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And because the world has this uncanny knack for kicking people while they’re down, every forty-five seconds or so someone asks me if the bar stool next to me is taken.
I’m pretty sure I meant to say this to myself—a soliloquy or maybe an inner monologue. But it ended up being more of an announcement, like something you might shout at a crowd of ill-behaved toddlers, and now everyone at the bar is looking at me. “Sorry,” I say. “But it’s true.”
All things considered, though, it’s probably a bad sign that even a toddler can tell that I’m in way over my head.
“There are two types of guys in this world,” she says. “Guys who know that ‘So It Goes’ is a Kurt Vonnegut reference, and guys who I want absolutely nothing to do with. I’m glad you’re one of the first ones.”
“I told you, Andy. I’m Daisy, and I’m friends with Henry. And I teach Vagina Fiction.”
I’m not an alcoholic—I don’t have the discipline to become one—but, generally speaking, I’ve been drinking too much since Karen left.
More pop music irony at its most jagged.
It’s the best thing a girl can be in this world. A beautiful little fool.”
“No . . . I don’t know that. You’re just our neighbor. That’s what I know. Our dumbfuck neighbor. You’re like a jackal. A . . . sex jackal.” I hear that, what I’ve just said, and it sounds so stupid that I now want the fictional FedEx truck to hit me—to just end this, right here, with all these rubbernecking morons as witnesses.
“You seem like kind of an expert when it comes to pain and human suffering.”
Facebook is the literal manifestation of all our regrets, looping and looping, for free, on our computers and phones. People who should be gone and safely out of our lives forever are there again, one cryptic little glimpse at a time, reminding us of all the things we should or shouldn’t have done.
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The sadness is sudden, and it arrives with significant weight into my sternum, knocking the breath out of me.
“From here on out, no matter what happens, even if I’m not around to keep drumming it into your head, you’re Batman. Always. Never Robin. Never again. Deal?”
After the age of about . . . what, sixteen? We’re all damaged. Every single beautiful, stupid, precious one of us. Damaged, damaged, damaged.”
“Really? That was such a good line to end on. You totally spoiled it.”
“I had this Etch A Sketch when I was a kid,” I say. “I used to love that fucking thing. I’d try to draw something, like a bird or a dog, but I was a really shitty artist, so I’d screw up every time. But it didn’t matter, because I’d just shake it up and start again.”
It might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. And I totally get it.
