Harold Riddle: My Date With Emma Watson, Which Has Nothing to Do With This Site

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

My Date With Emma Watson, Which Has Nothing to Do With This Site

Urlesque has interviewed Mark Baumer twice, once after he walked across America, again when he decided to eat a pizza every day. We found his voice singularly spare, odd and haunting. So when he sent us a piece he'd written about a date with Emma Watson, which isn't even on Urlesque's beat, we said "what the hell" and published it. -- Ed.

Emma Watson is in some movies. She goes to Brown University. She wears the same shirt every day because she is a model for Burberry. She is paid to be who she is because she is Emma Watson and Emma Watson is famous.

I go to Brown University. I am a graduate student. I teach a class. My students like to gossip about Emma Watson. They tell me about the shirt she wears every day. I am jealous of her ability to wear the same clothes again and again. I want my style to repeat endlessly like her. I want a Burberry contract. Someone should mail me a Marc Jacobs white t-shirt. I will wear it every day if you pay me some money.

I was at the train station once. Emma Watson sat on a bench at the train station. I asked her where she was going. She said she was going to New York. I said, "I am looking to mouth some sandwiches." Emma Watson said, "There is a nice place downtown where you can put a sandwich in your mouth." It felt good to talk to Emma Watson because I once had a girlfriend and then we broke up and I sometimes worry that I have forgotten how to talk to girls. After I talked to Emma Watson I left the train station. Eventually my ex-girlfriend called and asked what I was doing. I told her I was eating a sandwich.

In the spring she visited. We walked on the poor side of Providence because I live in a ghetto, but it isn't that bad because the area is becoming gentrified or at least that's what someone told me. I am not quite sure what "gentrified" means but I'm guessing it means "white people eating poor people" or maybe it has something to do with rich people making poor people eat sandwiches that are nothing but cheese, bacon, and fried chicken. I live near a KFC. It is across the street from a graveyard. KFC sells a sandwich that is nothing but cheese, bacon, and fried chicken. There is no bread on this sandwich.

It rained because in the spring it tends to rain. She said she was hungry. We stopped at the pho restaurant next to McDonald's across the street from my apartment. I once saw a homeless man in a wheelchair peeing in the parking lot of McDonald's. We went inside the pho restaurant and looked at menus. There was a fish tank, but I was tired of looking at fish tanks so I didn't look at it. After we ordered we had to wait because I guess capitalism is an imperfect system. Eventually, a woman handed me a brown paper bag. Our soup was in a brown paper bag.

My apartment is furnished with three chandeliers and Victorian-era furniture. My landlord's aunt died and he filled all his apartments with the furniture he inherited from her. We sat on the bed of my landlord's dead aunt and ate our soup. A few hours passed. We probably watched a movie. I think it was the Ben Stiller movie where he tries to build a doghouse and it makes him sad so he yells.

A few weeks after she left I had a dream Emma Watson and I were walking on the side of the road. I asked Emma Watson a question. She didn't answer. We kept walking. I walked ahead of her. She ran into a convenience store. I kept walking because I didn't know she went into a convenience store. The pavement ended and turned to sand. I asked Emma Watson a question. She didn't answer. I was alone. I could not find her. I returned to the pavement. I found a convenience store. Emma Watson had bought a bottle of Fiji water. I did not tell her I was thirsty. I asked if she wanted to play basketball because I knew I would probably beat her. We walked to some basketball courts. Three guys were playing. I began to wrestle one of them. Emma Watson went in a building. I stopped wrestling and followed her. A station wagon was parked outside the building. There were four basketball hoops in the building. A family on vacation was showering in the corner of the building. A friend of mine arrived. Emma Watson began to melt into a blonde girl from a television show I watch. I realized we were in my friend's house. Emma Watson was now blonde and less skinny than Emma Watson is in real life. I could smell a barbeque. I went in the kitchen. A large fat bald man was sorting the condiments in the refrigerator. He turned his head. There was a large growth extending from the back of his head. It was shaped like a dolphin. I asked my friend about this man's skin dolphin. My friend said, "He's had many surgeries. It used to be a lot worse."

The last time I saw Emma Watson she was standing next to a bench looking in her bag. I went to get a drink at the water fountain. When I came back she was gone.