Prompt Images
The two guys next to me are 34 and 35 years old, both wearing jeans and fleece vests but with different colored Oxford shirts underneath. I interrupt them and say, “12 people.” Both turn with looks of confusion and laughter.
The one with Oakleys on top of his black hair—at 11 P.M. in a bar—says, “Oh really? How do you know?”
I launch into a soliloquy I’ve recited dozens of times. “You know when people argue over the best superpower? Having been brainwashed by movies like Animal House, Porky’s, and—to a certain extent—Just One of the Guys, I spent a good part of my teens and late twenties believing that surreptitiously watching people in changing rooms was the pinnacle of titillation. And it’s for this reason that I always believed invisibility would be the best superpower to have. In go-nowhere hypothetical conversations with friends and acquaintances, they, without fail, choose ‘super strength’ or ‘the ability to fly unassisted’ while scoffing at my choice.
“Naturally, I took other angles to support my decision. Invisibility would allow me to be an international spy. Paying for tickets to movies, concerts, and sporting events would be a thing of the past. Simply activate my cloaking ability and waltz into the multiplex or Super Bowl.
“Only rarely did I cite the potential to scope out people in their undies. But at least I was honest enough with myself to admit that walking into a communal shower would be on my to-do list. If you could fly, at some point, you would look into a window or two, even out of boredom or happenstance. And what would a person do with superhuman strength? Exert cruelty on those who mumbled an unkind word at them? Render the sports record books meaningless? We aren’t all Superman or Cyclops. Have you seen Hollow Man?”
“No.” One chortles at me. The other shifts on the barstool, glancing at the muted television above the sentry of liquor bottles.
“It’s the one where Kevin Bacon is able to become invisible, but he loses his sense of self and becomes evil. I knew that wouldn’t happen to me if I could be invisible. It wasn’t a concern, because I can be honest with myself. I think this honesty is what helped me through the screening process. I used to work at a data entry job that required a security clearance. All of the bullshit hassle, none of the power. I was offered a spot in a military test. An experiment, really, but they call it a test. I think they pluck people like me from their cubicles and offer us spots. I read the waivers very closely. Things like ‘permanent physical changes’ were listed.”
They look at my appendages to see what I mean.
“But they were vague enough that I knew it wasn’t things like losing a limb or paralysis. They were really going to mess with me on a genetic or molecular level. My mind went straight to invisibility. I signed up and went through the process. For months they made me lay in this fucked up MRI-looking machine. They told me it was to restructure or rewire my brain; they just wouldn’t say for what purpose. But it didn’t do anything that they could see. I didn’t tell them, but whatever they did allowed me to know stats.”
“Stats? Like math?” asks Oakley head.
“Numbers. Anything quantifiable. If it can be counted, I know it. If I concentrate a little. I was yelling at my dog, like, how many times do I have to tell you to not lay on my clean clothes. And I knew that I had to tell him 29. I just knew. I tried it with other things. Pennies in a jar, how many free throws did Lebron make his rookie year, things I could check, and I was right.”
“Dude,” the other one says, “What are you talking about?”
“You asked how many guys that girl in the sundress had slept with. It’s 12. Is that too many, not enough, or what?”
They look at each other and break out into laughter filled with pity for me.
“You’ve slept with five,” I interrupt again. “You’ve slept with 27,” to the other.
“Dude, you’re legit insane,” says Oakley head (he’s the one with 5 girls) while picking up his rum and coke.
“There are 41 people in this bar, and you have one testicle. Just like one other person here.” When they don’t respond, I add, “This still isn’t as good as seeing people in locker rooms.”
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