Part 3

[thehefner]

A month later, the Rudes’ latest show was underway, Oedipus/Antigone. Tammy got the role of Antigone’s sister, Ismene, while I got another bit cameo role as the Messenger from Corinth. Y’know, the one who blabs about the whole, “Yeah, you’re fucking your mother!” thing? That’s me. I could only come down once every couple weeks, since I was so pre-occupied at school. Not only with classes, but I had also been cast as Dale Harding in a thesis production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Still, I had managed to make it down to Laurel for an O/A rehearsal, mainly just as an excuse to see Tammy.

She had brought along a guy named Jon Van Breeman, a friend she had met through Games Workshop who had just moved in with her and Bryan. Van Breeman was a short, skinny blond kid with glasses who had some military experience, don’t ask me what. While Tammy rehearsed, Jon and I hit it off, talking about geek things, comics, movies, the Simpsons, and so on. We talked while he worked on painting game miniatures from Lord of the Rings and Warcraft and such. He liked to show off his paint jobs, and I had to be as polite as I could, since they were frankly amateurish and sub-par. Rather than comment on the one he’s showing me, I’d look through the box of painted figures and find one I genuinely did think looked good.

“Oh, I really like that one!” I’d say.

And every single time, his reply was, “Oh, well, Tammy painted that one.”

Within an hour of our friendship, I had already starting skirting around the problems between Tammy and me. By that point, I had been talking to all of my friends in the Rudes about Tammy, telling them the few Hefner Monologues I had and asking them for advice, hoping that maybe one of them might be able to provide some insight or help. Y’know, something other than “Danger! Danger! Abort mission!”

“I wouldn’t worry about Tammy and Bryan,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That relationship’s not long for this world, trust me,” he said. It was that teeny seed of hope I was clawing for, and to hear it was music to my ears. His finger slipped and a glob of blue engulfed a poor innocent die-cast orc.

“Curse you, Reed Richards!” Van Breeman mumbled.

“…Wait. What did you just say?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s just something Tammy says sometimes. Now she’s got me saying it too. I’m not sure what the hell it means.”

I just smiled.

I found a confidant in Van Breeman, as someone who knew her and also liked me. I needed a confidant, because I could knew how things would go after Birthday Ball. Sure enough, she eventually stopped returning my calls again and began to avoid me at rehearsals. Not majorly, but enough that I could notice a difference. The flirting was completely gone. It was as if we had been nothing more than casual acquaintances. I could feel it all slipping away again. Every day that I went without hearing from her, I got more and more depressed. Was she pulling away again? Was she? Oh god, I couldn’t go through that again. I couldn’t. It was getting worse this time, I could feel it, and the worse it got, the worse I got. I kept telling my Hefner Monologues to students as well as the Rudes, now armed with the romantic surprise of Birthday Ball, but it felt like trying to use hands to hold back a flood.

When I turned 21, the Rudes decided to take me out to Atlantic City that coming weekend and get me bombed. I mean, hell, here I was, about to have my best friends in the world take me to “Less Vegas” and buy me all manner of liquid comestibles until I couldn’t feel my legs. And yet all I could think about was how excited Tammy was for Bryan when he turned 21, and how she couldn’t wait to see him, and how I hadn’t heard from her in weeks. I tried calling her cell phone repeatedly throughout the day, not leaving messages because I knew if I did that I’d never get a call back, I had to actually catch her.

So yeah, basically, I was going bugfuck. And again, I’d seen enough people go bugfuck so that I was just objective enough to say, “Heffie, you’re going bugfuck, maybe you should just rela-I CAN’T! I’M TOO BUGFUCK TO CARE!!!” See, to my mind, it was all painfully simple. All I wanted, all I needed to hear was that she loved me, that she wasn’t going to push me away anymore, and then I’d be fine. That was all I needed, or all I thought I needed. And the more bugfuck I got, the more I hated myself for going so crazy. Because I never wanted to be crazy or obsessive or anything; I wanted to know that what I was going through was understandable and normal for anyone in my situation. And guess what happened the longer I went without getting that validation?

So yeah, I didn’t get the call on my birthday. Nor the day after that, nor the day after that. When you’re miserable about something like this, something that involves staring at your phone and just waiting, time slows to a fucking crawl. I had to be back in town that weekend so the Rudes could take me out, but I just said "fuck it" and drove back home a day early so I could see her at that night’s O/A rehearsal.

So at this point, yeah, I’m basically like a junkie in the kind of withdrawal where’ll you feel like you’d sell your own mother’s kidneys just for a fix, however small. Pride meant nothing anymore. Hell, from my perspective, pride actually got in the way! When I found Tammy, she was a little curious as to why I’d called about twenty-five times on her cell phone over the past few days. Curious, but not really surprised or offended.

While a major part of her wanted me to just go away, for the whole “Heffie” problem to just disappear, another major part- the actress, the performer, the flirty bucket o’ sex with the side of fellated lemon- really kinda liked the attention. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, I could tell what was going on in her head. Like, on one hand, the thing with this guy’s doomed. On the other hand, I have him wrapped around my finger, hey this is kinda fun. On the third hand, I don’t want to hurt him. And on another hand, I’m totally hung up on him too and I don’t want to me. And one yet another hand… god, he just might treat me better than any guy I’ve ever met or will meet. Which was far more complex and conficted than my personal mindset of Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy Tammy…

When we talked, it was all the same thing, the same “I’ve just been so busy,” and that pit of despair and desperation got just that liiiiitle bit deeper. But then she gave me something. She bought me a Shakespeare Tarot Deck for my birthday. Oh God, she really had remembered after all. I felt like such a schmuck. I was being a crazed loser, and I thanked her profusely for it. It was a really beautiful set. She said she was going to get me a Green Lantern hoodie, but it cost too much. Ahh, whatta gal. All the going-nuts I was doing had worn me out, and I just wanted nothing more than to just spend a little time with her. We decided we would hang out after rehearsal, and I said fine, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh God, thank you.

She went to go converse with some of the other Rudes while I did my best to cool down, you dope, cool down. Just let things be good again, please, let them be good. As long as nothing else happened to excite me or set me off, all would be just fine.

“Yeah, so Bryan said it was ok if I dated girls!” Tammy excitedly said.

“Aw, that is so sweet!” one of the female Rudes said.

“I know! He said he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable if I were dating a girl, so he said go for it, have fun!”

“That is so cool of him!” the Rude said. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks!” she squeaked. “Oh, I’m so happy!”

So. Yeah. I just sorta… blinked a couple times there. Then I just turned around. I walked outside for a few steps there, headed to my car for no particular reason, just kinda… needing to go someplace. Then I stopped. I took a deep breath.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!”

That was it. That was the last straw. I’d stood all I could stands and I couldn’t stands no more. I went inside and found Tammy, she was saying goodbye to everyone as they started off toward Bennigans and I said:

“We need to talk. Right now.”

We went out on the theatre’s porch and I said, “Look, I really, really tried not to say anything, but this is driving me bonkers. This is too much. TOO MUCH! ‘It’s ok for me to date girls’?! So you and I can’t date, oh we have to be all secret and it’s doomed, we have to sneak around … but you get the OK from Bryan to date women?!?!”

Tammy’s arms were crossed and her eyes were fixed on the ground. Her voice was quiet and barely calm, barely suppressing the anger.

“It’s not the same thing…” she said, setting me off again before she could finish. Is she actually angry with me? She doesn’t have the right to be angry with me when I’m angry with her!

“No, of course it’s not! It’s even worse than if you were dating another guy, a third guy! I mean, with guys there’s at least this semblance of, ‘oh well, he may have that, but I have this,’ but with girls, I have nothing, you understand? There’s nothing I can compete with! There’s nothing that they have that I could give you, do you understand?”

“It’s not a competition.”

“Sure! Because you’ve already decided that I’ve lost! But at least with Bryan, I can still compete with him. At least I know that with him, I can look at him and say, ‘No, I know I can be a better man for you than him.’”

“So, what, are you asking me to leave him for you?!”

“I…”

Yes.

“I know you’d never do that. Because you’re convinced that he’s the one for you. And yet you’re…” I paused, taking a breath to choose my words carefully.

“I’m what?” she asked, and it sounded like a challenge. “Don’t fucking pause like that, goddammit! Tell me what you really mean! Tell me what you really think!”

“What? Tammy, if I say the first thing that pops into my head, that isn’t always the truth. If I don’t stop to consider what I mean to say, I might end up saying something totally wrong and hurtful.”

She yelled, “Everything you say sounds like lines from a script. Everything you say is like some written and rehearsed monologue.”

“Tammy, what do you want? Do you want me to call you a bitch? A whore? Do you want me to call you every nasty name there is? Well, sometimes I feel like I should, but I can’t! Because for all the shit I go through, I can’t get over the fact that I’m still so fucking in love with you.”

She looked at me with those wide, sad eyes of hers. She bit her lower lip as she just watched me, with the sadness of someone watching a flower in full bloom just beginning to wilt.

I said, “God. You say you love him, and yet you’re messing around with me. Me and God knows who else, and here I thought I was the only one.”

“You are.”

“And yet you’re allowed… openly… to see girls. And I… I-I can’t deal with that, Tammy. I just can’t.”

There was a long, long silence then. The cars sped past up along Cherry Lane, indifferent to the two kids standing in silence on the theatre porch. We didn’t, couldn’t, even look at each other. Finally, she said:

“I’m sorry I’m not everything you thought I was”

Those words hit me like a huge sack of what the fuck. It was so absurdly hurtful, my brain couldn’t even wrap my brain around it.

“How… whuh… what the hell are… Tammy, that has nothing to do with anything. How could you even say that? Jesus! I… Jesus.” Softening, I said, “Tammy… Paul was right. I knew exactly what you were. Any idiot could have told me it was a huge fucking mistake getting involved with you. Just as it was a huge fucking mistake for you to get involved with me.”

“Then why did you?”

“Same reason you did. Or so I like to think. Am I wrong?”

Another pause. She said, “It’s not what you think. Me wanting to date girls. When I see a girl who looks sad, who looks like she’s had a life of shit and abuse and pain… I just want to… I don’t know, I just want to pick that girl up and… make her smile. I want to take her out, make her laugh, make her feel… loved, important. I want to make her feel like a princess. You know what I mean? It’s not the same with boys. They don’t go through life feeling ugly and unwanted the way these girls do. I want them to feel wanted. I want to make her feel… worth it.”

I considered these words for a few seconds, looking at her, and I started cracking up. For a second she looked offended, then realized what I was laughing about.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, “You’re just as bad off as I am. You’re a damn white knight too. We all want to save somebody like we wish we’d been saved ourselves. Goddamn. Why do we waste so much time trying to save people who don’t want to be saved?”

We sat down on that porch and talked for about an hour. She said, “When you were yelling at me, I could smell you. I was looking at you and I was thinking, ‘I should be angry at him, I am angry at him, but god, I just want to kiss him so much.’ I was biting my lip. That’s what girls do when they want to kiss someone. They bite their lip.”

We never did go hang out at a diner or go back to her place to talk. We just sat there for an hour and slowly began to joke a little bit more, to laugh a little bit more. With more sadness than passion, we made out for what would be the last time.

I was so ready and intent on finally sleeping with her, I even did the unthinkable and cleaned my car, clearing off the comics and McDonalds wrappers out of the backseat. Ever since the failure at Birthday Ball, the idea of sleeping with her became more and more appealing, to say the least, but now she said no. I was just that excited by the idea of finally doing it with her, but she said no. She said that probably wouldn’t be a good idea now that she’d thought about it. It occurred to me later that my withholding sex was the only power I actually held over her, and now I utterly lost it and I didn’t even have sex with her!

She did return my calls after that, every now and again. I knew it couldn’t last, and of course it didn’t. At this point, I got a head-start on the angsting before things even started to go bad again. I was just that on top of things.. I could tell my friends were getting sick of me talking about her, of being in so much pain, but I couldn’t shut up about it. I was no longer telling entertaining Hefner Monologues; these were just good old-fashioned rants and wallowings. But I needed to let off steam, even if, especially if, the boiling would not stop. Of course, I look back on it now and I know exactly what I should have done, as I’m sure you probably do. But that’s the trick, innit? We all have to learn somehow, don’t we? And most of us have to learn the hard way.

She promised we’d have a movie night at her house like we used to, but when I arrived not only was Van Breeman there but so was Bryan. By that point, I was certain Bryan had figured out what was going on. I mean, c’mon, he would have had to have been a blind idiot moron not to have noticed! Tammy wasn’t exactly being careful and I’m about as transparent as hot air. Yet time and again, Tammy reassured me, “I love Bryan, but he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.” Oh goody, great, and this is the genetic material you want for your kids, super.

Partially because I was still sure he knew and partially out of my own shame, I did my best to keep out of Bryan’s way. Tammy was in the kitchen mixing up Long Island ice teas, so I ended up spending more time in her bed with Van Breeman than with her. The day had started as incredibly awkward and uncomfortable, and it wasn’t getting any better. She finally joined us, her drink already nearly finished, and asked what movies we were gonna watch. I was like, ok, this was the one card I had to offer. The only thing more important to me than watching movies is sharing movies that I love with someone I care about. After much badgering, I finally managed to dissuade them from watching the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers special edition documentaries (again).

I tried to get them to watch Ravenous, one of my all-time favorites. In case you’re unfamiliar with the movie, Ravenous stars Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, and Jeffery Jones in a movie about the Wendigo, the Native American vampire legend. It’s a bizarre, scary, and darkly hilarious little movie that’s unlike anything you’d ever see, and it utterly bombed at the box office. It’s a movie that’s very close to my heart and it meant a lot to get Tammy to see it (I think she would have appreciated the strong homoerotic subtext), but she said, “Jon said it was kinda lame.” Sucking up the disappointment, I managed to persuade them to watch A Clockwork Orange instead, a movie neither of them had seen before.

“Ehh, it was okay,” Van Breeman said. Before the jolt of contempt could hit me, Tammy backed him up, saying, “Yeah, it was weird. Hey, let’s put the Lord of the Rings DVD back in! I wanna see the costume documentary!”

The brilliance of Kubrick and McDowell, along with my own enthusiasm, were dismissed as inconsequentially as a TV infomercial. It’s one thing to shoot me down, but when you shoot down Kubrick, well that’s just unspeakable! I should have left right there, I really should have. All three of us were on the bed, Tammy between us both, one arm around Van Breeman and another rubbing my leg. The stink on alcohol was thick on her breath when she indignantly denied that she was drunk. I told them I had to go, see you next week at the play, and I left there feeling worse than ever.

I wasn’t surprised in the least to find that she brought Van Breeman along to see Cuckoo’s Nest. Yeah, she said that Bryan had the truck, she needed a ride and Jon was willing, and he was so looking forward to seeing the show. I could feel my breaths getting shallower, and I should have said something right there, but I stomped out that tiny sprout of pride before it grew any further and forced a complacent smile. “Oh. Goody. Thanks for coming… Jon.”

My friends at college (my god, I actually had friends! For the first time in my life, I actually had a group of friends in my own age group! I felt like Cinderella at the ball!) decided to throw me a late birthday party after the first performance of Cuckoo’s Nest. Tammy and Van Breeman sat on the couch next to me, cuddling the entire time. My friends all were eyeing them, and the girls, who were the more viciously protective friends of mine, began sneering and squinting maliciously at her.

“Is that her boyfriend?” they asked, knowing the situation well enough, thanks to me. “Did that bitch actually bring her fucking boyfriend here?”

“No, no,” I assured them. “He’s just a friend.”

“Just a friend? She looks awfully close to him.”

“What? Oh, no. No. She’s like that with everyone.”

This statement was universally met with a reaction that I like to call the “hairy eyeball.”

“What?” I asked, self-consciously. “She is. It’s just her way. Don’t worry about it. They’re just friends.” I coughed and forced myself to swallow. “Yeah. Totally.”

Afterwards, I took them back to my room, knowing all too well that my hopes of spending some time alone with her were all in vain. On the way back to the car, Tammy looked up at the stars in the Chestertown night sky.

“Look at them,” she marveled.

“They really are so bright and beautiful here, aren’t they?” I asked. “Not at all like in the city.”

“Eh, I’ve seen better,” Van Breeman said. “This is nothing compared to the night sky at my family’s farm.” In my head I started to flail and tried to strangle him, but I kept it all nice and repressed. “You should come with me sometime, Tammy. Would you like to?”

She squealed in excitement at the prospect and bounced up and down a bit. Then she gave me a quick and simple hug and seconds later they were gone. I spent the next few days feeling like someone was rubbing a cheese grater inside my chest. The train was still heading for the cliff, but it had to make a stop-over in Annapolis. My angst and madness with Tammy had to take a brief rest in favor of my day in court.

I pulled out a musty old coat that my Dad bought for me years so, and I was shocked to discover how big it was on me. Somehow, over the past couple months, I had really started losing weight. Huh. So I was basically swimming in tweed when I arrived at the courthouse, my heart pounding for the entire three hours while I waited for the damn thing to start. I spent the time pouring over the script I had written for what I was going to say. I had the whole thing plotted out, based on the suggestions of my friends, and I was gonna follow the whole thing to the letter in the hopes of looking as pathetic as I possibly could.

Then the Judge came out, a slender, silver-haired man with an affected southern accent like right out of a Smoky and the Bandit movie. To this day, I so regret not madly transcribing his opening monologue to the court. I just remember this much:

“Mah name is Judge James McKenna. This heah… is mah house. Y’all will find that I am tough but fair. Now many of you are probably here as your first offense. Many of you are not. If you deal with me honestly and without bull, Ah’ll probably cut you some slack. Ah understand that we’re all human and make mistakes. But make no mistake about this: Ah have been doing this long enough to know when someone’s tryin’ to yank my chain. If you even think about lyin’ to me, Ah promise you: Ah will nail yo’ ass.”

God. Damn! He went on like that for awhile, and damn, I wish I remembered the rest! I just wanted to follow him to his various court dates and be his groupie.

He let the people who brought their lawyers go up first. The client was this freaky tall Yao Ming-style Asian kid, whose lawyer looked like he’d been snatched out of the 1920’s. Seriously, this guy had a tweed coat, vest with pocket watch chain, perfectly coiffed hair that belonged under a bowler derby, wire-rimmed glasses, and- I swear to God- a handlebar moustache. This guy was Mister Milquetoast incarnate. I half expected to hear Droopy’s voice when he opened his mouth. Instead, what came out was:

“Yes, your honor, my client would like to ask the court for leniency.”

Which wouldn’t be all that funny, except, well… to get the full effect, you need to touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue and try to hold it there while you read that aloud. Every “s” he said came out as a bizarre mix between “th” and “sch.” Try it yourself. You should end up sounding just like Paul Rubens in Mystery Men. That was Mister Milquetoast the 1920’s lawyer.

Really, it’s just better if you try to read him and McKenna out loud with a friend. Go on, it’s fun!

“Well, now,” Judge McKenna said, reading over the kid’s file, “Says heah your client was goin’ seventy-five in a fifty-five zone. I can’t really be too generous for such an offense.”

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

“Tell ya what,” Judge McKenna said, “I’ll reduce the fine to two hundred dollahs and just one point off his license. That sound fair to you?”

“Yes, your honor,” Milquetoast said.

“Verah well. Y’all can pay out front.”

And this was the kicker, the part I couldn’t believe actually happened. Milquetoast actually said, (and remember, you gotta say it out loud) “Thank you, your honor. Justice is served.”

Thanks to this brief venture into the surreal, I was able to calm down just a little bit. Some time passed, and McKenna called out:

“John Hefnah? Is there a… John Hefnah heah?”

“Uh… yes, your honor,” I said, and walked up to the table. Officer Peck was on the other side and he shot me a small, mildly friendly look of recognition. Peck, clearly a busy little bee, had nailed the vast majority of the people in that courtroom that day.

“How did the defendant behave when you pulled him ovah?” McKenna asked Peck. This was always the first question that he would ask the officers, who would usually respond “Very cooperative.” However, I had the honor of being the only one there to be described as, “Very polite, your honor.”

McKenna looked at me and asked, “How old are you, son?”

“Uh… twenty-two.”

“You’re in college?”

“Yeah. Uh. Washington College in Chestertown.”

“Huh. First time offender, Ah see.”

“Yes, your honor.”

McKenna looked over my file and said, “Well now, it says heah you were going… ninety-eight in a sixty-five mile per hour zone? Son… what on earth do you have t’say for yo’self?”

I coughed a little, took a moment to refresh over the two long pages of script notes I’d made, (“make yourself as pathetic as possible” my friends said, their heads hovering over me like Obi-Wan Kenobi) and, voice trembling, I said:

“Well your honor I have no excuse it was stupid I was tired I shouldn’t have been driving but I did anyway it was stupid I had just broken up with my girlfriend…” which was more or less true, “… and I was miserable and not thinking and I was tired I shouldn’t have been on the road and it was stupid, stupid, stupid, I know, and it will never happen again, it never will, it was so stupid, stupid, and now I always drive the speed limit, I’ll never, ever, ever go over it again, I…”

Now at this point, I should say that I was serious about that last part. I was so shaken by the experience that I’d actually taken to hitting the cruise control on the exact speed limit when I was driving on long stretches. But Judge McKenna interrupted me there.

“Now, now, now, hol’ on there, son. Y’all kin stop right there. Nobody drives the speed limit. Ah don’t drive the speed limit. Mother Teresa don’t drive the speed limit, hell, Mother Teresa’s Mama don’t drive the speed limit.”

“Well, no, your honor, I actually meant it, I seriously do and I…”

“Son. You want my advice? Y’all better stop while you’re ahead.”

I fell silent. Now I had a choice to make there. I could have left well enough alone, and might have been just fine. Or I could have gone that last extra mile to appeal to this man, just to be absolutely safe. I was an actor, after all, and I knew a little something about saying the right thing to get the appropriate reaction. So I leaned into the microphone, said goodbye to my testicles, and with a quiet little Oliver Twist orphan tone, I said:

“I’m just scared, your honor.”

Yeah, that flushing sound you’re hearing? That’s the last of my dignity. When I told this story to Dave, he said, “Dude, I’m going to hit you just on principle!”

After I completely emasculated myself in front of a Maryland judge, McKenna said, “Right. Your fare will be reduced to a hundred twenty-five dollahs and no points off your license. Sound good to you, son?”

Unable to think from the cocktail of relief and humiliation, I heard myself instantly reply, “Indeed.”

McKenna shot me a look.

“‘In-deed?!’ Boy, they sure must be doin’ a good job up there in Chestertown!”

The courtroom burst into laughter as I headed over to the bailiff to pick up my documents. The kicker was the bailiff looked at me disapprovingly and said:

“Boy, I don’t know how the hell you pulled that off. You got off easy.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, the courtroom still chuckling. “Easy.”

Sure, I’d be able to laugh about it later. If I couldn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you about it now. But at the time, by that day, I’d felt like I’d fallen about as low as I could go. I was done. Exhausted, I didn’t have anything left to give or fight. And it was in this state that I drove over to Tammy’s house later that very day.

I needed to pick up some comics I lent her. She had ‘em for months but never read them, which only deepened the hurt. When I got there, I found out that she was out running errands, but Van Breeman was there to let me in.

Desperation makes a man do crazy things. When you’re desperate for something, like advice or answers or imput into a girl’s mind, you’d go to even to guy like Van Breeman if you thought he had the answers. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe that would just be me. Was I an idiot for trusting him? Well, I was no fool, but if I was wrong then I would have just been crazy and paranoid, so I didn't dare think about it. And I really just needed someone, anyone, to give me some answers as to what she was thinking and how I should act.

So yeah, basically I was an idiot.

“She doesn't like that you've been telling stories about her,” he told me. “She feels like you've been turning the Rudes against her.”

“What? No! No, th-that’s not true. …Is it?”

“They're your friends, not hers. She feels like they all hate her now because of you.”

“No… no, they don't hate her. I'm sure of it.”

“Are you really?”

And all I could think of was my friends at college saying, “That bitch had the nerve to bring him here?” Then I thought, no, no, the Rudes actually know Tammy. They’d never think that. No. But… you didn’t know for sure, did you? God, was it all my fault? Did I screw this up even further? If I hadn’t started the Hefner Monologues, might things have gone differently?

“If you want my advice,” he said, “from here it could go either one of two ways. You could keep going on like this, doing this to her, both of you going crazier and more hurt, until there's nothing left to salvage and the two of you can never stand to be around you anymore. Or... you can call it off with her right now. If you do that, you might still be able to keep a friendship. Those are your two choices from where I sit.”

So this was what it all came down to, after all these months and all this pain?

He said, “Here, I'll call her and tell her to come over. You can tell her right now.”

I was done fighting. I had pushed for longer and harder than any man in their right mind would have done. He called her up and she came right over. We said the usual things about how was for the best and how we'd still be friends, all these empty little promises. Just like the little lies from before, only this time I got the distinct feeling I was the only one who wanted them to be true. I remember the taste of Killian's Irish Red, her favorite beer, on her tongue when we kissed for the last time.

We decided to have that first hang-out together “as friends” the next week to go see Kill Bill Vol. 2. What goes on in our heads that makes us think that it’s ever a good idea to try to be friends with your exes anytime before the passing of several months? Do we think we can handle it? Or are we just so desperate to be near them that we’re willing to, as Silvius put it, “glean the broken ears after the man that the main harvest reaps”? She promised me we'd be alone, just the two of us. I wasn't planning on making any moves on her, don't get me wrong, but I just wanted her undivided attention once again. If we were just going to be “friends,” I at least needed that. We made vaguely awkward small talk, but more or less things seemed to be going fine. The movie was a few minutes away from beginning when Van Breeman sauntered in and sat next to her.

“Hey Heffie,” he said, “how're you?”

I… I… but she said…

“Uh, fine, Jon. I'm fine.”

I turned away, and quietly (or maybe not so quietly) I started saying, “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…”

Tammy gave me a look that could freeze blood.

“Stop it,” was all she said, then went back to being playful as ever with him. And the movie started. I tried making a few bits of commentary and such, as is my wont, but she replied to them with little more than a “huh.” Occasionally, however, she would lean over and whisper a couple bits of commentary of her own.

During the Black Mamba scene, she said, “Oh, I feel sorry for Jon right now. He's scared of snakes.” And in the scene where Michael Madsen shoots Uma with rock salt, she said, “You know, Jon's actually been shot with rock salt. He said it hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, it did,” Van Breeman reaffirmed for my benefit. “It hurt like a motherfucker.”

And I'm just sitting there, determined not to let a damn thing, not even Tammy’s “Jon Van Breeman Commentary Track” ruin my enjoyment of this movie. I said to myself that there's plenty of time to go crazy after the movie, but for now you will fucking love every second of this fucking movie for as long as it fucking lasts. Damn it. And I did. It was a damn good film. Then it was over.

Forcing a friendly smile, I leaned over to Tammy, who was talking excitedly about the movie to Van Breeman, who was saying, “Wow, now I want to see the first one!”

I said, “You need a ride back to your place?”

“I'll go with Jon,” she said.

“Are… are you… sure? I would very much like to…”

“Nope, I'll be fine.”

“Oh.” I swallowed, and it felt like swallowing a golf ball. “Ok.”

The three of us walked back to Van Breeman's car, but I was like a zombie the entire time. Van Breeman got in the car with a, “See you, Heffie!”

I held up a finger and said, “One moment.” Before Tammy could get in the car, I turned to her and said, “Please don't do this to me again. Please, I'm begging you.”

“I'm not doing anything,” she said, and quickly turned around to get into the car.

I grabbed her by the arm and pleaded, “Please, don't do this! Talk to me!”

“I am.”

“No, you're not! You're just putting on a show, putting up a front just like you for everybody else, but I am not just anybody else! Please, just... just tell me how you feel. Tell me anything, but don't shut me out again! Please, I-I can't deal with that again. I can't.”

“Stop being so paranoid,” she said, the words dripping with venom. I could feel the threads of her sweater rub against my fingers as she pulled herself away from me and got into the car. Without another word, she and Van Breeman were gone and I was alone in the mall parking lot. I called up Dave, who I knew would still be awake at two in the morning, and I said:

“Dave, I'm so angry right now I'm not safe to drive. Help me out here.”

“Umm… have you tried cursing Richards?”

I pulled the phone away and in the midst of the mall parking lot, still full since it was a Saturday, at the top of my lungs I screamed, “CURSE YOU, REED RICHARDS!!!!!!”

After a few deep, hoarse breaths I went back to Dave, “Ok, that helped a little bit.”

“Holy shit, dude, I cannot believe you actually just did that.”

“Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.”

After about an hour of ranting and then geeking with Dave, I didn't so much feel calm as much as I just felt spent. I drowned my sorrow in some Krispy Kreme donuts and drove back to college, with the dread knowledge that Oedipus/Antigone was two weeks away. And the end of spring semester was one week away.

TO BE CONCLUDED...

Comments

[fiveseconddelay.livejournal.com]

Knowing the ending makes the VanB intro that much more, uh, ..., good. (Yeah, I'm obviously ready to start writing, myself.)
Only time I got lost:
"When I turned 21, the Rudes"
I thought you were backflashing.
=> "I turned 21, and the Rudes"

[jcsbimp.livejournal.com]

I remember you telling me about what lip-biting means during the "Hamlet" auditions.

Wow.

So many pieces coming together.

Totally off subject.

[jayel4192.livejournal.com]

I realize that this is barely relevant, and maybe even a little callous. But replying to your lj is one of the faster ways of contacting you. and sometimes these moments pick us instead of the other way around.

ESPN's Jayson Stark ran this article today. top 25 "innovations" in baseball. I don't really respect his baseball Wisdom, though he is a talented journalist. Anyway, this article is from a NON-stathead.

having said that, your grandfather was involved with #3, #17, #18, and one of the honorable mentions. So I thought I'd pass it along.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=2329027

Re: Totally off subject.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet! (well, even if the names and acronyms mean absolutely nothing to me, I still get more than the gist) Thanks for the heads-up, this is great!

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

"I needed a confidant, because I could knew how things would go after Birthday Ball."

Um? What should the bit I've italicized be?

"And on another hand, I’m totally hung up on him too and I don’t want to me."

Did it again! me = be, yes?

"that pit of despair and desperation got just that liiiiitle bit deeper."

Multiple "i"s for effect does not excuse ot having two "t"s! *wink* So, "liiiiittle".