Falls Street (2) And somehow, Starky ended up with the ball, and he couldn’t decide how or if he should throw it. He knew he couldn’t drop kick it. “Hurry up, quit fucking around you faggot,” Cliff said, and Colombo laughed. The ball flopped out of his hands just a few feet away from the goal and started to roll backward. Colombo charged it like some kind of rabid elephant. Crash sent it sailing back to my end of the field. He was laughing when he did it. And the ball dropped down in front of me, and Charlie was onto of it. I had to move to get to a place to clear it. I don’t know why I had to run with it when I felt Charlie so close. I could have easily just kicked it up field, but I turned to the side and ran the ball behind Candice. And I felt Charlie right on top of me looking to rush in on my first mistake and send it in the goal. I thought about passing it off to Colombo, but then I remember that he wasn’t the one in goal. I came around Candice with the slightest lead, and I felt a sliver of an angle open for me to get the ball clear. I swung my leg and made contact, and the ball disappeared from the ground. Kabang, I heard and the spray of grass just finished falling as my vision swung up to see the ball sailing back past me to the right side of the right goal post. Everyone was standing very still, and Carrie Ann was lying on the ground in front of me holding her stomach. *** Chapter 2 – The Hum One of my first memories is riding the school bus with Carrie Ann even though we only lived a block away from the school. I don’t remember much about being a kid, except that cloudiness between thought and speech when things just couldn’t come out or wouldn’t come out right. She had pigtails back then, and her hair was sandy blonde like it could have gone either way, brown or blonde. I guess it all depended on exposure. And I realize sometimes, when I’m surrounded by people and things I know through people, I could have gone either way, too. I could have stayed inside that cloud and just thought all the things in my head and never say a word to anyone. I didn’t want to say anything when the soccer game stopped, but the situation called for something. I really wanted to apologize. I really did, but I couldn’t move near her. She was getting up from the ground and Charlie reached down his arm to help. “Are you alright?” he asked. “Yeah,” she said. “Just got the wind knocked out of me is all.” And Colombo and Cliff, who would have looked at me like a total loser if I’d let her score a goal, gave me this look like I was some kind of freak. Even Starky was looking at me funny, not knowing how to look at me, really. “Is she all right?” Crash called out. I wish he hadn’t, because everyone’s ears perked for an answer. “I guess so,” Charlie said watching her walk to the sideline. “Maybe, that should be it for us. It’s getting kind of late.” “Yeah,” Vic agreed watching her drinking water on the sideline. “I think I’ve had enough for tonight anyway.” And things were disbanding from there, I guess. Colombo trucked himself back up the field. We all walked to the fence, and one by one, we slipped underneath the chain. I hung back a bit, looking for a moment to say I was sorry, I guess. Charlie was talking to her when I came out. I stood still for a second looking for a chance to slip into the conversation, but Vic tripped up on my feet. “Christ, watch it?” he said. “Why the hell’d you stop in front of me like that?” I kind of got moving forward, and everyone was getting back to their bikes or walking over the hill past the school. I didn’t want it to look like I was waiting until they were gone. That would be all wrong. So, I left her there with Charlie and went back over to the hill. I thought of staying there for a bit, but that would be worse in case she came over the hill on her way home. I wanted to say something to Charlie to get any kind of reaction, but he was solid. I couldn’t tell whether he wanted to beat the shit of me or tell me I had a good game. And I had this ugly thought that he might be grateful to me for being such a bastard, so he could reach down and help her out. Sure, he’d pretend to hate me, but deep down he’d know that my misfortune was really just some kind of luck headed his way and knocking me over in the process. And it wouldn’t matter much if she wasn’t around, too. Dealing with that isn’t so bad. It was an odd exit, though. I usually bullshit or pretend to laugh. Crash and I would probably talk about some bullshit, and we’d make fun of the Green St. sluts, talk about porno and pot. It would be a good downtime. That night, I really wanted to get to bed. I sleep in my room that used to be a walk in closet. The ceiling is low, and the rafters slant overhead. Cobwebs galore and the occasional draft are typical, but I don’t care. I sleep on a mattress, because I hated the bed frame. I throw all my stuff in the corners and lay down next to the television. When I get in at night, I turn the knob just to turn it on, and I leave the volume down low. On some channels, pay per view comes in with perfect sound, though and blurry visuals. A few times a week, I’ll actually sit through a movie that way. I don’t know why I can take it. No amount of imagination is involved, anyway. I barely listen, sitting there reading a comic book. At times, I play songs on the stereo, but I don’t listen to the radio anymore. There hasn’t been anything good since alternative went commercial. Sixty different bands out there sound just like Pearl Jam, and I wasn’t big into them anyway. A few months ago, Kurt Cobain killed himself, and that was a big deal for some of the older kids, but they were big Guns N’ Roses fans a while back, too. They’ll get over it, I’m sure. I never listened to any of that stuff. When I think about people who have CD collections, I wonder whether they really appreciate things or if they just have low standards. All these people in school who drool over poetry and books, I start feeling like they know something I don’t, but then again, maybe I expected a lot more than melodrama and patterns. Maybe, none of that stuff is real life to me. Our English teacher Mrs. Thomas said that beauty is repetition. Maybe, that’s not an exact quote, but what if it was true? What if you only thought something was beautiful, because it was familiar? What about thrill seekers, those out looking for new experiences? I wonder if we had all those experiences before, like coming out of nothing is the ultimate experience, and thrill seeking is just us trying to get back somehow. When Crash was young, he really earned that name, jumping off the stairs wild-eyed and damn near crazy. And why? I was thinking it back then, but I sort of got to understand it after a while. He was trying to get back. Riding in a little red wagon, he was trying to turn the whole thing around before we all got these longer legs and screwed up faces. He was trying to drive back to where we came from. And I was watching every time, hoping he’d find the way. We only found Mrs. Henderson’s fence, though. She called his mother, too, and mine never found out. I seem to get away with a lot of things, because most people don’t know me or expect that I’ll do anything. Sometimes, I really think people wonder if I’m some kind of psychopath. I lose track of how long I spend inside, too. My parents are always around, but I can’t really remember anything about any day I’ve spent with them in the last few years. I never know what I’ve had for breakfast. I never know what I’ve had for lunch. With some thought, I can remember what was for dinner or what my father was watching on television that day, but after the night, it blurs into one mess. In the mess, my father’s watching static, sleeping through it. My mother’s muttering like she does, all these things she can’t decide whether or not she wants us to hear, and I hear them all just fine when I’m around her, but when I’m upstairs, I swear I hear her talking about us. I can feel the hum of her voice like I’m trained to hear it from miles away. I can’t tell what’s being said, but I can feel it. I don’t go outside, though. I just stay in listening, feeling it straight through the floor. I never feel like the same person who was up on Kings St. with Crash and that wagon. Most of the time, I’m just a numb receptor for that voice. I was thinking about all of that when I came home, and I don’t know why. Maybe it was just too quiet, and I was expecting that hum to come up through the floor. Nothing did, though. Someone left one of the ceiling fans on and it needed to be fixed real badly. It was making a noise like a tire wobbling over. I couldn’t really watch television that night, and it was an off week for comics. Nothing was even worth rereading. After a bit of sitting there and drumming my fingers, I must have kicked out. A lot of times, I try to dream about specific things, specific people. That never works or maybe it does, but I just don’t remember it. I couldn’t think of anything to dream about that night anyway. I was just wondering if I said a name a hundred times a night would I start to fall in love with it. And I wondered whose name I had said the most and what colors I had seen the most of. Then it occurred to me that creativity must be something sick and wrong to start out. It breaks up repetition and all that beautiful stuff. And if I ever made something that wasn’t true or felt something that just came from me, well, I guess that’s not beautiful, is it? All these thoughts get messed up late at night, and I wonder if they have a way to unsay things or if you just have to say more things over the top of them. If that’s the case, then I’d have to spend fifteen years or so in another house before it’d start getting beautiful. This place, the mattress, the window with the flies stuck in it, it’s not beautiful to me. I don’t think about the word beautiful hardly at all. If I’m just starting to thinking about it that means it takes a lot of years before I start feeling it for real. If that’s the case, then I’m years behind all these people I know. I’m years behind Ray who’d at least get numbers. I’m years behind Jeff, too. I don’t feel it like they do. All I can do is tell when I’m thinking about sex when I should be thinking about something else. I know there’s something else to it, and that’s the right thing or the best thing, the beautiful thing, maybe. I’m just not feeling it at all. How are you supposed to get so you can repeat it and feel it all the time? What are you supposed to do when you haven’t got a damn thing that people want in the first place? You have to fool them, don’t you? If there’s nothing about you that’s worth a damn, don’t you have to fool people into thinking you’re worth their time? Isn’t that what the pot and the books and these things we’re supposed to have in common… isn’t that what it’s all about? Or is it all just sex? Because sometimes, I really think it is. Sometimes, I’m sick on the feeling. And my stomach was all messed up over the thought that Charlie’s reaching down to pull her up was just about touching her. I get sick thinking about how dishonest we have to get if that’s really what everyone wants in the first place. And the worst part of it is that she’s not the kind of girl to try and imitate any stupid head motions or looks. She’s not even the same creature they are. But the guys, every last one of them, I just don’t believe. I can’t. Something is telling me that this whole beauty shit isn’t real at all. It’s just another lie to make it look good. It’s just like me hitting her with that ball. It’s only an opportunity to reach through. And what if I’m right, and people don’t feel anything else, it’s just that wave of sex coming in from somewhere, inevitable. Does that make me honest if I say that I don’t feel anything, and everyone else in the world a liar for saying shit about love and beauty and whatever? I have to be missing something, because I know I’m not on the ball with this shit. I know I’m not thinking this out right. There’s more to it than this, but I get a bad feeling that I’m going to have to stay quiet if I don’t want to lie. I’m going to have to stay completely silent if I’ve going to get through life without saying I feel something I don’t. And if that has the power everyone says, then I don’t know how I’m going to keep from wanting to say it so badly that I almost believe it. What kind of shit would that be if I just decided, yeah, I’m in love with you or her or whatever? And who could tell me I wasn’t, just as long as I talk like some kind of wuss and act all sick inside like Jeff does? Who’s going to say he’s not in love when he’s got a bottle of booze and a whole act to prove it? What’s wrong with these people? And how can I keep from doing it, because I know I will, and I know why I will? I know I want the it, not them. I know what I was thinking about even when she was there on the ground and I could see a little bit of her thigh under her shorts that I didn’t see before. I know the whole thing. And it’s sicker than all that, because I thought about how it all would happen from there with Charlie using that touch to move into one of those soft core scenes I’ve watched over and over again. And I could imagine it, all the while thinking, no, damn it, she’s not the type, but I could see it in my head so easy. It made perfect sense, and I tried to turn it around to imagine me doing it, reaching to the ground and saying I was sorry. I tried to think of what I could possibly say to make it me and her and not her and him. None of that worked, though. And I had that image of him pulling her hair out of the ponytail and pulling her maroon running shorts down slowly. I thought it all the way through to the bobbing of flesh and her shaking on the bottom screaming with the same voice that said, “I’m all right”. And the way she gasped for air on the field, from that I imagined her breathing. It was too damn wrong, but I couldn’t stop, because I knew it was the only reason I went to the field that night anyway. And I was stuck thinking of her and him, getting off on wondering where and how they were doing it. Afterward, I realized something awful. After knowing her for twelve years, I didn’t know the color of her eyes. Isn’t that some romantic thing that guys are supposed to notice? Surely, I’ve seen them enough times. Why didn’t they stick in as beautiful? I thought they might be blue, but I didn’t know. It was no use trying to think about her. I didn’t want to think about her anymore or remember any time I had seen her for real. It probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. Things just end up fuzzy in my memory anyway, and I can put in any detail I want. I could give her blue eyes if I wanted to remember them. It didn’t matter. Something aching in me said that if I was a good person, I’d remember her eyes. And I thought for sure that the professional would have thought of that on the very first day they decided they were in love. They would write it down somewhere in a secret file where they keep all the information they need. Then, they’d go to a dictionary and look up all the descriptive words in a thesaurus so they could say the right thing all the time. Crash probably remembered eyes. It didn’t matter if he didn’t think much more about anything other than pot. Starky probably hasn’t looked anyone in the eyes long enough to know that he should remember. Charlie would, though. Charlie probably knows, remembers, and never forgets. But Jeff’s probably got it somewhere in a shrine no one will ever seen. And still, I don’t know if it matters. If she is at all in my memory, she’s blurry, and that means she could be anybody else. And when I hit her with the ball, she could have been anybody, too. Then, why does it hurt to think of her getting knocked down? It’s more than just somebody else helping her up, too. It’s more than just those morons looking at me like I’m a nutcase. And I don’t know why it had to be her? Does it take something like this to get a person thinking specifically? Does it take some kind of accident or event to make people thinking about each other specifically and not in that fuzzy way? And how long does it last before it all gets fuzzy again? I don’t know. I’d like to think it passes with a night or so. I’d like to think that I can just get a few good sleeps in, hear some rumors about Kristy Lee spreading wide for some Weedsport guy, and then I’ll just be thinking about no one in particular again. It doesn’t work that way, though. And then you’re left with this frightening, eyeless girl looking up at you. You can’t live with that for too long, and that means you have to go see her somehow, long enough to see the eyes and make a note of it. I knew it’d be a hard thing to do, and what was really terrible about the idea was that it would take planning, the kind of planning that Ray knows all about. If I really wanted a serious shot at doing this, I’d need to call him up. That makes me want to puke, because talking to him about anything of this nature would be like admitting that I was ready to play the game like everybody else. It would be like throwing out a name that wasn’t Connie Stultz. It would be a real name, a real ordeal, and a real chance for them to watch me fall on my ass. It’s all premature for that crap anyway. All I wanted was to see her damn eyes…. It really fucks me up how fucking romantic that sound, too. So, I decided not to call Ray up after all. Instead, I just thought of what possible reason I’d have to see her. Why would a indoor kind of guy like me have anything to say to her? I racked my brain for something we had in common, some incident that bound us together… and it was too damn simple, and twisted. I had hit her in the stomach with a soccer ball. I could always go up and apologize. I knew I’d better do it soon, too, because if I didn’t it would sound really out of the blue. I was thinking about it ever since it happened, but I don’t think it was that important to her. It’s funny how that works. One thing can change everything for one person, and the other person just forgets it. What does it take to write something into somebody else’s history? Why is it that I know I’ll never forget hitting her with that ball? And some day, I know I’ll forget what color her eyes are. I probably won’t care any more. Do I care in the first place? If I did, wouldn’t I just apologize and mean it, not even needing to look at her eyes? Why should I get anything out of it? Hell. It’s been pretty hard to stomach the whole thing. Upon my decision to apologize, I had to make a list of places that I might see her. It was a pretty short list. Hanging out around the grocery store didn’t seem like a great idea to me anyway. Imagine if I said right there in front of her father that I hit her with a soccer ball in the stomach. That wouldn’t go over too well, now would it? I figured I better wait, until soccer came around again. That way I’d have an excuse to mention it. We’d just be reminiscing about what happened last time. That’d be all right, wouldn’t it? It’d be brief and to the point. I could get a quick look, be sure to approach her when the sun wasn’t behind her, and then I’d know. I’d write it down somewhere after I got home, and end of story. That was the idea I was going with, and I stayed inside until Thursday. I waited for the phone to ring for an hour or so, then I called Crash. He said he wasn’t going. I couldn’t call Starky or anyone else. It had just gotten too late. Usually somebody dropped a line. Charlie always liked to know who was playing before he showed up. Sometimes, he couldn’t play, but not terribly often. I waited, then I waited outside on the porch. It got real cold and the mosquitoes came out. It would have been all right if I wasn’t so still. If I had been running, I might just have been okay. I nearly fell asleep a few times, then to my surprise the sun started rising, turning everything peach and black. I was tired, but I wasn’t feeling much like sleeping. My head was kind of cloudy and I could go either way. I went back inside and slept through most of Friday morning. *** I don’t talk too much. When I do, it becomes a problem, because I can’t shut up. I don’t even accomplish anything, I just blab. That’s why I don’t call anybody at all, unless I really don’t feel like starting anything I can’t finish. Sometimes, when the parents go out to the store for something or other, I hang back and get bored, but I know if I start writing something down or trying to find something to do, they’ll just come back and ruin it once they get back. So, I call people up when I can. Crash used to be good to talk to when he had real problems. It took him five years to just lighten up and say, “my Mom’s a bitch” like everyone always knew. Now, he’s at ease, but I can’t imagine how. Every time you call you have to have some kind of reason or else he’s off the phone playing videogames or setting up some kind of deal. I used to know the kid who gets him his stuff, too. And I know about all the shit Crash has been selling, because I’ve been buying some of it. CDs and shit, I mean. He’s been unloading all those things his Mom and Dad bought him, mostly sports equipment. He says he’s getting ready for the big move and doesn’t want to have to lug all that shit around. I’ve bought things from him that I wasn’t really interested in. It really makes no difference if I spend it on a baseball cap or a movie ticket, either way we just bullshit and hang around. At least with the baseball cap, I get something to take home. Besides, Crash doesn’t much like going to the movies anymore even if you’re buying. If you say you’ve got him covered, he starts acting like he doesn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. I’d say the hell with him, but there’s not too many other people I can call. He pretends to get mad sometimes when I call late at night just to ask what he’s doing. He says it’s cause he’s expecting a call. Once he said something about some chick he met at the baseball field. I asked him to tell the story, and he said he was sick of that whole thing. Apparently, Ray had pumped him for information. The two had spent an awful lot of time going places in the afternoons. I don’t know with who, but I had my suspicions. The thing about it is that once you have suspicions about people, then you admit you don’t really know them after all. I knew them just fine, though, but somebody else didn’t and they let them in, I guess. And I thought about that small crowd that always forms around Crash. That whole sound wasn’t just a pocket of sound, a single incident, that was the world, really. That whole feeling is what everyone gets lost in. That’s where they’re going in the afternoons, to some pocket of people huddled around a center. That center can be anything and everything, but most of the time, it’s money from all I see. The drugs cost money, the clothes cost money, and the gas and the cars that take you anywhere cost money. They say you can go places with your mind, though. I think really hard, too, but I don’t concentrate. I just get thinking and the whole thing starts going in circles. I’m not sure if that’s bad. I don’t know why I can’t stay on one topic for too long. It’s almost like I’m getting chased away by myself or this strange feeling that something big is missing. I wonder if it’s because I’ve never really left anything. When it comes time to leave my room, I wonder if I’ll be thinking about the mattress on the floor. I wonder if I’ll be thinking about the comic books and the dead flies on the windowsill when they’re gone. Maybe, I’ll be the same guy just thinking about whatever else I run into. If that’s the case then all this thinking is just a certain kind of rotation. I’ll just be looking around and around with this wide reach of thought, only it’s not the thought that moves the world. My legs move the world. All those bullshit things I do everyday from watching cartoons to taping porno movies, that’s real movement, that’s how I go through the world. And I can sit and think about the little bit that I know about everything. I can sit and think for hours, days, and maybe my whole life. It never sinks in that it’s getting me nowhere. It never seems to get through to me that it takes some movement to change a life. I just can’t think out the answer. I have to move the world with my arms and legs like everybody else. But then I have to talk to people, and what’s the use in that, really? Calling Crash is like calling somebody’s secretary. He answers the phone with a big, “Hey, it’s Jason, how ‘bout that?!” like he’s doing me some kind of favor when he talks to me. Or he won’t know who it is that’s calling him and say he was expecting somebody else. “Could you call back… dude?” and he won’t say when. If you ask, he says, “Not tonight anyway… a whole mess of shit going on tonight…” and nothing else. And if you keep at him, and ask, “what kind of stuff?” He says, “Nothing you want to get concerned about…” and he laughs like he’s some kind of brilliant old man. I knew that little bitch when he was still pissing his bed, and suddenly, he’s got it in him that’s he’s some big time dude. Meanwhile, the people that called him scumbag, dork, and faggot when he was growing out his hair are the first people he probably gives his time to. And I understand that in his shoes, I’d do the same damn thing, but I wouldn’t be delusional enough to think it has anything to do with anything else but weed. That’s it. He’s been inducted, though. I saw him on the street walking around with Jess and Amy Howl, too. Jess has been in and out of every kind of juvie hall, and Amy’s just been off this planet for a few years. I used to remember Jess being real mean, busting people up just ‘cause he felt like it. Amy never stayed around him, but she was too stupid to talk, too, always whining that school was too hard and the teachers were bitches. Then, she just mellowed out. It’s not hard to guess how, and that was a good change, but she’s still butt ugly and doesn’t have the sense to cross a street by herself. Jess disappears and reappears from town. Every time he comes back, he’s brought in like some kind of celebrity back from Hollywood. He’s been in jail, too, I heard. Who hasn’t heard that, though? He tells everyone he meets, shows off his tattoo of a skull that he got “on the inside”, I guess. And he’s one of those people that could and would beat me down easy just for the amusement of it. Then, everyone who knew him would spit on you if you ever told anyone who messed you up. It’s not all that bad. He’s strong, but none of us are really that strong, not so that it’s scary. It’s gonna get worse, though, I’m sure someday. That kid’s going to have the strength to hurt someone real bad. That’s all that’s saving him right now. He doesn’t know much more than how to knock you down and almost out. If you really had to, you could get away. He’s not so fast anymore since he’s been smoking. He just points to people and starts laughing saying if they don’t come over he’ll kick their ass. And he’d say, “I’m not gonna hit you. What are you scared about? He’s afraid, ain’t he?” And everyone around him would agree and laugh, and the girls would eat it up. There ain’t no competing with that. He’s the worst in a crowd of girls. If you’re on the outside of his cluster, you’ve got problems. Crash is in there hooking them up with money he ain’t got. He’s hitting his Mom’s purse, but she hasn’t complained, yet. We were on his couch once when he was bragging about it. He just reached back behind the couch, grabbed up her big white purse, and started riffling through it. I could go down that route too, but my mom doesn’t have that much cash on hand, I’m afraid. That’s a strange measurement of thing, isn’t it? Sarah Highroad’s Mom’s a rich bitch. And the richer the moms are, the easier it is for the sons and daughters to get into these clusters if they want to. I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know if it means that we’re all riding on the backs of our mothers or we’re all some kind of reflection of the amount of spending cash in our house. I think it’s both actually, and it’s more than just money. I sit up in my room realizing that everything we broke, every mess we made, and every school problem filters down to our mothers. At least that’s the way it is with Crash, Ray, and me. They run the houses, and more and more, I can sense that we’re just lodgers looking for some place else to stay. That’s why we’d stay over at each other’s house, trying to get out of the regimes of our mothers. Yet, we’ll eat the food and ask for clean clothes. I know it’s hypocritical, but the weirdest part about it all is that the less she asks and more she simply provides, the cooler she seems. Absence is just like cash. If nothing’s there, you can do whatever you want. Cash doesn’t ask questions, it just is. Having cash on hand is like having a license to exist, separate from anything that resembles home or family. And not having a home or a family, that has its charm, sometimes it’s just like the money. People want to know you when you’re free, either way. I don’t know if I’m free. I’ve never done anything I haven’t gotten away with, but that’s because I know what I can and can’t do. I know how to stay out of the way. I know where to hide my shit. I know where and when I can get away with murder. Sometimes, life is great like that, and I don’t want to push it, because I can’t think of anything out there I really want to get away with. What would be the point? What would I have to hide? Everything my parents don’t want to know about me, they won’t want to find out. It doesn’t matter whether I did something or not. If I could pull the whole world inside with me, better than I’ve done already, or get on some kind of schedule, I’m sure I’d be even better off. What’s the point in wrecking things? I don’t understand these younger kids out there on Fridays breaking windows and setting fires. I don’t even understand the use in just standing on corners yelling shit and putting little kids in headlocks. I’m just not feeling it. None of it seems more exciting than the things I come up with in my head. The only problem is that I can’t find a way to do any of the things I’m always thinking about. I just kind of assume that they’re inevitable, like my imagination is just some kind of power to see the future. Then, the real future comes and goes, and I didn’t do or say any of what I thought I would. And I realize that this ain’t freedom at all if I’m struck living the same way all the time, if I can’t make a few things really happen. Somewhere down the line, you have to come to terms with this one major sick fact. No matter how you could see it happening, no matter what you’ve thought, and no matter why it seems plausible, you will not fuck a tenth of the people you want to. You won’t even come so far as touching their bodies, and if you do, it’s probably through some kind of accident. You either have to say to yourself that you’re okay with not getting any or you have to go out there in a hopeless mad dash to get somewhere. I’m at this point now where I can’t tell which way I’m supposed to go. I’m afraid I’ll just be stuck here in the middle, dreaming and half-believing that any girl I see and imagine naked is somehow going to fall to me by some weird process of elimination. I’m afraid I’m going to get real old some day and still be waiting for my turn like it was entitled to me. And I’ll be waiting around not even going outside or around where I might meet anybody different. Some women stick in your head for years. I can see that happening to me. Some long days, I’m going to have trouble remembering through the haze of age, but certain names are going to show up. Eventually, I’ll forget what they look like, too. I’ll just have this fuzzy image of women composed from everyone I’ve ever seen, and I’ll just be drooling over a name like Connie Stultz, trying like hell to get off on the idea that someone could be that damn hot. By then, I probably won’t even care to remember that like on some days, I’d forget about her even when he naked legs were hanging right out there underneath a blue flowered dress. Whatever. I wonder how many men are at home right now, having spent time chasing obligations around, going to and from work, still with that slight embedded sense that their turn with their Connie Stutlz is coming around for sure. I wonder sometimes if my father had a name. If he did, it couldn’t have been my mother. No one ever ends up with a name. They always get people, and those people have names of their own. Those people have wants and a slight sense that they might have a chance with somebody else, too. When you get married, you sign away your right to fuck someone big and famous. You sign away the hope. You say officially that it’s a fantasy, and it’s over. People hold a lot of dreams like that. They say they want to be movie stars, then they learn not to say it anymore. Then, one day they take a job, buy a house, have a family and say officially, the dream is dead. And why am I realizing this so early? The next few years, wouldn’t it just be healthy to assume that my turn to nail every chick I’ve ever thought of is just around the corner? I know it’s not, but can’t I just keep that sense? Why am I identifying it? Why am I trying to force myself to decide? Either I leave this room and try to get something going or I realize that I don’t want it enough. And if I don’t want it enough, it’s not going to happen. It’s funny, but I can sit up in my room thinking about one girl or the other and feel like I want it so badly, but I still don’t want it enough to leave the room. How much more do you have to want it before it starts motivating you? How much was Ray thinking about this shit before he knew he had to get his hands on some phone numbers? It’s that damn repetition thing again. When he’s after a specific girl it’s enough to pull him through. He’ll go up to her and sputter like an idiot, but at least he’ll do it. I could never keep the focus on anyone for long enough. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t worth the embarrassment, the revulsion, and the disappointment. He takes it all. I know it. Every girl out there finds it humorous, too, just a little bit. When she laughs at a bald man, a fat man, or any kind of hopeless man… she’s just taking power where she can get it. I can hear it when the Skanks are laughing and whispering. I can feel it when Kristy Lee makes those head motions to people at random. I can feel it in everything Sarah Highroad looks at. They live on it, as if to come together and say, “I know you want me, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.” When I think about that, I used to get real mad, but more often now, I’m just not feeling anything at all. And I can’t talk to any of them. They know what I want, and as soon as they start to use it against me, then I’d walk away. And I asked myself, are you ready to build a lie to get what you want? Are you ready to put on a disguise? Are you ready to say things like “I think about you all the time” and omit stuff like “I think about you naked sprawled out on a white carpet”? Some women assume that you want sex whenever you even glance at them. That’s why the best defense is to look at the wall and pretend not to listen no matter what Sarah Highroad says. Other women don’t assume anything, because they’re not even thinking about your existence, let alone the fact that you have any kind of pulse or desire. You’re an object, no different than a tree or building. Some women never mention sex at all, only in jokes and stuff. They have six or seven guy friends supplying their shoulders to cry on when all they’re doing is waiting around for their turn. If that’s stepping up, then I don’t know if I’m ready for that. The girl in center of it always claims she didn’t know when some poor sap ends up going psycho over her. She doesn’t mention all the time she spent right beside him shaking her tits and ass, never once mentioning sex, of course. I think I hate these girls the most out of all of them. Sometimes, I hate them all. I could see it if it came down to something they knew that I didn’t, but I can’t believe that’s the case. I think they only know a few things that work and they use them. The rest can be ignored. It’s nobody’s fault when a guy wants a girl, but his. Why girls want to mess with this shit is beyond me, because the way I see it, if you want a guy to burn himself up inside don’t bother trying to take the things he has, just hold up those things he can never have. Hold the rich, raw, and beautiful right out of his reach. He’ll probably end up killing someone. Are you ready to lie? Maybe, we need this lie. Maybe, we need to believe in feeling and love and shit, because no one wants to admit how strong this other stuff is. It’s more than laws, I think. People weren’t designed to respect. I think they were designed to breed. All that stuff about being good to each other, the planet, the world, that’s all just issues that people have out their as criteria. If you agree with her on this issue, this issue, and this issue, she’ll fuck you. It’s having the right criteria that makes a person good or bad, and maybe, it all comes back to the same thing. Either you’re fucking people because they want to save the whales or because they’re just there. Those are the ends of the spectrum, good and evil. No getting around it. And what am I if I just say I want everyone, but not enough to have them and not enough to change the way I am? And personal appearance is the main thing. We all know that, don’t we? Who’s going to deny that? Ray can say whatever he wants about “feeling it in the pit of his stomach” but he’s never felt anything for some fat ass bitch. Sometimes, I’d like to test that out, get two women to do exactly the same thing and see who gets the most attention, the one with the tits or the jumbo rolls for a stomach. I won’t even listen to people who say it has nothing to do with physical appearance. It’s every damn thing. That’s why all those guys in those soft-core porno movies have the same damn haircut. It’s repetition. We’ve had it all since we could see, watching these clusters form around people. Our little minds were being pulled before we even knew why, and I can’t help that my dick will raise for a thin girl and not a fat one. I can’t help that. All I know is that the feeling is real. It’s not something I have to convince myself is happening. She’s there and there’s a reaction. It’s funny how backward and hypocritical the whole system is. A guy has to spend months pretending that he doesn’t want it, to even have the chance of getting it. The best thing a guy can do is find another guy who does want it and shows it, then he can step up and protect her. That puts him in a better position to get it later. Will someone tell me why, if a guy says it’s not about sex, does he accept it just as soon as she says yes? After the fact, provided it went well, then it’s okay to say you always wanted her, right? She practically expects you to say that, doesn’t she? Wait a minute, though. I think I understand something. I’m just upset, because of I’ve been thinking of Ray out there at the ballpark talking to some girls, knowing what he wants, and knowing what he’ll say to get it. It doesn’t bother me that he’s there as much as it bothers me that I’m not, because I’d probably do the same thing. And what if that ended up working? If that whole thing, picking a girl, deciding I’m in love, if that all got me laid, how could I look down on it? I wouldn’t. I’d say love was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d probably try to stay in love as long as I could, even if she left. There has to be some other way, though, something that doesn’t have to do with lying or pretending I care about something that I don’t. I know in advance any thread of feeling I’ve got for anyone is just going to throw me back into wanting them. What better thing could I do for them than to stay silent. Jeff knows what he’s doing. He knows why everyone talks about love, and he wants no part in that. What else is there to do, anyway? What’s a fitting tribute? I could hurt myself, I guess. I could hurt other people, too. I could sit and wait for someone who just can’t take it, and when he cracks, I could bust his face open and play the hero. That’s the only way I could see it working. Then, all a guy could ever hope to be is an alternative to someone who came before him. The longer you wait, every girl you’ve ever known has had and has ended something. The longer you wait, the longer their lifetime is without you. Everyone forgets your name. Some people even forget the names of the people they’ve slept with. And if that doesn’t have a hold on people, then nothing does, I guess. And if everything’s so forgettable, is it so wrong to think that everyone gets their turn? People remember the ones they love, though, and I don’t want to love anybody. The best thing I could do if I ever felt it was probably not to say it, to hold off from saying it as long as I could. That would make me a good person. “Hello, Ray?” I said. “I don’t believe this man, but I….” But, I’m not a good person. “I’m in love.” “Really,” Ray said crunching on some potato chips. “Who is it?” “Well, I don’t want to tell you?” I said. “Come on,” he said. “You obviously want to tell me or you wouldn’t have brought it up.” Ray’s knows a lot about these things.
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