Late at night, when he was certain that there was no one awake to ridicule him, he harbored fantasies of being James Bond. During the day, these fantasies sailed the seas of utter pragmatism. He knew, intellectually, that being shot at was dangerous, as was the idea of bedding every woman that struck his fancy.

But after a full night of drinking alone in the company of his friends, he let the floodgates of his subconscious open so that his fantasies could have the free reign that they needed to survive. So that he could survive.

He pretended that he was handsome, dashing or interesting even though he knew that he was none of these. Sometimes, he would spend the wee hours of the morning trying to perfect the “turn, spin and shoot” maneuver in his boxers and dress socks. The maneuver that was, to him, the epitome of everything that was James Bond.

Any portion of his life that did not involve his increasingly elaborate fictions in the role of master spy began to seem inconsequential. The job had long since been rendered moot as a source of intellectual or emotional engagement. His friends were beginning to sense his carefully cultivated disinterest in them and were leery of continuing to function as an anchor to reality for him.

He wanted something new and different for his life, but was unable to determine what. He had focused on a specific set of circumstances for satisfaction and happiness for so long that he was stuck; painted into a corner by his own wants and desires. He had set his goals at such an unattainable height that even the thought of a single step up from his drab existence was almost unthinkable.

This, the condition of his life, gradually settled on his consciousness like newly fallen snow on a sleeping dog and when he shook off the lethargy, it was with such stark clarity and suddenness that he almost didn’t comprehend that his life had been sleeping at all.

The impetus for the sharp right turn in his existence was a woman. She was wholly unlike any woman that he had ever known and, further, was unlike any woman that he had ever thought that he would be interested in.

He first noticed her because of her hair, which she wore spiked in a Mohawk like the plumage of some rare tropical bird. That, in itself, wasn’t enough to catch his interest, though. Instead, it was when she stopped short and glared at the man next to her, whom he took to be her boyfriend. The boyfriend stopped, turned around, came back and took her arm. It was that act that fired his imagination and burned out the fantasies of James Bond like the pus in an infected cut.

He imagined that the girl was willing to do anything in bed because she enjoyed variety but was her boyfriend was too chickenshit to ask her to do anything that he obviously wanted her to do. Her revenge, he imagined, was to treat her boyfriend like a pussy when they were in public; her bitchiness was a form of training – she was training her boyfriend to be assertive enough to be a good lay. Or so he imagined.
Fascinated with this tropical creature and the instant conclusions that his imaginings of her lusts and life had created, he walked over to her and introduced himself. She and her boyfriend took one look at him and deigned to react, each in their own way. She nodded, smiled and walked away with him while her (ex) boyfriend pouted and stood his ground. It was an easy choice for her to make, apparently.

He was not disappointed when her sexual appetites did not prove to be as wild as he had imagined them to be. He was not disappointed when he discovered that somewhere deep inside, she knew that she wasn’t as interesting as she wished that she could be. Nowhere near as interesting as the people that she surrounded herself with were, either. (And her friends were very interesting.)

He was not even disappointed when he discovered that she did not like James Bond in any of his incarnations; she did not even enjoy Sean Connery as an actor, which was almost a pop cultural sin in and of itself.

The single thing about her that disappointed him was the fact that she was a Vanilla Ice fan. She’d begun one of their dates with a diatribe against his detractors and it went from there. She had every one of his albums and a copy of his movie on DVD (he hadn’t even know that it was available on DVD).

What sank the relationship was the fact that she had his name tattooed on her ass, which was fairly disconcerting when he was behind her during sex – especially since it was her favorite position. He never attempted to defend his position on artistic grounds; instead, he just left her and refused to return her phone calls. It was a shallow thing to do and, had he found her more interesting as a human being, he might have felt guilty about his decision.

As it was, though, he just felt pathetic for having had sex with a Vanilla Ice fan.