"I know. I'm horrible. I'm leaving him anyway." (961 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.77 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by QuinnTheEskimo (View user info) at 2009-07-21 08:13:14 EDT
The water dispensor in the fridge shoots out at an angle, like the way you piss in the morning after staying up all night having sex. It's four in the damned morning. I wish I could sleep.
I still smell like her, damn it. Her perfume was strong enough that it lingers on my shirt, an uninvited guest over staying his welcome. But I can't stop smelling my shirt, even now that the smell of Egytptian Cotton is almost overpowered by cigarette smoke.
Why was she there? I know why she was there, that's a stupid question. It was a poetry reading, and she was there to read poems. I hadn't expected to see her, this ghost from my past, this damned woman whose voice and smell and fingers had a way of gripping me in a way that I couldn't escape. Her love had been wrestling a bear; even if you made it out alive you ended up scarred.
All I had wanted to do was smoke weed with an old friend, drive down to the reading, and go home. I blew off the girl I'm seeing to do just that. Instead my friend flaked out on me, left me alone in a coffee shop, seven in the evening, waiting for the reading to start.
Things would't get moving until nine, I knew, so I walked around the corner to surpise a friend I hadn't seen in years. When I got to his place, a thin stranger answered the door.
"Hey, is Nick here?" I asked.
The skinny man shook his head. "Ain't seen him all day."
"Fuck. I was hoping he had weed, my friend bailed on me."
"Sorry, yeah, he's moving out soon. E-mail him, that might be easier. He doesn't got a phone."
I nodded. "Got a bathroom I could use?"
"Yeah, lemme find some toilet paper."
"Naw, I only gotta pee."
"Through there," He pointed, the muscles in his skinny arm stood out in shadows and pools of light.
The place was like it was last time I came by, the squalor of pot heads living together, making rent with enough left over for reefer. The kind of people that would rather smoke a bowl of weed than eat a bowl of cereal. My kind of people.
When I came back out the skinny man was gone, so I left, walked back down to the coffee shop. There was a pretty black girl sitting out front and flipping through a note book so I sat next to her and lit a cigarette.
"Whatcha got there?" I asked.
"Writing."
"Whatcha write?"
"All kinds of things. This is mostly letters, love letters, to a man I was with. There is a song in here somewhere, I'm trying to find it."
I nodded, though I wasn't sure what she meant. Had she written a song, and lost it, or was she trying to write a song about the man using lines scraped out of her love letters? I gave up thinking about it. Everyone writes about love.
We sat in silence for a while, then she asked, "Want a drink?"
"What kind of coffee you got?" I asked.
"It's vodka, cheap vodka."
"You know my brand!" I said, smiling. She poured me a drink, two shots in a plastic cup and I gulped it down.
I sat for a while after that, then decided to leave to find some where I could turn this buzz into full blow vibrations. A stood, stubbed my cigarette out on my shoe, and thanked the girl for the vodka. I walked through the coffee shop to the back door where I knew my truck was waiting and there she was.
"Quinn?" She said, her tone sounded as shocked as I felt. I didn't say anything, just stood there, stunned. What do you say to someone you know like I knew her?
She stood and hugged me, and began to drag me to a more private area of the coffee shop. "Can we talk outside?" I asked.
"Of course!" She said.
Outside, she told me how much she missed me. She regretted hurting me. God how I had missed her! Every single day thoughts of her floated through my head. I told her this. We hugged again, then we kissed, and kissed and kissed and kissed. I liked kissing her, her thin lips against mine. I held the hair on the back of her head in my fist, the way I knew she liked.
We left the coffee shop, her reading forgotten, and walked around downtown, talking about old times and catching up on things we had missed in the last few years. We went to Del Taco. I ate a large fry, dipping the processed potatoes into that heavenly Del Taco cheese while she sipped at orange flavored tea. The place was nearly empty, and N'Sync was playing on the overhead speakers.
"I still look for your car, even a thousand miles away I still looked for your car." I told her.
"Every time I saw a truck like yours I'd perk up, too." She told me. He face grew somber. "I had no right to treat you like that, no right to jerk your chain, to hurt you like I did. I understand if you never feel the same way about me."
"How could I? How could I not wonder if you were out with some other man, out letting some other man run his hands all over you, letting some other man kiss you. Jesus. Even now, your boyfriend is sitting at home waiting for you to get back from your open-mic poetry reading while I run my hands all over your body and kiss you."
"I know. I'm horrible. I'm leaving him anyway."
"That's what you said last time we were together. I believed you then. I'm two years older and wiser now, not that it makes much difference. I'd still take you back in a heart beat. Besides the sleeping around you never treated me too badly. I'm a sick pathetic fuck."
She reached across the table and held my arm. "No you're not."
"What time is it?"
"Eleven."
"Better get you home, to him."
"I'm so sad that I have to leave you and go back to him," She said, looking at the floor.
"Yeah, and I get to leave you and go to no body." I said it in a way that implied any warm body would do.
I stood up and left the restaurant. She got into her car and drove home, and so did I.
At home I couldn't sleep. One, two, three, the hours ticked by while I waited for the sun to come up smoking cigarettes and eating half a canteloupe. I watched the moths flying to the porch light, their buttery wings hummed unti their fat bodies hit the bulb with a sort or tink-thud noise.
And then there was a bee. What's a bee doing up this time of night, I wondered. Shouldn't he be home, asleep, instead of throwing himself into that hot bulb like all those idiot moths?
User Reviews
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2009-07-24 14:14:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2009-07-23 17:24:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I want to bum you.
Submitted by spuj (user info) at 2009-07-22 05:20:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
brilliant
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2009-07-22 03:42:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sage104 (user info) at 2009-07-22 01:04:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
A) There's nothing wrong with eating a bowl of cereal and THEN smoking a bowl of weed, or vice versa.
2) Why men continue to like women who cheat on them and vice versa is something I will never, ever, ever understand.
D) I enjoyed your weird ass ending.
Submitted by moopy4u (user info) at 2009-07-21 18:58:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awwwwww!!! I know how you feel man. I really do :(
Very inspiring.
Submitted by THERAPlST (user info) at 2009-07-21 18:03:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
gnarley.
Submitted by cheerios (user info) at 2009-07-21 16:52:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ejryuu (user info) at 2009-07-21 15:47:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Closer to a 2 than a 1 but not by much!
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-07-21 15:17:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, but apparently someone's alter has problems with it.
Probably Kaos-King, jealous his writing gets -2bombed to all hell. If only he could actually write.
Anyway, if this post means what I think it means, you better not do that shit, or I'll be forced to dust off the old face kickin' boots.
Submitted by Gayvid_Gerrold (user info) at 2009-07-21 15:01:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2009-07-21 14:49:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
What do you say to someone you know like I knew her?
I thought for sure you'd hate this line the most, haikumikoo.
Submitted by SullyThePirate (user info) at 2009-07-21 14:04:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2009-07-21 13:27:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Her love had been wrestling a bear; hairy and smelly and sometimes you got bear spit on you.
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2009-07-21 12:24:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish that you (Quinn), MWG and I could be BFFs.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-07-21 12:02:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Her love had been wrestling a bear; even if you made it out alive you ended up scarred.
===
I hated that line, but the rest is groovy enough.
I told you I can't +2 you if you start writing like Bukowski.
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-07-21 12:01:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TechnoRatty (user info) at 2009-07-21 10:35:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh! let the Clouds of thy sweet Vapours rise,
And both my Mammularies Circumcise.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2009-07-21 10:27:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you should have just written about the bee. i'm in a place where he interests me more than what humans do to each others brains, which is what everything else is about.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2009-07-21 10:12:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
At first it made me think of Frank Miller. Kept expecting to read "she smelled like angels ought to smell".
Good though.
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2009-07-21 10:05:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
looks like goooood readin
Submitted by Foolproof (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:59:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
'Nuff said.
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:54:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
been reading a lot of bukowski lately, and whenever i read someone it tends to show up in my writing.
Submitted by HellRazer (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:45:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very Bukowski. I dig it.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:32:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
http://stuff.ubersite.com/1101881284388921925/1/lemonparty.jpg NSFW (but not the lemonparty you're thinking about)
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:19:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
my fingers do smell like victory:
cigarettes and hand lotion
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:19:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yeah, the bee should be home, but he's obviously not.
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2009-07-21 08:18:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I love to smell my fingers in the morning.
Smells like victory.