The Dream of a Girl Named Tucker

I am my present self but unmarried, unemployed and without a shred of ambition or hope of attaining any. I am living with my parents at their new house in sunny Los Angeles. The real estate of Greater Los Angeles has gone the way of Manhattan. My parents now live in what used to be Inglewood in a very narrow, small, futuristic house. Almost like a section of a Tokyo pod hotel. Some of my other relatives might also live there. It is morning and I am arriving home after having stayed out all night. There is a brand new high school nearby, a modern building with facilities equally cramped as my parents' house. Somehow I have met one of the high school students, a teenage girl named Tucker. She is not a reference to Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney nor does she resemble her. If she resembles anyone from Sleater-Kinney it's Carrie Brownstein, but Tucker doesn't look much like her either. Skinny and petite, lanky but short, wearing a sweatshirt and trousers. She has short, mouse-brown hair, and no make-up. An androgynous look on a willful, independent girl. In fact she's a loner, a misfit.Tucker and I have spent the entire night together on a park bench at the high school. Despite our having known each other only a day or so, we have developed a tenuous emotional fixation with each other. We have plighted our troth, we will throw in our lots together come what may. It’s a crazy idea, but no couple just starting out in life can predict what the future holds for them. Come what may we will face it together without a thought about what outsiders might think. We have made a clear appointment for me to meet or contact her later that morning in order to reaffirm our devotion and to begin to plan our crucial next step.

I enter my parents’ house and tell my mom all about the plans that Tucker and I have made to spend out lives together. I am disappointed to find that Mom is appalled at the idea. I become frustrated with her inability to be happy for me. I don’t understand why she can’t trust my judgment. She doesn’t want me to be happy. Mom suggests that my dad will be equally displeased with my scheme when he hears about it — she’s going to tell him when he comes home from work (!). I spend the rest of the day pouting and sulking around the cramped house. The hour in which I am to contact Tucker comes and goes while I do nothing. Tucker will realize that I have had second thoughts. It will be clear to her that I lack the commitment to her that I had professed to have the previous night.

Later in the afternoon I return to the high school and find Tucker in the crowded schoolyard. She is aloof, detached. She won’t look at me or acknowledge my presence. The misfit loner has recognized that she is alone again. I try to explain to her that circumstances have become more complicated than I imagined. Tucker won’t listen, she has moved on emotionally. For the rest of the day I follow her around the high school, imploring her to talk things over, but she ignores me. At the end of the school day Tucker leaves the school with the rest of the students. I remain alone at the high school. I wander the empty hallways, occasionally perch on hand railings, and while away another night at the high school, but this time I am alone.