An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

Alfred north whitehead.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, ... that we should cultivate

the habit of thinking of what we are doing.

The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them

Jesus Christ, I can’t get out of going to Herb’s 45^th birthday party , no matter how hard I try. 

Damn email came three days ago. “Join Herb and his honey for a b-day blast at the beach, rsvp”. Picture of Herb’s cherubic, typically clueless but hopefully sexually satiated (finally!) face, next to a woman with enormous white teeth, smiling with a delicate tanned arm around his shoulder. I knew this girl only too well.  Also, I’ve known Herb since second grade.

You see the problem, I hope.

Herb doesn’t know the extent of my relationship with Miss Smiley Face, is the thing. And given the amount of free alcohol that will be available on the beach due to Herb’s infinite largesse, I knew it would be difficult for me to keep my mouth shut.  I am a silly gentle drunk, but I tend to leak secrets that cause violence to my relationships. I also leak other stuff too. God help me..

I programmed Herb’s beach locale into my new GPS, or Juliette, as I called her. Strict but not pushy authoritative English chick accent. Not unlike Herb’s new squeeze.

She was a high class girl whom I had the misfortune to meet one night at a bar near Herb’s beachfront “mansion”, where I sought escape from his …largesse.  He was planning a nude Charades game, with generous prizes. Like trips to Aruba. I had no need to get naked at the time, and made my apologies and split for one last beer at the bar, where I was somewhat known. Not too well known, though. I expected a sullen solitude.

Then: 

She was in a pink tanktop and short flowery summery skirt that night. Miss Smiley. Her English accent intrigued me. A graduate of Oxford, no less: mathematics. Christ. I couldn’t picture her hunched over a notepad doing advanced calculus,that’s for sure. I suspected she might be fibbing about her math degree, so I tested her with a completely forgettable question about the seeming discrepancy between male and female math whizzes, and what it meant, regarding womens’ logical brains, etc.  I admit, there was some tease in my innocent query.

Good god, what a mistake. She went on for 10 minutes telling me about her unfortunate experieces as a girl in a man’s world, all that ridiculous male jealousy & resentment about some sunny little beauty sitting in class, probably in shorts, leg tucked under leg, pencil in hand, scribbling at mens’ speed. A damn distraction for the geeks, we laughed. We laughed about a lot of math stuff. Derivatives and integrations. I put a nice metaphorical spin on that, and she was mine.

We ambled down to the beach, on a summer evening, a made-to-order cool breeze blowing onshore to alleviate our respective heats.  My heat was immense. Hers was too, judging from the girly indentations on the front of her cute little t shirt that i know were not there earlier.

She raised her tee up over a soft lush belly, and tied it back. Squeezing her breasts into a fine little slingshot . Then she kicked off her pink sandals.

She sat down, plop, cross-legged at the point where the tide just reached her exquisite knees. I enjoyed the way she she talked about math.She waxed profound in  a most unusual way. She got, well, provocative about asymptotes. How the distance between the curve and the line aches infinitely to get to zero, but never makes it. No intersection. She seemed sad about that.She would rest her hands on her lap when I responded. Pushing the skirt up her thighs so as to keep it dry from that tide.

....................................................

Awhile later we were trying our darndest to disprove her wacky theory. On the soft sand. Warm water randomly licking our limbs. We were right at that tide point.I thought of infinitely small distances, how they sometimes just never get to zero. I hoped so much that it was not so. I tried to make it not so. So did she, bless her heart. Her mathematical heart.

Later, much later, thank you very much (I was drunk but not in any way sexually impaired) we lay in the dry sand, licking and gently brushing off salt and sand hither and yon on our flushed flesh, and slso the occasional little teeny crab that tickled our legs. She captured one, and named him “Jimmy”. I was delighted. We talked and talked til the sun came up, and we were  very dry , inside and out. Dry as a math proof.

“I have a big morning, love. Monday, y’know?” she said as she pulled the tee back on, put on the sandals, but left the skirt over her lap. She went into a pocket of it and pulled out some equations. Mulled them. I handed her her pencil. It was dry and sharp. 

 “Me too. Lovely to have made acquaintance of you, my dear, and email me about those asymptotes,” I said, respectfully getting the hint to get lost, retreating back down the beach to Herb’s.  I needed a shower and to get on my Harley and go. Hope Herb hadn't missed me too much..he was a damn good friend. I would ask him about how the naked charades went. Who got that trip to wherever...

………………………………….

I followed the GPS lady’s instructions in a haze . How the hell would I deal with this situation? Herb and I had grown up together, him my straight man, me the genius jester. One thing about being a jester is you can’t really control your tongue . Especially after Herb shoves a pint glass of Guiness in your greedy hand..I was getting angry at Herb for being such a good guy. For his largesse.

I wasn’t paying attention until, “destination on your left,” I heard. We were nowhere near the beach. WTF? I pulled into a McDonald’s and sat, flummoxed, pounding the GPS of course. That never works.

A tap on my back window. It was she.

She jumped in the back seat and said, “sorry I had to rig your GPS, but this is urgent.”

“What kind of ‘urgent’?” I asked, delighted but also disturbed, in a strategical way.I don't appreciate random variables much.

“Math urgent. I gotta figure this one out , and I am stymied… I thought of all my friends who know math, but they would just laugh, stupid male pigs. You are pretty enlightened for a p….uh, a man, so I thought of you.”

She was in another summery skirt, and jumped crosslegged into my back seat, laptop nudging nude knees...damn woman, she just shucked off her sandals and made herself at home.

“You rigged my gps for a math issue,” I almost laughed.

“Baby, it’s a big one.  I found a curve in my research that defies the usual rules of ‘asymptote’. Here, I got it on my laptop.”

I stuck my face in the back seat and marveled.

“well, shit, lady. “

“yeah, I know, huh?” I loved that smile of hers.

“What about Herb,” I innocently inquired, though I gave not a shit.

“He supports my work. You know that about him.”

I got in the backseat and we got into math-mode. This was the most intriguing curve I had ever encountered.