"The best part," I whispered as I pushed her little black dress down around her stomach, "was all those people watching us." She moaned and pushed back into me. I paused to nip with my too-sharp incisors at the back of her neck. She moaned more and pushed against me harder as the Town Car slid through downtown. "They were watching us and thinking we were such a nice young couple. What do you think they'd have thought if they knew about all the piercings, all the tattoos, all of the things we do?"
She flipped over and locked her disconcerting green gaze with my baleful cobalt one. She still smelled slightly of the cigar I'd just taught her how to smoke, the wine I'd chosen, and the steak dinner I'd partially hand-fed her. She murmured something about how hot the thought of those people approving of us made her, how hot she was at the thought of all the motorists around us oblivious to what we were doing. She traced a fingernail up my stomach--which had been vastly thinned during my ever-so-tiny breakdown a few months earlier. She murmured something else. Then we had sex--deviant, dirty, and unfeeling.
That was my birthday last year; that was the last day of my old life.
Sure, I still got the calls. "We heard about what happened. No pressure this time. We're adults. We know they were just stupid kids. Come to work with us. We know you've got something left. Come to Florida. The sun will do you good. We'll get you an apartment right by Ocean Drive. We've got funding. We'll turn you loose. You can build us a Death Star. All the money you need. Totally in control. Sony wants us to develop a content delivery system for the PS3. CTO. Clothing allowance. Equity. Personal assistant. We know some people at South--get you a company BMW. Offices here and in Helsinki. You can build a fucking Death Star. A fucking Death Star. You're still a star. We know you can do it. Come to us. Join us. Retake your place."
The calls took on their own sound, their own fury. The calls signified nothing. The people knew me, knew what had happened at my last company. They knew that I'd cracked under the strain. They didn't care. Maybe I had a little of my juice left. Maybe my knowledge of the industry could still be useful. Maybe I hadn't even shown my true power yet.
Maybe nothing: I knew I was done for the time being. Maybe I was done forever.
The girlfriend urged me to take one of the positions. She dreamed flamingo pink dreams of a life for the two of us in the sun in Florida: I earning the money; she spending it. Girlified muscle cars and dignified Audis with child seats zoomed through her head. She imagined herself that thing that she'd always wanted to be: the eternal student. She imagined herself as the mother her family wanted her to be. If she married the CTO of a well-funded startup, couldn't she be both? At night she would tell me these things before performing sex acts with me that only rock and porn stars are accustomed to. In my world that is tenderness, intimacy.
I smiled indulgently and played along. I played along with so many things--her perversions and pretenses alike--that it had become second nature to me. In my heart, I knew she was fickle, but I told myself that a creature like me would never come any closer to love. I knew that she would betray me. I knew that I could never keep her, because unlike the princes in her fairy-tale daydreams, I wouldn't fight valiantly to hold that fickle favor.
Weeks before the episode I called "My Sister's Big Fat Kung Fu Redneck Wedding", we broke up. We broke up because she wanted me to fight to earn her love, and I knew a love I had to drag someone into by pummeling another suitor wasn't real. Only the yoke of real domesticity and fidelity could ever hold me.
That wouldn't be enough, and she would rend me asunder from equally fickle friends with lies so egregious that I quietly refused to answer them. Even rending me from any emotional support wasn't enough; she wouldn't stop until her beau had both threatened my life and found his way to a jail cell for trying to follow through with the threat. But I digress.
Summer found me more alone than I've been since my parents died. I wasn't working for the first time since I was eighteen. I had no friends left because of both the incident surrounding my breakdown and the treacherous machinations of a woman whose best line in beguiling me was, "Anal sex." My family--what little of it I may claim on any given day--was disapproving at best--after all, how could I be taking time off? Didn't I understand that this would disrupt all the things that might ever follow in my life? Wasn't I thinking about my future? Wasn't I thinking about what duties I might have to them? The last infuriated me most.
I simply cut the world off. I spent an entire summer lying in the grass and warm sunlight of Seattle's many parks. I read quietly and chatted amicably in broken French with curious passing dogs. I had a couple flings, but my taste for people had worn thin. The last fling ended with a girl calling me too intense. I wondered what in heaven she could be looking for when a sleepy-eyed, tousle-headed me was too intense for her. What milksop, spineless thing could ever mollify so bland an appetite.
Gradually, I got sucked back into a couple technical endeavors. By late summer, I found myself a preferred trainer and knowledge base for all things technical on a certain mobile device platform. I lived half a year in the air over Oceania and Asia. I shopped for electronics in Akihabra and smiled at tall, accommodating redheads in Sydney. For a time, I managed to run away from myself--that most dogged of pursuers.
Finally, even I tired of hotels and mini-soaps and smiling and charming my way through customs--it's amazing how a neatly-dressed, soft-spoken, tall, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, blond-haired, blue-eyed American can ghost through almost anywhere. I returned home and accepted a retainer at one company and began helping another make a grab at some angel funding.
I also regained some of my taste for friends. Most of the people I've met have been spectacular. Some I'm indifferent about. Some I've even bonded with--no matter how slightly--even though I've never met them in real life and probably won't. I've had some adventures with them. I've had a few moments of angst and fear--not the boozy, careening, fire-laden fear of just a few years ago. I've had a moment or two of joy--not the artificial, saccharine joy of that same belle poque.
With my savings dwindling, I finally took a new job. Not the lofty, rarified heights of my previous posts, but a simple job I could do and leave there when I was done. Plus, I get to race go karts on a pretty much daily basis.
I won't end the day with a girl huskily moaning "stick it in my ass". I won't fight tooth and nail for venture funding or pretend that I'm a twenty-something master of the universe.
At best, I hope to have a quiet dinner, a quieter cigar, and a few precious stolen moments with some people that inexplicably mean more to me than I'd ever have credited. Perhaps, knowing them, it's not that inexplicable. I wish I deserved them; they deserve better than me.
My fantasy quiet, peaceful life seems so near.
What has this year in the life taught me? Not much. I think I learned perhaps the greatest thing I've ever learned, though. I'm a bit closer to being human, a real boy.
Whether that is a good thing or not is a question for the philosophers.
She flipped over and locked her disconcerting green gaze with my baleful cobalt one. She still smelled slightly of the cigar I'd just taught her how to smoke, the wine I'd chosen, and the steak dinner I'd partially hand-fed her. She murmured something about how hot the thought of those people approving of us made her, how hot she was at the thought of all the motorists around us oblivious to what we were doing. She traced a fingernail up my stomach--which had been vastly thinned during my ever-so-tiny breakdown a few months earlier. She murmured something else. Then we had sex--deviant, dirty, and unfeeling.
That was my birthday last year; that was the last day of my old life.
Sure, I still got the calls. "We heard about what happened. No pressure this time. We're adults. We know they were just stupid kids. Come to work with us. We know you've got something left. Come to Florida. The sun will do you good. We'll get you an apartment right by Ocean Drive. We've got funding. We'll turn you loose. You can build us a Death Star. All the money you need. Totally in control. Sony wants us to develop a content delivery system for the PS3. CTO. Clothing allowance. Equity. Personal assistant. We know some people at South--get you a company BMW. Offices here and in Helsinki. You can build a fucking Death Star. A fucking Death Star. You're still a star. We know you can do it. Come to us. Join us. Retake your place."
The calls took on their own sound, their own fury. The calls signified nothing. The people knew me, knew what had happened at my last company. They knew that I'd cracked under the strain. They didn't care. Maybe I had a little of my juice left. Maybe my knowledge of the industry could still be useful. Maybe I hadn't even shown my true power yet.
Maybe nothing: I knew I was done for the time being. Maybe I was done forever.
The girlfriend urged me to take one of the positions. She dreamed flamingo pink dreams of a life for the two of us in the sun in Florida: I earning the money; she spending it. Girlified muscle cars and dignified Audis with child seats zoomed through her head. She imagined herself that thing that she'd always wanted to be: the eternal student. She imagined herself as the mother her family wanted her to be. If she married the CTO of a well-funded startup, couldn't she be both? At night she would tell me these things before performing sex acts with me that only rock and porn stars are accustomed to. In my world that is tenderness, intimacy.
I smiled indulgently and played along. I played along with so many things--her perversions and pretenses alike--that it had become second nature to me. In my heart, I knew she was fickle, but I told myself that a creature like me would never come any closer to love. I knew that she would betray me. I knew that I could never keep her, because unlike the princes in her fairy-tale daydreams, I wouldn't fight valiantly to hold that fickle favor.
Weeks before the episode I called "My Sister's Big Fat Kung Fu Redneck Wedding", we broke up. We broke up because she wanted me to fight to earn her love, and I knew a love I had to drag someone into by pummeling another suitor wasn't real. Only the yoke of real domesticity and fidelity could ever hold me.
That wouldn't be enough, and she would rend me asunder from equally fickle friends with lies so egregious that I quietly refused to answer them. Even rending me from any emotional support wasn't enough; she wouldn't stop until her beau had both threatened my life and found his way to a jail cell for trying to follow through with the threat. But I digress.
Summer found me more alone than I've been since my parents died. I wasn't working for the first time since I was eighteen. I had no friends left because of both the incident surrounding my breakdown and the treacherous machinations of a woman whose best line in beguiling me was, "Anal sex." My family--what little of it I may claim on any given day--was disapproving at best--after all, how could I be taking time off? Didn't I understand that this would disrupt all the things that might ever follow in my life? Wasn't I thinking about my future? Wasn't I thinking about what duties I might have to them? The last infuriated me most.
I simply cut the world off. I spent an entire summer lying in the grass and warm sunlight of Seattle's many parks. I read quietly and chatted amicably in broken French with curious passing dogs. I had a couple flings, but my taste for people had worn thin. The last fling ended with a girl calling me too intense. I wondered what in heaven she could be looking for when a sleepy-eyed, tousle-headed me was too intense for her. What milksop, spineless thing could ever mollify so bland an appetite.
Gradually, I got sucked back into a couple technical endeavors. By late summer, I found myself a preferred trainer and knowledge base for all things technical on a certain mobile device platform. I lived half a year in the air over Oceania and Asia. I shopped for electronics in Akihabra and smiled at tall, accommodating redheads in Sydney. For a time, I managed to run away from myself--that most dogged of pursuers.
Finally, even I tired of hotels and mini-soaps and smiling and charming my way through customs--it's amazing how a neatly-dressed, soft-spoken, tall, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, blond-haired, blue-eyed American can ghost through almost anywhere. I returned home and accepted a retainer at one company and began helping another make a grab at some angel funding.
I also regained some of my taste for friends. Most of the people I've met have been spectacular. Some I'm indifferent about. Some I've even bonded with--no matter how slightly--even though I've never met them in real life and probably won't. I've had some adventures with them. I've had a few moments of angst and fear--not the boozy, careening, fire-laden fear of just a few years ago. I've had a moment or two of joy--not the artificial, saccharine joy of that same belle poque.
With my savings dwindling, I finally took a new job. Not the lofty, rarified heights of my previous posts, but a simple job I could do and leave there when I was done. Plus, I get to race go karts on a pretty much daily basis.
I won't end the day with a girl huskily moaning "stick it in my ass". I won't fight tooth and nail for venture funding or pretend that I'm a twenty-something master of the universe.
At best, I hope to have a quiet dinner, a quieter cigar, and a few precious stolen moments with some people that inexplicably mean more to me than I'd ever have credited. Perhaps, knowing them, it's not that inexplicable. I wish I deserved them; they deserve better than me.
My fantasy quiet, peaceful life seems so near.
What has this year in the life taught me? Not much. I think I learned perhaps the greatest thing I've ever learned, though. I'm a bit closer to being human, a real boy.
Whether that is a good thing or not is a question for the philosophers.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
Have a good rest of the day, my friend.
That was tasty writing - pure mercury. Have a quiet evening. Cheers.