this point my maybe-boyfriend for at least a month—kissing some girl in a club. Yep, he was tonguing down some light-skinned, curly-haired, Forever XXI fashion-top-wearing girl. The shirt she had on was asymmetrical. Repeat. He kinda betrayed me with a girl wearing a shirt that was long-sleeved on one side and tube top on the other. After a marathon curse-out, he managed to make the situation not about his “cheating”—we weren’t exclusive yet—but about my inherent awesomeness physically compelling him to treat me like “some stupid chick off the fucking street,” in my humble opinion.
Was I too perfect? What kind of crazy monkey-junk logic was that? Was he just not that into me? Did I actually just ask myself that? What kind of maniac subscribes to a self-loathing brand of reasoning created by a comic with frosted tips? So what was it then? And we’re back to the beginning. What would Lisa do? Where does one purchase a mallet?
We’d started out promisingly enough. Dex was terrifyingly good-looking and had a quirky I-write-poetry-about-the-women-I-date-to-make-each-one-feel-special thing going. He was in law school. He’d be my Cliff. And I’d be a less pathetic Pygmalion. James who?
Then, on that never-ending Saturday night, I stupidly decided to do a drive-by. Sure, I was going to check up on him at the club, but I was going to be super-covert about it—two-stepping in the background and pretending not to care about what he was doing over there with that woman dressed for Homecoming 1996. So the girls and I posted ourselves on the fringes of the dance floor, and he was so good for the first two hours.
Then I came back from the bathroom.
“Stop staring at him!” I screamed over the music. They were busy drilling neat holes in the back of Dex’s head, arms crossed over their chests like pissed-off principals.
“That girl just kissed him,” said Adrienne, my best friend since freshman year, too matter-of-factly to be joking.
“Ummm, what?”
“She kissed him on the lips,” she repeated in the same “just the facts, ma’am” voice they use with victims on SVU. “We both saw it. There wasn’t tongue or anything. But definitely on the lips. Whaddyawannado?”
What do I want to do? What do I want to do? I want to fucking scream is what I want to do! I want to punch that bitch in the damn throat and slap that shirt back to the bargain-basement bin to which it belongs. I want to slap you for seeing them tongue each other down and then telling me about it. I want to hop in my time machine and take back the blow job I gave him last night. Fock! This dude was supposed to be it. I took him to an office party, for Jesus’ sakes. An office party! I couldn’t stop saying, “Oh fuck.” He was gorgeous and smart and funny and muscle-ly and beautifully weird and ugly when he came. I’d farted in front of him and didn’t bother to pretend it wasn’t me. And now I was going to have to start over. But fuck it, right? Keep it moving.
Yeah, maybe tomorrow morning.
I clicked over to where Dexter was sitting with Forever XXI girl and pounded my fingers into his left shoulder. “We need to fucking talk.”
He was surprised to see me but followed my back through the club without asking questions. I pushed past people like an astronaut with space dementia. When I finally whirled around to face him, I could tell he was drunk. “Are you here with that fucking girl?” I screamed with my feet shoulder width apart and my nails digging into my hips. Power stance. “And don’t even try to fucking lie, ass face, because Adrienne saw you licking her goddamn titties.” Dex’s eyes got big, but he didn’t deny it, not even the parts I’d made up. Not a sound came out of this man’s mouth, even though it was so wide open I could’ve put my fist through it. I thought seriously about doing that.
“Omigod, your breath! It’s doing karate moves. Close your fucking mouth, retard!”
He closed it, and I left.
I ran past Adrienne, who’d witnessed my meltdown along with a bouncer and a few other people, to the ATM across the street to try and get $20 for a cab. Why do I never have cash?! Adrienne ran too. “Get in my car, Helena. I know you’re embarrassed, but it’s me, dude.” Fock.
As soon as I got into my apartment, my always empty but now totally