Danny and Isa and the Functionality of Reliable Disfunctionability. Part I

Danny is a jew. He's big and loud. He's not exceptionally tall and not overweight. So maybe it's his hair, his nose, or his voice. But he takes up any space he's in.  Which falsely offers a possibility of flexibility to his impenetrable personality.

"Rushmore".

My dad met him in LA when Danny flew out to get more information on his scholarship to USC film school.  I watched the movie with my dad a month later.  Danny IS Rushmore.

"If you plan on working in LA, everyone will have gone to USC film school.  But if you say Harvard, that'll really shrink their testicles."

That sounded good to Danny.  So he took my dad's advice and will be moving out to Cambridge this fall to stake his claim in Harvard class of 2013.  One year after the world is supposed to end.

Isa is an Italian.  She's confrontational, loud, and dramatic.  She's ivy league. She's beautiful.  She's pencil thin with boobs and jet black hair which has, by now, given in to her will to dye it black, and now just stays that way.  She laughs at nothing and her body shakes and she glances in the mirror and approves.  She limply holds a spatula, making pancakes, reading directions from the box, falls on the counter laughing, the box of powder mushroom clouding.  She's the only one I know who can make a nuclear bomb out of a box of pancake mix.  It's two in the afternoon.  We're making breakfast.  Anyone could tell from a mile away. There are ingredients everywhere. 

She's mastered the impeccable equilibrium between pathetic incompetence and a will so strong that everything and everyone around her doesn't have a choice but to fall in line and make possible whatever the hell it is that she's passionately half-assing- which now is frying pancakes. A yippy dog goes off in her yard like a car alarm.  She leans out of the dining room sliding glass door yelling, 

"Basta basta! Steinbeck! Auhh fuck. Basta!", she falls against the curtains, her deep v-cut shirt drawing attention to push-up bra breasts heaving in her laughter, sapping the energy out of her whole body.  A white fluffy bite-size dog comes running up, disoriented, mislead, riled up.  A completely useless imbred dog.  Did I just miss something?

"I'm going to ask out Isa", Danny proclaimed, smirking and overly confident.  He has a quick stride.  He walks looking down like there's nothing in the world that would merit his sanctioned and carefully sanctified attention, nothing he doesn't know about. He tilts his head sideways to me to see the reaction.  The doubt in my face that will turn his desire into a challenge, something he can take on.  An outlet for him to prove everyone wrong.

There's no way.  Danny's the kid in school who crosses the line, who seeks and pushes the fuck out of everyone's buttons.  He talks too loud in the library. Like everyone would be doing themself a favor by putting down their textbooks to listen to him. He raises his hand in class for an excuse to bloviate his prolific, impressive, but in all ways excessive and obnoxious knowledge.  No way is Isa going to go out with that guy.  She's gorgeous.  She's Italian.  She can get any guy she wants.

"Okay", I say.  "If this is going to be done, it might as well be done right.  If you have to do roses, make them black.  If you're going to see her, make it today- it's raining.  It'll be that much more dramatic."

They dated for a year and a half. At least. Maybe more.  Before breaking up the first of many times.  We all had no idea they would last that long.  It makes so much sense though. They're perfect.

Isa loves attention.  She's never single.  She's been with boys. She's been with girls.  Sometimes in the same night.

Danny loves sex.  He can turn anything anyone says into a sexual innuendo (no, in-YOUR-endo!!). But even more than sex, Danny loves Drama. Danny LOVES Drama.  Drama loves Danny. Drama, Danny loves.

Isa yells. Danny yells. Isa argues. Danny rebuts. Isa gasps and cries. Danny rolls his eyes. Isa gets exasperated.  Danny gets a hard on. Clothes fly off. They are so in love.