When I was twelve, my best friend Jake got run over by a bus while crossing the street to my apartment. He was an ideal best friend, although his hoodie strings were always slicked with saliva. When he died in my eyesight, I was mostly disturbed by the calmness around him. Other than the screams and commotion from the driver and passengers, nothing in this world had changed. The crosswalk down the street continued its countdown. The LED advertising on the halal cart droned on, FALAFELS, SHAWARMA. What stuck with me the most was Jake’s stillness. I had seen a lot of horror movies, derivative slashers where the blood was always spurting and oozing. That didn't happen with Jake. His head had become a fleshy rope, I remember feeling surprised that his innards were not red and bright, but a mixture of material. Beige doughy chunks, and other unidentifiable objects mixed into a blob. Peaceful viscera. He looked more like an unfamiliar alien mass than the roadkill I had seen while living upstate. He was so serene and at peace that I remember how upset I was at the people touching his vacant body. Jake was and then he was not. I didn’t have any other friends so I got really into playing Nintendogs. I learned in my grief group later that taking care of something assists greatly in processing grief. Loss and life anew.
My mother found the group on the internet, one for families confronted with grief and trauma. Our group met in a clammy church basement that irritated my eyes. On our first day, we sat next to another mother and son, who would respectively become our best friends. Mike had just lost his father, Andrea’s husband. He was popular on YouTube, an early vanguard in the parkour scene. Breaking into abandoned places, free climbing, all the go-pro shit. He had fallen off of a water tower. Mike and I bonded over how painstakingly boring the group was. Eventually, we lifted each other's spirits and we were allowed to stop attending altogether. Mike was a lot less of a griever than I was anyhow. Andrea was the breadwinner, and he told me he wasn’t all too upset as the life insurance check got him a new PlayStation.
Mike liked to listen to Lil Wayne and play Call of Duty. He gave me my first monster energy, my first cigarette, and constructed my first blunt. I got good at stealing Swisher Sweets for us. I do think he was sad, deep inside somewhere. Behind his oily skin and cool haircuts. He never complained around me at least, I’d never had a dad in the first place. We were always either hanging out, or I was waiting for him to come back from baseball practice. I spent so long looking around his room, imagining I was seeing all of his stuff through his own eyes. I tried to note his intentions, wondering why he put the Budweiser Bikini girl poster on the wall closest to him, the Pulp Fiction poster above it. He is still the only truly cool person I’ve ever known. Things shifted the summer after freshman year. All he ever wanted to talk about were baseball friends or girls and he started using slang I didn’t understand. I tried to brush it off but he’d squint at me after he said anything: gauging my understanding, before shaking his head with a smugness. Our moms were still best friends, we didn’t want to explain the tension to them. We were at the age where everything felt too humiliating to vocalize, to make real. When she would go over to their place, I would too. Mike would sit on his bed, facing away from me completely. Before school started, he moved in with his Aunt and Uncle in Pennsylvania. Their school had a better baseball team and he was itching to go D1. My parting gift was the Sum 41 Hits album I lifted and stashed in the front pouch of my JanSport.
Absolutely none of this matters, out of this period the only thing significant to me still is Mike’s mom, Andrea. Mike had been helping her out at work much to his chagrin. As he got older and was capable of more, he was assigned more. I’m sure this was a factor leading to his move. Without even as much as asking, or easing me into the possibility, my mother notified me I would begin my unpaid internship for Andrea’s company. Granted, my summer otherwise would have consisted of me staying in my room. Sure, I would have said yes, but I was pissed I wasn’t given the chance to exercise my freedom.
Andrea put me through hell that summer. She would constantly fuck up, she was ambitious but entirely unorganized. Often, she would ask me to do something not just mundane, but useless. Organize some files that were already perfectly arranged. If I pointed this out to her the veins in her neck would protrude. Mike had inherited this trait. Once I did the task, she would rush in and ask why I was changing her already fine organization. She would massage her temples and repeat what felt to be her mantra under her breath, You're killing me, you're killing me. I wish I had. She would assign me a frightening workload, and give me exclusively unrealistic deadlines. Every day I made a promise to myself- this would be the day I tell the bitch she could pay me or find someone new. As the moment of my explosion neared, Andrea would enter with a bag of my favorite food (Wendy’s) and a sweet smile. I can still place her bleached toothy grin, her manicured nails clutching the bag like it was going to run away from us. I would always be in that grip. Instead of eating at her desk, she would join me on her office floor and dip her fries in my ketchup. Her, crossed-legged, a position that I always found uncomfortable, me with my knees hugged against my chest. She would sit way too close to me and briefly, I could see the girl behind the woman. Briefly, it was just us and the rest of the world was null. She would exploit my labor, my need to please. It got so much worse when I started to like it. I liked the way she talked to the businessmen on the phone, establishing a boys-club rapport to build trust, and then slipping into a slight flirtatiousness to get what she needed.
I could pass my mistake off as the wrongdoing of any teenage horn-dog, but the truth is, I’d probably do it all over again today. I started writing about her whenever I felt bored and needed some stimulation to keep awake. I wrote about peeling off her Wolford tights. Running my fingers across the skin markings left by her tight bra straps. The evidence of her heavy burdens. I’d peel it all away until I was met with a softer girl. The soft girl who would want me, rough, incessant. We would need each other both ways, this sexy symbiosis, she would rough me up first until I was driven to give it back to her much harder. I wrote pages of this shit, sparing no details. Writing in the margins. Flip the page to the backside and she was kneeling for me.
Inadvertently I wanted her to see it. When she found it, I walked into the room as she concentrated deeply on the pages. When she looked up at me, she wasn’t mad. There's an image of her- one of which I am unsure is real or manufactured by time- where one of her eyebrows is raised slightly. Something of an invitation. I immediately left the office and never went back to Andrea’s. My mother often asked about what had happened so I deduced that my strange woman was loyal to me in the end. I’ve always admired women with discretion. I told my Mom I was merely frustrated with working for free. Now, and for the rest of my life I will refer back to this moment with Andrea as my biggest blunder. It is something I will never come back from. A failure I will spend my entire life grappling with. I am unequivocally damned.
I worked a few odd jobs throughout college, a smoothie bar, dog-walking, and tutoring middle schoolers. This lust for powerful women persisted, even without the presence of any in my daily life. There were no self-help books on the subject, and everything online suggested my compulsive thoughts were related to my mother. This provided no answers, as our relationship had always been pleasant, maybe even boringly so. This period lured me into making some financially unsound decisions. I assumed my attraction meant I would enjoy the service of a dominatrix, but I don't even feel the need to divulge further into that arc. It did nothing but leave me moderately annoyed and 500 bucks short. I paid beautiful girls my age to call me a loser on Twitter, but I became annoyed upon finding out they were also students, mostly unemployed. I scoured dating apps and updated my settings to show me women in the forty-plus age range. What compelled them to join a fail-twenty-something for dinner, I am still unsure. They mostly were recent divorcees with liberal arts degrees and failed careers, so these dinners added to my financial losses and nothing else.
I started my page shortly after graduation. In the beginning, I would scour LinkedIn and Facebook, for women whose careers were vibrant enough to pique my interest. The page was simple. I’d post their business headshots, and write a quick bio summarizing their careers and accomplishments. The page was only intended to be my outlet, as pornography did nothing for me and I needed some degree of release. I didn’t set the page to private, as the knowledge the highlighted women might see my posts was an important element. I was collecting a harem of powerful, working women. It has been a few years, and the page is still my only success. I boast a following count of almost 150k, all women assuming this is a female-managed page. Believing I am merely promoting hard-working women. Which, I suppose I am. I was going to be profiled by some massive media outlets, all less than interested once I refused to reveal anything about my identity. You take the good with the bad.
Four months ago, I posted a woman named Sheila Brewer. Sheila lived in the city, the owner of some swanky new bars. In researching for her bio, I found out one of the joints was hiring and applied on a whim. Let me make one thing clear: her successes were not on par with my desires. I need a true trailblazer, but her proximity was enough for me to take action. I figured I could study her, figure out what traits of hers brought her success, and find a broad with those traits tenfold. Sheila is in the place a surprising amount and enjoys making small talk with the staff. It is clear she has a bias for the more attractive lot, myself included. I’ve noticed she has a preference for another bartender I had begun to get along with, Jack. Jack reminded me of Mike, but when we went to a concert together I realized I would never meet anyone as cool as Mike was. Sheila's Dad was a pastor, the famous face of a string of megachurches across the country. This development worried me, as my urges tend to prefer my women self-made, on some rags-to-riches shit. Luckily, he hadn’t given her any money. They had fallen out of contact when she chose to move to New York City. Still, this sense of religious piety existed in her, maybe religious prestige is a better term. She flaunted her position of modern Christian aristocracy often, despite not conducting herself like a Believer. She once spoke to me about how sad she was about suicide, as all committers went to hell. I told her my father had killed himself a month before I was born. She gave me a lackluster frown and dropped some knowledge- God tests our faith.
Sheila owned other spots in the city, but our bar was her designated hangout. The place was always buzzing with hordes of Sheila wannabes. Women similar in looks but lacking in the ambition that fuels my fire. Out of the women I’d lusted after, Sheila was on the lesser end of physical attraction. She was something plain. She once came into the bar covered in red splotchy welts after a laser session to remove her freckles. She is uninspiring facially and no absurd treatments will fix this. I had liked her freckles, I remember Mike had been insecure about his too. Nonetheless, she interested me far more than the attractive women my age who would flirt with me during my shifts. Her drive to change things, purely because she could, was enticing.
Last night, she was buzzed enough to explicitly come on to me. I bit. This was something I hadn’t felt the need to initiate. I knew it was fated. A part of me worried she did this for the validation of a young man, an aspect that could thwart my desire. Then I remembered her life was full of men sucking up to her for their gain, saying whatever she wanted to hear, and this dissuaded my worry. She didn’t need my validation. On our short walk to her place, I marinated in our silence, focusing on my lust and mission. She started on with some bullshit.
Ever been with an older woman?
Almost exclusively. (Well, been out with at least. Did not mention this caveat.)
What's that about?
Just preference.
You're not one of those losers who likes his women to be independent because you don’t wanna give em anything?
What the fuck.
Well?
I just think it's hot I guess.
Ok. Good.
To me, an indicator of unintelligence is the need to immediately throw out some strung-together psychoanalysis to deepen conversation. I’ve dealt with enough of this shit from my brief period of going on dates with over-therapized college girls. Sure, I could have divulged more information. Her suggestion was total bullshit though. Mike and I used to make fun of the kids in the group who tried to dig deeper. The truth is, no matter how deep you go, the knowledge can never bring your dad back. Or your best friend. Or the fact you are a virgin because even though you are attractive, your high standards have left you impotent.
You need to get a haircut.
My haircut is cool.
Well, sure…It's a bit long… my dad’s checking out the bar next week.
Wait. I thought you didn't speak to him.
I mean we aren’t super close but you know, on business.
No, I don’t know.
I mean. It’s not publiccc business you know, it wouldn’t look good on paper. But he's a businessman at the end of the day. I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of people at the bar to look into the church too, it's a win for both of us. I couldn’t have done this without him. You know, I didn’t even finish college.
It says online you graduated from UVA?
Well. A lot of things are said online.
The repulsion I experienced last night was insurmountable. When we reached her building, I wished her a good night and told her I wouldn’t be coming in to work today. A block into my walk back home, I threw up at the image of her nudity. Her freckle-free skin. In her overpriced luxurious high-rise apartment. Her dad had probably invested in the development. Had I gone up, I might have killed her. I mean that. Just to see if the blood even can spurt and ooze like in the movies. Or in the first-person shooters Mike and I played. I paid for some Swisher Sweets on the way home. Every puff of every blunt deludes me into thinking they’re not gone forever.
They’re still out there, also holding out for me.