The Chameleon
"DUDE. I'M AT A REAL CROSSROADS HERE."
Coupe sat in the diner, picking at his buffalo chicken wrap. He looked at his friend, Davis, across the table and threw up his hands.
"Okay. Calm down," responded Davis. "This is a classic John Hughes kind of dilemma. You're dating three different women. You like each one equally but for different reasons. Let's really make a Nick Hornsby list and see who you see yourself with in, say, seven years.
"So, there's Geena. Tell me about why she might be The One."
Coupe snagged a fry. "Geena is a writer. She's incredibly smart. While her poetry tends toward the 'let's put together as many twenty-dollar words as possible in this piece' she always tosses in a dick joke or a bizarre sexual reference that knocks the thesaurus out of your hands.
"She's gorgeous and funny and, when I read her blog, I get completely butterflied."
"Butterflied?"
"C'mon. Butterflied. Swooney. Nervous and excited. Butterflied."
"You're a dipshit."
"Yeah. Anyway, Geena is the kind of artist that turns me on intellectually."
"Okay. How about Laura?"
"Oh, fuck. Laura? She's a model. Like a nude model. She is drop dead spectacular and has this mysterious air about her like she knows something you don't but doesn't look down on you for it because she believes you'll figure it out.
“She likes to wear wigs out in public to pretend she's someone else. I think in part because she is recognizable from her online photos."
"Dude. Did you go online and check her photos out?"
"Nah. I decided it was more respectful to wait until she offered to show me. I mean, she's naked in most of them as I understand it. If I'm going to be cool, I'll wait until invited. Less pervy."
"Can I check them out?"
"Sure. Perv."
Davis cackled. "And finally Cherise."
"Yeah. Cherise. Man, she's a trip. Tattoos, drinks like a Viking, totally unpredictable. She's a little nuts but in a good way. You never know what she's gonna do or what she'll say but it's always interesting.
"She told me that the guy she was with last took her dumpster diving for 'art materials' on her birthday and they found a half-eaten birthday cake in the garbage so they ate it and fucked in an alley."
"So, dangerous?"
"Yeah, kind of. I mean, the danger part is a lot of the attraction, I think."
"So, let's line 'em up, here." Davis grabbed a salt shaker, a pepper shaker, and a knife. "The salt is the intellectual. The pepper is the model. The knife is the rebel. Which one makes you laugh the most?"
Coupe moved the salt shaker forward an inch.
"Which one gives you that hard-on that won't quit?"
Coupe moved the pepper.
"Which one challenges you to try new stuff?"
Coupe moved the knife.
Davis scooted up in his seat. Grabbed a few of Coupe's fries. "Now what are the negatives for each?"
"Negatives?"
"Potential roadblocks. Red flags."
"Hmmmm. Geena seems a bit aloof. She puts on this air of superiority that translates to a form of light snobbery. She thinks anyone who watches TV is a moron. She loves to read but hates Dickens and Stephen King."
"You watch TV. You love Dickens and King. Definitely issues but not what I'd call serious ones."
"True. I guess I just get the sense that she thinks she is fundamentally better than most people around her. And she's pretty controlling. It's her way or no way because anything less than her way and it's a wash. Nothing insurmountable but you asked for negatives."
"Laura?"
"This is gonna sound stupid but she talks about sex all the time."
"That sounds pretty stupid. How can a hot nude model focused on sex be a negative?"
"Yeah, I know how it sounds. She just doesn't have much else she's interested in. And I'm no prude but the stuff she's into is a little out there. Sex dungeons, sex swings, bizarre dildos. Also, I've met, like, seven of her guy friends and found out she fucked all of them. I'm ready to meet a guy friend she still hangs around with she hasn't slept with, you know?
"She keeps bringing up how she wants to peg me. I told her I wasn't into having things rammed up my ass but she won't let it go. Keeps telling me I can't know I don't like it until I've tried it."
"Wait. She hangs out with all these friends she's had sex with?"
"Yup."
"Okay. Wow. How about Cherise?"
"Red flags? Dude, she's almost all red flags. She'll drink anything with alcohol in it. We were trying out cocktail recipes with a bunch of different liquors. We had a discard bucket that was all of the drinks we didn't like. Rum, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila. Bitters, creamer, allspice. It smelled like gasoline. She kept it in her fridge and drank it when she didn't have anything else.
"She calls herself a 'trash panda' because she doesn't like spending money on food, clothes, furniture, over-the-counter drugs, whatever, so she goes to the dumpsters behind CVS and Big Lots and brings stuff thrown in the trash home.
"Cherise is out there, dude. If she doesn't like the topic of conversation, she'll grab something and smash it or fall into a fetal position and bawl like someone died. She just disappears sometimes and if I ask where she went, she calls me a controlling asshole."
"Damn."
"Yeah."
Davis sat back and looked at the three totems in between them. "Well, my friend, you have what we call a real quandary. How about this—what's the one thing each of these women might do that you'd consider a deal breaker?"
"You mean, based on what I already know about them? Like tendencies that might lead to something?"
"Sure. I don't know. Is one of them a pyro and might light your couch on fire? That kind of thing."
"Geena is judgmental. I suppose taken to an extreme, the dealbreaker would be if she looked down on my family. Treated them as if they were somehow less.
"Laura is so focused on sex, I guess the dealbreaker would be if she just kept sleeping around."
"Or surprised you one night by pegging you?"
"Oh, yeah. That would break the deal completely.
"And Cherise shoplifts. I caught her stealing a cheap ring from one of those boutiques on Milwaukee. She just shrugged and claimed the universe gifted it to her. The line crossed would be if she stole from me or got arrested for theft."
Davis sat up as straight as he could. "The moment of truth. Show me pictures."
Coupe pulled out his phone. Pulled up three pictures of Geena, Laura, and Cherise and dutifully handed it over. Davis looked and his eyes got wide.
"Oh, fuck."
"What?"
"That's Diane."
"What?"
"Geena is Diane. She and I hooked up two weeks ago at a house party in Logan Square. She told me her name was Diane. Said she was a sculptor. Man, I'm sorry." He swiped to Laura. "Huh? Is this Laura or Geena?"
Coupe grabbed the phone back. "That's Laura."
"That's the same girl, Coupe." He grabbed the phone back. "And Cherise is the same girl as Geena, Diane, and Laura."
Coupe snatched the phone and took another long look. "Bullshit."
He dropped the phone on the table. "You're right. How could I not have seen it before? She lied about being three different—"
"Four."
"—four different people. Am I stupid? I mean, what fucking moron doesn't see this?"
"You think she's like a split personality? Or just pretends to be other people? Either way, the fact that she posed as three completely different people to the same guy and got away with it means she's brilliant or you are, in fact, incredibly jaw-droppingly stupid."
The two men sat in silence for almost five minutes, staring at their plates.
"What're you gonna do?" asked Davis.
"Cherise. I'm going with Cherise."
