Why then would I add myself to that dogpile. Plus, I don’t know what internet you’re on but mine is chockablock with nubile teen ass. But he’s right, he’s right. Go talk to a woman tomorrow, he says. This is your assignment.
Next morning I go to the coffee shop. It’s all men. Bearded whiteboys hunched over Tumblr. A fat guy reads Thomas Piketty’s Capital. The book of the summer. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask about it at a party. I haven’t read it, I’ll say, but I looked at a precis. I will pronounce precis like the douche I am. It will impress her. First I have to get invited to a party.
On the back patio there’s one woman. Gigantic ass. Face like a Mexican dwarf with Downs syndrome, but forgivable. I should talk to her. Check off my homework. Excuse me, miss. I couldn’t help but notice your fat pudenda clearly defined in your half sheer black yoga pants. Your chubby cunt crack looks like it’s about to come to life and say feed me like Little Shop of Horrors. I’d like to bury my raw helmet in those sweaty yeasty folds, all pungent in the summer heat. Let me know your thoughts. I say nothing.
Another one sits. She is cute, maybe 25. Before that awful dry season at 28 when girls have to get their shit together. Wholesomely pretty. Miss Clairol red hair. Not too red, just enough that she can call herself a ginger on the internet. Out of shape skinny but she’s feeling the top of her own tits, maybe taking a pet hair off her shirt. She has a framed canvas. She is drawing on it. Excuse me, miss. What are you drawing there. Is it my rigid purple cock spraying a hot salty load on your Miss Clairol hair, because if so you are really reading my mind. I say nothing.
Woman in purple yoga pants carrying a baby. The pregnancy weight made her ass floppy. I want to spread the crack open. Bury my face in it. Tongue out her hemorrhoidal postnatal asshole. Mount her and blast on her battered cervix so the kid has a little brother to grow up with. Her jiggly fat white girl thighs. Her soft functional maternity exercise clothing. Her war zone of a cunt. Something primal about it. Proof that her womb yields fruit. She is talking to the waitress, answering some question about the kid. His hair. She must get sick of talking about it. He can walk. He’s roaming free and climbing on the furniture. Clumsy. He’ll fall on the polished cement and crack out all his teeth. Permanently warp his skull. She has a fanny pack full of products for cleaning out his ass.
Now he’s making that baby eye contact with me. Awkward. Sorry for thinking those things about your mom. Enjoy that banana. He smiles at me. She looks. I say nothing.
It’s too hard. I leave and go to the gym. There are girls there too but headphones, iphones. Civilization was built to give women tools to avoid me. The day is a bust.
Try again the next morning. On the way to the cafe I pick up a copy of L.A. X-Press, the hooker paper. A girl works the counter. I have to speak to a woman. Jesus Christ, I tell her. I hold the paper up. These whores are disgusting.
Yeah?
Seriously, look at this. I show her. Sexy Alejandra has a 1/3d page color ad. She’s maybe 65. Body like a white tall kitchen trash bag after you’ve been stomping chicken bones down in it for three weeks. Her lips are full of sheep fat. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick, I tell the girl.
Oh wow, she says.
And dudes are out there paying for this.
Wow.
I’m sorry for carrying this paper in here. But it’s interesting, you know, they have real world news. Like look, there’s an article about Honduras.
Wow, you never see that.
But you wonder who looks at the brutally murdered Palestinian teen and then wants to fuck a hooker.
Maybe, she says, the idea is that you get so worked up over the pain of the world that you need an erotic massage.
Could be.
I actually like the horoscopes in that one.
Against all odds she is interested. I should keep saying stuff. The Mamas and the Papas is playing. The next thing I would say is: I can’t hear this band without thinking of Papa John Phillips rawdogging his passed out daughter on her 18th birthday. He wrote all their songs, you know. But the girl, I can’t see myself fucking her. So what’s the point. I order tea and leave it alone. The paper tells me new friends could appear on the scene, Pisces.
At night I go to AA. Astrid comes too, because last time she drank she pissed herself and I had to put her in a chokehold to get her upstairs. Afterward a cute girl talks to me. You look exactly like a guy I know, she says. My cousin. You ever flick the bean to him after a family beach outing, I want to ask . She was across from me at the big church table. I’d been eyefucking her all night. Once in a while she’d look up and our eyes would meet. Well here, I say, let me take a picture of myself. You can send it to him. She texts herself the picture. We’re going to Two Boots after, she said. Do you want to come. But I had to take Astrid home. And showing up with Astrid was the only reason this girl spoke to me in the first place. This was AA meeting #150 for me. AA meeting # 1 where I showed up with a tart in a tight dress. #1 where a girl spoke to me after. I hate women.
Well good, my sponsor tells me when I tell him the news. You got a girl’s phone number in real life. Now ask her out.
But I don’t want to. She seems too normal. And I don’t want a girl anyway. Not yet. I want to sit at home alone a few more nights reading that stupid poem and being a pussy about it.
I go home. I have a facebook message from this actress my brother fucked back East. She’s out here now. Once every three months I look at her work on youtube. Jerk off to it and think: I should ask her out.
I liked your story, she says.
Thanks.
I don’t agree with everything you write about but you’re more compassionate than you’d think.
I try to be.
I love your brother to death. From what little I know it seems you guys had a difficult childhood.
Yeah, I tell her. Really my childhood was fine. Why kill the momentum.
I had a lot of that same shit too. A lot of abuse. It’s hard to carry the weight of all that around. I’m glad you’re doing the AA thing.
Thank you.
I’ve wondered if I had a sex addiction.
Yeah?
Like a lot of the time all I want is to fuck or watch porn and masturbate and it’s a huge distraction.
Is it fucking up your life? I’ve found the 12 step thing helpful.
Like last night before I went to bed I took a picture. In case I woke up and wanted to send it to a guy.
She’s a human being who hurts and you are too. You want another girl and you’re just using someone to forget that for a minute. This will help nobody. This will definitely fuck you up. You know this. You know this. You type “come over.” Do you hit send or what.
Take Me Home Tonight
He was lit and he went to the back patio for a cigarette. It was Monday and the crowd wasn’t bad. Two to one ratio but one cute girl smoking alone. Mexican in Converse. 1981 Love and Rockets.
You look like the girl who blew Eric Stoltz in Rules of Attraction, he said. He knew she would know it.
Haha– that’s not the only thing she did in that movie.
The less said about the rest the better.
I actually love that movie.
Me too. It was the first time I learned that people wipe their ass while they’re still sitting down. That split screen scene with fuckin cinder block head James Van Der Beek.
I thought he was hot.
You live around here?
Yeah.
With your family?
Why, cuz I’m Mexican?
Yes.
No, I have a job and I pay rent. I went to college and I’m not pregnant, Sean Bateman.