Moonwalker, Chapter 11

Zoe hadn’t been joking. For dinner we ate salvaged bear claws and monkey bread washed down with the end of the day’s coffee we usually dumped.


“I love monkey bread,” she said, feeding Cally a ball of sweet and sticky dough, then licking her fingers. Cally licked her lips and said “Kiss me.” I gagged and tried to look like I wasn’t jealous.

The movie was The Butterfly Effect. It was horrible. I mean any movie starring Ashton Kutcher was horrible, but this one was especially bad because it wasn’t supposed to be funny and the three of us couldn’t stop laughing whenever Ashton got the most agitated. Cally kept Zoe’s promise and made an extra bag of popcorn with Bragg’s and nutritional yeast for the gulls.

“Tell them it’s good for them,” she instructed me.

“Yes, Professor Weiner.” We laughed so hard we spilled popcorn all over the floor where the three of us laid on our stomachs like little kids to watch the TV.

“You know Ashton is kind of cool,” Zoe said. “You can tell he really does love Demi and she’s fifteen years older than him. Maybe you should go for a younger guy, Minnie.” I knew she was trying to butter me up by not calling me Minerva, or nutritionally yeast me I guess I should say, but I wasn’t going for it.

“Been there, done that. Plus I told you I’m not going for anyone, especially someone barely out of diapers.” Especially not crazy-homeless artists, even if they did have surfer shoulders. It was bad enough I was straight without having them know I was generally attracted to derelicts that sucked me dry mentally, emotionally, and financially.

“That movie wasn’t so bad,” Cally mused. “I mean they really did a good job of demonstrating a sophisticated scientific concept. I wonder if Ashton knew the source of all his troubles?”

“I don’t think sophisticated and scientific are even in his vocabulary,” I said, “and what concept are you talking about?”

“Smarty pants,” Zoe kidded me.

“The Butterfly Effect,” Cally told us in her best professorial tone. “I was just talking to my undergrads about it this morning. That’s why I picked this movie out.”

“I was worried you were going to tell me you were going to dump me for a boy,” said Zoe.

“As if. You know I’d do anything for you.”

“Even take my name?”

“Maybe we could talk about that some other night when I haven’t eaten so much popcorn and might not puke?”

“What’s the Butterfly Effect?” I asked before the conversation veered too far into the surreal.

“It’s a famous phrase that demonstrates the primary principle of Chaos Theory. You know who James Gleick is right?”

“Hello? I went to art school?”

“Is he the guy that came up with the Gaia Hypothesis?”

“No, that’s Lovelock, but I bet they’re friends because they’re definitely on the same wavelength as far as the earth being a living entity with consciousness just like you and me.”

“And what about me? Can somebody fill me in or am I just too unconscious to have a clue what you’re talking about?”

“Jealous, baby?”

“No,” she said, sticking out her lower lip.

“Are you pouting? I can’t believe you’re pouting. I probably shouldn’t tell you how cute you look right now.”

“I don’t get it.” Zoe whined.

“Ok. Well, the Gaia Hypothesis is probably obvious to you since you’re a mystical free-spirited pixie artist. It just says that the earth is as conscious and alive as we are. The implications of this are that since we humans who live on the earth have become parasites capable of destroying our host it will most likely rise up and kick us off soon.”

“How’s it going to do that?”

“Oh, you know, Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, global warming, all those tornadoes that keep slamming down on Kansas like the Wizard of Oz on continual replay.”

“The lunatic is in the grass……The lunatic is in the grass,” Zoe sang in a cockney accent. She had it down pat, as my mother would say. It was part of her twee act. “Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz matched up with Dark Side of the Moon? It’s mind-blowing. I actually cried which I never did in the regular Wizard of Oz. I always feel so bad for the witch. Nobody understood what she went through.”

“What did she go through again?” I asked.

“Can’t remember, but I figure it must have been horrible to turn her into such a bitch.”

“Well we’re not in Kansas anymore. These days there’s no excuse. She should get some therapy.”

“Look who’s talking,” Zoe dared to say.

I stuck out my tongue. “Monkey bread is cheaper.”

“Sorry, I ate the last piece.”

“Hey, do you want to hear about the Butterfly Effect or not?” Cally reined us in, pushing back her long blond hair that crackled with static when she took her hand away.

“I guess so,” said Zoe.

“Gleick’s famous statement was that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings could cause a typhoon halfway around the world.” Her voice was dull and dry, blasé, as if to test our attention. Were we really listening? Were we so jaded we couldn’t take in the enormity of what she was saying? Well, I couldn’t. I was lost with the butterflies flapping their wings in the waning sunlight. Zoe, however, still had human ears and a mouth that could speak.

“How could that be possible? Butterflies weigh practically nothing,” she asked her girlfriend, trying not to look mesmerized by the sight of her exposed neck, sinuous as a swan, one long arm draped across the back of the futon, the other crooked to support her head as she leaned back to watch our reactions, eyes half-closed.

“It has nothing to do with size,” Cally said, sitting back up and reaching for her computer. “Here, let me show you.” She typed into Google and pressed enter.

“Here. Let’s see...Butterfly Effect. Whoops, better type in Chaos Theory, too. The first entry that came up is that dumb-ass movie.”

“We live in a truly degraded culture,” I had to comment. Cally smiled and kept on typing. “You know you love it,” she said, giving me a look that caused me to swallow my words of protest. “Here we go. According to Wikipedia, ‘The Butterfly effect encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependencies on initial conditions in chaos theory.”

Zoe and I looked at each other. We could tell she was really excited and didn’t want to tell her we still didn’t have a clue, but one of us was going to have to do it because it might be important some day if we ever needed to know how to get out of Kansas.

She wasn’t my girlfriend, so I volunteered to be the one to burst her tornado.

“Ground Control to Major Tom,” I interrupted. “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Zoe laughed, but Cally kept going. I was going to have to sing to get her to pay attention. “Come on Zoe, help me out. Don’t do this to me.”

“It’s all yours. You’re the star of this show,” she said, reaching for the popcorn.

“Here are we sitting in our tin can,” I sang. “Like my grimace?” I said for Zoe’s benefit, Cally still wasn’t paying attention to us.

“I love when you caterwaul,” she drawled like Scarlett O’Hara.

“Far above the world. Planet earth is blue and there’s nothing we can do.” I stopped, surprised at how my voice sounded. It was much stronger than I remembered. It was almost like someone hiding in my vocal chords had decided it was safe to come out. I wondered what he’d been hiding from? Soldiers? Martians? Godzilla? I also wondered how I knew it was a he who’d been hiding when my voice was a clear soprano that rang true as a tuning fork, vibrating around the three of us until we got off our bellies and sat up straight. The cheap Oriental rug felt like a genuine magic carpet.

“Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom?” Zoe finally joined me. “About time,” I said as we fell silent, or rather silent with laughter. We were rolling on the floor at this point, laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.

Cally closed her laptop by now and stood, sweeping her arms wide as if to embrace the cosmos. We sang the climax together, all three of us. I couldn’t believe I’d grown up to be such a dork.



Here are we floating round our tin can!

Far above the moon!

Planet earth is blue!

And there’s nothing we can do!

Dun dadun dadun dadundun! Dun dadun dadun dadundun!



And then the synthesizers took over and we were floating above the earth looking back at all we’d left behind….headed toward the moon with nothing to do and no desire to get there.

On the ride home, for the first time ever I laughed at my fear of the moon. Of course I kept my headlamp until I safe on my sofa, but I didn’t miss my helmet.