Geese hate me. I mean, really. I am despised. I rowed for the crew team in college, and every morning we were on the water as soon as the sun came up. One particular morning, I was walking to practice, enjoying my daily pop-tart (raspberry frosted) when a hissing Canadian goose began to chase me. As you can imagine, I was not pleased to have to put up with such shenanigans at 5:45 am. I hoped that if I ignored it, it would get bored with me and go away, so I picked up the pace a bit and stared straight ahead. You would have thought that I was being hunted down by one of Tony Soprano’s cronies rather than an out-of-sorts water fowl.
Well, as luck would have it, this goose was relentless. The hissing got closer, my steps got quicker and before I knew it, we were both sprinting across the campus center at break-neck speeds. There was only one thing to do. I threw my beloved pop-tart at its head. This seemed to stun my splenetic friend. I watched the goose. The goose watched the pop tart. The air stood still. It was better than “Showdown at the OK Corral.” After a minute or so the spell was broken, and we both went our separate ways.
A week later I met Bethany. Bethany was a loon. When she was 4, she broke her front tooth in half. Someone glued it back together. When she was 11 she broke her canine in half. Someone glued it back together. When she was 17 she broke her bottom tooth in half. Someone glued it back together. When she was 24, she was dancing near a bookshelf and accidentally bit it while doing the running man. She broke her molar in half, put it in some milk and kept right on dancing. Later that week, someone got her a porcelain implant for free because she just loved her so much. I did not love her. She was a loon, and I was certain that someone that loony was bound to be a goose lover. A month later, we were walking in Prospect Park and this vendor just handed her a hot dog. For free. He was wearing an ugly orange vest and most of the snaps were missing their other halves. Bethany said that Dostoyevsky would have loved him. Then she ate that free hot dog. I didn’t get one. (Not that I eat them now anyway–vegetarian–but I sure do miss them.)
Why was I still hanging around with her? When I broke my tooth in half, I had to get a root canal and it really hurt and the whole shebang wound up costing me close to 600 bucks!! Now to add insult to injury, I had been snubbed by the hot dog man, who apparently preferred her broken smile to mine. I figured, after some consideration, that since there were no geese in Prospect Park, maybe the rest of the day would go without a hitch. Besides, this Bethany was sort of intriguing, poor dental health and all.
A few days after that we were sitting around her apartment, enjoying the World’s Perfect Snack: butter toast cut into triangles and mint mélange tea. It was soggy and grey outside, so we opted to put some Tom Waits in the stereo and poke through old photographs. It was then that my worst fears were confirmed. Bethany was a goose charmer. There, amidst a pile of old childhood snapshots was a picture of Bethany petting a goose, her head reared back with what I supposed was a great belly laugh, mouth opened wide. I hated that picture. I hated it because it looked as though she was about to swallow the sky whole, taking not only our galaxy, but everyone else’s too, just so that she could keep them all contained inside her throat. She could sit there all day like a god, with all the world inside her, reaching in to pull out the sun when it burned too much, letting the stars out for Christmas, waiting for the earth to bounce around and break that tooth again, giving the oceans to that damn goose to use as a playground.
What was I supposed to do? Now not only was she Bethany: the loon and Bethany: the free hot dog getter, she was also, Bethany: Queen of the Geese. They loved her!! Those same geese that sent assassins to kill me!!
I hated that picture. I hated it, but I realized after a moment that I actually loved it, if it’s possible to love something that you don’t seem to like, even a little. And I think it is. This was how the inexplicable, seemingly impossible Goose-charmer Crush began.
