A Tale of Two Rachels.
I have two friends named Rachel. Both of them have red hair, are not tall, have fair skin and are not having a good time right now getting their masters degrees. But beyond that they're both very different people and I love them in very different ways.

One Rachel is an artist, a writer/director/performer, a Neo-Futurist alumni who left the company to study in England. The other Rachel is a social worker, an extremely prolific volunteer, and president of the education fund on the board of directors at the Chicago chapter of NOW.

England-Rachel and I connect on many levels, but I especially enjoy our humor-connection. We can even alienate others a bit when we're together, laughing and riffing on the same joke for minutes on end. England-Rachel and I also have something in common. We both have a tendency to keep our lives small, even a bit insular. By that I mean we're both very get-up-go-to-work-come-home people. We both complain about not getting out enough to experience the world. She tells me that she's not enjoying England enough and that bothers her. I can totally identify with that. We're both introverts...introverts who perform on stage. And some people don't get that. Others do.

Chicago-Rachel has complained to me in the past that she gets out too much, that she wants her life to be smaller, simpler. She has told me that she has too many friends, too many appointments. I don't identify with this, but I am still drawn to it. I think one of the things that I love about Chicago-Rachel is how different she is from me. We certainly connect, and connect well, but Chicago-Rachel and I, on some level, probably want to be more like each other. Or maybe that was the initial reason we became friends. These days she says she doesnt' get out enough because she's constantly studying, though I still imagine she's a veritable Travel Channel compared to me. And last night while we talked, I was overcome with how much I've missed hanging out with her, how I need to see her more often.

I feel that way about both Rachels. I don't see them or write to them often enough and that bothers me. I feel that way about excercise. I don't do it often enough and that bothers me. I feel that way about eating right. I don't and that bothers me. I feel that way about talking to my family. I don't call them enough and that bothers me. But I go on focussing on the stuff that, in the moment, seems to matter most and the physical world around me is a nuisance. Sometimes I even resent having to eat.

So there's England-Rachel, a brilliant writer who likes to stay in and watch hours of reality TV shows while painstakingly hand-designing t-shirts for our entire company to wear for a surprise, and there's Chicago-Rachel who travels to Thailand to educate and enlighten non-english-speaking 13-year old former prostitutes and sex-slaves. One wants her life to be richer, the other--at least before she went to grad school--longed for simplicity. And then there's me. I want to see both of them more often. I want to giggle all the time like I do with England-Rachel, while I'm out saving the world and keeping appointments with Chicago-Rachel.

And what is stopping me? What stops Rachel, or even Rachel? Well, before I ask questions that are so connected to the human condition that you begin to wonder why I'm bothering to be so obvious, I will at least say this: it was good to see Rachel last night. And it was good to get a birthday card from Rachel the other day. And I look forward to the next time I see Rachel. And I hope Rachel is happy, or as happy as she can be. And even though I don't say things like this to my friends, and even though I want to, intend to, but somehow just don't, I will say it now:

Rachel, I love you.

More from my work in progress, The Big Book of Everything. The book of MONEY & CAREER, Chapter 1, versus 1-4.

1:1 Long after the universe had been created and well before Bill Buckner blew the world series for the Boston Red Sox in 1986, humankind multiplied.

1:2 First there was work and little time for anything else. Then there came tools that helped with work, so humankind used that extra time to work more.

1:3 And then there came machines, and a few incredibly violent wars. Those machines took over most of the work we had to do (like laundry and killing people). So we filled that time with more work, going about inventing more machines to do work that we didn’t know we needed to do.

1:4 And then we watched a lot of television. Such is the way.

Just before the El arrived at one of the stops this morning, the driver said over the intercom "People, uh, I have to stop at the Chicago station for just about a minute. I have to, uh, leave the train and take care of something. But it'll only take a minute." I was looking out the window at the time. I smiled and chuckled a little but as I did I felt a wave of similar reactions go through the whole car.

Everyone on the train appreciated this moment and simultaneously understood this man's plight. We've all had to pee, of course. I then took a careful look around and saw a faint, commuter-smile ebbing from every face. An entire, packed train of workers-en-route was suddenly very patient.

Had this man stopped and said nothing, the entire train would have figeted and checked their watches. Some dope would have flipped open something cellular and seemingly shouted at the top of his lungs about how he was going to be late.

Yesterday I was at Ada's Deli with my fiance. She just got back from the protest in Washington. (Folks involved in the protest estimated that over a million people were there, making it the biggest protest in one location in human history. I hope their estimates are accurate.)

Anyway, she got up to use the rest room while a man at a nearbye table was on a cell phone. He was the worst kind of cell phone user--the guy who's not terribly familiar with them, using his freind's phone. So the man was essentially shouting. Here's what I learned about him:

1. He is Jewish--a Rabbi in fact.
2. He owns a company in the southwest that kills livestock (I assume not pigs), and also makes leather and food products.
3. The company is number 7 of the "fortune 1000 companies", whatever that means.
4. He earned 919 million last year. (yes, he broadcast this to the entire restaurant.)
5. He was talking to his friend's mother.
6. His freind's name is Lawrence.
7. Lawrence represents another business or charity and was there to ask this wealthy man for money.
8. Our rabbinical friend lost his mother on December 14th of the year 2000. She was 90.

Genevra returned from the ladies room exactly as the man handed the phone back to Lawrence. It felt like this man's conversation had been a half-time side show, like hold music on my lunch with G.

Last night I was rehearsing 43 Plays For 43 Presidents again. We're remoutning it on the southside at the Beverly Center for the Arts on May 8th. I was in a silly mood, and at one point when Genevra was playing the recently assassinated President Garfield and lying flat on her face, I leapt onto her back and kissed her face and made funny noises. (Yes, today I am a 30 year-old man. Happy birthday to me.)

She asked me to get off her as she said the others were "uncomfortable". Yeah, they probably were. It hit me that I had basically begun to hump my fiance by all appearances.

But I wanted to jump on her. And I wasn't hurting anyone. And who hasn't at some point in their lives wanted to jump onto the back of an alluring human being--even if it's to be silly and make funny noises?

If I'm not hurting anyone, can't I say or do whatever I want? Why did the Rabbi on the phone irritate me so much? And why was it such a bad thing that he shouted his 2003 earnings to the entire Loop? And why was it funny when the driver on the El today basically annouced to us that he had to take a wiz?

We loved the man on the El today. We hate the man on the cell phone who's sharing his salary with the diner. And we're uneasy over the man who leaps onto his fiance in the middle of a reahearsal. Some violations of the status quo seem pleasing, some will always bother people--like they are rules broken from an omnipresent book that no one wrote. It's been there since middle school when suddenly there were things you didn't do or say, because if you did them or said them you were a geek. Am I a geek? Is the Rabbi a geek? Is the El driver one of the cool kids? Have we never left public school?

I swear, we think we've grown up but we haven't. In no time we'll be telling our kids that they shouldn't skip and throw their arms around because people will think they're crazy. We'll tell them not to pinch their wee-wee's and stomp and say they "gotta pee." We'll insist that they stifle their loud laughter, hint that they're too old to play with dolls, and beg them not to run screaming through the yard. And then we will turn around and laugh at how unenlightened their adolescent rulebooks are. We will say "oh, what, is that not cool now?" and chuckle to ourselves because we're adults and we have it all figured out.

Look around. I love this place but it is largely joyless. And that's why your adolecent children think we're all a bunch of fakes. Please dance today. Do something. And I promise to jump on my fiance as often as I possibly can. And when the kids in school make a face, I'll moon them and scream like coyote. And hey, Mr. 919 milliion, GOOD FOR YOU! And while we're at it, let's all stop to pee when we have to pee, and we can be charming about it, too. We can, dare I suggest, hold our wee-wees and stomp. Why the fuck not? Huh? Why?

I hear the Queer Eye guys in my head whenever I shave. Does this happen to any of you men? They're on an imaginary closed-circuit monitor watching everything I do in my bathroom. "Wrong!" they shout when I begin to shave my neck in two directions, and I feel frustrated because I wish they knew that my hair grows down by my chin and up by my adam's apple, so I need to shave that way.

But I shave slowly, and I imagine them praising me for that. "He's a good shaver," they say. And I feel proud.

I am not hit on by gay men and this bothers me; It always has. Women are more low-key so I don't expect them to come on so openly, and my luck with them has been ridiculous anyway so I have no complaints. But men are men no matter who they want to sleep with; and when you think about it, if you're a hetero man in this era, the best barometer of your sexiness should be the open gawk, passing glance or inappropriate men's room proposition from that guy with the abs who smells nice.

But I'm kidding myself, really. My luck with women has always been Woody Allen-esque. I'm a charming, small self-deprecator with some talents. Women go for talent. Men go for looks. And men have never found me attractive--even the heterosexual ones. I've witnessed a lot of hetero men openly and easily trust their girlfriends with me, like I was voted Least Likely to Steal Your Girlfriend. And at this point, I'm engaged and happy and my dating morals are not Woody Allen-esque anymore, so you can trust me. It's true.

But a man needs to feel pretty and boyfriend-threatening. It wouldn't be such a bad thing if a straight woman gawked at me while I passed her by, but I'd probably think she was a little doped. A gay man gawking, though: that's credibility.

In the mean time, I can try to dress well and shave carefully, offer my guests drinks and learn how to make creme brule. And I can pray that the five little gay men in my head will praise me too, or at least stop yelling "NO!" when I take off my underwear in the bathroom.

I heard about a study once that found women are sexually attracted to men who clean. At the very least, when I'm at home, I can hope for a pinch in the ass while I vacuum. Until next time...