Fool Circle, pts. 1 & 2

Fool Circle
By Dutch Pearce

pt. 1

  Cue the piano intro that's played just so perfectly and chromatically it can mean only one thing; our protagonist has had his bittersweet epiphany. The ending of a great movie that leaves you smiling, but only to keep you from even thinking about crying, and you think about it for hours afterwards, sometimes days, trying to figure out if you're okay with it. If you're okay with the ending. If you're okay with reality. Sometimes I guess you'd prefer the Hollywood ending; the cheesy, plastic pop rock intro that’s played when he goes running up to the girl and kisses her. However, this time it’s different. This time he doesn’t really get what you want him to, and he loses some things you’d rather he didn’t, but most importantly; he does get a better version of himself. He gets a tightly closed-lip nod that holds back the tears and makes you go “hmph” and then say, “That was really good.” And it was. I think so, at least, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before I tell exactly what that epiphany entailed, let me tell you how he reached it . . . or how I reached it, rather.
 

  Our voices were soaked in reverb, which usually meant we were both talking on the phone while shitting. It became a ritual of mine to call her while I was relieving myself, because I believe I do my best thinking with my pants around my ankles.  But now that she and I were no longer on speaking terms, I had taken to calling Reed instead. That morning, however, he called me and he was livid.
  “Dude, what the fuck? How can someone be so fucking dense?” I told him I’m not sure how anyone could be so dense. Admittedly, I was paying more attention to the dirt beneath my left big toenail. I pulled it out with tweezers that Connor’s girlfriend had left sitting on the sink and I smelled it.
  “Ugh! Jesus!”
  “I know, dude! What the fuck?!” he said thinking I was agreeing with him, or even listening for that matter. I’m not very good at phone. I don’t know if it’s my ADHD or working as a telemarketer for 2 years, but I am simply not good at being on the phone, unless, of course, I{/I] call and establish the conversation and, unlucky for Reed, I hadn’t that morning.
  “So what exactly happened again?”
  “Hey, I gotta go, dude. I’m late for class,” and then he hung up. I felt guilty because Reed was obviously angry about something and I had no idea what it was. Thankfully, he gets mad a lot and then gets over it pretty quickly and he doesn’t really read anything I ever write, so he’ll be none the wiser on this one.
  However, that whole one-sided conversation wasn’t just to let you that I’m a bad friend or a prick on the phone, it’s to warm you up to what a real prick I am, or was, rather. Neglecting my friends by ignoring them on the phone is one thing that I can admit to doing without feeling too guilty. However, using girls is an admission that I must mutter beneath my breath after I’ve shouted out all other kinds of confessions that I would hope distract you from the nasty, little caboose.


  I was 11 years old when my older sister’s best friend, Haley, moved in with my family and inevitably set in motion the evolution of the monster I would come to be. Haley was 16 and she smoked and drank and was constantly leaving the house with boys who had facial hair and listened to loud, abrasive sounding music. I wanted Haley in ways that my pre-pubescent, curious body didn’t quite understand at the time. When I would sit outside my sister’s room and hear her recounting her exploits from the night before, I’d get a tingling sensation in an area of my body that hitherto had only been used for peeing and for G.I. Joe water-skiing. You see, Haley’s parents divorced and that’s why she decided to move in with my family. She was mad, so to get back at them, she refused to live with either her mom or her dad. I don’t think they cared, though, to be honest. As for my parents, they’ve always had a sort of laissez faire approach to parenting and I don’t even know if my dad realized she was actually living with us until he had to help her move out some 3 months later. Before Haley’s arrival, my sister, Caroline, was a straight-A student who would’ve never dreamt of doing anything even remotely sinful. Within a week of Haley living with us, she had her belly button pierced, a smoking habit and a lost innocence. Haley was far more dismantling than any of us could have ever realized. She would say to me, “Listen, you’re a cutie, you’re gonna get the girls. Here’s how:” and she would tell me all of these secrets. All of these horrifically graphic and sexual things and I listened and I fucking loved it. She would tell me that all girls feel ugly most of the time and if a guy makes her really believe otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with her. Once I moved to the city and had my own apartment, I started doing just that: whatever I wanted with whatever girls I wanted. And it’s all thanks to Haley for teaching me and showing me the way, and Mommy for not loving me enough and leaving me starved for female attention and her for breaking my heart and making me want to infect everyone with the same misery in which she left me. 


  So there I was, once again seeing the best view of my life, once again telling a girl I’d never felt this way before, and once again making another girl fall in love with me. And the worst part? As I sat on that bench up on the patio that overlooked the city, I actually sort of believed the words that were coming out of my mouth. And I suppose that’s what makes a lie perfect, when even the liar has himself fooled. This time her name was Victoria and she smelled like her. That’s immediately what attracted me to her in the first place, actually. Well, besides her breasts. She wore Lucky Girl and even though she smoked too much, she smelled so good all of the time. This was our second date, but the third time I’d been around her. The first time was in a shitty bar where they served minors and fifteen cent perogies. I watched her all night; her long, auburn hair framing her face perfectly like the leaves dangling on the pale limbs of a birch tree in late autumn. Her ample cleavage polarized by her attitude as she was unlike any other girl in the bar. She drunkenly sat on no laps; she didn’t flirt with the older, desperate, crusty dudes to get a free drink. She just sat with her friends in a corner, chain-smoking and never once looking at me. I was intimidated, but not nervous. I felt unnoticed, but not undesired. I told all of my friends I was going to get her.

  “You’re so ridiculous,” and then she said my name, which she shouldn’t have done. Something about hearing a pretty girl say my name (especially in her cute New Jersey accent) really sends me over the edge. I guess it’s an ego thing.
  “What?! Why am I ridiculous?” and I already knew exactly how it would play out. I was on autopilot at that point. I’d already decided she probably wasn’t the one to make me forget about the one, but just to double check, just to conduct a more thorough study, I was going to get those tits out just to see if they were as perfect as they appeared to be in her tight, little sea foam green A&F tank top.
  “I just think you’re a bullshitter,” she said behind a veil of nicotine. Before I realized that she might’ve been on to me, I watched her take another drag and I thought of Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation and then I thought of Bill Murray’s orange camo shirt turned inside-out and then I thought of Ghostbusters and before I knew it, my ADHD had taken a hold of me and I was seeing Stay Puft the Marshmallow Man walk through the streets of the city that was alive before me.
“We should get out of here, Victoria.”
“Oh?”
  “Yeah, let’s go back to my place and watch a movie or something.”
  “It’s kinda late, though.”
  “Yeah, true. I guess, you’ve gotta get to bed to wake up early for church tomorrow, huh? Come on!” I said as I pulled her up. We both knew she was staying over at my house that night. We both knew I was going to fuck her that night. We both knew that I was probably lying, too, but neither of us wanted to admit it, so we just kept playing along. I knew the song by heart, and I loved singing it for other people. I knew she probably wasn’t used to guys as attractive as me being as nice to her as I’ve been and although Victoria is beautiful, she’s still a woman with low self-esteem.
  I’m 13 years old and reading my mom’s Cosmo and a panelist is saying that even though she considers herself a pretty liberal-minded feminist, nothing is more attractive than a man asking her to dance. With that in mind, I grabbed Victoria’s left hand with my right and I stopped to turn and face her. She looked at me puzzled as I grabbed her other hand and I started to hum, ignoring the people walking by and staring at us. She’s laughing and embarrassed and I’m dancing with her just like my gram showed me when I was much younger. She spent days teaching me how to dance because I was to be the ring bearer in my cousin Jennie’s wedding and my gram wanted me to learn to dance properly for when I had my customary dance with the flower girl. The gay part of me loved it and I picked it up quite rather quickly and zealously, probably to the dismay of my conservative grandfather. Then the reception came and the flower girl and I were both called out onto the dance floor by the DJ and before that little bitch even gave me a chance, she took off running and crying. There I stood, sheepishly and afraid and hurt with my hands in my pockets not sure what to do and then my gram came to the rescue and started dancing with me. She didn’t care that I had a bowl cut and buckteeth and that my little tux had mustard on it. She pressed me deep into her overly perfumed breasts and consoled me and told me how handsome I was and just how lucky I’ll make a beautiful girl someday. Every kid gets told this shit, but rarely do they listen to it or take it to heart. I think that was my downfall from very early on; I was very much susceptible to flattery. 
  Now she’s stopped fighting it and Victoria is looking me in the eyes and smiling brighter than her postcard worthy backdrop and I’m smirking that devilish little smirk that I spent hours in front of the mirror practicing. She was falling in love with me and I was already trying to think of how I would explain to her that I was no longer interested in seeing her. But first . . . let’s see those tits. Before I broke that heart, I wanted to see the armor that covered it. She was all mine and I was about to get everything I wanted from her before I left her scarred and ruined for years to come. Or so I thought.


  I watched her all night and told my friends that I was going to make her mine and at this point they knew damn well to believe me. They’d seen me walk out with a 10 under my arm, winking at them all the way, too many times to know better than to doubt me when I say I’m going to pick up a girl. Now don’t go thinking that I’m sexist, because technically I am, but so are some women. It has nothing to do with my gender, it’s my personality. I’m a hunter. It’d be the same if I were a woman or gay. I’d go after what I wanted and I’d get it, most of the time. This night, I wanted the lonely girl in the little black dress chain-smoking in the corner. The girl who hadn’t even looked my way once during the course of the night; that’s the girl I wanted. The girl who hadn’t taken any notice to me (the fucking tallest guy in the bar); I wanted to bury her face into my Star Wars comforter and I wanted to make her scream and I wanted to bite her back like I’d seen cats do and I wanted to pull her hair and make her call me her god. No. Her fucking god. I wanted to punch the wall and look her right in those gorgeous gray eyes while I buried every inch of myself deep inside of her. I wanted her to fucking notice me.
  Finally, the king was exposed. I got up and moved to just the right area of the room that after she left the bathroom, she’d have to walk past me and when she did, I’d be ready.
  “Hi. Uhm . . . Victoria, right?” Give the illusion of shyness. It’s endearing.
  “Ha ha, yeah. And you are?”
  “Your friend told me your name and I just wanted to say that you smell like Cabbage Patch Dolls, Victoria.” Give the illusion of eccentricity. It’s interesting.
  “Ha ha ha! I what?” and just like that she was mine.
  Now even the most brutal serial killers have a routine. They have standards and personal rules and regulations that they set up for themselves. For a long time, I was a monster, but I wasn’t without tact. That night, Victoria wasn’t very drunk at all, but still I had lines that I wouldn’t cross. For instance, I’d never kiss on the first date. I’d go all the way on the second date. Hell, I’d tongue a butt or two on the second date, but on the first date I’d lead them to believe that I was a nice guy with good intentions and only her best interests in mind.
  “Man, if only there were a way that after tonight, after you leave and after I leave . . . if only there were a way that I could have some sort of assurance in knowing that I’ll see you again. I don’t know. Do you know? Maybe some form of technology or some kind of network through which we could communicate to one another by just entering a random string of numbers that’s been assigned solely to us.” And again she laughed and, for the twentieth or thirtieth or thousandth time, I thought to myself that maybe this girl could be the one to make me me again. We’d only known each other for about fifteen minutes, but I could feel the weight of the romantic world crush me as I traced her outline with my memory. As she got out her phone I complimented her, “beautifully, but seemingly cumbersomely large purse.” Then I noticed that she laughed with her whole body; her chest heaving in and out so much that it shakes her neck and makes that long, healthy hair fall in front of her face, covering my favorite part of her. And I bet she hates her laugh.

“I love your laugh, you know that? You laugh with your whole body,” and she was in the palm of my hand, bathing in my compliments, shaving her legs, with a cigarette burning away while Deerhoof echoes in her larger-than-she-can-really-afford bathroom getting ready for our first date. She washed everywhere, too. Just in case.


  The fickle weather of the city finally got exhausted and decided to relax into a crisp, breezy autumn chill and I couldn’t have be any happier. In those muggy early September nights, Victoria’s attire had been just a little too distracting. I remember reading a study, or maybe I made this up, but anyway, something about well endowed men having a loss of insight and coherent thought when they’re aroused because of the amount of blood that’s being neglected from the brain as it, instead, is being sent to the male reproductive appendage (the dong, for the laymen). I couldn’t think straight when I was around her. I forgot about my own rules. I was calling her more often she was calling me. I was not out planting more fuck seeds. I was not courting a back up girl. I was not keeping most of myself hidden away and protected from her. In fact, I was not being myself at all. I was scared and nervous and I kind of liked it. And I was now on my way to meet Victoria to talk about why what was happening was happening. We were meeting at a small coffee shop (privately owned, of course) on the intersection of Where We Are and Where I’d Like Us To Be.
  She used my name so much, almost gratuitously, but I loved it. Nearly every sentence that came out of her mouth either started or ended with my name. This time she started it with, “[my name], you realize we’ve only known each for like a month?”
  “Yeah, and in that month, we’ve had sex about a dozen times and I’ve given you about 50 orgasms,” I held my hand up for a high five and she laughed, rolled her eyes and complied, “but we’ve only actually just hung out and not had sex about three times. It just seems backwards to me. And I’m not trying to act like some nerdy jizzwad with a good Christian upbringing who thinks sex is special and should be valued above all other things, but really . . . it kind of is, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve shared with you the most physical intimate experience possible and I still feel like I’m sort of not your number 1 priority right now. I know you’ve got school and work and other shit and I know I’m probably just being needy, but it’s just that I believe that I should know how to cheer you up when you’re sad or know what you look like when you cry before I know what you look like with my semen covering your face.” She didn’t even flinch on that one. She just said that she understood what I was saying and then her jaw opened, her eyes rolled back into her skull and out came that same fucking broken record tune. Like when your computer freezes while you’re listening to music, chatting on AIM, talking shit on message boards, downloading the new Neurosis record and looking at babes on Myspace and suddenly . . . it just shits out and there’s a two or three second clip in the song you’re listening to that just keeps repeating over and over and over and over and over and over again until you finally CTRL+ALT+DEL it.
  She started going on about how she’d been hurt too many times by guys exactly like me and I wanted to pull a keyboard out of her stomach and just CTRL+ALT+DEL her and start her over before some asshole in a shitty local emo band fucked her up. In that moment, I realized that I actually didcare about this girl. At first, I thought that it was just her playing hard to get (hard to get to like me, hardly not hard to get in bed. Hard to get out of bed if anything), but no, I genuinely cared about her. I really did want to fix her. Why, though? Why was she different? She was sitting there going on and on about shit I didn’t care about and she did all of this shit that I hated, like smoking and drinking constantly and fucking hanging out with her friends instead of me and for some reason, I still wanted her. Badly. I still wanted her and I wanted her to want me and I wanted her to want me to want her. Things got confusing as I tried to swim to the very bottom of my thoughts and find the center of myself and figure shit out, but I just got lost in the depths and I couldn’t figure out which way was up. I nearly drowned, but I heard a sound coming from beyond the water and I swam towards it. I returned, gasping for air, back to the conversation.
    “You know what I mean?” she said and if she were any other girl, I would've known exactly what she meant and I would applaud her for being so privy to my scheme. However, this time I found myself singing the Cryin’ Wolf Blues and I was too busy trying to make that broad trust me to just sit back and appreciate the irony of it all. Just three weeks before then, I was on auto-pilot and then suddenly, I was falling in love with the very same girl. What’d happened?


“Where’s Connor?” Reed asked through a mouthful of garlic tofu.
“Not sure. I don’t think he went to class today. I mean, he hasn’t been lobotomized to my knowledge,” I smirked a little at my own joke.
  “You think he’s at Karen’s then?” Reed spit out a piece of rubbery tofu and flicked it away from the rest of his food. We’ve all been there.
  “Probably.”
  “So how’d your date with Amy go last night?”
  “Not Amy, man. Amy was like three girls ago. Last night was Victoria. You remember, the girl with the great rack from the bar, you know, a few nights ago?”
  “Oh, right on. How’d it go regardless? You fuck her?”
  “Did I? Dude, she-“
  “What’s up, dudes?” Connor said as he entered the front door. He was carrying some books and he’d actually changed out of his (read: my) Cursed shirt, so it seemed as though he may have went to class after all, “What’s up, Reed? What’re you eatin’?”
  “You go to class today, man?” Reed asked.
  “Ha ha, no, I was at Karen’s.”
  “Fuckin’ titties?” I know his ways.
  “You know my ways.”
  “Anyway,” I returned to what I was telling Reed before Connor interrupted me, “so I’m on top of this girl and it’s just seconds after initial penetration, so I’m going at a medium pace.”
  “Naturally,” Reed said.
  “Wait, what girl? Katie?” Connor asked sitting down in his ugly, blue recliner.
  “Connor, you were fucking here when I brought Victoria over last night! You told me you thought she was hot!”
  “Yeah, dude, but I also did like 3 Gs that night, too.”
  “Tro,” I said.
  "Alright, so you’re going at a medium pace, go on . . .”
  “Thank you, Reed. So, I’m going at a medium pace, but she’s beneath me, like, going faster and trying to go harder. It was fucking up my rhythm terribly, but goddamnit if it wasn’t one of the hottest fucking things ever!”
  “How were the tits?” asked Connor the Tit Critic.
  “Perfect. Best ever!”
  “Dude, fucking lay off the superlatives. Everything you say is either the best ever or the worst ever. Why can’t something be average once?” Connor said.
  “Maybe you’re right, but I mean it this time. And you know what else I mean this time? She’s the one. She’s one to make me forget about her.”
  “Forgot about who?” Reed asked not realizing the gravity of his temporary mental slip.
  “Whom. And I was referring to the girl whose name we do not utter,” I said.
  Connor stopped me, “Holy fuck, we gotta go! We gotta get out of this house! I’ve heard this story so many fucking times and I’m in too good of a mood to hear it again right now.”


pt. 2

I woke up to my phone vibrating in the little cavity that god or whoever left in my chest. Though I guess I can’t complain, girls have always found it kind of cute and it’s not nearly as deep as some of the others I’ve seen. You know what I’m talking about? I think the improper term is “concaved chest” or something. Anyway, it made my pectoral muscles look bigger, so, as I said earlier, I can’t complain. Although, when my dad caught me with French fries in it and ketchup in my bellybutton, he was not pleased. I don’t know what he was, really. Confused, maybe. I do know that he grounded me for the rest of the day, but I didn’t care because it was a school day and I didn’t feel like going outside anyway.
  I picked up the phone and answered it without first checking to see who it was. Big mistake.
  “Uh’lo?”
  “Were you sleeping, I’m sorry.” My breath was kicked away. My pulse stopped. I tried my best to play it cool.
  “. . . you.”
  “Ha ha ha! That was pretty dramatic sounding. Were you sleeping?”
  “What time is it?”
  “It’s a quarter after 3.”
  “Then yes, obviously I was sleeping. What do you want?”
  “God, we haven’t spoken in like a year and that’s all you can say? I’m sorry I called, I guess I’ll just-“
  “No, you’re right. I’m sorry for being rude. What’s up? You alri-”
  “I hate him. I can’t stand him, ya know?” I didn’t know, but I had hoped. I had hoped and I had thought about this phone call and fantasized it in my head for days, Hell . . . months on end. Had it finally come? She sighed and then continued, “I can’t stand him and I miss you, honey.” It had.
  “You hate who?” I was still trying my best to play it cool. It was too good!
  “You, honey.” What?
  “What? Me?”
  “Oops. I meant Nick, I’m sorry. I thought you asked who I mis- nevermind. I hate Nick. He’s . . . ugh, I just hate being around him.”
  “What’s going on?” Victoria mumbled as she’d begin returning to the world of the consciousness beside me. She said my name into the dark as if to make sure it was me lying there talking on the phone at this hour. When she said my name it was like a wrecking ball crashing and sending shock waves of guilt rumbling through me. In that moment that the caller said “honey” I was sucked back into the 3 year relationship of shitty fights that were never resolved, only paused momentarily for great sex and fleeting spells of mutual kindness. She never said my name, to her I was always “honey” or “baby” or “asshole.” Never just . . . me.
  “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye,” and then I hung up.
  “Who was that,” and again the impact of my name left me feeling as if I’d just done something wrong. Had I? The phone rang again and no name appeared, but the number was all too familiar. I silenced it quickly and then turned it off.
  “A friend of mine from back home; he just got broken up with by his girlfriend and needed to talk, I guess. I’ll just call him in the morning. Let’s get back to sleep.” I placed a pillow over my right shoulder and pulled her into me and I smelled her and I smelled her. I could feel Victoria's face shift as a sublime, tired smile spread across her face. She drifted back into a world where time doesn’t exist and neither do lies and I wondered if I was her lover in her dreams or if I was just some vague stranger who drifted in and out like she was to me in mine, just a reoccurring feeling with no identity or special place in the heart or mind.
  I spent the rest of the night lying awake and composing my feverish thoughts around the cadence of Victoria’s peaceful breathing. It was so dark in my room that I can’t remember if I had my eyes open or not. And when the Devil came and collected my soul that night for keeping his end of the bargain, I can’t say for sure that I was dreaming. Something about the way my skin smelled the next morning, like I was young again and I was sleeping next to my sister in a tent with a fire smoldering outside and my parents’ love still tucked away inside the camper; the embers still bold and bright orange before the rains of infidelity turned them to gray, ugly mud.


  “When you go back, are you going back to be more than friends with Nick?” I asked already knowing the answer. My voice echoing in the empty staircase outside the venue where I’d been before she called me and told me she was going back to school. I thought of being in my dad’s family’s mausoleum and burying my aunt when I was too young to even pronounce the word “mausoleum.” I just remember how big everyone was and how loud even the quietest whispers were. I was in a mausoleum again, burying a three year relationship; taken from us before its time. She’d come back up to the city to visit her sick grandmother. Looking back, I really should’ve asked how her gram was doing. I was concerned with other things, though. Like how this was the first time, since we’d met, that she’d been within a hundred miles of me and I’d went over 4 days without seeing her.
  “Probably,” three syllables cut me deeply and nearly killed me. I felt my knees buckle and the butterflies in my stomach hatch and get caught in my throat and the fire in my soul set off the sprinklers and I was a fucking mess, “I’m sorry.”
  “I don’t know what to say.” I really didn’t.
  “We’re just not good for each other anymore and I don’t think we ever will be again. I’m so sorry.” She can’t be that sorry. I was thrown against the wall, sliding down it slowly; a brownish-orange loogie coughed up from an infected lung and shot out between chapped lips.
  “I know you’ve already given me so many chances, but listen . . . I’ve really changed this time. This whole time, I thought you’d chosen college over me and I resented you for that and it wasn’t until you told me that you regret moving away for school did I ever really forgive you. Not that I had to forgive you, but you know what I mean. And you also know that this douche bag is at best second to me. You know I’m better in nearly every way. You said yourself that he’s out of shape and smokes and likes bad music. I just . . . I don’t get it.”
  “He’s nice to me and he hasn’t embarrassed by making me look naïve for trusting him.”
  “He’s only nice to you now. He’ll take you for granted the second he’s given the power to do so. You’re just doing this out of spite. Admit it; you just want to teach me a lesson. No one will ever love you the way that I do. And that probably sucks because sometimes I'm so bad at showing how much I really do love you, but it's the truth. Please. I know you want to be with me. Don't do this to me. Don't do this just to spite me. You want to be with me. I know you do.”
  “No, I don’t. I want to be with him and I just want be happy.”
  “If you leave today, you’ll never hear from me again. I promise you that. On my dead aunt Sylvia’s grave, I swear that to you.” And then she actually used my name and it killed me.
  “Please just give me a hug and a kiss good-bye. Nothing is certain yet; I just need to get back now. We’ll talk once I get back, but I have class tomorrow and it’s already late. Just give me a hug and a kiss before I go.”
  “I can’t do that. I’m sorry. I can’t do that knowing that before this day is over another guy will hug and kiss you. If you can promise me that this will be the only hug and kiss you receive until you see me again, then I will gladly give them to you now. Can you promise me that?”
  “Please, honey?”
  “I didn’t think so.” And I turned away from her and walked back into the venue. She started to cry and I went to the bathroom and watched from the window as she walked back to her car; looking behind her every few steps to see if I was running after her. I’d always ran after her before, but I never stopped her that time and I really don’t know if there’s anything I regret more in my life. I’m not foolish enough to believe that it would’ve changed anything, me kissing her, but I would’ve loved to just felt infinite perfection once more. I know that in that moment I would’ve believed that my kiss was some magical miraculous act that could’ve change her mind and corrected all of my past errors and my history of infidelity could have just been erased from her memory and I know that having given into the temptation and kissing her would only have provided me with false optimism and hope, but I still regret not doing it. I regret it so much. For as Baudelaire once said, “What is an eternity of damnation compared to infinity of pleasure in a single second?”


  Somewhere barely hanging on a dying leaf there was a distorted, inverted image of me and before I could even look into it and notice all of my flaws; before those flaws crashed into me and nearly ruined me, it fell to the dirty sidewalks of the city, never to be observed or even noticed.
  “Something wrong?” she grabbed my hand just as she said my name. I turned to look at her.
  “No, I’m alright. What about you? You okay? What’s this hands holding in public business? You see an ex you’re trying to avoid or something?”
  “Ha ha! Shut up!”
  “I’m sorry. It’s just uncharacteristic of you to publicly display your affection,” and I thought about how funny it would’ve been if I would’ve said pubicly instead.
  “Well, I am your girlfriend now, aren’t I? I want the entire world to know that this handsome gentleman beside me isn’t just an acquaintance of mine, but my boyfriend.” 
  “Yeah, but what about me? You think I want people knowing we’re dating? Hopefully they’ll just assume I’m taking my retarded sister for a walk or something.”
  “You jerk!” she tried to playfully hit me, but I grabbed her and pulled her into me for a kiss.
  “I love you, Victoria,” and I really meant it. I really meant “love” and not “like you a lot and don’t like it when you’re not around” and I really meant “Victoria” and not anyone else.


“I love you, too, honey,” she said as she traced the tattoo on my stomach with her long, alien-like index finger.
  “When’s your mom expecting you?” I was trying to hint that she should probably get going, but I was too afraid to make it obvious. How do you tell someone who’s completely in love with you that they’ve become sort of a burden to you? How do you tell someone that even though you haven’t seen them in so long, you didn’t really miss them that much? Especially when you can’t even explain it yourself. She was so beautiful and I knew that. The best I’d ever, ever, ever do and I knew that, too. What is wrong with us? Men, people, humans, mammals? What makes us so greedy? Why couldn’t I just be content with her? Why did I have to lose her before I could learn to appreciate her again?
  “I don’t care. I haven’t seen you in like two months and I don’t care to see her for another two, so she can wait,” she fixed her septum piercing and looked back at me with her brilliant green eyes and asked, “is it crooked?”
  “It’s stupid.”
  “Asshole!” she said as she threw a pillow at my face.
  “I wasn’t an asshole a minute ago when I was giving you your fourth orgasm.”
  “I faked it.”
  “Bullshit. We both know you’re a terrible liar.”
  “And we both know you’re a great one.”
  “Don’t say shit like that. You’ve been away at college for so long and I’m just happy to see you. Let’s not fight. I was only joking, baby doll. Don’t be mean.”
  “I know, honey. I’m sorry,” She reached for her bra and I picked it up with my toes and footed (get it?) it to her. I knew how much she would hate it if I did that.
  “Isn’t it incredible that I can do that? I’m like this super advanced alpha male creature; highly evolved, ya know?” She rolled her eyes and told me that she should probably get going and I got up, still naked and sat in front of the computer.
  “Okay, yeah, I’m definitely going now. I don’t wanna sit around and watch you post on that fucking message board all day,” I just snickered, “So I’ll come back in two days and then what?”
  “I don’t know. What?”
  “Don’t be an asshole,” this time she did you use my name, “you know what.”
  “Hmm . . .” I sarcastically furrowed my brow and scratched my chin, “yeah, I don’t know. I’m drawing a blank.”
  “Fine, I’ll just find someone else to take me out to celebrate our three year anniversary with them.”
  “You know, that barely made sense.”
  “Shut up and get dressed and walk me to my car.” I stood up and kissed her and told her for the hundredth time that day that I loved her and for the hundredth time that day I wondered if I even really meant it anymore.
 

  “No, Victoria, I don’t know what you mean. The smoking gun in this case is the fact that we’ve already had sex several times. Really, if I was like those other guys who’ve fucked you over, don’t you think I’d be content with just fucking on occasion and then not having to worry about you at all until I wanted to fuck again? You realize that I’m asking to be tied down in a monogamous relationship with you? I want to commit to you. Do you know how many girls from my past would fucking kill to hear these words spoken to them? I mean . . what the fuck?” She never seemed to mind my arrogance, even when she was beset by it completely, as she’d just been. She stared at me for a long time and not once in those moments did my concentration break. I was 10 and watching my uncle push a cigarette into his ear and pull it out of his mouth again. I was 16, locked away in a room with Janet Fry and Chelsea McCracken, watching them make out and finger each other at Johnny Sikora’s birthday kegger. I was locked into her stare. Her gray eyes were impossibly thick prison walls beyond which I would never see. One syllable like the snap of fingers broke the hypnosis.
  “’Kay,” and then she smiled. She laughed so much, but smiled so seldom, but she smiled now, “but if you fucking hurt me, I swear to god that I’ll kill you.”
  “Yeah?”
  “Yes.”
  “This call’s for a celebration then! Let’s get the fuck out of this stuffy fucking coffee shop and go do something wrong and blasphemous!” I grabbed her hand and as she stood up, a little bit of gut slid out from underneath her shirt and I loved it. She was perfect to me.
  “What do you have in mind?” she said as she started to gather her bag and hoodie. I ignored the question and grabbed her hand. She looked at me.
  “Victoria, I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise.” She smiled at me again, but I saw right through it. I knew she was afraid, and I was, too.
  Could my fickle nature really be slain? At that moment I really thought it was possible, but little did I know that just around the corner patiently waited my past.


  “I’m on hold,” Connor was still wearing his hot tamale novelty boxers when he came downstairs.
  “So?” As always, he’d just interrupted a story I was telling Reed.
  “Who has you on hold?” As always, Reed seemed happy to get a break from hearing me talk.
  “Karen. She’s on the phone with Hines Ward.”
  “What?!”
  “Hines Ward, as in the all-star wide receiver? The NFL player, Hines Ward?!”
  “Yeah, dude. Karen met him at some club last night and she spent the entire evening with him and Jerome Bettis in the VIP room.”
  “Dude, you’re fucked!” Connor and I have a weird friendship. We never miss a chance to kick one another when either of us is down.
  “Come on, man! Don’t say that. It’s probably not even really him. She’s a moron. How we should even know who Hines Ward is?” Reed said, offering some comfort to the obviously worried Connor.
  “Or maybe she’s lying. Connor, don’t sweat it. She’s probably lying, dude.” I felt obligated to ease up a little mysle.f
  “She’s not lying,” he looked nervous and I didn’t blame him, “Hey. No, don’t worry about it. So, what’s up?” I heard the faint and distorted excitement of Karen’s voice coming from his phone as he left the room. I looked over at Reed and he was just sitting there with a strange, twisted smile of disbelief on his face.
  “Wow,” he said, almost just to himself. He put his hands on his head, as if to keep any more bizarre information from coming into his brain. Or maybe to keep this new bizarre information in so he could wrestle with it a little more.
  “Dude, she’s so fucking hot. Back in their little, Hickville hometown she was practically a freak because she was so hot and everyone was just afraid of her, but here in the big city she’s primo-tail and ripe for the picking and I’m not sure if Connor has what it takes to keep her around.”
  “Holy shit," Reed said still struggling to grasp what had just happened.
  “I know, man.”
  “That sucks so much,” Reed had his hands on his head pushing down on his face to fight against the uprising features of his astonished expression, “What chance does he have against that fucking guy?”
  “What chance do any of us have, man?”
  “Against who?” Reed asked.
  “I don’t know. Ourselves?”