Jason
IF JASON HAD to hear the song “Let It Go” one more time, he would jump out the window. He had spent the evening alone with Mia—his first in a long time—while Christina went out with friends. He had tried to show her some old toys from his childhood, his beloved G.I. Joe and Hot Wheels, but she had cried and demanded he play Frozen on his laptop. She watched it before falling asleep on the sofa, her little arm dangling off the edge. He picked her up and got her dressed for bed, hoping she’d wake up during the process and want to spend time with him, but she slept soundly even when he pulled the pajama top over her head.
Women, it seemed, had a built-in advantage with parenting. Mia was attached to Christina from the moment she popped out. Jason had to work so much harder to get any reaction from her, and now that Christina had gotten her addicted to mobile devices, he had to compete with technology too.
He tried not to dwell too long on his relationship—or lack thereof—with his daughter, realizing that this at least gave him an opportunity to have fun. With Mia asleep and at home with her grandparents, Jason was pumped for another night out. This time, it wouldn’t be at Celebz.
He looked at himself in the mirror after his shower. His towel was tied around his hips, his small beer belly protruding slightly, wiry hair covering his fleshy torso. The hair on the sides of his head was still thick and dark but had gotten too long, which made him look as if he were trying to distract people from his receding hairline and bald spot in the back. He knew it didn’t really matter—women loved older men even if they were bald, which was why Patrick Stewart’s wife was so hot. That was at least what his favorite pick-up-artist blogs told him: men were attractive because they were confident and charming, regardless of looks, while women were attractive solely because they were young and pretty, regardless of their personalities. Balding and aging sucked, sure, but it sucked worse to be a woman.
When he was at Colgate, losing his hair was the last thing on his mind. He didn’t think they were his glory days at the time. He thought they were the beginning of something better. Every weekend, at the dilapidated white colonial that housed Delta Xi Tau, he and his fraternity brothers would host a party and invite the girls from the two hottest sororities. The girls from the slightly uglier sororities would invariably wind up coming too. A few times there were some hidden gems in there, or at least girls with big boobs and self-esteem issues. The Delts would set out the liquor on the table, and in a matter of hours the bottles would be empty and placed on the mantel if they were particularly impressive, like a jumbo bottle of Jack Daniels. The girls would arrive, already drunk from their own pregaming and ready to dance. He’d crank up “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and, more times than not, any girl he approached would be his.
Except Christina. The senior alpha female of Sigma Theta, she would sit in a corner with her friends, sipping on her drink delicately, laughing as if she were at a debutante ball and not inches away from an empty Coors Light box full of vomit.
One night, he approached her after he had a few too many shots of Jack. “Why is it that I’ve seen you so many times, and you’ve never said hi?” he asked, breaching the wall of sorority girls that surrounded her. “It’s pretty rude to drink a stranger’s drinks and not even introduce yourself.” He smiled, to make sure she knew he wasn’t actually angry. Normally, such a pickup line would work with women. He believed in the semiconfrontational approach to flirting.
She took a sip from her red Solo cup of Franzia sauvignon blanc. “Because I have a boyfriend?” He tried to focus on the light bouncing off her Tiffany charm bracelet. He knew if he didn’t, he’d be looking at her perky chest, her blue eyes or her perfect lips.
He normally ignored girls with boyfriends because there were so many other willing girls who were single. But he couldn’t get Christina out of his mind. She looked like a Victoria’s Secret model who required no retouching. It was like a tragic Greek myth: someone had created his perfect woman and then made her unavailable to him.
He asked her sorority sisters and discovered that Christina’s boyfriend went to Stanford, and they saw each other only a few times a year. He considered waiting it out until they broke up but didn’t feel like taking the risk that she would be the one-in-a-million girl who actually stayed with a long-distance boyfriend. He had to take action.
Knowing that girls like Christina would never refuse an opportunity to dress up and go somewhere fancy, he organized a fraternity winter formal that would blow all previous formals out of the water. He put pledges to work organizing it from top to bottom, making sure everyone pitched in their money to get the best venue. Geography limited him to the Utica Radisson, but that was better than all the previous formals held in the school annex. He made formal wear mandatory and told the pledges they had to rent tuxedos or stay away.
When he asked her to be his date—only as a friend—she bit her glossed lip and looked down at the floor. “Only as a friend.”
The night of the formal, Jason and his friends rented a stretch limo to pick up the girls at the sorority house. Christina emerged in a sequined floor-length ice-blue gown that hugged her hourglass body. She picked up the hem so that it wouldn’t get wet in the snow and climbed into the limo next to Jason. When he scooted closer to her, she edged away slightly but smiled at him.
“How would Mr. Stanford feel about you sitting so close to me?” he asked with a wink.
“He wouldn’t care because he knows we’re just friends.”
“He knows about me?”
“No, but...you know what I mean.”
At the Radisson, Jason requested that the DJ play TLC, Christina’s favorite group. He handed her a martini, which became two, which became three. Without her usual entourage of best friends—he had instructed his brothers not to invite any of them—she found herself in conversation with Jason and only Jason. As the two of them drank more and more, Jason told her about the amazing job he had lined up at IBM after graduation. This wasn’t true at all, but Christina’s eyes lit up.
Westlife’s “If I Let You Go” began playing. He asked her to dance. Her hands rested on his shoulders, but she laid her head on his chest, so he let his hands migrate to her butt. Later that night she told him that she didn’t think things were going to work out with her boyfriend after all.
That first night with Christina was probably the best sex Jason ever had—probably, because, having drunk so much, he couldn’t remember the details. But he remembered waking up the next morning next to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, wondering how on Earth she got there and feeling a deep sense of panic as he realized he would need to find a job at IBM as soon as possible before graduation.
The story he later told Christina was that he had been promised the job but at the last second they gave it to one of the senior executives’ sons instead. Much to his relief, she understood, and even better, consoled him with sex. Crisis averted. As the days ticked off to graduation, he sent his résumé to dozens of tech companies. He wound up at a junior sales job at a third-tier computer hardware company called PushComp.
They moved to New York City together after graduation, where Christina began her career in marketing. He wasn’t making that much, but what he made he spent on her: clubbing in the Meatpacking District, designer clothes, towers of sushi.
Four years into their relationship, Jason began finding bridal websites in Christina’s search history. At one point she had been the perfect woman, but by now he had seen her with a stomach bug and without makeup, and he knew how the bathroom smelled after she used it. Little signs of her tanning addiction were starting to show on her young face. He had become a senior sales associate at PushComp. If he hadn’t moved in with his college girlfriend, who knows what kind of women he might have met? Perhaps ones who continued to give blow jobs after the first six months—something Christina insisted was gross and degrading.
He dragged his feet on the proposal while he created anonymous accounts on dating websites with no photograph and no bio. When she was out or asleep, he scrolled, surveying the single women in New York at his disposal. He resisted messaging. But he started taking a stand with Christina. At one point he even told her that he believed marriage was a sexist institution and that, as a woman, she shouldn’t be interested in it. This gambit did nothing to forestall her ultimatum and, when it came, he panicked at the thought of losing her. He told himself that, perhaps, his doubts were temporary: he was only twenty-six, so of course he was afraid of marriage. Things would work out. He spent a year’s worth of commission to buy her an engagement ring at Tiffany.
When their sex dwindled from every other day to once a week, then once every two weeks, she told him she just didn’t have as high a sex drive as he did. She still smiled and giggled when he took her to dinner at expensive restaurants, but when they were home she spent most of her time flipping through Architectural Digest, watching HGTV and shopping online at west elm. When he tried to touch her, she recoiled as if her entire body were ticklish. One day he overheard her on the phone telling her mother that Mr. Stanford had become a VP at Google.
He wished he had listened to his brothers when they told him not to mess with a girl who had a boyfriend. As his hair thinned and his metabolism slowed, the handsome, smiling frat boy in old photographs became his nemesis, taunting him about his lost youth. He was determined to turn back the clock. He logged on to one of his anonymous dating accounts and added a photo. He began taking off his wedding ring whenever he was out with friends. The girls didn’t quite fall into his lap as he had hoped, but with hard work and perseverance, he did find a fling here and there: an aspiring “TV personality” working as a Hooters waitress, a single mother in her midthirties who genuinely believed he wanted to be her boyfriend, a married woman on his sales team who was just as discreet as he was and as many erotic masseuses as he could afford.
And suddenly Christina was pregnant.
He pretended to be happy about it, went to all her doctor’s appointments and held her hand, but all the while he was thinking about the Thai massage place around the corner from PushComp, the strip club on the West Side Highway and his hot coworker Jill in Compliance.
In spite of all his ambivalence, once Mia was born, the DNA kicked in and Jason found himself falling completely in love with his daughter. Mia, on the other hand, preferred Christina from day one, and Christina was just so much better with her than he was. Jason found himself jealous of both of them, they were so close. Christina loved Mia more than she had ever loved him, and Mia loved Christina more than she could ever love him. The only advantage of this was that Mia kept Christina so busy, she no longer had time to monitor Jason’s actions. She was taking Mia to Mommy and Me classes, to Gymboree, to a music class called Little Chopin where parents paid one hundred dollars a session for their toddlers to sit in a circle and suck on dirty plastic flutes. Jason had more time to himself than ever, and he spent it doing what he loved most, without guilt. Why should he feel guilty? Their whole marriage began with infidelity. Was she really any better than he was? If she really wanted him to be faithful, she would have sex with him more often. Besides, it wasn’t as if he fell in love with the other women he was with. It was only sex—he might as well have been masturbating.
When Mia was five months old, he was laid off from PushComp. Going to job interviews was intimidating and demoralizing. He thought his work in sales had prepared him for rejection, but he hadn’t expected to be blown off so many times by email. When the subject line included the words thank you he knew what was coming. On the rare occasions that he tried to express his frustration to Christina, she claimed that there were jobs out there—he just wasn’t looking hard enough. The boyish charm and good looks that once seemed to get him everything he wanted had deserted him. He was in his thirties with no job, no sex life and a daughter who cried whenever he held her.
It was only a matter of time before Christina found out about the other women. He had expected a fight, maybe even a few cut-up Oxford shirts strewn across the living room floor in revenge, but as it turned out, Christina had no qualms about pawning her engagement ring, changing the locks and filing for divorce.
The first time he had slept with Christina, that night of the winter formal, it had been the best night of his life. Thirteen years later, despite hundreds of attempts to top it, it still was.
* * *
Jason got dressed. He had already asked David if he wanted to go out that night, but he was going to dinner with his dad and stepmom. Emily had been sleeping ever since the afternoon. Lauren and Matt were spending the night in watching Netflix. The house was quiet with the kids asleep. He went on Facebook. He had friended all of the wedding party, even people he hadn’t met yet, and everyone had accepted his friend request, even Jennifer. He had flipped through her pictures a few times, evaluating just how much effort he would exert to sleep with her. He had gotten to the point where sex was less about his own pleasure, and more about how big a high-five he would receive from telling people. Jennifer was sexy, tall and svelte, but she was twenty-nine. She was probably full of baggage and desperation but still hot enough to bang. A man would have to be insane not to at least try.
When Jason opened his chat window, he noticed Nathan was online. Nathan’s profile picture was a webcam selfie in which he gave an overly serious glare to the camera while tipping his hat. The collar of his leather trench coat was turned up, like a fat male version of Carmen Sandiego.
He found Maddyson’s profile. Her profile pic was an iPhone selfie, the default for girls her age. She wore a black tattoo choker and made a face that looked artificially surprised. He saw the green dot next to her name on Messenger—she was online too.
Hey, what are you up to? he typed. If she didn’t recognize him or thought he was being creepy, he could always claim he meant to message someone else.
“Nothing. Hanging out at home.”
“Same.”
“Wanna come over?”
This was a stunning development. Could it be that he had entered a new prime in his life? His early thirties hadn’t been the pussy festival of his early twenties, but maybe thirty-five was the beginning of a new era. If he was right, he was looking at a second Golden Age!
Sounds good to me ;) he typed. I’ll bring the liquor.
David
“I think it’s time for a toast,” Nick said.
“Dad, you made two toasts already.”
“No, no, hear me out. To the next Steve Jobs!” David cringed as the couple at the next table turned and looked at them. He overheard the wife asking the husband if he recognized David and then saw the husband shake his head, perplexed.
Susan giggled and raised her wineglass, and David slowly lifted his up to meet theirs.
“I’m not done,” Nick said. “And may his compassion, intelligence and empathy serve him well. In business, in marriage and in life.”
Susan got her phone from her sequined clutch purse. “I have an idea! Let me take a selfie of my two handsome men! Lean in together, you two.”
David smiled weakly. “Susan, it’s not a selfie if you’re taking it of other people. A selfie is a picture you take of yourself.”
Susan’s eyes widened. She turned to Nick. “Can you believe this? All up with the tech lingo! He’ll be running Silicon Valley in no time!”
“Speaking of lingo, David,” Nick said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you—what’s twerk?”
“What?”
“Is it some sort of computer thing?”
“No, it’s, um, it’s a dance.”
Susan laughed. “I am so glad I have you kids! Without you, I’d never know any of the hip words!”
David thought about correcting her use of the nearly obsolete word hip but decided against it. Susan took a photo of him and Nick. He felt his phone buzzing with a call. He checked it. It was Robert.
“I have to get this. It’s my boss.”
“Ooh, it’s Bill Gates at work!” Nick said. He took out his own phone and snapped a too-close candid of David with the flash on.
“Hey, Robert, what’s up?” He heard Nick mutter “Ugh, it’s too blurry” as he looked at his phone.
“How’s your wedding week going?” Robert said on the other end.
“It’s good. I’m actually at dinner with my family right now.”
“Oh, right, the time difference! I just came back from Pacific Beach. Man, the waves down there. Unbefuckinglievable.”
“Cool, cool. So—what’s up?”
“So I’m looking at your Twitter feed now and I’m not seeing any tweets about the BluCapital thing.”
“Oh, no, I’m so sorry. I totally forgot. It’s been kind of crazy—”
“I get it. You’re getting married. No problem, man! I’ll make sure Zach does it tonight.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll do it right now!”
“Okay. Because Zach is more than willing to help out if you’re feeling slammed.”
“It’s fine. I’ll do it. Thanks, Robert.”
“Cool. Say hi to your family for me!”
“I will, thanks.”
He turned off his phone. He looked up and saw that Nick’s eyes were moist.
“That was amazing,” his dad said.
Jason
“Good evening, gentle sir.”
Jason had knocked on the front door of the Porters’ expecting Maddyson to answer it. Instead, there was Nathan, wearing his signature leather trench coat, his fedora tipped rakishly over one eye and no shoes. Maddyson stood behind him, twirling her pink strand of hair around her fingertips, flipping through her phone again. It was astonishing how terribly young women dressed, Jason thought. Jennifer might have been older than Maddyson, but she at least put some effort into doing her makeup properly, getting a decent manicure and wearing heels. Maddyson wore a large boxy sweatshirt that looked not only unflattering, but uncomfortable in the summer weather, along with a pair of high-waisted denim shorts that made whatever butt she had look long and deflated. As for makeup, she appeared to be wearing nothing except for dark purple metallic lipstick—something Jason assumed was a trend among girls her age. It didn’t look good, so he focused on her smooth, slender legs.
“Hey, guys, I brought some vodka,” he said. “Nathan... I didn’t realize you’d be home.”
“I heard that you would be joining my dear stepsister for a night of merriment. What kind of gentleman would I be if I left her unattended?”
Jason shrugged. He should have seen this coming. “Well, I’m happy to see you, man. We haven’t gotten to spend much time together, and I think it’s time we got to know each other a little better.”
“’Tis a pity indeed, good sir, that so many men become so embroiled with the pursuit of females that they forsake the intellectual pleasures to be found with other like-minded courtiers.”
“Okay, I’m going to be straight up with you. I have no idea what you just said.”
“Perhaps we can watch a film. Or otherwise, play Skyrim.”
“Not again with the Skyrim,” Maddyson said, her head craning back.
“Your parents still out with David?” Jason asked as he walked into the house and perused the family photos on the walls. He wanted to make sure it would be a while before Nick and Susan returned.
“Yeah,” replied Maddyson. “It’s a little private congratulations thingy since he’s getting married and all.”
“More like marching to the gallows,” Jason said. “I was married once. Never again.” Normally that line piqued women’s interest, or at least made them wonder what his story was. But Maddyson just scrolled through her phone as if she were listening to one of her dad’s friends talk about his 401k.
“Why don’t we start drinking?” Jason asked. “Nathan, you can pick a movie.”
“I know a great deal about cinema,” he said, speaking to him but looking at Maddyson. “But I fear my tastes could be a bit...refined compared to what you normally watch. Plebeian taste confounds me.”
“How about a classic?” Jason said. “American Pie.”
“We have the DVD,” Nathan said. “That was my brother’s favorite movie in high school. A bit blue to watch in front of the lady, though.”
“Nathan, I’ve seen it before,” Maddyson said. “It’s just that old movie with the guy from Orange Is the New Black, right?”
Nathan went over to the DVD player to put the movie on, groaning slightly when he bent over to insert the disk. He motioned to Maddyson to sit on the sofa. With an effeminate flourish of his hand, he took off his trench coat and laid it on the carpet in front of the couch, bowing and removing his hat to reveal his greasy scalp. Tonight he had gone without a ponytail and just let his oily hair hang free as if he were a villainous lord on Game of Thrones.
“After you, milady,” he said, encouraging her to walk across his coat.
“Dude,” Jason said, patting him on the shoulder. “This really only works if there’s a puddle or something. I’m sure she can walk on the floor herself.”
“’Twas merely a joke!” Nathan said.
“With you, it’s hard to tell.”
Maddyson ignored the coat on the floor and walked to the other side of the sofa where she sat down with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Nathan took a seat several feet away from her.
Jason went into the kitchen to make some drinks, looking over his shoulder as he left to make sure Nathan wasn’t making any new moves on Maddyson. Nathan appeared to be frozen, staring at his stepsister with his hat shading his face, but unable to say or do anything. He looked like a giant garden gnome.
The Porters’ kitchen was decorated in a rustic style. There were a pine table and chairs and a glass vase with white daffodils as a centerpiece. The walls were covered in blue-and-white tiles with little roosters on them. There was a photo calendar on the fridge. The photograph representing June featured a slightly younger Nathan sitting on a patio chair at a cookout, clad in his trench coat and fedora, surrounded by happy and chatting middle-aged people in their bright summer clothes. He was glaring at the camera with one hand on his chin and the other tipping the brim of his hat. The picture was framed with cheerful little cartoon images of umbrellas and flip-flops.
Jason quickly mixed some of his vodka with Susan’s no-pulp orange juice and carried all three glasses into the living room. American Pie had started. Nathan had edged slightly closer to Maddyson on the sofa, but he was still a good three feet away. Jason placed the glasses on the coffee table and sat down between them.
“You’re really into your phone, huh?” he asked Maddyson.
“I guess. Why do you care?” He peeked over to see her phone screen but couldn’t get a good look.
“Well, you may or may not know this, but I’m the CEO of a revolutionary transportation-based start-up called WalkShare. And I’m soon to be the cofounder of Beardster.”
“What?”
“It’s kind of like, Tinder meets Uber, but...”
“I’m on Tinder right now.” She finally revealed her phone screen, where she was flipping through different men, all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three.
“I can’t allow that,” he said. “You can’t use my competitor.” He smiled in a way he hoped was sexily arrogant, not just arrogant.
“Is your app on the market yet?”
“No, I mean, we still need to get an engineer to actually build it, but—”
“Then Tinder isn’t your competitor.” She continued to scroll, swiping right at most of the men she saw.
“I thought you would be pickier than this.”
“Oh, I’m not using this to meet guys. It’s a social experiment where, once we connect, I ask them what they think of slut-shaming and see how they respond. Then I post it all to my Snapchat story. It’s for my final project.”
“I don’t shame sluts. I love sluts. It helps that I am one.” He thought of winking, but that would be too much. Instead, he flicked her shoulder playfully. She turned to look at him like he was an irritating mosquito.
“Slut is a word to shame women. Not men. So when you call yourself that, it’s different. Men created the word slut to keep girls like me down. Men like you are the ones enforcing dress codes, for example. Did you know that I led a protest at my high school over their ban on crop tops and booty shorts? That day, we all came to school in crop tops and booty shorts.”
“So this is what’s going on in high school now. Nobody cared about dress codes when I was younger.” He wondered if maybe Lauren was the future of America—billions of Laurens walking around getting angry over booty shorts. It had infected the cute girls now.
“I think it’s generational,” she said. “People in my generation care passionately. We want to change the world. Your generation...no offense... I mean, baby boomers are pretty much responsible for all the problems my generation faces.”
“Baby boomers? I’m not sixty.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
He paused, wondering how he would recover. He shouldn’t have drawn attention to their age difference since that was the one thing stopping him from gaming her. He changed the subject. “So when you said the word slut exists to shame women like you, do you mean that you’re promiscuous?”
“I guess,” she said. “Depending on your definition.”
“You two!” Nathan whispered from the edge of the sofa. “Keep it down, I am trying to watch the film.”
“Yeah,” said Jason. “Nathan doesn’t want the subtleties of the tongue tornado scene ruined for him.”
“I know this movie is subpar and classless,” he shot back. “I put it on for your enjoyment as I am a good host and a gentleman. If you want to simply talk throughout it, I would be happy to watch an atheism documentary instead.”
“No need for that, buddy,” Jason said. “I don’t want to be a bad guest. I was just chatting with your sister. Surely that’s okay with you.”
“Stepsister. So any sexual relations we might enjoy would be legal. But yes, by all means, talk with her.”
“Ew, Nathan,” she said. “Why do you always go there?”
“I am just speaking the truth. Now, if you both want to continue watching American Pie, I am happy to regale you with my thoughts on this film’s representation of decaying Western society—a society plagued by feminism, and superstition known as religion, where free thinking is no longer practiced, where women willingly give themselves away to the alpha males, where truly intelligent thinkers are not rewarded with sex but punished with virginity, where chivalry and decency are dead, where—”
“Dude,” Jason said. “You’re bumming everyone out.”
Nathan took a sip from his screwdriver and went back to the movie. Hopefully if he got drunk enough, he’d just fall asleep, Jason thought. He didn’t seem like a big drinker.
“That reminds me,” Jason said, taking a sip from his own drink. “Maddyson?”
“Oh, right.” She gulped down the lion’s share of her screwdriver without wincing the way other eighteen-year-old girls might. He remembered how girls drank when he was a Delt. They claimed to be drunker than they were, and they claimed to like whiskey and football just to impress him, when in reality they had mini-fridges stocked with Smirnoff Vanilla and cranberry juice and spent their weekends at outlet malls. They would pretend to be innocent or promiscuous, whatever they thought would impress him. He would tease them about their hair as an excuse to touch it, and he would show them his football trophies in his bedroom, where he kept cold tequila and limes in his own mini-fridge. He remembered very little of the actual sex. Usually by then he was blacked out.
And there he was, on the sofa with Maddyson, plying her with a screwdriver while she ignored him for her Tinder social experiment. How had it come to this?
“Actually, Jason,” she said. “While I’ve got you, could you answer a few questions for me?”
“Sure.”
She opened her laptop and began typing as she talked. “Back when you were young, was it normal for a woman to have multiple partners?”
“Uh...well, I’m not that old now. What’s this for?”
“We’ll get back to that question. Would you say that attitudes toward female promiscuity are more lax or less lax now than they were when you were young?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Can you just answer the question?”
“Wait, is this for some kind of college assignment?” He took another sip of his drink. He needed to drink more to get through this.
“I won’t use your name, don’t worry. Okay, would you say that slut-shaming behavior between women was more or less common in the eighties than it is now?”
“I wasn’t an adult in the eighties.”
She closed her laptop. “This isn’t working. I’ll just ask my friend’s dad instead. See you guys. I’m going to go hang out at Chelsea’s house.”
“No!” Nathan protested. “You are too inebriated to be behind the wheel of a vehicle!”
“She lives down the street. I’m walking.”
“Dressed in such a tempting manner at night, by yourself?”
“Fuck off, Nathan.”
Maddyson put on her Chuck Taylors and left. Jason turned to Nathan, who was slumped over on the sofa, sadly staring into his screwdriver.
“Nathan, drink more.”
“A gentleman never becomes three sheets to the wind.”
“Yes, they do. I do, at least.”
“Well, you, my good sir,” he said, taking another dainty sip, “are not a gentleman.”
When the end credits of American Pie rolled, Nathan was still awake and alert, having had had only one drink. Jason was on his fifth.
“You should be ashamed,” Nathan said.
“Of what?” Jason knew he was slurring his words.
“I know why you came here. You’re recently divorced, and after your heart was trampled upon by the fair Christina, you thought you were free to take my stepsister’s innocence right in my manor.”
“Okay. First off, Maddyson isn’t a virgin. Second, this isn’t a manor and it’s not yours.”
Nathan checked his steampunk-inspired bronze watch, with visible gears. “Maddyson does not seem to be returning from that wench Chelsea’s house. I suppose it is just us gentle sirs now.”
“I should be going then.”
“Nonsense. I shan’t allow it. You are too deep in your cups to drive safely, and as much as I disdain your predatory posture toward my stepsister’s delicate flower, I will not see my brother’s wedding marred by your untimely demise.”
“Well, thanks.” He got up and stretched, allowing his belly to show when he raised his arms. Who cared, it wasn’t like Maddyson was still around. “Fuck, why did I even come here?”
“Only you can answer that. Here. Prithee follow me to the guest quarters. World of Warcraft awaits.”
“Ugh, anything but that.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer that I tell my father and stepmother that you came here to get Maddyson drunk,” he said, his eyes dancing mischievously. “They’d love to hear about that.”
“Fine, whatever. I’ll be your weird fucking video game buddy.”
Nathan steadied him as they went upstairs, past a series of photographs of Nathan and David as little boys. It was strange to imagine Nathan as a child. How did he become this?
“You looked different as a kid.” He missed a step and almost fell into Nathan.
“Ah, yes. My innocent days. Before I learned about the treachery of romance.”
“You really hate women, don’t you? And you think I’m the scumbag?”
“To the contrary. I adore women. I adore everything about them—their slim waists, their long hair, their full lips, their...heavenly girlhoods. But I have become resentful, for these females want nothing to do with the likes of me. You appear to have the same problem.”
“Fuck no,” he blurted, accidentally spitting in Nathan’s face. “I’m not a virgin like you. I was married. And before that, during that and after that, I’ve fucked tons of women.”
“Yes. But you are unhappy nonetheless. Is it a particular female that plagues you so, my brother?”
“What? No. I’m just drunk. Stop it.”
“As you wish.” He opened the door to the guest room and Jason flopped on the bed, his face pressing against the quilted floral duvet. Vodka-scented drool trickled from his mouth. He felt the bed’s weight shift dramatically, as though some kind of gravitational force were pushing him off. His dizziness didn’t help. When he rolled over and opened his eyes, he saw that Nathan was seated at the foot of his bed.
“You really want a friend, don’t you?” Jason said. “Why are you still here?”
“I may want a friend. But you, my good sir, need a friend. You have nothing, is that not the truth? The females did this to you.”
“Women aren’t aliens, dude. Fuck, no wonder you’ve never had a girlfriend. What the hell did women do to you to make you this way?”
As if he had been waiting a lifetime for that question, Nathan took a deep breath and prepared to speak. He removed his fedora and placed it on his lap. “I was once innocent. I once believed that in order to attract a female for sexual pleasure and companionship, my only course of action would be to be nice to her. To do her favors. To tell her how beautiful she was.”
“Well, no. That’s called being a spineless weirdo.”
“I did not know that at the time. My mother, may she rest in peace, taught me that women would see me for who I am inside. And what happened? The females flocked to my taller, more handsome brother, and ignored me. And so I came to realize the true nature of the females.”
“And you seriously wonder why women don’t want you?” he asked. “You’re ridiculously bitter.”
“One particular female germinated my worldview.” Nathan took a deep breath in, staring straight ahead at the wall instead of Jason, as if he were performing in a dramatic play. “When I was in ninth grade, a lass by the name of Sophia caught my eye. She was stunningly beautiful, with long blond hair and the face of a mystical warrior wizard. The female kind, obviously. I became friends with her, called her every night and whispered sweet nothings to her. I became her best friend, her confidant. However, I was never good enough for her to date. I was her friend through every breakup, every crush, every devastating fight fueled by her girlish fury and his brutish lack of sophistication. And she never once realized that the only true gentleman who would treat her like a lady was standing right in front of her.”
Jason raised his eyebrows. “You realize you just described every teen romantic comedy ever, right? Is your life this much of a cliché, or is that just how you like to view it? Either way, it’s very sad.”
Nathan turned to look at him sternly. “It is a trope because art imitates life.”
Jason sat up, shaking his head. “You get that there are tons of reasons a woman wouldn’t date you, other than you being too nice, right? I mean, for one, you don’t seem to bathe more than once a week.”
“I believed Sophia was deeper than that.”
“So one girl didn’t like you. Did you ever tell her you liked her?”
“No. I simply left a bouquet of wilted black roses by her locker with a note reading ‘From your masked guardian, lurking in the shadows in passionate silence.’”
Jason lay back down and rolled onto his bloated belly. “Dude,” he said. “That’s fucking terrifying.”
“She never figured out it was me. She asked me many times if I knew anyone who was watching her from afar. I said no.”
“Well, no wonder she wasn’t into you. You did creepy shit, and then never admitted you were into her. How was she even supposed to know?”
“Females have remarkable intuition. It makes up for their subpar logical skills and inferior upper-body strength. Oh, she knew, she knew. But she delighted in tormenting me. For four whole years I was forced into a platonic servitude that brought me nothing but misery. It is thanks to Sophia that I am the tortured soul I am today.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I experienced something similar in college,” he said, just as Jason was beginning to hope that he was wrapping things up. “There was a woman in my philosophy class. She was slender, brunette and petite with the milky white legs of a...” He paused, as if he was trying to think of a good comparison. “Of a stool,” he finally said. “A stool that’s white.”
“Got it. Stool legs.” Jason smirked.
“But comely. Anyway, I never could work up the courage to speak to her. So instead, I became her guardian in the dark. I followed her home each day, making sure nobody harassed her or touched her. You have no idea how many creeps are out there. I friended her on le social media—it meant but a pittance to her, since she friended everyone—and then used that to find out which events she attended. I would attend those events, as well, my eyes glued to her, ready to swoop in with my katana the minute any lesser male thought he could impress my fair lady.”
“Your katana? You brought a katana?”
“No. My figurative katana. Otherwise known as my mind. I would intellectually eviscerate any male who came close to her. But she never seemed to notice or care. One time, she just told her low-grade suitor that I was ‘some drunk asshole.’ I had imbibed nothing that night! Eventually I became resentful. I had been protecting her and caring for her and all for what?” Nathan’s voice had grown higher and louder. Jason was worried he might cry, so he put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder.
“Buddy, you never spoke to her. Your whole strategy is flawed. Women don’t notice their ‘guardians in the darkness.’”
“Exactly. This is why I cannot trust them to be true, to be genuine...to be ladies.”
“No. Look, I’d be the first to say I don’t have a great track record for respecting women, but if you want to get laid, you need to actually talk to them. Not follow them home.”
“Is that any better than getting my stepsister drunk with the expectation of sexual intercourse? Shame on you.”
“Yeah, shame on me. I get it, I’m a pervert.”
Nathan turned to meet his eyes. “You may be. But tonight you have done something very few other men have done, and for that I commend you.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“You talked to me.”