Secret History of the Goat

I only ever kissed her once and we never even fucked.  I know Nick said he
caught us screwing, but Nick didn't see what he thought he saw.  And Nick is
a liar anyway. 

No, I loved Mallorie, that's for sure, but it never got past that one kiss. 
She was too drunk to consent and I was too much of a gentleman to take
advantage.  Back then, that is.  Shit happens.  People change.  I sure as
hell ain't a gentleman no more.  But still, I know it wasn't my fault.  I'm
not the one who fucked her and I'm not the one who fucked it all up.  I just
sat back and let it happen.  So maybe it is my fault a little, but for sure
I didn't start it.  I just kissed her.  It isn't my fault she went bat shit.

We'd all been drinking.  That was what we did.  That was all we did except
maybe smoke weed.  I didn't like to smoke, though, so I stuck to the cheap
beer and whiskey.  Being all of seventeen we had to keep our boozing hidden
away so we mostly drank down at the trestle.  It was a good place to hide
from cops or whatever because you could see them coming and head out the
opposite way before they even got close. We didn't have any place else to go
since none of us had cars.  So, that night- July sixth, 1989- Mallorie,
Nick, Gloom, Dave One and myself were hanging at the trestle. 

Yeah, we had some nicknames, I guess.  Gloom was just about the smiliest guy
you'd ever meet, so I don't know why we called him that.  Maybe it was
supposed to be ironic.  Or maybe he just had a bad day once and
got stuck with a name that didn't make sense.  Whatever it was he had that
name before I ever met him and I never asked why.  Where did Dave One get
his name, you ask?  Well, that one's a no-brainer.  We didn't want to
confuse him with Dave Two.  Of course, Dave Two insisted that he should be
Dave One since he was older, but nobody cared. 

It didn't take much to get me shitfaced back then.  I was a lightweight. 
Really, I only weighed about one-thirty and I was six-two so I looked like a
goddamn coat rack.  But they didn't call me Coatrack.  Nope, they called me
Goat.  The Goat, Goatman, Mr. Goat, Getcha Goat.  I had about a dozen
nicknames. for real, but they all pretty much had the word 'goat' in them. 
I'm pretty sure it was because I had a goatee, but it's hard to remember for
certain every little detail.  So let me focus on the important shit.

I first met Mallorie a month before the night of our one and only kiss.  It
was around graduation day.  We went to the same school, but never met on
account of her being a freshman and me a senior.  She struck my heart right
off.  She wasn't the prettiest thing around, and she dressed like a rag
doll, but something in her voice and the way she looked at you over a cigarette
just got my attention right off.  From the git-go I was obsessed.  I was
hanging with Dave One and Dave Two when Dave One's girlfriend, Wendy showed up
with her best friend.  Her straw-colored hair was about as ordinary as no
mail on Sunday and her roundish face was as plain as mashed potatoes with
nothing.  But one look and I felt it.  She was different from anyone I'd
ever met.  When she laughed it was like she knew something and wasn't
letting on.  When she looked at you it was like she saw a tiger behind you
and didn't even care.  She was absolutely average in every way, except that
she was totally fucking beautiful.  You don't get it, do you?

That first night I tried to talk to her, but I couldn't make words happen
with my mouth.  So I just stared and she knew it.  She got in close to me
with her cigarette and looked right at me.

"Who the hell are you?"  she said, exhaling white smoke into my eyes.

"Eric Perry is my name, " I said, " but they all call me Goat".

Most girls would look at me like I was joking when I told them that.  Not
Mal.  No way, she lifted her chin up and released a stream of cancer from
her mouth.  After a hot second she just sad, "Baa."

That's it.  Most guys would have thought nothing of it, but I read a million
words into that one barnyard noise. 


"Motherfucking, Baa."  I responded.  I didn't speak to her again for at least a week.



(more to come later)