Rogue Scholar

"He's having sex with my shoes!" she said in her accent born of a French speaking family in Quebec, tempered on the rails and train station platforms of Chicago and honed to a razor edge serving up sex-on-the-beach along L.A.'s sunset strip. Josee always had a story to tell. They were like the smoke from her cigarettes. They came as easy as exhaling. Like her cigarettes, her stories should have required a warning label. There's a lot you can learn from people like Josee who live on the edge of ordinary. Just be careful if you're going to try this at home.

I stifle a burst of laughter imagining her new pot-bellied pig having orgies in her closet.
"Every day when I get home all my shoes are full of sperm. He must go at it all day long," she explained seriously. "I started hiding my shoes, but then he goes for the rug instead."
"Maybe he just needs a girlfriend?" I suggest.
"What am I going to do with more pigs? I don't live on a farm you know. I live in a studio."
I didn’t have an answer for her, but it didn’t matter, she never had much use for other people's advice.

Katharine Hepburn on men - "The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend."

"I forgot how good sex is in French," she told me when she got back. Josee had been home for the holidays when she was reacquainted with her childhood friend. He was a second cousin to her by marriage. Her entire vacation was spent with him. She had that certain je ne sais quoi with men.
"He's a little hottie. Just wait till you meet him. He's coming out to visit next month."

"Where's he going to stay?" I asked.
"With me and my boyfriend," she said as if that was obvious. Josee never had much concern for people's social hang-ups.
"Does he know you're sleeping together?" I asked.
"Are you kidding? Why would I tell him? They barely speak the same language."
Every day while Josee's cousin was in town, she showed him the island [and a good time]. Every night, she was a gracious host in front of her boyfriend. Out together, the guys got along splendidly. Apparently they had a lot in common.
"I'm glad he's going home tomorrow," she told me at the end of the week. "I'm tired of trying to keep track of these two."

Bill Bryson on fear of wild animals- "Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death..."

"I'm going to look at the parasites," she announced. "I'm going to scrape them off the shark and identify them under a microscope."
She was going to South Africa to study sharks for her senior thesis and shoot a documentary. It was hard to imagine this tiny green-eyed girl collecting parasites from live, flesh-eating predators. I could see other problems with her plan too, like money.



At the end of summer, I was watching the footage she captured of great white sharks. It was amazing. The borrowed submersible camera was safely back at the university, and so was she, with more stories. “When I was filming the sharks, I would forget I was in the water with them. I was concentrating so hard on making sure I got the shot," she explained, "until they bumped the camera."
She said the scariest part of the trip wasn't the sharks, it was the place where she had arranged to stay. "Nobody went out at night. There were guard dogs inside the wall and guns by the door."

Excerpt from internet joke on job recruiting - "...Then Bill Gates asks candidates who do not have management diplomas to leave. 500 people leave the room. [Insert name here] says to himself, 'I left school at 15 but what have I got to lose?' So he stays in the room."

Just before graduation, she showed me the job announcement she had applied for. It was perfect for her. She seemed unconcerned about several gaping chasms in her resume.
"This says you need a PhD and management experience," I said.
"If I was qualified for the job I'd already be doing it. What have I got to lose?"

Two weeks later, she started her new job. In the company's newsletter they introduced her, "Josee is a hot commodity... [and] as anyone who has worked with her will attest, is hard-working, conscientious and a lot of fun to be around." I knew she was going to like working there.

Mario Andretti on life - "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."

A few months later Josee came by to see me. The clothes were new, but she had the same just-out-of-bed hairstyle. She had something to show me. We walked outside and she tossed me her keys.
“Let’s go for a ride,” she said with a smile as she slid into the passenger seat of a brand new convertible Mercedes.
I tried to look casual as I jumped into the driver’s seat. It smelled like leather and a lot of money. I turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred while my heart skipped around in my chest. I carefully steered around the other cars in the lot.
“C'mon, I just picked it up. Let’s see how fast it’ll go,” she said as we pulled on to the street.
I floored it all the way to the coffee shop parking lot like the street was on fire. Heads turned to see two wind-blown blonds stepping out of the sports car.

We laughed and reminisced. I could learn to like this, I thought, living just a little out of control.