Lately, for the last few months at least, ten seconds after they---friends, family, strangers, ex's---ask me about her, they ask me the same question: "you in love with her?"
And every time they ask I clam up and put my face down. Even if I'm on the phone with that Cuban girl who had my number in a wrenching way (nasty grip) and she can't see me:
"Brinicio, you don't think I can hear you blush over the phone?"
Harpooned from across the continent.
Sometimes I'd give anything to be misunderstood. I could never understand the people who complain about being misunderstood. What's so bad about it? There've been times I woulda killed someone to have a few misunderstood get-out-of-jail-free cards. Standing on some street corner somewhere with broken glass in all my pockets and staring at a girl. You feel like your punctured little soul has a cast on it that nobody will even bother to vandalize let alone sign.
Any asshole gets me, understands me, knows the score. They always have. They always will. Nobodies ever asked me, "What are you thinking?" They don't have to.
But I'm not used to this role. One reason I liked getting girls to cheat with me was for the satisfaction of turning their partner into my number one, crackerjack publicity firm. Hurt people like to hurt people. Pretty basic concept. Especially when, aside from all the acting out insecure bullshit, there are so many girls out there who make it so tempting.
What are the things you're *not* supposed to do? One of the first is: You shouldn't talk about your ex's. Terrible idea. This is basic common sense. Accepted wisdom. Fairly intuitive to anyone.
Depends.
This is certainly true if your ex-stories are dull, or cliche, or a low-rent invitation for somebody to join a lousy, heartbreakingly predictable narrative. Most people don't appreciate trophy cases or the practice of taxidermy in general.
I went to this career thing the other day (after I dropped out of my own school of thought and decided, aw well, fuck it) and one of the questions they asked our huge group was, with a poster on the wall proclaiming, YOU'RE OFF DRUGS AND SOBER AND WANT TO ENTER THE JOB FORCE, "What is 'time' to you?" Even before the pause was impregnated a guy who put up his hand, he had that bloated, career-polygamist look about him, and he said, "Time is what everybody loses over and over for their entire lives."
Solemn nods of furtive appreciation and agreement.
I'm sure his future 19 wives could appreciate the logic of where he was coming from. Seemed mostly true to me, but not for EVERYBODY.
Artists don't lose time. The good ones get to redeem their garbage like coupons. That's why artists are so annoying.
That might be why I go after women using my ex's as my main weapon and douse it with the gasoline of their history.
When I was five and saw all the kids in kindergarten on the first day I sized everybody up the best I could about who was most powerful. Naturally my eyes gravitated to Amber Murphy, Prettiest Girl (not just in the classroom; in the WORLD). Winnie Cooper for every guy before we knew Winnie Cooper. Next. The biggest, strongest kid. The meanest kid. The funniest kid. The cutest, most charming kid. The future street kid with junk halo glare in his eyes. The sweetest girl. The best guy with put-downs. The richest kid. The smartest (this is a weird category because most really smart people secretly feel the dumbest, which means they're actually the easiest to manipulate emotionally and thus are fairly weak in the power ranking pecking order). The fastest running kid. The puzzling future lesbian girls. The sphinx-like queer boys already getting along with girls from the get-go. The most satisfying victim. The cheerer-ons. The joiners. The loners. The people stuck in roles they don't want to play.
After a week I had everybody lined up. But I'd missed one of them. A glaring omission.
He was a quiet kid, good looking, minded his own business---then it was paint class one day. And at the end of class the entire school STOPPED after he handed in his project. Everybody paid attention. That painting was commended by our principal and used to represent the school hallways along with the 7th grader artists' work, even though Dan Starling was five years old.
Somehow a pulled-out-of-his-ass portrait of an elephant had everybody eating out of the palm of his hands. And by the time it was taken down he didn't even want it. So it was auctioned off and fell into my greedy little hands and I gave it to my mom and she was ASTOUNDED by my artistic achievement and I never ever ever ever told her (there's a fair chance she still has it 24 years later).
* * *
"Do you love her?"
I used to go out of my way to sell this stuff. Because forgers understand authenticity a lot better than authenticity usually does. It's their job to. An honest guy doesn't have much need for understanding a dishonest guy. He can just hire one. Like casinos do hiring reformed crooks to catch active ones. Or banks hiring ex-bank robbers to catch new ones.
"Do you love her?"
Why do we pretend if I said yes or no or maybe you'd understand what I mean?
Or do you already know and asking me and my putting my head down bashfully is really the answer you were looking for the whole time?
"So do you, Brin?"
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