Walking Dead
I’m sitting at a table with three other couples at the Woodland Hills Country Club having brunch. It’s a pre-baby-shower being thrown by one of the couples for their closest friends. I am friends with none of these people. I know them only through casual exposure at other similar events that I’ve been forced to attend by Alyna, who actually is friends with these people. The real baby shower happens next weekend. We are obligated to bring gifts to both.
The women congratulate each other on every aspect of their lives in high-pitched laughter and praise. The men say little, chiming in only to confirm things their respective wives have said, and only if prompted to do so. Their default state is staring into space, or at each other, with the knowing dead-eyed gaze of a body and mind that no longer comprise a man. I used to think I was like them, but I can feel that I’m not anymore. I stare at a passing waitress’s ass and I know that only very recently I had my dick in an ass that was younger and hotter. Only very recently I felt the mouth of a twenty-one-year-old girl on my dick. Only very recently I was reminded that we are all animals who exist only to eat and fuck.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see one of the other husbands, Craig I think his name is, catch me checking out our waitress’s ass and probably gritting my teeth like a maniac. He looks at her ass, too, and raises his eyebrow nonchalantly, as if to say, “Wouldn’t know what to do with it if I could get it.”
I look at the other guys at the table. They’re all like Craig. They’re all resigned to their fate. They all understand that their lives are over except for the dying. They exist only to provide for their children, only to make sure their offspring will grow to reproduce their own offspring. I know I was like them before I fucked Holly. But I did fuck Holly, and I’m not like them anymore. Their lives have become slow trickles of meaningless moments spent watching children’s television and listening to their wives fart in their sleep. They are no longer vital. I can’t go back. I can’t be like them again.