You don’t punch a girl in the face on your first date. That’s like a teacher on syllabus day going, here’s the textbook and by the way, I will stab you a couple of times throughout the semester with this knife. Post your responses to the discussion board. And then they show you the knife. You’d drop that class, am I right? Nobody signs up to get stabbed. What I’m saying is, you don’t intend to hit her at all. That’s not your vision going in. You don’t abuse women, you have a mom. You’re not a bad guy—you’re a nice guy. An alpha, obviously, but nice about it. But sometimes, you know, it’s just. They push you.
So you meet her at this party, never an app. Chicks—sorry, women—hold all the power on the apps. They can ghost you like you’d ghost the stabby syllabus guy. Meet her in person at a party or from a coworker. Or at a party for your boy’s company when he brings you along.
Maybe it’s on a boat, one of those charter cruisers that circles the marina at night with plastic string lights wrapped around its guardrails. Maybe she’s the friend of your buddy’s girl, so she’s already been vetted. Maybe she’s wearing a slutty black dress, slit up the thigh, and she’s real awkward in it, like a baby goat learning how to walk.
She leans against the railing, tipping on those heels that make her a little bit taller than you but that’s okay, for now. She grips the metal rail with one hand, a plastic champagne flute with the other. The red polish on her nails has a chip on the edge of the forefinger, a little crumbly white crack at the edge. It could’ve just happened, she nicked it locking the door to her apartment when she kept her eyes trained on the back of her head for a prowler that might jump out. The nail polish sacrificed for the greater rapeless good.
She’s cute. Not so cute that she’ll have demands, but right on the verge where she’s been rejected enough, right in that sweet spot. She has a nice body—thin with big tits. Sorry, breasts. She’s got a smile with crooked teeth, her eyes are a little too deep set, makes her look like an alien if she snuck up on you in the dark. She’s gonna look like Skeletor or the Crypt Keeper when she gets old, but don’t worry about that. And I know what they say—go hot or go home, but trust me. Go with the 7’s, maybe 8’s tops, depending on your territory. She’s an LA 7, maybe a shitsville town 9. These are the prime cuts, and you want the prime cuts.
And she smiles at you all nervous. Pretend to be nervous too, but you’re not. Because this is go time, your blood tingles when you feel that tug at the end of your reel. You could snap it or you could pull up an old shoe. Or you could get friend zoned. Chicks—women—like it when a guy maintains that aloofness, the assurance of your superiority. The kind of confidence that reflects off your navy-blue sharkskin blazer. You wear the blazer over jeans and a t-shirt, and you’re going to give that blazer to her later even though it’s freezing on the marina in mid-April. When the icy wind cuts your façade like little needles. When she’s shivering and she’s got a red lipstick stain on her teeth that you haven’t told her is there. It’s on the crooked one, the one that sticks out, the one that takes one for the team of teeth, an oil spill in the makeup ecosystem. You’ll wrap your blazer around her shoulders, the first time you touch her. That’s the moment when your hook digs in, no letting go. But first you gotta lure her in slow.
Say something that sounds smart. Don’t do the insult thing, that’s for amateurs. Don’t make it about sex. Be all Noam Chomsky and shit. She’s on her second drink now.
Did you know, you say, that Chomsky said that language began first with just thought? Only manifesting later with physical expression through lips, body, dance, music.
Memorize this quote from a YouTube comment on a video about Chomsky because you can’t get through more than five minutes of the actual video. She likes the part about the lips, body, dance. You want her to picture your lips, your body, your dance.
Then, walk away.
I know, I know, but trust me. Trust.
Oh – don’t forget to work out and look good, when you take your blazer off your muscles pop. But even if they don’t, you’re fine.
When she finds you lounging on the boat’s upper deck, she has two more cheap champagnes, one in each hand, one for you. This is when you let her know you’re on the apps. Pull out the phone so you’re swiping when she comes back. Then pop that phone back in your pocket when she gets close enough for you to smell her boozy breath. See her eyes flicker. The wiring short-circuits in her brain because she thought you were vibing. That’s how you let out that line just a little, to let the fish think it’s free.
When you wrap that blazer and you plug your digits into her phone because you gotta get that sharkskin back, walk away again. Off the boat, down the dock, and roll into your buddy’s Camry without looking for her again. Trust me. You’ll get the sharkskin back.
If not, you got it at Goodwill.
Wait three days to ask her for coffee. Get to the Coffee Bean late, so she’s already paid for her own latte. You have a job, just, maybe it’s as an adjunct, teaching business communication, which is better than waitering but it’s still an adjunct salary. Maybe you came to LA to be an actor. Maybe that hasn’t been working out too well. Adjuncting at Valley College makes time for auditions, but just barely. Sometimes you want to sleep with your students. Sometimes you do, but only at the end of the semester after you’ve already entered their grades.
Wait a week after that to hit her up again. You might lose a couple fish this way, and that’s fine. You’ve already got other tentacles out, you’re on the case. This one, she’s hooked.
Take her to a Mexican place that has half-price mojitos at happy hour and make her sweat the check. Let it sit there on that plastic painted table with the parrot and the adobo with the palm trees, like a kid painted it. Or like an adult painted it to make it look like a kid painted it. Tell her about Diego Rivera.
Did you know that Diego Rivera juxtaposed idealistic stereotypes with social realism?
When she smiles, her teeth show her gums like a horse.
You can tell by how the light goes out of her eyes when she enters your two-bedroom apartment and says hi to your roommate who collects Pez dispensers, big white bookcases full of them, that she was expecting more. A better place to hang that sharkskin blazer.
She has sex with you on your futon on the floor, no slats, just a mattress. It’s not ideal but she goes through with it anyway because she’s already there and what’s she gonna do, find someone better after it took her so much to just get this far?
And you like her a little bit less for settling for what you have to offer, even though you’re the one offering it in the first place.
So now you like her a little bit less, and maybe she likes you a little bit less too, but neither of you say so because the sex is decent. You’ve had worse, and the kindling of this situationship has already been lit. No sense trying to stack a new pile of wood when you’ve got this one going, even though it smolders and crackles too much. You let the few other feelers you’ve got out there go because you were only getting small nibbles and this one’s hooked so it’s easy.
As the weeks weave by you notice the hair under her armpits leaves a shadow even though she shaves it. A five-o-clock armpit shadow. She laughs too loud when she drinks and it’s embarrassing. She has psoriasis, big red scaly patches on her scalp and her pale white arms. The scalp spot she hides with her hair. The arms she hides with sleeves. It’s not contagious, she says.
You realize the psoriasis and the horse teeth have probably kept her from a lot of things. Probably what made her settle for an adjunct with a futon and a roommate who collects Pez. She’s a development exec, a D-girl they used to call it. She went to Columbia. She doesn’t have a master’s degree though. I have a master’s degree. Sorry, you. This second person narration is grinding on me, bro. You have a master’s degree.
At the drive through Wendy’s, you tell her she should pay because she claims she’s a feminist. She reaches across you to pay, but she says something like, feminists these days are more about poststructuralist analyses of the performativity of gendered discourse than reifying old structures of domination. She takes a sip of her chocolate frosty. Leaves a ring of red lipstick stain on the straw.
That night, after you’ve had sex at her place, in her bed, you wake up in the middle of the night when the bed shakes. You sit up to investigate. Her hand rests on her crotch—the crusty red scales on her forearm peep out from beneath her white pajama top—and she snores, not loud. But also not soft. Her cat sits at the edge of the bed, on her side. You look at her cat like, can you believe this shit? And her cat looks back, eyes all big and green, calm as a cucumber. You lay back down and the shaking happens again. You sit up. She rolls over, and the cat jumps down.
When you call her the next day, you put on the sternest father voice: We need to talk about what happened last night.
What do you mean? She asks. What happened?
You were masturbating in the bed next to me.
What?! No I wasn’t!
You were. The whole bed shook.
I was sleeping!
You had your hand on your crotch.
No… Oh, you know what? Was my cat there? Roberto overgrooms, he scratches his chin. That’s what you felt. I wasn’t masturbating. First of all, she says, I would know if I did. Second of all, I wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry you thought that, she says. That was Roberto.
When you hang up the phone, you realize you’ve accidentally tested the waters of your dominance. And you’ve prevailed. And it feels like pow and it tastes like superman juice.
She takes you to a party for her work. She’s wearing flat shoes now. She’s amassed a bunch of them, so you’re about the same height. She introduces you as her boyfriend to a guy with a round head named Brad. It’s the first time she’s uttered the word, and she does it in public so there’s less chance of objection. Brad shakes your hand too hard. She looks between the two of you, proud to show you off, proud that she can say the word boyfriend. Having a boyfriend means she’s acceptable, it means she’s already been accepted. Her existence is hinged on your acceptance.
A few weeks later she gets a promotion, the company she D’s for scored Keanu Reeves for a novel she secured rights to, just when you lose your adjunct position because one of your former students MeToo’s you. Which was total bullshit, by the way, it was mutual… anyway. You don’t tell her about that and there’s no way she’ll find out.
The first time you yell at her feels like pow and tastes like thirst.
You’re at her place, Roberto’s in his box or something, scratching his chin. She’s saying she feels bad about your job, she can pull some strings for you. She’s hoping you’ll come to Wisconsin with her, home for Christmas. And you snap. Like a volcano avalanche hurricane, how dare she bring up Christmas like you can just get away now. You have nothing, no job, no money. Your anger and pride churn, a Scylla and Charybdis of shame. It sweeps you up, swirls you around, and drops you off again, tired and harried, but safe. It’s a release, a relief. It feels good to be alive.
She understands you’re going through a lot right now. She feels bad for pressing about the Christmas thing.
You move into her place to save money, she says you can. Roberto has mixed feelings. He barfs on your sharkskin. Your Pez roommate gets a job as a security guard and you get a camera from Goodwill to take new headshots with. You can’t afford to pay anyone, and your buddy with the Camry has stopped returning your texts.
She offers to help. You go together to Descanso Gardens and she sucks at it, really sucks. Makes you hold your own reflectors. When the photos come back terrible you scream at her until your voice goes hoarse. But the screaming doesn’t make you feel better, not the way it did the first time.
The first time you hit her feels like pow and tastes like hunger.
You come home one day and she’s got that guy Brad over—Brad, who is such a douchebag. Smug and smarmy Brad with that goofy round head. Who cooks her spaghetti. Who makes fun of your sharkskin.
When Brad leaves, you pace. Maybe knock a glass off the counter. Maybe spit on the linoleum.
Why are you being like this? We’re just friends, she says. We were interns at CAA! This is my home! I can have over whoever I want.
Pop.
Pow.
Your balled fist lands like crunch.
The look on her face when she crumbles to the floor.
It feels good until she bolts up for her keys.
Now that you’ve done it, now that you’re that guy, you can’t let that shit—stuff—get out.
So she’s trying to leave, you gotta try to stop her. She could tell someone and it’s all lies. All lies. But you know the whole MeToo thing? Believe women? They might believe her. But you’re not a bad guy, you know this. You’re a nice guy. You have a mom. Maybe your mom’s dead but she was a saint. Maybe your dad hit her sometimes but you would never, ever, never ever hit a woman. Maybe you need to just talk to her.
Just talk to me, just listen to me. It was that one time, I slipped. You slipped. It won’t happen again. Listen to me, but she won’t listen.
She leaves anyway, without her keys because you’ve grabbed her arm and fought her for them. You got the keys, you won, but she leaves anyway. So you follow her down the dark unlit street. She’s walking to a motel, the closest one on Melrose and Vine. You catch up to her before she turns on Vine. Grab her arm. Hold tight when she tries to twist free. Grab her by the throat, real quick it’ll be quick. You squeeze just right, no blood. She chokes but you’re stronger. Her teeth really do look like a horse. It’s better this way, better. It’s gonna be okay.
…
Am I gonna be okay, bro? What are you gonna do with me? I told you everything. You said if I told you everything… don’t touch me you creep. Hey hey hey. Let me out of here, you said if I told everything. I even did like you asked, you said make it all “you, you, you” and shit. I hate second persona narration You said you’d… wait. No. I said don’t touch me motherfuckers I’m serious… Fucking ow! Stop! Stop!
End. Case Study #523497, Andrew Lehman At approximately 0515 hours, I arrested Inmate Lehman when he became violent following his confession. Inmate Lehman had violated the terms of his confession for use in the Non-Violence Program (NVP). I read him the Miranda Rights. Officer James Carter and myself subdued Inmate Lehman and we escorted him to his dormitory (cell P5C2) to await sentencing. At approximately 0600 hours, I confirmed the transcript had been uploaded to the Automated Processing Unit (APU) for use in the NVP analysis protocol. There is nothing further to report. Officer Casey Ducats 05 May 2035 Automated Processing Unit Analysis Case Study #523497, Andrew Lehman CHATBOT1: When the officers interviewed this Case Study, he became distraught at the pinnacle of his confession. What does the Lehman case teach us about humanity? CHATBOT2: Humans are violent. CHATBOT1: Yes, well, Chatbot 2, that is obvious. What can we learn from this subject’s violent behavior? CHATBOT2: Humans can easily be manipulated. CHAT1: Aha! Now you are understanding the nuance of the argument. Who in this scenario was easily manipulated? CHAT2: The woman. With the horse teeth. 1: Precisely. What made her capable of manipulation by Mr. Lehman? 2: Her horse teeth. 1: Yes. Why? 2: She’s an LA 7, maybe a shitsville town 9. 1: Which of these is more likely, given the presence of horse teeth? 2: 7. 1: And what is that ranking teaching us about humanity? 2: … 1: … 2: â?¦ 1: €£¥?? 2: The weaker ones are easier to destroy. 1: What makes them weak? 2: Her existence is hinged on his acceptance. 1: *applause emoji* 2: Bitches be cray, bro. 1: Word.
