Ian MacAllen

The first community theater production outside of the high school drama club that I involved myself in was Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I had long fancied Oscar Wilde when I joined the cast as a lighting crew. No doubt part of Wilde’s appeal was his dandyism, the persona of erudite elitism mixed with sexual deviancy.

The Importance of Being Earnest mixes witty dialogue with a tumultuously twisted plot, and in the end, everyone ends up having the sex (That last part we can assume happens off stage right after the curtain falls). But one plot twist held particular appeal, when Jack turns to Algernon and says: “Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country.” Algernon then accuses Jack of being a long secret Bunburyist; Bunbury is Algernon’s imaginary friend that often falls ill whenever Algernon wants to avoid some sort of obligation. I too, am a Bunburyist.

Early on in my college career I experienced two important revelations: first, that the population of New Brunswick was finite, and two, that often I engaged in totally inappropriate behavior. Unwilling to do the sensible thing, which would have been to stop acting inappropriately, I grew concerned that my misdeeds could have repercussions on my social life. So I did the only other sensible thing: adopted my very own Jack.

Jack was born at a bar on Louis Street in the seedier section of New Brunswick sometime before last call the summer before my senior year of college. Jack in the subsequent weeks made appearances at house parties or bars and has traveled to various cities in the northeast. Jack has never actually slept with anyone (which, I suppose, means Jack is sort of a failure, since the whole point of an alter ego is consequence free sexual liaisons), but there are to this day people, women in particular, that have only ever met Jack. A few years after college, I was back at that bar in New Brunswick and this cherubic looking girl who met Jack once so many years before came over and said hello.

I was out with my boss for her birthday last year. Just in case she happens to read this, we were, certainly, without a doubt, celebrating her thirtieth birthday. She still is, at this very moment, not a day over thirty.

We celebrated at a glitzy hotel bar, the sort of place that attracts the very worst in humanity. The place was crawling with these people, the types that come to bars to be seen rather than to get drunk. I don’t go to bars to be seen. I go to bars to drink.

I arrived on time, which is to say that I arrived too early for the party. Now then I was stuck in this glitzy hotel bar alone surrounded by a bunch of guys with popped collars. I’ve never understood this fashion trend. As far as I know, the first appearance of popped collars in pop culture was actually in costuming for generic alien species on Star Trek. Apparently anyone in the future with gray skin has popped collars. Well played, guidos, adult fraternity brothers, and aspiring Wall Street brokers. Surrounded by these people, the obvious solution for me was to start drinking as quickly as possible.

While I’m sucking down vodka sodas, this girl Tahesha starts talking to me. Immediately I reverse my previous position and decide that maybe overpriced glitzy hotel bars aren’t so bad after all.

A few minutes later the birthday girl’s entourage shows up. I’m properly drunk at this point, having sucked down two and half vodka sodas in an hour.

I join the birthday party. The birthday entourage, having arrived fashionably late, has lost the reserved seating area. Some of my boss’s friends are minor celebrities. My boss’s minor celebrity friend tries resolving, unsuccessfully, the issue with the glitzy hotel bar management. Thus I say minor celebrity.

The party congregates near the outdoor bar hoping to push in on some seats. The outdoor bar is crowded. I’m beginning to sober up. Hoping to avoid a drinking fail, I make my way to an indoor bar where the line is shorter. I again find Tahesha. We are talking again. I explain that I am here for a birthday party. I explain that the birthday party is for my boss. I tell her my name is Jack.

After two drinks, Jack decides he should rejoin the birthday party. Tahesha is going to join Jack at the party because she wants to meet his friends. And probably because Jack offered to buy her a drink.

We approach the outdoor bar where the birthday party is standing. Tahesha sees my boss’s minor celebrity friend and thinks he is Regis Philbin. He doesn’t look like Regis Philbin, except in that way all white middle-aged talk show hosts look the same. I correct her, tell her who he really is, thinking that will be the end of things and that its not really a big deal. But suddenly it is a big deal; she’s been in the audience of his show and is very excited to see him at the glitzy hotel bar.

Tahesha shoves her way towards the bar and introduces herself to my boss’s minor celebrity friend. She tells him that she was an audience member on his show once, some months ago. He pretends to remember her, smiles graciously and returns to the birthday party.

“You should come meet [Minor Celebrity Friend], he’s really nice.”

And Jack says, “I already have, he’s here for my boss’s birthday party.”

Suddenly she is excited: now she’s talking to a guy who is friends with someone who is friends with a genuine minor celebrity. She’s a starfucker, which is the worst kind of person I can think of, but I’m also thinking that this fact might increase my chances of getting laid. Of course I would be getting laid with a starfucking sycophant, so I order a drink.

We linger at the periphery of the party. My boss is standing next to me and notices I’m talking to Tahesha. She really wants me to find a nice girl because she thinks having a nice girl makes me a better employee. She’s probably right about that because nice girls don’t usually allow for things like drinking until 3am on a weeknight. My boss talks to Tahesha. Suddenly I realize my boss has never met Jack. I send her a text message updating her on this development: “I’m Jack tonight.” On Monday she will ask about this text message.

Everything is going well. Tahesha casually touches my arm in the middle of conversation. This contact is obviously a sign that she is willing to touch me everywhere. I’m drunk enough to feign interest in whatever Tahesha is saying, but not so drunk to say something stupid.

But then the party begins breaking up. Not only is my celebrity cachet abandoning ship, but even worse, people are saying goodnight to Ian. As the party begins to leave, the guests say stupid things like “see you later, Ian,” and “Good night, Ian.” Does no one read their text messages that say tonight, I am pretending to be someone else?
I think for sure my cover is blown. But then the party is gone and she is still there talking to me.

We are nursing our drinks. I can sense this is going well. Maybe Jack will finally have his first consequence free sexual liaison. Tahesha wants to leave. Perfect, I want to leave. She has not figured out that Jack and Ian both inhabit the same corporeal form.

Outside the glitzy hotel bar there is a line to get in. I feel so fancy. Tahesha gets Jack’s number. I get Tahesha’s number. No chance of losing a phone number in the digital age: I send Tahesha a text message while she is standing there: “Jack says call him.” She laughs, but doesn’t bother inviting me back to her apartment. I don’t want to invite her to my apartment because I have to take a subway there, and because my roommate doesn’t know that this evening I’m playing the part of Jack. I walk to the subway, alone.

Four days later I receive a text message. More accurately, Jack receives a text message: “hey Jack, its Tahesha, we should hang out.” Suddenly I see the failures of telling women my name is Jack; even if I were to have a drink with her, and even if that drink went really well and later that week we went for dinner, and then maybe some other time we went and saw a movie, eventually she would figure out that my name isn’t actually Jack.

Jack never wrote back to her. Tahesha was after all, a starfucker. I certainly feel better knowing that it was Jack and not Ian that rebuffed Tahesha’s text message advances.