Katie, You Are a Great Success
I’m not the most socially connected human being on the face of the planet. At any particular point in my life since high school, I’ve tended to maintain one to three close, open, unconditional drinking-and-smoking relationships with other weather tossed pilgrims who also missed the boat for Moderate Success Island. That’s such a funny word, isn’t it? “Success…” It evokes a gut reaction without real criticality. It divides friends and marriages, an unplumbed gorge between those who think they don’t have it and those who can’t figure out what it is. There’s a magazine that claims it for its title, and it’s sold on the same rack as “Money” and “People.” It’s easy for me to wax cynical when I’m momentarily removed from my tightly knit social security blanket of three threads, though, when another Friday night has passed in lonely quietude and it starts to look like Saturday is going to be just as excruciating a reminder of how life isn’t going according to plan.
You know the story. You wake up, hungover from drinking alone, to find that you’re back in your parents’ house, that it wasn’t a paranoid fantasy that the graduate advisor you’d lined up months before the start of school tanked your career wrongfully at the word “go” on the basis of your first two meetings, that he’d decided you were, “…ultimately really only concerned with the trivia of interpretations of quantum mechanics and could never cut the math,” and you eventually cracked under the pressure and withdrew. You nearly fall out of bed, and when no one takes the resultant dull “thud” as an invitation to nag you about picking up your room, you realize your folks are probably gone for the day―because they have lives. You run to the bathroom, void thirty percent of the viable fluids you thought you had, stumble down into the kitchen and living area past what you’re seventy percent sure is cat vomit, rub your temples, turn on the television, and your ex-girlfriend is selling taxidermy on a cable reality show again. Then, Bastet the Ancient Egyptian cat god immediately starts in with you before your bagel and coffee―because of your chronic paranoid schizophrenia.
“Dan!” she screamed in my third ear. “Dan, you’re hallucinating!”
I groaned. ‘You couldn’t possibly be wrong, cat, if I’m “hearing” you,’ I thought at her.
She poked a purple astral wisp into my eye.
“…But you’re seeing me. You don’t usually see me on cable when I’m not really there―now, do you, huh? Huh?” Her whistling, little half lisp was absolutely piercing this morning.
I sighed. ‘No, I can’t say I do―not that I recall,’ I thought.
“I mean, even when you were drunk last night, and you turned on the TV to look for me―when I wasn’t there, because even the advertisement you read said it was scheduled now, but drunk people with Jesus complexes gloss over details and expect the universe to conspire to instantly gratify them―even then, you didn’t see me,” she said, “but your condition must be deteriorating.”
The part of my brain claimed by dragons in the last great war was producing words faster than the little piece I still lived in could process them.
“You just crammed more verbiage into that one sentence than our entire romantic relationship,” I said aloud.
She chuckled. “What do you think of the piece?” she asked.
I squinted at the screen. The show’s hosts were apparently haggling with the no-longer-requited-love-of-my-life over the mounted head and neck of what appeared to be an albino male deer. The hosts noted its ostensible rarity and admitted the craftsmanship of the taxidermy. It was beautiful, but I found it hard to focus on the piece.
I had never actually seen Katie without the counter culture embellishments obscuring the view. She had removed the eyebrow piercing. She wore no white powder on her naturally fair skin, or any makeup that I could tell. She didn’t need it. No black hair dye… the natural color of her long hair was more of a sandy blonde-to-brown, or just a tinge lighter than mine, all shine, no wave. (…Maybe a little wave, but not to her “ex.”) Cropping the taxidermy out of the scene and muting the conversation, nothing would have marked any connection with the image I had of her from years ago, except maybe the Converse sneakers she wore. She was just an unpretentious, waifish, naturally beautiful Mona Lisa in her own fashion that I was almost surprised to recognize.
Her doppelganger poked me again. “So, what do you think?” she asked.
I blinked. ‘She looks nothing like you,’ I thought.
Bastet snorted. “…of the mount!”
I squinted again. ‘What mount?’
“’That’s what she said,’” said my delusional “ex.”
I stared through the screen. Katie sold her piece for several hundred dollars. I pumped my fist. The scene changed to some spoiled dippy socialite approving the piece that had been procured on her behalf for a Christmas party. I turned off the television and sat there for about half a minute. It was quiet in the house, even in my head.
“Dan?” came a “voice” that was more church mouse than cat.
“Hm?” I thought.
She paused.
“Wanna be my stalker?”
I shivered, then took a deep breath.
“Nope,” I said aloud.
“Guh!” she said. “Fine!”
“…And I’m ending our Facebook friendship,” I added as I got up.
“You ended it last night!” she yelled. “I only ever accepted that request out of pity, anyway! You’re a lousy kisser and your poetry sucks!”
I judged that it was nearing sundown by the orange light in the foyer as I trudged up the stairs. I’m a vampire, without the fangs. I could sleep from sunrise to sunset.
“How many times did you look at my Facebook profile?!” Bastet demanded.
“…About half a dozen,” I thought truthfully.
“You were always selfish like that!” Bastet shouted in my head. “I guess Jesus is just too frickin’ important to stalk a girl right, who did everything for him.”
“Don’t call me that,” I thought at the top of the stairs.
“You deleted my number!” she shrieked. “Where are the desperate, drunk, four AM calls? The unrequested sexual photos? I don’t even get a three page text out of nowhere from you!”
I walked into my closet and grabbed a spiked dog collar from off my belt and tie hanger, putting it on with the buckle behind my neck.
“Well, there were those couple of rambling Facebook messages,” I offered.
I could feel her astral corpus about to explode.
“Those?!” she howled. “Dear gods, Dan―those were barely creepy! They might have even been slightly sweet! When I read that poem, I mean…”
‘What?’ I asked, putting on my own pair of battle hardened Converse high tops.
She shook her head and made an emphatic cross out motion with her arms. “Let’s just say―maybe―that the water color of the fox crying a giant black heart shaped tear that I posted the next day wasn’t a figment of your imagination.”
‘It probably was,’ I thought. ‘It was pretty, though.’
“Couldn’t you at least convince yourself that it absolutely had to be about you and fail to read between the lines that I still didn’t want to talk with you?!” She was laughing. “I have a career to think about! You’re not getting in the way of that!”
I examined my hooded sweatshirts for a minute, chin on hand. The lack of contempt was palpable. I finally reached for that one particular worn “hoodie” that I barely ever wore but could never quite bring myself to give up on.
She recoiled. “Ha! Ha-ha, Dan! You think wearing the hoodie I gave you seven years ago that you haven’t thrown out yet is gonna make up for this? That hoodie makes an appearance once a year at most. You’ve never even fetishized it! You washed it, for crying out loud!”
I was dressed for success. “I deserve a medal,” I said.
“You’re even cognizant of how a normal human being could be creeped out by what to anyone else would look like back patting for simply not completely succumbing to romantically obsessive insanity! What the fuck kind of paranoid schizophrenic ‘ex’ are you?”
I grabbed the bag I had loaded with writing supplies and a flashlight the night before and started down the stairs.
‘One who truly loves you,’ I thought.
“Okay! That’s a start!” she said. “Where are you going?”
‘To write sonnets in a graveyard,’ I thought.
“Better!” Her aura turned warm purple. “Are they for me?” she asked.
I walked through the front door and locked it behind me.
‘It probably wouldn’t be appropriate to send them to you at this point,’ I thought.
She made a noise like she was about to vomit. “Dan, there’s no hope for you,” she said.
“You’re right,” I said aloud, as I started down the walkway.
October was over. It had turned into a pumpkin and rotted with the first frost. Barely a tree held a stubborn, clinging leaf, and I was the only spook still roaming the streets in search of something sweet. The graveyard wasn’t far. I almost wished it was farther, though, because I could fool myself sometimes into thinking that the length of a trek correlated with the meaning in it. A quarter mile down the road, Bastet’s presence still clung to me like a wet miasma, but she hadn’t said anything.
‘What is it?’ I thought at her.
“Why do you love me?” She asked.
‘When I laid bare my insanity to you, you were the only person who made fun of it in a way that implied that you still credited me some fair measures of intelligence and insight, both in the flesh and on the astral,’ I thought, ‘so I consider you the kindest person in the world.’
She emitted one of her characteristic impish giggles. “That’s flattering. What if I maybe believed your ‘delusion’ could have a kernel of truth to it?”
‘You as flesh, or as dubious but witty idealization?’ I wondered.
“She’s like my appendage,” said Bastet. “Any ‘lower’ is like an arm with a mind of its own.”
‘The “mind of its own” part was the reason I was asking,’ I thought.
“…Kind of like a penis, I imagine,” she added.
‘Mine reads physics textbooks and H. P. Lovecraft all weekend,’ I thought.
She blew through my synapses like the wind in the trees. It was getting dark, but it wasn’t much farther.
“How was I kind?” she asked.
‘You were the only one besides my parents and the oppressive theocratic astral regime who visited me in the hospital,” I said. “You brought me stuffed animals and graphic novels.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bastet. “I remember, I gave you ‘Johnny the Homicidal Maniac’ to read.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. No one else was on the road to overhear. “You seemed perfectly content to have a boyfriend who thought there was a global conspiracy to cover up the fact that he was having psychic conversations, and who thought he had other magical powers―who thought you were a god.”
“Dan,” she whistled through the piles of leaves, “you were smart and sweet, at your worst. You were obviously schizo’, but I felt safe with you, somehow.”
I walked up the drive of the graveyard. It wasn’t as venerable as some of the others around the area, but it was big and mostly secluded from the major roads. Walking between the rows of polished stones, the ground felt like it could give way underneath. The Jersey pink and purple sunset hues were dying, the last bright gasp shining through the bare trees.
Bastet giggled. “Maybe it wasn’t obvious, that you were schizo’. Maybe it really is a gigantic cover up, and you’re some kind of singularity. Maybe you took on ‘God’ and mostly got away with it.”
“…But with basically nothing accomplished,” I said, “out of my original goals of starting bloodless uprisings on the physical and astral planes.”
My phone vibrated: it was a text from my buddy Dave. I started typing a response.
“You have my ear,” said Bastet.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said, putting away the phone and taking out paper and a pencil from my bag.
“…and a creepy hoodie,” she added.
I rolled my eyes and started counting syllables of the first line I was trying to write.
“Wanna talk with her?” asked Bastet.
‘You mean your lower, on the astral?’ I thought, scribbling a line. ‘It doesn’t work that way.’
“You’re not the boss of me,” she said. “She’s my meat-puppet dick-with-a-brain.”
I nearly had a second line. There were times I wished she’d take a hint.
“She could be thinking of you right now,” Bastet whispered. “She could be masturbating to you. You could be her guilty pleasure.”
I counted syllables for a minute before I responded.
“She could be calling me up to go get a cup of coffee if she really felt that way,” I said, “instead of sending her shadow to crack dick jokes while I’m trying to write her poetry.”
“Guh!” said Bastet. “Fine! I’m sure she isn’t enjoying it.”
She acted like she was stomping off, which is obviously theatrical when you can teleport at will. It was a sure sign that she actually wanted another sonnet. The gods are relatively predictable. Most of them are usually appreciative of art undertaken in their honor, but they don’t fall all over themselves to let you know. In my experience as a straight male, human women tend to be the opposite: some tend to make big displays about how they want poetry from a guy, but it’s rare that they really think through what that entails or appreciate the result the way they idealize it. I know guys must be essentially similar, but my own limited direct experience is with women, by accident of nature. Katie probably felt similarly, when she gave me an anatomically correct sculpture of a heart in a black coffin shaped box. I loved it, and it’s still hidden away in the attic somewhere with the other preserved organs and skeletons, but I was dealing with the onset of “life changes” during our relationship, and I had difficulty expressing any emotion clearly to anyone.
Bastet must have determined to try to contain herself just long enough for me to finish a first stanza before breaking into soft shoe, because no sooner had I rhymed “need” with “seed” than I heard a voice from beyond.
“Dan!” said Bastet. “I found a dead thing that isn’t buried!”
“Where?!” I shouted. “I wanna see!”
I could feel her attention flit about the graveyard like a searchlight. “Oh! Where was it?” she asked.
She took off fast down the rows of stone faced monuments, and I chased her. She hopped blithely over mounded earth and polished marble―the dead couldn’t care. She stopped suddenly at the heart of the yard and looked around. I came up on her tail and nearly fell over trying to brake. I was practically in her space. She drifted into mine.
“I think it was here,” she said.
I looked around. “I don’t see it,” I said.
“You wouldn’t,” she replied.
I shivered. “Why wouldn’t I?” I asked.
“It’s me,” she said.
“It’s you?” I reflected.
“That’s right. It’s you,” she said.
The graveyard was the least frightening part to me. “Are we supposed to pretend to make out or something, now?” I asked.
“Just pretend to hug me,” she said.
I thought of a girl who broke up with me in antiquity, shuddered, rolled my eyes, looked around, then put my arms out in a loose circle. That’s when the car came roaring up the graveyard access road.
I tried to act nonchalant. The car came as close as it could, and the windows opened.
“Are you some kind of necromancer-philiac?” asked Chrissy.
I chuckled. “I am the summonér of nothing in particular,” I said.
Dave grimaced. “You know, the line is―“
“It was an awesome line, the way I said it, Dave!” I shouted.
Chrissy cackled and pointed fingers. “You shut your mouth, Dave!”
The driver snickered. “I’m happy you two are my friends. Seriously, though, Dan, what were you doing?”
I gaped and stammered. “I… I… You texted me like twenty minutes… I thought―when you say you’re coming, usually…”
They both gave me cool, superior looks. They knew about my “illness” already. They knew a few other things about me, as well, but somehow they still kept coming around, and I loved them for it. Bastet had stealthily oozed away, and I loved her for it.
“Just get in the car quick,” said Dave. I stalled for a minute to grab my bag, and then we got out of there like it was a graveyard haunted by a schizophrenic stalker.
“Dude,” said Chrissy, “what is it like when you’re talking with people who aren’t there?”
I could barely hear her over Failure playing on the megawatt sound system. “They’re generally better conversationalists than most people,” I yelled, “but you folks are exceptions.” We all laughed.
I leaned into the front bench. “Folks, I realize how strange that was,” I said. “Please call me out on bizarre behavior if you ever feel uncomfortable or I don’t seem to be self aware, but if I didn’t indulge ‘the voices’ often enough, they’d demand my attention in ways I couldn’t parse.”
“Dan, I don’t feel uncomfortable,” said Dave. “You never get out of hand or anything.”
“Who were you hugging, though?” asked Chrissy.
“I was hugging a five-thousand-year-old Egyptian cat deity,” I said, “who I know isn’t there, on my better days, but that doesn’t stop her from yapping constantly in my ear.”
Bastet pinched my spine. She’s never out of earshot.
“What’s she like?” asked Chrissy.
“She’s too human to worship―like they all are―but she’s exceedingly kind, for all her sarcasm,” I said. “She’s sort of a protector personality.”
“So long as she’s kind,” said Chrissy.
“Hey, where are we going tonight?” I asked.
“QKI’s,” Dave said. “I couldn’t get you on the list, though. You have money for the cover?”
I felt for my wallet and pulled it out. “Yeah, I’m all good,” I said.
“Great,” said Dave. “We’re meeting a friend of mine, there. She’s single and cute.”
What a segue. “Oh?” I said.
“I might have told her I was bringing my poet-physicist friend along,” said Dave.
“I’ll try not to talk to myself in front of her,” I said. “Thank you, but why do that?”
Dave shrugged. “Sometimes it’s just nice to help connect friends, and it seems like you might both be having trouble finding someone at the moment. Her name’s ‘Katie.’”
The obligatory moment of misplaced hope in impossible accidents flared and burned itself immediately into exhaustion.
“It’s not me,” whispered Bastet.
‘Any idea what she’s like, though?’ I thought.
“Huge pair of personalities, probably,” said Bastet,
‘What makes you say that?’ I wondered.
“Your luck,” she said.
I managed to hear “the voices” clearly enough over the blaring car stereo to channel them into another stanza of poetry before we arrived in Newark. We parked in a half empty lot, and Dave got a flask out of the trunk for us before we headed over to the club, because nobody actually gets drunk in the bar. That would require a steady full time job to fund, the kind which might instead support a shared living arrangement with a significant other. Some of us had significant others to consider, and some of us didn’t have steady full time jobs.
When Katie broke up with me, she didn’t say why. I didn’t ask her. She had started to cry as soon as the first words came out of her mouth, and I didn’t want to make things any harder, and it just seemed natural. She was an intelligent, creative girl who wasn’t in a position to support someone whose life had become a shambles. I stopped her, and I said it was okay and I understood. We hugged, and that was that.
Dave’s name was on the list at the club, and Chrissy and I were satisfied to pay for the change of pace. A remix of a song by Depeche Mode was playing as we entered. We got drinks, and we sat down in a booth. We joked about how “white” the dancing was, and Dave lambasted the DJ. Dave and I went for cigarettes, and Chrissy stood outside with us. He got pulled into conversations here and there while Chrissy and I talked about whiskey and music. When Dave found us again, we went to the bar for a second round. About the time we were served, we noticed an argument break out at the door, which Dave went over to while Chrissy and I seated ourselves back at a booth.
Bastet poked a feeler in from behind. “That’s her, Dan, at the entrance,” she said.
I looked over, but I could only see Dave and the bouncer through the door. ‘Does she have a huge pair of personalities?’ I asked her in my head.
“I take it back,” said Bastet. “Sometimes karma trumps luck.”
‘Well, is she intelligent?’ I wondered.
“Her brain is skinny and wrinkle free, at least,” said Bastet.
Dave and the other Katie came in with the cold. She wasn’t unpleasant to look at, I supposed, with long jet black hair, green eyes, white powder complexion, and copious latex and piercings. Some of us accept and even like latex and piercings, but something wasn’t quite right, about the delay at the door.
“I told them I knew you!” she said to Dave as they approached our booth. “I mean, how do they expect me to pay? …To get into this club? If I weren’t for me, they wouldn’t even have a DJ tonight―you know?”
“Katie,” said Dave, shooting me a smile that made me nervous, “this is Dan, the physicist-poet I was telling you about earlier.”
I stood up and started to offer a hand.
“Oh, well, hello,” she said, brushing past my hand for a hug that left me feeling slightly violated. “…But everyone calls me ‘Kitty.’”
“I take offense at that,” said a voice no one but me could hear.
“Kitty” winked. “They say I have the personality of a cat.”
“She licks herself,” said Bastet.
“You’re a physicist?” asked Kitty. “What’s that like? Maybe you could teach some of the guys I know a thing or two about the equations of motion, you think?”
“Bad pussy!” said the cat god.
I twitched, but I think I passed it off as an earthquake.
“I hate how Dave does that,” I said as we sat. “It’s flattering, but I’m not working in the field. I’m kind of in between careers, at the moment.”
“He’s also vegan,” Dave chimed. “I don’t know how he does it, but didn’t you say you were considering vegetarianism or veganism, Katie?”
Kitty nodded. “Considering,” she said, “but after a lot of soul searching and research, I think veganism might actually be socially irresponsible, in its own way. I read an article that pointed out that more animals are killed in the grain and vegetable farming operations necessary to support the diet, but they say that you are what you eat.”
My smile didn’t crack. No one but Bastet saw my head explode and reassemble itself in the course of those two sentences.
‘Think she ate a stupid cow?’ I asked Bastet.
“Mostly just penis,” said the cat god.
“Well, my reasons are rather more about sustainability than animal rights in particular,” I said, trying to tuck-and-roll past the argument about basing your worldview on one or two bad internet articles you find through social media.
“There are health reasons, too, though!” Kitty continued. “I hear it’s great for weight loss. I’ve considered it to try take some weight off my breasts, because they’re causing back problems for me and I’d rather do anything less invasive than reduction surgery, you know?”
“Huge kindness…” said the other Katie.
I gaped. I couldn’t help it. The other two of us at the table fidgeted.
“Do you think I could be sexy with small breasts?” she asked, fluttering her false lashes. “I mean, can brains carry a girl?”
“Weapons of mass deduction…” chirped Bastet.
Chrissy looked at me and smirked.
“I guess you should do what’s best for your health,” I said. I pretended only Bastet could see me cringe.
“Yeah,” she said, “I guess it’s like a guy and his dick. I’ve known some guys that were, well, huge, and it just makes all the difference in their confidence.”
“Tube sock full of bologna…” Bastet quipped.
It was happening: I was cracking again. I had hallucinated this conversation from the start, I couldn’t quite convince myself. How could I be the only one starting to laugh?
“Oh, but you find this funny,” she said with a predatory smile. “I wanted to shoot a video with my last boyfriend―you know―but he was too self conscious, and I think he started using a penis pump or something when I broke up with him.”
“’Pressure Treated Lumber’ on DVD…” said Bastet.
I couldn’t help the laughter, but I trained my eyes dead on hers. (I admit I sometimes scrunch up my face and try to project back in time on the astral plane to see the looks on the faces of Chrissy and Dave right then.)
“Would you ever be up for something like that?” she asked me. Her gaze turned intense and sultry. “I don’t use condoms, though,” she added.
I stopped laughing.
“Bring a coat hanger,” whispered the real Katie.
That did it. I reached for my drink and just barely managed to shoot it without choking. I pounded the table with the other hand and leaned over it.
“Dear Christ, I love you!” I said to nothing in particular.
Katie who doesn’t use condoms didn’t like that. Immediately, her face turned lurid and she was up from the table.
“Dave, your friend is fucking creepy,” she said. “I have to go. I said I’d meet another friend in New York, and you know what traffic is like, anyway.”
“Bumper-to-bumper…” said the good witch of the north.
Dave got up and chased after her. Chrissy closed her eyes and laughed deeply and wistfully.
“I think I need another drink,” she said, getting up to walk over to the bar.
I couldn’t take it. I tried to put a boulder on my laughter to crush it, but it sprayed out of every orifice. I made wild snorting noises like a buck or a bull. I flailed and gasped for air.
“Three hours ago, I was calling you the kindest person I’d ever met,” I said, still wracked by spasms of laughter.
“Dan―Dan, calm down,” she said in a lisping little whisper as I tried to comply. “I want you to listen very closely to me: if you can’t allow yourself a little laughter at the expense of someone who mostly deserves it, you will die.”
I started laughing even harder. I felt light headed. I saw amoebic spots before my eyes.
“Dan!” she whispered. “If you don’t at least make yourself that allowance, you will be pulverized under the weight of your fantasy.”
I stopped laughing, like someone had suddenly reached over and violently shaken me. In the next instant, I felt a hot, wet pressure behind my eyes.
“I will not let that happen,” she said.
Dave came up behind me and playfully slapped my back.
“Dan!” he said. “You alright, man?”
“Rather, you will not let you do that to yourself,” said Bastet.
Chrissy was close behind Dave, with three drinks in hand. She finished one in front of us as she stood. Dave smiled and reached out a hand toward one of the other shots expectantly. She glared at him and swallowed that one, too.
“Dave!” she yelled. “What were you thinking?!”
Dave’s shoulders fell. He patted me on the back.
“Man, she’s bat shit, but she’s hot,” he said. “I know it’s been a while for you, Dan, what with the illness and all. Maybe that’s all you get, sometimes.”
I thought I knew what he meant. In any case, no one had lost an appendage.
“Man, can we go home, soon?,” I asked him.
Chrissy looked at me with an expression I read pity in, and then she looked at the third shot. She tilted it back in one good swig.
Sooner or perhaps later, when Dave had sobered sufficiently to drive, we packed it in. Chrissy fell asleep in the front seat of the car while I finished the third stanza in the back. The couplet emerged somewhere around the point I trudged up the walk to my folks’ front door:
So long, so many ways we said “farewell”
to orchards left in trusting, given seed
in parks between a crimson carousel
and one more queue for something you don’t need.
Why circumscribe the pencil point for’er?
Why mourn an ocean’s passing with the tide?
The perfect model of systemic er’r
consuming expectation, I confide
in her, the kindest of my waking dreams
who gently scoops my cotton insides out,
renews the matted filling, heals the seams
upon my eyes, and draws me close about.
I picked a rocking horse to take the crown.
I bet my hand, then all the cards fell down.
“Success” is a funny word. It’s nearly lost on me. I don’t think Katie was thinking of it, either, when she broke up with me, or when she decided not to respond to my couple of attempts to reach out to her again. I hated that word in high school and my early adult life―like everyone was supposed to be on TV, make piles of money, and start a nuclear family. One can’t be a burden on the people who love them, though. There’s more to life than pretty words and searing feelings. I think of all the people I know chasing that ill defined dream, though, and all the uncritical assumptions about it that people seem to make. I would love to one day rise to the highest proverbial mountaintop and stake Katie’s banner in it in gratitude, to hold her arcane countenance up to humanity as the greatest “success” I know and as a model for my own, but from there it’s on the rest of the world to make the connection.
I don’t know if Katie will ever read the poem, but Bastet seems to like it.