Set-Up: A personal essay

Zachary Urbina



Lately, I'm spending far too much time on the internet. YouTube. iTunes.  MySpace. When a 26 year-old man can spot a fake female MySpace profile in a matter of seconds, he is not getting much action in the real world. The thing to look for when you get a friend request from a seemingly too-good-to-be-true brunette or a scantily clad blond is the personal detail entry "Children." Each of these phony, porn site-promoting profiles read "I don’t want kids" under Children, if the profile is bogus, as though a promiscuous 19 year-old with her tubes tied is every man's ultimate sexual fantasy. Not that I have anything against porn, mind you. Just not on my MySpace. It was under these circumstances that Bryony, my next-door neighbor, asked me if I was interested in being set up with a female friend of hers.

My neighbors are great. Bryony and her slightly younger husband Scott work as professional musicians in various capacities. The possibility of being set up with a friend of theirs, appealed to me for a number of reasons, most notably, the fact that I have been humbly rehearsing a one-man sex act for several months running. (No word on a performance yet.) Usually, I would not be interested in such a set-up, as blind dates are generally social code for some other, oblique agenda.

When a female sets up another female with a guy, she is usually acting out of pity. Her own relationship is fine, so why not tinker a bit with a less functional version. When a female tries to set up a guy with another girl, this usually means that she is attracted to him, but otherwise spoken for. The chance of her having sex with the guy is not possible, but a little sex by proxy is the next best thing. Wise to this, yet blinded by my own desire, I begin a steady routine of exercise, to fully prepare myself for this upcoming encounter. That's when I noticed something strange.

The first evidence appeared last week, in the form of the gnawed corner of a Cold Case shooting script, neglected reading that had been floating around the back seat of my car for a number of weeks. At the time, I attributed it to a moth. Perhaps the little insect laid eggs and the hatchlings needed nourishment. Ok, no problem. I threw the script into the garbage and scraped together the small torn bits of paper, tossing them out as well. Then, while searching through my glove compartment I found a circular hole and the same telltale torn bits, arranged like a nest among seven or eight paper napkins.  That's when I saw it, a distinct black hair. In that moment, I realized that somehow, a rat had gotten into my car. It's the kind of event that prompts a person like me to call their entire life into question.

Upon closer inspection of my car, I discovered three elliptical turds perched on the dashboard. I then found myself sniffing the air inside the car, to see if I could detect the subtle hint of rat hide, whatever it might smell like. I hesitated throwing out the remaining un-gnawed napkins. First, because I firmly believe that of all the lessons my father bestowed upon me as a child, the hording of paper napkins from fast food establishments, then stashing them in your car for later use, was something worth preserving, even passing along to my own child, some day. Second, I thought the encroaching rodent, now without paper napkins to nest in, might move on to the roadmaps and owner’s manual, which also share the space in the glove box.

After completing my once weekly, food-shopping run to Trader Joe's, I hesitated loading my groceries into the back seat, like I usually do, and eventually placed them in the trunk. Not that the rat would immediately attack my brown paper bag of fresh-ground coffee and organic bananas, but he could. I don't want to give the little vermin any reason to stay, I thought, and he probably can't get into the trunk (in my mind, this rat, all rats in fact, were male, even thought that’s not biologically possible).

I considered the car itself. I'd purchased it new, off the showroom floor, in fact. It remains in relatively good working order, aside from a bit of cosmetic damage on the front left quarter panel, the result of an unmentionable legal entanglement from the year previous. Perhaps the rat found some twisted metal to squeeze between, and upon finding ideal conditions to live, including an ample supply of paper napkins, decided to sire a family of baby rats and live among the friendly confines of my Honda. After returning home from Trader Joe's I went over every inch of the car. I looked under the floor mats. I raised the hood and peered into the mechanical, labyrinthine underpinnings that I know little or nothing about. I checked beneath the seats and where the skinny, plastic spare tire hides.

Maybe I should sell my car. Who in hell would buy it? I can see the ad now: FOR SALE. Black 2003 Honda. 80K miles. Good condition. Possible rat. Being a lifelong Los Angeleno, I depend entirely upon my car to survive. What did the rat in my car suggest about me as a person? Is mine the kind of lifestyle that invites the attendance of rats? I listen to The Beatles and David Bowie quite often. Do rats like classic rock? I am not the kind of driver whose personal possessions pile up, littered throughout the interior of my car. The few items I keep inside the car are purely utilitarian. A row of loose change in the center console. Sunglasses clipped neatly to the visor. In the trunk, an umbrella, a beach mat, and a racquetball racket, for various unforeseen eventualities. Are these the spoils of a rat's ideal habitat?

Or was it something deeper? Something elemental about my own personal hygiene? You always see rats on pirate ships, and pirates seem prone to scurvy. Did this imply that I too, somehow had scurvy? I rarely eat fast food, and when I do, try never to eat inside my car. I don't ferry beverages about, spilling them carelessly around every turn. Does my body emit an odor that beguiles rodents, like some form of olfactory Pied Piper? If so, was this the reason I had not been in a serious relationship for almost a year? Am I slowly becoming one of those people that other shoppers roll their eyes about in line at the supermarket? Like the old ladies who buy countless cans of cat food, despite little Fluffy's demise two years prior. Or one of those attention-starved elderly gentlemen who chat endlessly with the 40-something female cashiers. Am I a future social leper of America?

A well-known hand washer after shaking hands or visiting public places, I soon began washing my hands immediately after exiting my car, as if the emergency brake handle might be soiled with dried rat afterbirth. I envisioned myself driving down the 101 Freeway at 70 miles per hour, only to be distracted by an unexpected appearance by not one, but a whole family of rats parading across the dashboard, then promptly wrecking my car on the nearby guardrail in a dramatic fireball. Clearly, my imagination was taking hold of me.

I expected myself to appear on one of those "lighter side of the news" stories that run at the end of the local TV newscast. You know, those throw-away pieces that bear no real need to be told, other than to fill the last 45 seconds of air time on an otherwise slow news day. And on the lighter side of news, area man contracts bubonic plague, some snarky hair-pieced anchorperson would report, thwarting my chances of ever bedding another female in the greater Los Angeles area, between now and infinity. A lowly area man, ripe for dubious news-making? Was that me?

I fret at the possibility of baiting a rattrap with peanut butter and leaving it in my car overnight. How else could I make the bugger leave? Then it hit me, like a sackful of oranges. The car I drive, my hygiene, my family, my idiosyncratic behavior, my reading material. The places I shop. The food I eat. The music I listen to. My vaguely checkered past. Rat or no rat, this whole episode is being brought on by the possibility of there being someone else in my life that might have input about my existence.

When you stay single for a while, you forget the implicit code of a relationship; that sharing physical love and life experiences with a significant other also allows them access to the cogs of your personal inner-workings. In a word, vulnerability. Not that this person would find fault in some aspect of my personal life, but the possibility exists that they could. I ponder this, and call off my silly rat hunt. Even if the rat really is in there, you can't let fear paralyze your chances for living life and, if you're lucky, finding love.

This morning, while trudging down my driveway to take out the garbage, I spotted Bryony, my neighbor, removing groceries from her car, and inquired about the upcoming blind date. She gave me this odd look and then said, "Oh, I'd forgotten all about that." I laughed wildly, closing the lid of the trashcan. "What's so funny?" she asked, puzzled by my outburst. "Oh nothing," I responded, "Do you think Trader Joe's sells mouse traps?"


© Zachary Urbina 2007

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zachary Urbina first began working in the film and television business and eventually found his way to writing after discovering his great distaste for working long, thankless hours.  His previous work has been published in the Pasadena Weekly and the Los Angeles Daily News.