Misplaced Identities

 @copyright 2020/Mike Consol

The Spiegel sisters sat on either side of me in my English composition class. They leaned forward and twisted their willowy bodies for their twice-weekly flirtations with me. One was named Tracy Spiegel and had cascading blonde hair reaching well below her shoulders. Jennifer Spiegel, a year younger than her sister, wore less makeup and had shorter dark hair tied in sprigs that burst in all directions from her scalp. They prattled back and forth while I tingled with the countervailing forces of their magnetic fields.

Our instructor and connoisseur of classic literature was a slightly crazed Irishman named Peter Gallagher. He spoke in a voice constantly rising and falling as he gave life to the dramatic characters from his most cherished novels. There was always a book tucked under one arm and he read from it at well-timed intervals, often from the back of the room so his words wouldn’t be diminished by any visual tics.

Today was different. Gallagher wasn’t himself. Agitation was etched across his forehead and his movements were palsied. He was carrying a sheaf of papers in his hand that he waved madly over his head.

“What kind of tripe have we here?” the professor said before slapping them onto his desktop. “I asked you to write a composition about the duality of man, and at least half of you lead with the very same sentence.”

He yanked a representative paper from the stack and read: “Webster’s defines duality as ‘a dual state or quality of being.’ ”

“How cliché can you people be? Could you possibly have written a more hackneyed opening sentence? If I wanted a definition I would have asked for one, or just opened up my own Webster’s. I ask all of you, is this college-level work? Well, Mr. Jimmy Tribeca, what do you have to say for yourself?

A hot rash ran across my skin. “I didn’t start my paper that way. I never touched my Webster’s. I started with the right and left hemispheres of the brain.”

“I know that,” Gallagher said. “I never ask a question I don’t already know the answer to. I used to be a lawyer until I realized the lives of fictional characters were much more interesting and less annoying than plaintiffs and defendants. I saw a lot of duality in those courtrooms, which was the genesis of this assignment, which at least half of you flunked miserably. The writing couldn’t have been more vapid. When I came across an unexpectedly clever turn of phrase I plugged it into Google and found a couple of incidents of plagiarism. Those papers not only have a red ‘F’ on the cover, you will also find a Post-It note affixed suggesting that we discuss your expulsion.”

Gallagher gazed about the room. “I see some of you making furtive glances at the basketball player.”

I looked around; some of my classmates were returning my stare.

“Has he been elected class spokesman? Is he braver or smarter than the rest of you? Are you expecting his competitive spirit to spill over? I used to play basketball. Most of my fellow players were dunces.”

The professor walked up my aisle with a paper in hand. He set it on my desktop with a rustle and pointed a well-manicured fingernail at a grade he had penned on the cover in blue ink. It said “A.”

“You got the highest grade in the class, Mr. Tribeca. Congratulations. So much for the dumb-jock stereotype. Then he turned sharply and walked back to the front of the room. His body went into a barely perceptible collapse as he admitted, “I’m not being fair. Someone stole my identity. It’s got me very tense, but that’s no reason to take it out on all of you, even if you did botch this assignment. Maybe I should take some responsibility for not explaining it thoroughly.”

Gallagher sat down. “There’s somebody out there pretending to be me – another Peter Gallagher. It’s a fairly common name, but this guy’s taken possession of my Social Security number and has opened a couple of credit card accounts in my name. He’s spending money on cosmetic procedures and call girls. He’s committed some other crimes and the police have shown up at my door. They cuffed me for a short time until they figured out what was going on. This is a very serious and disturbing felony. Identity theft is on the rise again. It’s almost like a home invasion. For all I know he will show up at my door one day, assassinate me and take possession of my entire life. If a man not resembling me shows up for class one day and introduces himself as Peter Gallagher, people, I would ask that you walk out of the class and telephone the authorities immediately. You’ll know him by his lack of English skills and literary knowledge.”

 

 

 

 

After class, Tracy and Jennifer Spiegel invited me to join them at their favorite lunch place, a pretentious joint named Caffé Mingo located in the city’s pompous Northwest District. It was a twenty-minute drive from campus in their Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible. They retracted the roof even though it was misting.

Our server, who I pegged as a cross-dresser, wore a perpetual sneer of superiority. I refused to talk to him. I just pointed to the menu item that said Tuna of Chicken, which was the bird poached and marinated in olive oil with sage leaves and slivered garlic and served on butter lettuce salad with a creamy dressing and pickled cherrie. The girls decided to split an equally condescending menu item that they mispronounced.

When we finished eating the Spiegel sisters also shared a cocktail named Insomnia. Its overwrought description called it a warm mix of house-infused vanilla vodka, Amaretto, Godiva Chocolate, Grand Marnier, a double shot of Illy expresso and finished with whipped cream.

Tracy said, “What did you think of Gallagher today?”

“That was freaky,” I said.

“Talk about dualism,” Jennifer said. “There’s an alternate Peter Gallagher, one with all the same data. I wonder what he looks like.”

“They never catch those guys,” I said.

Tracy said, “Why is that?”

“They just don’t. It’s like those guys who send out e-mails about money from Nigeria. They’ve been doing it for years and there’s never news about anybody getting arrested.”

“My spam folder keeps filling up with magic formulas for penile enhancement,” Tracy said.

Jennifer put a hand to her mouth and giggled. “I can get a $250,000 life insurance policy for ten bucks.”

“Try this one,” I said. “Five hundred business cards for ninety-nine cents. The shipping and handling fee is probably forty-nine ninety-five.”

“I think they’re trying to steal your identity,” Jennifer said.

“I’ve been promised rapid weight loss with Acacia Berry,” Tracy said.

“You’re not overweight,” I said.

“Yeah, but she’s getting older,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got a pill in my spam folder that contains a high concentration of resveratrol that will reverse the aging process.”

“Resveratrol?” Tracy said.

“It’s the stuff in red wine,” Jennifer said. “They swear their pills are super concentrated with the stuff. You’d have to drink nine thousand bottles of wine per day to get the same amount.”

Tracy said, “A guy named Robert G. Allen says I can make $24,000 in 24 hours.”

“That’s probably the guy who stole Professor Gallagher’s identity,” I said.

“Don’t even try unsubscribing from those spam e-mails. That just proves they have a live e-mail address, then they sell it to a thousand more scammers and you really get buried in spam.”

Tracy said, “Do you have a girlfriend, Jimmy?”

“I have a nurse named Alicia.”

“Have you given any thought to Spring Break?” Jennifer asked. “This year we’re heading for Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. We always recruit a few guys to go along with us. We go wild.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Tracy said, “you won’t find us being sold on video.”

As they continued working on their cocktail, the Spiegel sisters shared the same straw, pivoting it back and forth to take sips.

“Our mom and dad are going to be visiting campus in a few weeks. Maybe we can introduce them to you. Dad’s a basketball fan. I heard him say that you’re a masterful ball handler. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Big compliment.”

“Dad makes a lot of money doing dumb things,” Jennifer said. “We’re talking Amway and Shaklee and a bunch of other multi-level marketing schemes.”

“So the stuff works. You said your dad made a lot of money.”

“Yeah, but he works at it twenty-four hours a day and our house is always full of boxes. They’re stacked everywhere and he gets confused about what box contains what merchandise. Sometimes he ships the wrong stuff. It gets messy.”

“Dad goes to one of those churches that teach having money is evidence that you’re right with the Lord. That’s how God blesses you, the minister says. He showers you with money. I guess the poor are shit outta luck. If they had true faith they wouldn’t be poor.”

“So that’s your father. I haven’t heard you say anything about your mother.”

“She’s bipolar,” Tracy said. “Tons of fun when she’s manic. She’s up all night and full of energy. Then she crashes and all she does is sleep or complain. There are drugs that can control her mood swings, but dad insists she shouldn’t take them because the side effects are worse than the bi-polar.”

Tracy went back to her straw.

“Poor daddy,” Jennifer mused. “He’s had it so rough and been such a trooper. A lot of men would have bailed years ago. He insisted that we attend the same college because he wanted us to look out for each other. He doesn’t say it, but I know he’s got this fear that one of us inherited mom’s bi-polar gene and it just hasn’t activated yet.”

Tracy said, “How are you going to make money, Jimmy? How is God going to bless you?”

“You know I’m a psychology major.”

“So you’ll help people like my mother?”

“I’m more interested in laboratory research – parapsychology, ESP, telepathy, the occult.”

“There’s not a whole lot of financial blessings in that field,” Tracy said.

“That’s true. Then again, I’m not planning on attending your dad’s church.”

I picked up the bill and the Spiegel sisters insisted on getting the tip. We drove back to campus with the Cabriolet’s top down.

Rain drizzled from the sky.

 

 

 

 

After basketball practice two days later, I got back to the dormitory and found two young women knocking at my door. It was the Spiegel sisters from English Composition class, Tracy with the sweeping blonde hair and Jennifer with the short, dark bursts of hair.

“I’m on this side of the door,” I said.

They looked at me daftly.

“How did you girls find me?”

“We asked,” Jennifer said. “You’re not hard to find.”

“There was a woman knocking when we got here,” Tracy added. “Nobody answered so she looked at her watch and left.”

“Then what happened?”

“We started knocking,” Jennifer said.

“How long have you been knocking?”

“A couple of minutes, then you showed up.”

“You thought your knocking would get a different result than the woman before you?”

“We knocked louder,” Tracy said. “And we used a couple different beats. We thought you might be asleep and needed to be woken up. Was that your nurse?”

“Yes. Alicia. She’s a good friend.”

Jennifer said, “She’s really pretty. Can you just be friends with a woman that good looking?”

“We don’t have sex,” I lied, “if that’s what you mean.”

I unlocked the door and invited the girls in.

Tracy said, “We heard you guys won last night.”

“It was no contest. We took Pacific to school.”

“Do you want to get some breakfast?”

“Which one of you is going to cook?”

They smiled at one another and then laughed.

“We thought we would leave cooking to the professionals,” Jennifer said.

“Mother always made me breakfast in the morning,” I said. “It would be so nice to have a homemade breakfast.”

The Spiegel sisters were looking at one another again.

“Our apartment has a kitchen,” Jennifer said. “We’re not much for cooking but how can anybody mess up eggs and toast?”

“My thought exactly. We can stop at the store on the way and I’ll buy the groceries.”

 

 

 

 

The Spiegel sisters teamed up on breakfast but were having trouble focusing and talking with me at the same time. The eggs were sloppy, the potatoes were burned and the coffee was weak. It didn’t matter. We had a good time. We sat around and let the food settle in our stomachs. The girls shared a love seat and I was positioned on a big, overstuffed living-room chair.

The conversation was mostly superficial until Jennifer Spiegel asked the table-turner of a question. “If you’re not having sex with that woman who came to your room, perhaps you would like to have sex with us.”

“Perhaps,” I lamely replied, “we could put that on the schedule.”

The girls let out an air-headed giggle.

Tracy said, “Maybe we can torch the calendar and seize the moment.”

They both moved toward me. Jennifer went mouth-to-mouth with me, her tongue giving me a dental examination. Tracy circle around back and rubbed my shoulders and neck. After a few minutes they traded places. Tracy was the better kisser. Soon her hands were running down my chest and stomach and onto my lap. As if having two beautiful co-eds wasn’t arousing enough, the Viagara taken before we left my dorm was fully expressing itself. It was a thing young men these days — perfectly potent and yet wanting to pop record-breaking erections with the aid of pharmaceuticals. Following the path of least resistance, the smoldering ramrod muscled its way out of my jockey shorts and shot down my left pant-leg, heating the flesh of my inner thigh. Tracy had taken hold of it now with both hands and was navigating like it was an oar and I was her canoe.

“Holy shit,” she said.

The girls were climbing all over me. I was lurching, bucking and twitching in my attempts to break the untamed bronco between my legs. Tracy’s face was in my lap and she started tugging at the waist of my jeans. Before the Spiegel sisters could get any further, the fully formed visage of Alicia appeared to my mind’s eye – the sweet and savory Alicia. How could I two-time or three-time her, especially after all the ministrations she had provided during her off-duty hours from the hospital’s nursing department, after all she had done in taking care of my minor yet persistent basketball injuries? She was a quirky woman, for sure, but a substantive one, a lady magnitudes beyond these promiscuous co-eds who were behaving like groupies.

 In a panic I stood up, shedding the girls. Tracy fell backwards onto the carpet and Jennifer rolled off my shoulders and onto the chair.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tracy said.

I started moving in circles, trying to walk off the erection.

“Sorry ladies. I really can’t do this right now.”

“The hell you can’t,” Jennifer cried, looking down to my crotch, to the cock that was straining mightily against the inner seam of my Levi 501s. I could swear that a little more force and it would come ripping through the stitching and take a proud stand. “You’ve got a third leg in there.”

“You’ve got the both of us,” Tracy said. “We can handle it.”

“I really have to go. I lost track of time. I’m already late for a team practice.” It was a lie, but I was certain the Spiegel sisters didn’t know Sunday was a non-practice day.

“Can’t you miss one practice?” Jennifer said. “No man turns down two women. You obviously want this. Breakfast at our place was your idea. Stop fighting the urge.”

“Really,” I said, walking in another circle, “I have to go.”

Tracy grabbed the keys to the Volkswagen Cabriolet off the counter. “I don’t believe this.” Her comment was a snarl.

I held my jacket in front of my pants to conceal the erection as we exited the apartment. The Spiegel sisters were not accustomed to rejection, and I wasn’t accustomed to turning away beautiful young women. This was different, though. There were extenuating circumstances.

The Spiegel sisters were stone silent on the drive back to campus.

When I stepped out of the car I tried to thank them for breakfast. All that came back was a cold glare from Tracy and flip remark from Jennifer. “Have fun playing with the boys.”

 

 

 

 

Alicia and I were having “sex” again by my definition and “foreplay” by her definition. The vagina was off limits, so we used all other parts and labor at our disposal to express sensuality and orchestrate our crescendos. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that body images of Tracy and Jennifer Spiegel went flitting through my head at the moment of impact.

I was tempted to tell Alicia about the incident, that the young vamps had come onto me, were clinging to my body when I rebuffed them by standing to make a quick exit, leaving their fallen and crumpled bodies on the floor. With the proper editing my story could be turned from a shameful encounter into a heroic act of monogamy. I didn’t go there. Woman always had their suspicions. Alicia would start asking questions. Chiefly, how I ended up at their apartment and why I had put myself in such a blatantly compromising position. What about my behavior sent signals to the Spiegel sisters that a physical encounter could even be considered?

Women have instincts.

Other ghosts haunted our union. There were still secrets in our relationship. She didn’t even know yet that I smoked pot. If we could just keep our relationship on a superficial plane everything would be fine.

 

 

 

 

The next afternoon, on my way to basketball practice, I ran into Professor Peter Gallagher. He wanted to know why I was absent from his English Composition class that morning. I had skipped all my classes that day out of laziness, but told him a twenty-four hour bug had burrowed into my system the day before and I had just recuperated.

“It’s too bad you missed today’s class. My lecture was about the villains of literature – Samuel Whiskers, Robert Lovelace, Claudius, Pinkie Brown, Svengali, Hannibal Lecter and, of course, Count Dracula. I think I nailed it.”

“Wish I had been there.”

“Me too. It was my best lecture of the year. I’m sure you could have made a contribution to the discussion.”

“I’ll be at the next class.”

“By the way,” Gallagher said, “I got my identity back. They caught up with the guy in Ottawa of all places. He was an American pretending to be a Canadian pretending to be an American. Racked up more than $200,000 worth of goods, services and adventure travel on my credit cards. He doesn’t even look like me.”

“That’s a lot of dough, professor. Are you on the hook for all that?”

“Hell no. The credit card companies and banks sucked it up. I wasn’t going to pay it. I didn’t do anything illegal.”

“That makes me feel good, professor. You definitely have not been the same Peter Gallagher since your ID was stolen. I understand now what a vicious crime it is.”

“I wish the judicial system agreed. I pressed charges and testified against him, but the court knocked the charge down to a misdemeanor because it was the first time he stole an identity. He’s going to do a week in jail and a few years probation. We have no sense of justice in this country when it comes to white-collar crime.”

“How are you going to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” I said. “How does a person guard against identity theft?”

“The big one is don’t give your Social Security number to anyone, regardless of how mandatory they claim it is. Nobody knows where mine leaked from. The guy who stole mine bought pilfered Social Security numbers in bulk.”

“Outrageous.”

“I suspect mine leaked from a doctor’s office or an auto insurance company. Maybe even from one of the credit card companies. They’re getting hacked all the time. Fifty million records stolen here, one hundred million there.”

“So you’re back to normal?”

“I’ll never be the same. I’ve had to rebuild my identity. It’s a tremendous amount of paperwork and bureaucracy. I don’t feel like the same person anymore.”

“Who do you feel like?”

“A binary version of my old self. Everything’s electronic now. I’m a nine-digit number. That’s my ultimate identifier. If I give the authorities my name, they won’t believe me. If I give them my number, they have all the goods. I’m an English Comp professor, for crying out loud, a man of letters. Now I live in a numerical world where my words are no good.”

 

 

 

 

On Saturday morning I went to the Student Union and lined up at the cafeteria for some breakfast. After being served I looked for a clean place to sit when I noticed a female head with bursts of hair randomly springing from it. As I circled around I had no trouble recognizing that it was Jennifer Spiegel, despite the oversized pair of extra-dark sunglasses. She was hunched over a coffee of cup and her hands were wrapped around the white porcelain. Everything about her posture said she was cold and trying to transfer heat from the cup to her body.

I put a hand on the chair across from her and said, “May I?” She ignored me so I pulled the chair back and took a seat.

She sipped her coffee.

“Where’s your sister?”

“In bloody hell, for all I care.”

The surprise registered on my face. “Oh boy … trouble in sibling paradise. I’ve never seen one of you without the other. What are you going to do about Spring Break?”

“If she’s still planning on Catalina Island, I’ll head the other direction. Maybe the weather report will be good in Nova Scotia.”

I reached across the table and carefully removed her sunglasses. Jennifer Spiegel’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot. The light makeup she usually wore, black mascara and violet eye shadow, had been washed away. Embarrassed, she turned her face toward her shoulder.

“Tracy slept with my guy.” She retook the sunglasses and set them back on her face.

“I was under the impression you two shared everything.”

“Ever since we were teenagers,” she said. “We cut our thumbs and took a blood oath like kids in a Huck Finn novel. We agreed to share everything forevermore.” She wept a bit more. “We don’t even have our own clothes. We shop together and agree on what we’re going to own. One wardrobe for two women. It saves money but it’s limiting. I saw an incredible pair of knee-high suede boots I wanted to buy — cuffs, laces, the works. Tracy vetoed the purchase. Our boobs are the same size, so I don’t even have my own bras. She insists on thong panties because that’s what the guys like. I hate those butt-flossers, so I run around panty-less.”

It was the kind of disclosure that sends tingles through a young man. A completely naked girl but for the mini-skirt and tights.

“I just wanted something of my own,” she sniffled. “A guy of my own. Then she went and slept with him.”

The inseparable Spiegel sisters suddenly had a chasm between them. Territoriality had finally asserted itself. Maybe it was inevitable. More famous couples with far more at stake had their falling outs. Lennon and McCartney. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Elvis and Priscilla.

“He must have been a pretty special guy if you wanted him all to yourself,” I said.

“That’s just it, there’s nothing special about him at all,” she said. “He’s super ordinary. I felt bad about keeping something from my sister, so I picked a guy I didn’t think would make a difference to Tracy.”

“How did you get caught?”

She turned a defiant cheek.

“I’m sorry. I admit, I’m curious.” I waited five seconds, hoping she would reconsider the inquiry. “Forget it,” I said. “It was a nosey question.”

“Blame it on cell-phone records,” she finally said. “We have a shared calling plan, of course. Tracy got suspicious about a number she didn’t recognize. She must have called and heard a stranger’s voice. Then she lied and said she’d be gone for the weekend, supposedly camping in Columbia River Gorge as part of an outdoor survival workshop. Saturday night she came crashing through my bedroom door and caught me riding Evan like a jockey at Churchill Downs. My first instinct was to lie, so I told sis I had just met him. Well … she knew better than that because of the phone bills. Tracy had proof we had been talking for weeks, so I was busted.”

I took the cup from her hands and refilled it with coffee. When I set it down she wrapped her chilled hands back around the re-heated porcelain.

“I tried to reason with her. When I told her I wanted something of my own she went ballistic and reminded me about our blood oath. Even though we were only thirteen and fourteen years old at the time, she insists that we hold to a childhood pact.”

Jennifer Spiegel’s face disappeared behind her sunglasses and coffee cup for a few moments.

“A couple days later Evan’s in the apartment again and he’s on his back and this time she’s in the saddle going at it like Willie Shoemaker. Tracy had timed the whole thing with my class schedule so I would walk in and find them.”

“Your sister thought you were disloyal to her, so she retaliated,” I said. “She wanted to show you what it was like. She sees your sibling relationship as the primary one in your lives. It’s blood. It’s family. You two have been together from the beginning. In her mind there’s no other relationship that can possibly equal that.”

Even through the darkness and UV protection of the sunglasses I could feel Jennifer Spiegel’s scorching glare.

“I’m not taking sides,” I said. “I’m just giving voice to your sister’s perspective.”

“Is this the Psychology Major in you?”

Sort of. You, on the other hand, want some independence. You’re the younger sister. Every younger sister wants to step out of her older sister’s shadow. Tracy doesn’t understand your motivation. You were trying to be loyal to her while being true to yourself. It’s all very natural and human. I think with a little effort you two can come to an understanding. You and Evan might even get back together with Tracy’s blessing.”

“It’s over with Evan. I wouldn’t touch him again. He’s been contaminated by her and her lies and deceit and her stinky goo.”

A passing couple glanced over, having detected the venomous tone of Jennifer Spiegel’s words, if not their meaning.

“Regardless, you two should go into relationship counseling,” I said.

“Yeah, right. Relationship counseling with my sister. Sounds creepy.”

 @copyright 2020/Mike Consol