Jon had a big mouth. He'd opened it with the best of intentions. He was just trying to be a good guy. But that didn't change the fact that he should have just kept quiet.

He liked Lauren. Maybe not just "as a friend." She was easy to like. Blond. Fit. Fashionable. Pretty. A bit of an airhead at times, but usually a pretty sharp girl. Nobody liked the way things were going with Gregg, but it really wasn't our place to get involved.

We'd all had the opportunity. Every few months she could someone would see her sitting alone. Usually in a stairwell. Sometimes in the courtyard by the swimming pool. Always crying. You had to stop and ask what had happened. It was just the polite thing to do. Even though you already knew. Another fight. Or maybe he'd been talking to someone else a little too long at a party. Or she'd found something suspicious in the apartment. It always went the same. She'd ask what you knew. If he was a good guy. And there was only one way to play it. Just dodge the question or say you don't know anything.

It wasn't even a lie for me. I didn't know anything. I assumed Gregg was fucking around. He certainly wanted all of us to believe he was. But I'd nobody knew for sure. Maybe it was just talk. I'd never seen him with anyone. I'd never even seen someone leaving the apartment.

But Jon had. He'd been there when Gregg picked the girl up. He'd been sleeping on the couch when she left Gregg's bedroom the next morning. And all of this he probably should have forgotten. But he liked Lauren. Perhaps too much. And when he found her crying he confessed.

And for his trouble he got her gratitude. At least for all of a week. That's how long it took Gregg to convince her that it wasn't true.

When it was all over, Gregg still had the girl. All Jon had was a black eye and a few less friends. And a woman who resented him for trying to trick her into bed. At least in her estimation.
( Read more... )

Current Music: Radiohead - All I Need

When I was 13 I rode the bus to school. One autumn morning I left the house, as usual, about an hour after everyone else. It was about 7:45. I walked down the driveway and stood at my mailbox. My neighbor, a girl who was in tenth grade, was already down there. Within minutes several vans and police cars arrived and stopped just up the street. Men in body army got out carrying giant shields and holding guns. They got us and moved us outside a perimeter they were setting up. Over the next hour they slowly closed in on one house, though we could not see what was going on.

As I found out later, they were after one of my neighbors. The man--Kevin--had been to our house a hundred times, if not more. Though we didn't live in a subdivision or have the type of neighborhood activities you might see on television shows, he was a regular at people's backyard cookouts or holiday parties. He even went to church with a few of our neighbors.

The night before Kevin had been out with his wife at a chain restaurant by the mall. After a few beers an argument had broken out. Things escalated in the parking lot, at which point Kevin went to his truck, pulled out his totally legal and loaded handgun and shot his wife at point blank range in the face. An onlooker, apparently feeling the need to play hero, had produced his own weapon and fired it. He missed. For his trouble he was repaid with a shot to the stomach. Kevin then got in his truck and drove home to go to sleep in his own bed, where the SWAT team apprehended him without any fight the next morning.

Terri--Kevin's young, attractive wife--survived the shooting but was permanently disfigured due to muscle damage and scars. The parking lot cowboy also survived. Kevin eventually ended up in prison, but he served less than two years thanks to a temporary insanity plea. Last I heard he was working for the phone company as a technician doing home installations.
( Read more... )

The builder must have had a sick sense of humor. Outside the large wall of windows children were running around a playground or feeding ducks at the small pond. Inside, as if in another dimension, we sat in the crowded municipal building waiting for our number to be called so that we could hand over a check and have our vehicle registered for another year.

I'd been there for 10 minutes--though it seemed like 30--and I spent most of it staring out the windows. Perhaps that's why I didn't notice the girl sitting near me. At least not at first.

She seemed so familiar.

I kept glancing her way. She seemed to do the same.

"Starbucks," she finally said.

"Huh?"

"Starbucks. In Grand Prairie. You used to come in."

"Oh, yeah," I responded. "I used to work over that way. I haven't been there in at least a year. I left that job."

Actually, I'd been asked to leave. But that was beside the point.
( Read more... )

Tags: idoling

Six months ago I ran into Simone in a mall. We talked in the awkward way that past lovers sometimes do when it ended badly and they run into one another unexpectedly. We asked about work. We both admitted we were shocked to see the other still living in this fucking town. She asked about my dog. I asked about her son.

"Well, he has a little sister now," she said.

I was surprised. I had heard a few things about her over the past couple of years, but I didn't know she was with anyone.

"So, I guess you're married...or close to it?" I asked.

But it turns out that wasn't the case at all. She was perfectly candid in telling me she'd gone through a "wild phase" when she was just "listening to her body's needs." She could probably narrow down the father to a couple of guys, but it really didn't matter because it wasn't someone she had an interest is knowing.

And now she was 26 with a baby girl--and a son not even in school. And she was living with her folks and sleeping in the same bedroom she'd spent her first 18 years.
( Read more... )

Tags: idoling
Current Music: Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach for My Revolver

"Hank has never once bought me flowers," she said.

This didn't exactly surprise me. The "Hank" to whom she referred was her soon-to-be ex husband--though he didn't know that yet. I'd always figured the dude to be a complete jerk, if only because he looked like a meathead, worked at a hair salon, and liked to quote Glenn Beck. But Simone wasn't one to badmouth him in most situations. But she'd already made the decision to leave and was just working up the courage to tell him. Perhaps that's why our impromptu get together had turned into an alcohol-fueled confessional.

"An empty gesture. That's what he called it," she continued. "'At least you can eat chocolate,' he would say. Not that he ever got me a thing on Valentine's, either. 'Just another meaningless holiday,' he said. I'm convinced he only got me stuff at Christmas because he wanted me to get him something. And still, it was always stripper lingerie and short skirts and bright colored halter tops--shit I would never wear."

She'd just finished her second martini and her deep southern drawl was becoming more pronounced.
( Read more... )

Tags: idoling
Current Music: Ghostface Killah - Back Like That

Do people read the introduction posts, or are they just here to give us a chance to practice? I have yet to figure it out.

I'm 32.

I'm male.

I'm white.

I live near Dallas, but I'm not even close to being a native--even after 5 years in Texas.

I have a tendency to talk too much about music, movies, books, and other self-indulgent interests that mean little to anyone else.

I often say things like "I like cute girls who wear skirts and listen to good music and talk about philosophy." This is because my life consists of nothing more than meaningless one night stands and nights spent high as hell just trying to break up the day to day monotony of sleeping, eating, shitting, and going to a job that has been slowly sucking the life out of me for close to a decade. I wish there were more attractive people on LJ, like back in the day. I feel like I'm alone here.

I guess you could say I'm "trying to find myself." I'm sure American usage snobs have a problem with that phrase. I even have a problem with that phrase. But it does get the point across, even if it earns a bit of a scoff. I can't blame you. Who talks like that other than assholes and narcissists? And I may be both.

I'm jealous of the lives that other people lead. Not so much those with families and so forth. I'm not sure that life is for me, although at one point I thought it was. I'm just jealous of those who wake up feeling satisfied and content on a regular basis. I would pay a lot of money for the power to delude myself in the way they have.

Perhaps that last statement sounded kind of bleak--as if I've given up. But that's not the case at all. I did say "trying to find myself." As opposed to losing myself. Although I've done a lot of that, too.

Tags: idoling
Current Music: ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Another Morning Stoner

I think so. Yes.