the bad guy

No one believes you because. You’ve heard about it on the news, known a few friends of friends here and there. It can get ugly. But do these things really happen to people like you?

Imagine this: you spent a long day at the factory, working like a dog. You have to stay late because someone bails his shift, leaving you with twice the workload. This drags on four extra hours, then you’re free to go. You don’t have a car, but it’s relatively safe for a 6’4,’’ 250lbs man to walk the streets of Cleveland after dark. Or so you think.

“Salt of the earth,” honest, hardworking. You taught your kids their alphabets, their manners, their loyalty to the flag. Your wife is a schoolteacher; beautiful, smart, can bake a mean apple pie.

So, you’re walking home. You approach a streetlight illuminating a small, quivering figure. As you get closer, you realize it’s a young woman. She seems alarmed.

“Fine night we have here,” you say as you nod your head.

You look at the girl. She has makeup smeared down her cheeks. Her blonde hair is messy. Dirty. She wears a tight, short, green dress and carries a small black purse. You look into her eyes and see vulnerability.

“Ma’am, are you holding up alright?” You ask in your gentlest voice.

You wait. She starts to cry, covers her face with her hands. She tells you she got in a fight with her boyfriend. Dropped her off here on the sidewalk, told her to find her own way home. Thing is, she’s not from around here. Got an accent. Got no idea where to go or what to do. No phone, no money.

Shocked, you reassure the girl that she’s safe, that you’ll take her to Shaker Heights with you. Get her off the streets where your wife will take care of her. She doesn’t answer, but faces the road, leaning over and crying some more.

She turns around with a .45 automatic raised to your face.

“J-Jesus, stay calm,” You stutter.

You’re fucked.

She demands you give her your wallet. All you have is a $5. She throws the wallet to the sidewalk, cursing. Her vulnerability has been replaced by a hard evil. And she’s downright pissed you’ve got nothing. She eyes your wedding band.

“That!” She points to it with her free hand. “Give it to me.”

Anything but that.

Three years of saving went into that goddamn ring. Shit, it was even engraved. ETERNALLY YOURS.

“Now listen…” You try to reason with her.

But she tells for you to shut-the-fuck-up. You panic. You think of your kids, of your wife. Of this gun in your face.

Without realizing, you lunge. You grab her wrist in your left hand, simultaneously squeezing. Hard. With your right hand, you rip the pistol from her fingers and you throw it as far as you can. Splash, into a small pond. The girl freezes. Her face is blank, her mouth contracting like a fish.

“Stay. Calm.” You beg her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

As if that were the cue, she lets out a blood-curdling shriek. A shriek so loud it scares the shit out of you. It’s fucking unearthly. She starts thrashing around, and you’re holding her wrist because you don’t know what to do next. You frantically search the purple night, praying a car rolls by.

“Bro, what are you doing?!” A teenage boy runs across the road towards you both.

You let go of her wrist.

“HELP ME!” The girl screams, “HE’S TRYING TO RAPE ME!”

Your heart sinks into the pit of your body. Your stomach tightens, your head feels faint. No. This isn’t real, it’s some sick, depraved nightmare. This isn’t happening.

“No you don’t understand son, she was trying to rob me. She had a gun!

“What gun?” She says, smirking through her tears.

chelsea hotel no. 2 lyrics turned story

I was supposed to be studying for midterms one night;

instead, I wrote a short story using a line from the first stanza of a song as the beginning of each paragraph. 

I had downloaded chelsea hotel no. 2 by leonard cohen and couldn't stop listening to it

march 17, 2013

I remember you well. we used to be classmates. you got upset one day and threw your chair to the front of the classroom. the teacher was outraged, the school kids were in a frenzy. that summer, you went away to massachusetts and no one ever heard from you again. you always smelt like cigarettes and peach tea, even two seats away from me. I would look at your dirty hands. they never followed the pencil across the lined paper like the teacher wanted them to. you treated yourself like an empty desk.

**
In the chelsea hotel, I bought my first pack of cigarettes. it was the morning after my best friend lost her father, the night we were drunk in new york city. we saved just enough money to drive six hours east, to celebrate our graduation. we took a bag for a few nights, we took our favorite CDs, we took our best underwear. we stayed at the chelsea hotel. she told me she'd never slept with a boy before, and I told her I knew. a lot of people back home didn't know, but I knew. she was the kind of girl so uncomfortable in her own skin, she accepted anything anyone else projected on it. that's probably where she got her reputation.

we were talking so brave and so sweet. I held her hand and laughed with her as we made eye contact with three beautiful boys across the bar. it was dark, and I whispered again into her ear the things I would say to them if I could. she bought us another round of drinks, and was so brave by the end of the drinks that she walked over to the boys. before I knew it, we were sitting so sweetly on their laps, so sweetly in their eyes. my best friend couldn't find her key, but we had enough money to take a cab to their apartment.

giving me head on the unmade bed. a scratch on my left knee from ripping off my jeans. the taste of cigarettes in his mouth. these are the bits and pieces that pervade the swallowed evening. I tried to pull my clothes back on, but she came running into the living room. She was hysterical, her made up face ran down her chubby red cheeks. She told me her mother just called and told her her father had died. without putting on a shirt, I ran over to her and held her in my arms. we cried and I forgot what happened next.

while the limousines wait in the street, filthy things go on in cabs. I don't remember why, but the boy who was with my best friend came back with us to our hotel. or at least this is how it was told to me. he told his friends that we needed help getting back, getting another key from concierge. he would sacrifice his night. I guess he didn't feel like sacrificing his sleep; he put me in the bathtub and shared the bed with her. in the morning, he was gone, and her father was still dead.

**

but those were the reasons, and that was new york. still, I find myself yearning for a cigarette whenever I feel that momentous emptiness welling up inside my stomach. one day I found myself sitting under a gas station awning, seeking shelter from the rain with a smoke in my teeth. for the first time in five years, I smelt this sickening peach sweetness, and there you were.

 I was running for the money and the flesh you said. I'll pay you back for these smokes, you said. you're still the only person to talk to me, you said, and I said I knew. it turns out, you were sent away because of repeated outbursts, and you had "anger management problems" and were a threat to our pathetic little catholic school. I knew your parents were getting a divorce, because your mom used to be friends with my sister's classmate's mom, and not many people got divorces in our small town. your mother also had beautiful black curly hair like you.

and that was called love for the workers in song. love was having enough money to send your son to boarding school, to therapy, to a place hundreds of miles between yourself and what you're afraid of. you showed me the scars on your arm from other boys, and from a boy you didn't want to admit you were. you told me dirty jokes, and I gave you a fifth cigarette, and you spit onto the sidewalk. I laughed at your mannerisms. you asked me why I was being so friendly to someone who I didn't even know.

probably still is for those of them left, you said, and I knew what you meant. catholic school was nasty. I told you I agreed, and that something in me drowned there. when I realized how much I hated it, people hated me for knowing it. my best friend became my best friend when we were the two most hated girls in our class.

oh but you got away, didn't you baby? you seemed broken before, but in a different way than you were in front of me chain-smoking in the rain. I knew that you always saw beyond your circumstances, and that's why you were so angry. everyone oppressed you. me on the other hand, I had grown tame. I found pleasure in losing my mind, in cigarettes not because they were "social" or "cool" but because they made my body forget I hate myself. I don't think you ever hated yourself more than I do. I almost told you this. you touched my shoulder and said you would see me around. you walked away, and I went into the gas station to buy another pack.