Gossip Girl?" I say, searching for conversation.

"No time," says Emerz. "Reading Swann's Way, Davis translation. Paper on temporal disparity due Wednesday."

"Well, I'll fill you in," I say. "Picture the polished windows of a downtown high rise, a man in a three-button--"

"Let me call you right back," says Emerz. "I'm getting into an elevator."

First there is just the dead phone in my hand. And then a creeping dread. A sudden blast of lonesomeness surrounds me like a crop circle. No one will believe where it came from.