See?

I’ve just realized you put a hole in my neck. I push my finger into the dimple that you've permanently burned there and feel my skin dip like a crater. Now, no matter where I go, I will always have this wonderfully macabre souvenir from you. While it is wonderful I'm sure, I am yet to be aware of its significance. That was meant to be off color, not jarring in anyway.

            “It’s almost sentiment, I suppose,” you say. “I’ve scared you.” 

            “Scared me?” I ask. “How so?”

            “There is literally a scar.”

            “Did you perhaps mean to say, scarred me? It isn’t that scary, and scarred has two R’s in it.”

            “So sue me,” you reply, at length.

            “For what you did to my neck?” I exclaim, in mock surprise, although the sarcasm is lost, at length. “That seems a little dramatic,” I say.  “It was an accident; I don’t blame you for that. I’m not mad, by any means. I just thought I was being funny bringing up old times.”

            “What?” You say. You seem to be at a loss. “I think you’re overanalyzing the word ‘scar,’” you tell me, putting a drawl on it. I can see it, your pronunciation that is. I think you missed my joke though.

So sue me, you said. Remember? 

For the scar? I retorted cleverly. Remember? 

Hook, line, and sinker. 

Wakka wakka wakka.

            “Geeze, it’s been a long day,” you groan, rolling your eyes. I can see it.

            “For you?” I ask.

            “No, for you . . .”

            “Is that sarcasm?”

            “Very much so.” You say, and you cross your arms and look away, like when you were a ballerina. I can see it, you crossing your arms that is. I can feel your words in my pockets, filling them to the brim and spilling them over with indifference. I know you want me to stop talking, but I don’t. I can’t.

            “So why was your day so long?” I inquire.

  BuzzBuzz. More words that I don’t have room for. Don’t interrupt me when I’m trying to have a conversation. Can’t you see I’m trying to have a conversation?

“He better not be on his way over,” my friend demands from my other pocket.

“He is though,” I say. “How did you know?”

 BuzzBuzz. Words. More of them, they’re yours this time.

“School I suppose, and I didn’t get home from the airport until two a.m. because of bad weather.”

I don’t know who to listen too.

BuzzBuzz.

“I passed him,” my friend intervenes. “He looked like he was sitting on a dick.”

“Well, he is gay,” I reply. “You should be more tolerant. It’s what he likes. For all you know he was sitting on a dick.”

 He was coming over to drink my liquor. He was coming over for his friend's sake. His friend, who was, no doubt, currently sitting slack in the passenger seat going unnoticed by my friend, who was traveling in the vehicle next to theirs staring into the drivers side. He was coming over for her, but she would not be coming. Not tonight anyway, because she was with him. For those of you who are confused, she is not the “You” that I have been speaking too, because “You,” is an entirely different person. She, is also not “my friend,” although she is a friend. You, the reader, are also not her. The “you” that I've been speaking to that is. That would be insane. That wouldn't make any sense. That, would be crazy. 

Pay attention here because I am talking about six different people.

            You.

            My friend.

            Him.

            Him.

            Him.

            And Her.

            Are you paying attention? BuzzBuzz. Not now, I’m telling a story here. Can’t you see that I’m telling a story?

They were all coming over (except for you of course, you live too far away) because we had all spoken on the phone earlier that week, and made plans to have drinks together. But I was expecting everybody hours ago. And It wasn't even everybody's tardiness that pissed me off. It was the fact that he had invited himself over. He, was coming over here, to see her. However, while she had verbally confirmed her attendance, I knew that she was going to end up at his house, letting him fuck her, as she never properly learned how to be alone, like I had. I was also annoyed by his arrival, because he had never been formally invited into my house. Unless I extend an invitation to you myself, then you are not my guest. You are just a person near my bedroom and I do not wish to speak to you.

 

            “You had school today?” I ask you. “How awful, I did too. Did you learn anything new?”

BuzzBuzz.

“He’s gay. Of course he’s gay,” my friend says. “I knew that.”

BuzzBuzz

“I learned that countries with the frizziest hair, genetically, are Lithuania and Denmark.” You tell me.

            How fancy, I think. I never learned anything in school about people’s hair in other countries. We only learned ugly things about other countries, like currency and corruption and war. Sometimes nice things though, like languages and foods and paintings, but never anything personal, never anything as personal as which countries had the frizziest hair. I don’t even realize I am pacing in my room now and I catch myself looking up at the ceiling. There is a ring of dust on the ceiling right behind the fan. It’s disgusting and I shouldn’t have to clean it. It was there when I got here. I think I'll leave it for the next tenant. God I could use a drink, I think to myself. But you should never drink alone. You have a problem if you drink alone. God I need a drink.

BuzzBuzz. 

Not now, I'm thinking. Can't you see I'm thinking? 

But I do not hear from you for the rest of the night. 

He arrives with him. They head straight for my fridge and help themselves to my beer. What a gracious host I am. I should consider myself lucky they don't make a pass at my liquor. He asks me if I have heard from her. I tell him that I haven’t. I say, "I don't think she's coming." I fail to mention to him that at this very moment, she is probably being straddled over a coffee table and He is making her come right now.  She doesn't even have the common decency to call, and say that she's not coming, leaving everyone to wonder where she is. Everyone wonders but me, because I know she's a bitch. 

My friend finally arrives. As he enters the room he looks at me and rolls his eyes at the other two in the kitchen while they drink my beer and giggle dimly to themselves. They all go into the living room and put on a scary movie. I do not join them because I do not watch scary movies. I have a terrible imagination and it keeps me up most nights. Instead, I decide to read a book in the kitchen on the counter, sitting up against the side of the fridge with my feet up on the toaster. I am doing my best to ignore the screaming coming from the living room. I sit and try to focus on my book about war in other countries. There are no chapters on frizzy hair.

When the movie is over I join everybody in the living room and stare past them while they boast tall stories of bravado and lie about fights they haven't been in. They pontificate loudly about themselves, to themselves, and roar over one other; about nothing in particular. They remind me of great big Silverback gorillas, because I do not understand Silverback gorillas. I want them to leave. When they finally do leave I go into my bedroom, turn off all my lights and try to go to sleep. I cannot sleep though, because the screaming from the living room is still ringing in my head. So are the authors harrowing accounts of currency, corruption, and war. When I get to sleep that night, I dream of skeletons dancing in flames, screaming at me in agony and ecstasy as they beg me to save their frizzy hair.

BuzzBuzz.

Not now. I’m trying to sleep. Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?