Jack’s Proposal &… Where the F*ck is Marla?

You only believe in things you would actually wear. And since I don’t care about clothes, I guess I lack a point of view.

When did this happen? I always thought I was deep. The type of person you’d actually want to listen to if they were cast in The Real World Season #31: Baghdad. Unfortunately I was never a housemate in that show. Not because they didn’t want me, but because I never even sent in my audition tape. I guess that’s all my life has ever been. A series of “never-really-tried.” My only true adversary is my past. Pathetic. Me competing against myself. The person from the present always resenting the past “glory” from my younger self. Always feeling my peak came, left, and I never knew it happened.

Marla, why did you have to go?

I wrapped my hands around your neck… as you begged me to fuck you by the window. Fuck you on fours while all neighbors pretended not to watch from their own windows. As they ate their dinners as big happy families, they stared at you getting pounded on the couch. You waved at the old lady who’s walking her three-legged cocker spaniel.

Lovely.

Between us, I was freaking out. Felt guilty, like I shouldn’t listen to you when you absentmindedly asked me to rape you. I shouldn’t have fucked you in your sleep neither. But fucking is like having a relationship with god. You think you love him, but in reality, you just want him not to kill you. And if god can give you the power to rule over others, then you’re all set.

So, maybe it was my desire to be one with god, and to have his power manifest itself through me, that lead my body to emit certain chemicals that lured the opposite sex (and sometimes the same sex…) more than ever before. And since the rule of life is, that when it rains it pours, my increase in sexual behavior only led to more sexual behavior. Funny thing is, as with everything, it all started with a lie.

I saw Emma again at another event a few months after my disastrous Marlboro party took place. Yes, the one that ended with my face being stitched into a new identity. That one.

She was making out with some other dude. I reacted the only way a mature responsible adult would, by approaching one of my female friends and telling her to pretend she was you. At first, I thought it wouldn’t work. I mean, c’mon… are we 5th Graders? Truth is, my friend started getting into it, and soon did Emma. I ended up going home with both of them that night.

Being one with god has it’s benefits.

———–

The city where no one is born. The place where no one belongs, that’s where we wanna go.

The telephone rings, and I stop soliloquizing. Unknown number. These calls are generally made by my paranoid landlord or by the guy who’s been trying to get me to renew my non-existing car insurance for ages. If only I would just give up and let him have my social security number, would his pre-recorded machine stop calling me? Is it all just for the chase?

Today it is neither of them, the man who introduced me to the Green Fungus world talks through the other end of the phone line with his thick accent, assuming I recognize his voice without the need for proper salutations. He says we should meet, emphasizes on how he has a “proposal” for me I can’t deny.

“Do I have a choice, Mike?”

“No.”

The one thing people in this city have in common, is the desire to leave something behind. Some try to relive a memory of a past long-gone. Others long to experiment with the swinger approach to life: never settling for one perspective fully. Sporting both sides of a coin at once. Ideal principles of counter-culture, plugged to dreams of technology and stability.

You wanna make some money? Grow your own weed, and risk having your balls tied up by a local cop who wants to get his hands on your goods. Or better yet, laundry some dough along with your sins at the casino of non-rejects, where tourists come and experience the washed down version of rebellion.

Given enough money and motivation, even things like rejection can be packaged and sold at your local Walgreens.

Everyone wants a piece of the action. Even when you aren’t born at a place where there’s any action.

Mike and I met for a beer, and that’s when he felt it was safe to tell me I could quit my job, because he was going to gay marry me.

“Excuse me?”

“I give you $100,000 a year. You give me citizenship.”

“That’s a lot of!! Ahem… Ok. Let’s be rational. Why me? Why not a girl?”

“I don’t know any girls. Everyone thinks I’m gay. It will work. Trust me. I take full responsibility. If anything happens, I won’t let you rot in jail. Not for too long at least.”

Mike gives me one of his awkward smiles. I never really asked him why he broke my face, or why he took me under his wing in the party scene. Truth is, I felt like I owed him. And marriage, well… I always wanted to be married, but not as much as I wanted to be divorced.

“Hi, my name is Jack… and I’m a divorcee.”

It had a nice ring to it, I must admit. Also, I was getting bored of my debts, and you were never coming back as stated by your last phone call.

“I’m never coming back.”

It seemed like the logical next step to add to my list of shit to do before I die was gay marriage indeed.

——————————-

“A lot of women are thinking about you today.”

“Um, really?”

She gently touches my face, and her fingers trail my forehead. I lift my hair to show her a not-so-neatly-closed scar I carry with some amount of pride.

“I remember how you got this. Your sexual prowess just filled the air that night… and I just haven’t been able to get you out of my head ever since.”

“Really? All that after one party?”

“Embarrassingly enough.”

She looked down with coy innocence, yet knowing we were both thinking the same thing. And that was: “How would it be like to fuck each other.” To just get up and interconnect our bodies in ways that would leave her with a urinary track infection.

I laughed off the tension and told her how last night concluded with the DJ following me to the Men’s bathroom, hoping I would let her blow me.

“Apparently she had been fantasizing about it for a while…”

“Who doesn’t?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I take a hit out of my bong, and my eyebrows frown reflecting my sudden discomfort.

“What was your name again?”

———————————————-

Mike and I get gay married at City Hall… and have our picture taken along dozens of other loving gay couples, as examples of love not being dead in this world. As examples of what’s good, clean, and progressive in modern society.

“Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?”

The phone rings. It is you.

“Marla, I really can’t talk right now. Wait. Aha… umm. Can’t you see I’m busy?? I’ll call you in half an hour. I promise. Your visiting hours are over in 10 minutes? Well, I’m not visiting, I’m just calling you. Then why do you call me when you know they are going to have you hang up? Ugh, Ok… Don’t cut yourself! Bye.”

My eyes return to our South American lesbian rabbi priestess, and instruct her to continue with the ceremony.

After we are done, I don’t feel any different. The limo arrives, and before our chauffeur can get out of the vehicle, I open the door for Mike to get in first. Who said chivalry is dead? For the amount Mike’s paying, I could even blow him… I think. For now, I’m just moving in with him. His apartment was nicer than mine anyway.

———————————————-

Marla, you remember that time I had not showered for a week because all we did was fuck? Remember that night we were supposed to meet with friends (our self-imposed check-in with reality night) and the building ran out of water right after you took your shower.

No clean clothes; I felt ugly and dirty, yet it was too late to cancel. Waiting for the bus, you stood there in front of me, and gently began to dust off my attire. Rearranged my ironic baseball cap. Untucked my shirt, redid the laces on my tennis shoes… until I felt like new. I never felt loved more.

You broke me.

———————————————

Six months after our wedding, the interview with MIGRA took place. Mike and I had practiced. We knew everything about each other, from birthdays, to what color were our toothbrushes. What color was his underwear? Easy… he doesn’t wear any. I knew his family history, and he knew mine. We shared bank accounts, and extensive receipts of dinners together. What can I say? I was his bitch in the afternoons, and he let me off the hook during the nights to do what I had to do… which was to drown myself in self-pity and pointless pleasures.

The interviewer looks at both of us for a minute without saying a word. His first question unfortunately is,

“What’s Jack’s phone number?”

Mike is blank. Same question is addressed to me.

“What type of question is that?? I’m seriously offended. I mean, that’s what cell phones are for. Right?”

Two weeks later, the door bell to our apartment rings at 6:25 am. Mike leaves his generic bedroom (the one that can pass as a guest room in case of emergency), drowsily walks to the door… and without paying attention, he opens it. A middle-aged Chinese lady is standing there with a briefcase, a notepad and a pen. Mike smiles awkwardly, and shouts:

“Jack, honey! We have company!”

Silence… not really.

The government agent lets her quiet footsteps guide her to where she must go. Our apartment is not that big anyway.

Mike keeps shouting my name, mixed with sweet words like “HONEY!” or the more desperate “LOVE OF MY LIFE!” I should have known that behavior was unusual. Very unlike Mike…

The door to my bedroom was only half-way open, yet after a gentle push that coincides with a mild squeak, the door is no longer a barrier to the eyes that intercept the antagonistic scene taking place. Chinese eyes glare at my naked body, as I pound an Emma who’s currently on fours with her hair being tugged by one of my fists, as my other hand just locks her wrists behind her sweaty back.

Sad thing is that, even then, as the Chinese lady grows paler by the second, as she annotates furiously on a notepad… I still feel the need to finish Emma off.

———————————————

Marla, you really broke me.