Sex Life of a Fool:
I never wanted to pretend that this was going to go anywhere else, but I couldn’t help myself. When someone offers me kind words, since they are so few and far between I eat them up, craving the sustenance of recognition, of support, of feeling, caring, all of those things that make you feel linked in chains to everyone around you. But maybe no one is linked, maybe we are all just floating silently and alone, we all have our ways we really feel, but because of how we think we are suppose to act to people, with this fake decency we lose our individual drives, we delude ourselves into thinking that to connect we have to conform. We have to sit and laugh at the things we don’t find funny, we have to sit and nod to the things we don’t agree with, and use the words we don’t want, and like the people we don’t want. We always have to put on fake grins, and use polite words. Even those people who claim they are honest and blunt, are they? No, in some ways they have a persona too, they think this is how people want to see them, even their feelings are hidden under their icy exteriors, but those are not the people I have problems with. The People I have problems with are the ones like Allison, the ones that sit there on this throne of politeness and fun, and intellect, who are none of the above, inside they are as judgmental, lame, and stupid as the next person. You can see it in the hunger of one’s mind, the eclectic words they use, and the vocabulary is essential, how do they describe what they’ve seen to the people around them. There are ways in which we react that we don’t manifest for fear of judgment, a movie for instance, if it touched you sometimes you can’t say that, so you simplify it, you say oh it was funny, oh it was cool, oh it was thrilling, those may be true, but if you really mean powerful, life-affirming, bad-ass, thrilling, touching, that it pulled at your heart strings, then why the hell don’t you just say it? I’ll tell you why you are hiding; you are hiding in your own image. It starts when you are a child, it forms with the people who grow to be your friends, and if you have few friends all your life, then god help you, because you will have only known the way you express things, and if you are only expressing them to yourself well then that audience is the purest and can’t judge you, so you are free to say whatever the fuck you want. Maybe I’m being unfair, maybe people aren’t really dumb, and I never meant dumb in the academic terms, some of the most ignorant people I know are the ones earning the degrees more often than not statistically of course it’s the ones who are not educating themselves on a daily basis that are dying away. But I digress, what was this rants purpose really, I can’t really say, but the world is this stage, and we the players, to misquote Shakespeare. I just want to know when nice became mean, and mean became kindness. Those fakes, those blunt fakes are some of the nicest people I’ve met, they don’t want to see you, they will tell you, they don’t like something they will tell you, even if you don’t like it. But those nice masses, those annoying nice people, myself included from time to time, will look you in the eye and lie to your face with a smile, pretending somewhere deep inside, that they are not jerks, but aren’t they jerks? Yes. There’s nothing worse than sustained silence broken by a beautiful voice saying beautiful words of how you should spend more time together, how you should do this and this and this, and you come alive, I came alive, I felt like someone wanted me. Then the next time you speak it has changed yet again, they barely say anything all emotion, all want is gone, and then you sit in that silence and you delude yourself into thinking maybe maybe maybe all the rest of your time. I will wise up one day I’m sure, but I never expected anything to come from Allison. It was in the midst of another silence when it happened.
Allison’s voice came over the receiver, “what are you doing tonight?” I was stunned I hadn’t heard from her in three weeks, except passing her in the college halls, and now she was calling me asking what my schedule looked like this evening. At first I wanted to yell at the bitch, I wanted to yell at her indifference for the past few weeks, but then what would that have accomplished, all she would say was that she had been busy with this, and busy with that, when I knew for a fact that she wasn’t busy at all. And why would I do that, when even though I was irritated I still had that naïve feeling of hope buried inside, that when someone contacted you out of the blue they wanted you specifically, they could have called anyone, but they called you.
So what did I say, I said, “nothing. Why?” And then I waited for her to ask if I wanted to hang out with her tonight, perhaps go to the beach, or to a movie, playing hop scotch in the elementary school yard, I could give a shit, as long as I was around her.
“Well I wanted to know if you wanted to see that new romantic comedy that came out, that one that everyone’s been talking about?” she said, and in my mind I was like yes I will go see that overly popular fad of a film that I’m sure will be a piece of shit, but yes, I’ll see It even though it’ll not only be a waste of two hours of my life, but a waste of eight dollars and twenty five cents of the very little cash I have, yes I will go see it even though I will complain about it to my friends, even though I know I’ll lie to you afterwards and tell you it was good, yes I’ll go do anything you want to do as long as I’m with you.
“Yeah sure, I thought about seeing it, my curiosity was kind of pushing me to finally check it out, even though it’s a chick flick of the highest order, not that I don’t like chick flicks, some of my favorite movies are chick flicks, Pride and Prejudice for instance, and I liked like Moulin Rouge, and all that stuff. I mean,” I was digging myself into a hole, yapping on and on about this obscure thing and that, I never knew how to shut myself up, when you got me talking about movies. I could go on all day and gladly would if someone cared to listen, but in this instance, I had to pretend it was dumb of me to be talking so lively about them, “oh sorry, they are just movies. I do that sometimes.”
“You sure do,” she says with a laugh. I didn’t understand that laugh, I mean I knew she was laughing at the fact that I talked so much about them and ranted, but for some reason I don’t know if it was in thinking it was a cute thing to do, or just stupid of me to just continue talking like that. I wanted to assume that it might have been kind of cute. “So how about you pick me up at my house tonight at five and we’ll go see the movie at eight.”
That was three hours in-between. “There’s three hours in-between that.” I said.
She laughed again, “Well we want to have plenty of time to have dinner and talk before we go, I’ve been putting off eating all day for tonight.”
Great I thought food too. It wasn’t so bad that we were going to get food, it was just that this had happened before, two or three times, and it was very casual for her, she didn’t think of it as anything but I wanted to think of it as something, but how could I, if it wasn’t I would feel like the biggest loser. So then I tried to think of it as just friends, but that’s futile when some people you don’t simply want to be friends with, and if they know this fact, and they ask you to hang out with no care to the fact, the last thing they want to be is simply your friend, then isn’t that kind of low, wouldn’t it be nicer just to say you know what I don’t’ like you. You don’t have money, you don’t have looks, you don’t have personality, you don’t have charm, you are boring, lame, anything, in those situations those words would be nicer than letting them live the delusions just because you are bored and want someone to hang out with. And then shelling out money for cash, particularly at a nice restaurant well that’s just a pain in the ass, and will put quite a big hole in your pocket, and I was personally prepared to spend as much money as possible if it was going to go somewhere. I always was, and here I was ready to do it again. “Oh cool where do you want to go?”
“The Oriental Palace”
At least she wanted Chinese. I could shell out a ton of money for Chinese no problem.
But was this the same old run around as before, I had to know. “So is this a date?”
“I don’t know.”
The most common answer. I don’t know. How the fuck don’t you know, honestly, where the hell do you get off telling someone who is ready to jump for you, that you don’t know if it’s a date or not, was it originally one, was it not? Isn’t that simple enough to figure the fuck out. Apparently not, apparently it was very complex. Apparently Allison couldn’t decipher her feelings like I could, apparently the whole feelings thing was invisible to her, maybe she didn’t know what a date was, and maybe she was numb in the brain. Maybe in her guise as the sweet, she had gotten stuck in her honey and now realized she had set up a problem area, that proposing dinner and a movie could be interpreted this way, she was buzzing with fear, maybe. Or maybe she was just to plain nice to say; no it is not a date, just as friends.
“Oh.” Is what I said. And then she jumped in, “so tonight at 5 right? You’ll pick me up?
“Yeah sure.”
“Alright well I got to get some stuff done around the house I’ll see ya then.” And just like that she hung up.
Why was it like that? Why was it when you asked the core question, the question that they know is buried there, why is it when you get into the feelings, they jump ship, why is there always something to do at that time: A paper to write, shopping to do, cleaning, and on and on, why is there always something to do when I am most looking for answers. I suppose no one can really give that answer right? You are to busy paying your bills, to busy mowing the lawn, to busy drinking whiskey, to busy living, to worry about the answers to the question I am posing, I would say I was busy too, but I’m not.
So five roles around, and I go and pick her up, she’s wearing her winter coat, and a nice pair of jeans that give her ass a nice plump firmness, in the best most sexual way possible, in the way that I can’t help but checking out, and she sits in the car, and we drive off to the Oriental Palace. On the way there we talk about homework, we talk about professors, about books, and movies and films, we even sing along to a song on the radio. Then we get to where we are going, we get our food and we eat and we talk and talk about obscure things, about how she’s worried about her future, to which I reply that know one can really know what it is going to happen, and fear is only going to push through our lives, and the best thing to do is to find distractions, and by distractions I’m talking about finding solace in me, it’s very much a wink wink, hint hint type of thing, and I’m being so obvious I know she knows what I’m talking about, but she pretends she doesn’t. And when we are finished eating, we decide to drive to the book store, and we do and we look at everything we can, there is still thirty minutes to kill before the movie starts, and then suddenly out of the blue she says, “do you really want to go to the movie?”
“Don’t you?” I ask, I don’t want to be put into a trap here.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“yeah.” That’s it, that is all she says about it, one word, I’m looking for an answer to what she means and she just says yeah, apparently she’s looking to me to finally say that yeah I would rather not go. But I’m not going to say that.
“Well, what do you want to do instead?” I say.
“Let’s go to your place, watch a movie there, I don’t feel like being out.
So of course I say that’s fine. So we go to my house, we watch movies, we sit there and silence and watch a musical, then we watch comedy, and then we talk about our favorite musicals, and then she says she’s tired and its about time for her to get home and get some sleep. I think okay, sure. So we leave I drive her back home, drop her off, and then I never here from her again for a month, she calls and asks me, “what are you doing tonight?”
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