Story: Out for Drinks

DRAFT

• Background on this story:

A few weeks ago, I felt like I had fallen into a rut with my fiction writing. (OK, a lot of that had to do with working on a book, which means always dealing with the same characters, duh.) But I've been writing science fiction for a few months now, and I wanted to go a bit old-school: real-people type characters. This happened. As always, comments welcome.

“It always helps to have connections—however you get them,” George said.

“Where’d you get that? From the ‘Selling Out Quarterly’?” I was furious with him, and unable to hide it.

He lowered his eyes; he could tell I was dissing him. Of course; I’m always running into people who hate it when I tell them truth. They always argue: my truth is not their truth, there is no absolute truth, you gotta cheat to survive, the usual excuses for living a less than honest life.

Although, if everyone is lying, does it even matter? I like to think that I only lie to myself—for encouragement—but I’m probably full of shit, too.

George’s right hand was massaging the condensation on his glass. His left was flat on the table, very unnatural looking—I took the difference between his sensually wiping right and the stiff left as a measure of his cognitive dissonance. It was just odd: his fingers massaging the glass delicately, seeming to relish the cool liquid. I lowered my head and shook it slowly side to side.

“What?” George said.

It took me a moment to lift my head and look at him.

“I can’t believe you sometimes.”

“Yeah, I’m getting a little tired of that. I’m trying, you know, but this place, it gets me down. Really down.”

A little truth at last.

“Why are you smiling? You like it that my job is utter shit?”

“No, no, that’s not what I’m feeling. OK, your job is shit, but you’ve been shitty to me for a long time now. I’m bruised, it was stupid not to talk to you about it.”

“Stupid? What do you mean? Is this another one of those big deals of yours, where I have to struggle with both you and my job?”

I lowered my head. I swear, it was too fucking heavy to hold it up.

“Jesus,” he said. “There you go again. How the fuck am I going to deal with your crap, too?”

I looked at him, kind of admiring the swiftness of our descent into a fight. I still had a cool head, but it felt like I was barely hanging on. I did something I never do: I rebelled. I stood up. I put my hand on top of his still-flat-to-the-table left hand. His feeling hand, if we can trust mass-market periodical pop psychology. His hand was terribly cold. I felt compassion for him, but I realized it was pointless: there was no way I could express it, in a public place, that would help him. Or save us.

“I’m helpless,” I said.

“And your face is making promises you can’t keep. I’ve seen this before. You really do love me, I know that. But at a practical level, my life is shit and I can’t seem to connect with you.”

“Because when you do, you dump that shit on me. I’m filthy with it. It gets into my dreams. It deflates me, tears me down, I don’t get any supportive vibes from you.”

“Because I’m a fucking loser! Losers don’t have anything to contribute.”

He said it so loudly that people at other tables stared at us. I covered my face with my hands. I felt tears, but it didn’t seem worth it to cry.

He slapped the table, startling me. I dropped my hands and stared at him. I wanted to punch him. I’ve become a fighter over the last six months, and I truly wanted to physically punch the shit out of him.

But his anger went cold, terribly cold. He was like a marionette, giving me a bold, disinterested stare. Nothing like a husband at all. I felt like my very existence was being questioned.

I found the strength to tell him the truth; I don’t know where it came from. “You’re allowing yourself to become a loser, Frank.”

He stood. I could feel his hate, the menace he was marshaling to defend himself.
I stood. I’m about a foot shorter than him. I was terrified. I started to shake.

“Either fight back, or fold your tent.”

He visibly shrank, shoulders slumping, head lowered. “I’m ashamed of myself,” he said.

I didn’t know how to reply to that. He was starkly guilty in my eyes, like I was seeing all of the devils in him boiling out of his face. It scared the hell out of me. I hate to see a man pity himself like that. It’s so disgusting. A man should be a man. I tried to blame myself for his state—my usual response, fuck me for being such a stupid slut—but then I was too angry to buy my own bullshit. I don’t even know why I call myself a slut like that. It’s fucking complex, and I don’t give a shit about it. I like to pretend I’m everywoman. But maybe it’s just true. I was fucking close to tears, and I was quite aware that, tactically, that would be a really stupid thing to do.

“Your face,” he said.

Which struck me as stupidly funny, given the situation. I couldn’t stop myself, I laughed helplessly, tears streaming down my face.

He got up, and came to my side of the table. “I’m desperate, don’t you get it?”

“You’ve been hiding inside yourself, I can’t remember when you were lose, playful.”

“I don’t even feel like a man any more. Everything is just shit.”
OK; I felt sorry for him. I’m an optimist, I guess. If he was everyman, I was everywoman. Pathetic, sorry for my loser husband, sorrier for myself, we’ll both just go crashing into misery.

“I’m having a hard time being optimistic,” I said, and knew right away it wasn’t a helpful thing to say. His face dropped even further. His mouth wasn’t just downturned, it was something torn into his face.

And then he cried. Very muscularly, his body weirdly shrunken and twisted. Like his soul had been torn out of him, and he was slumped, hanging on his own bones.
Yet I did not feel sympathetic. I felt rage. I wanted a man for my husband. Not…this monkey. I reared back and then swung my fist at his face. I wanted to explode it.

He ducked out of the way, and I was even more furious. If he had grabbed my hand, if he had tried to restrain me, I would have tried to kill him, I swear. I’ve never felt myself so angry.

But it was like flying. I felt free, too. Maybe not powerful, though, and what I wanted then was power. To push him away, wake him up, encourage him, beat him senseless, mother him into some critical insight.

It took me a while to realize that my own fucking fucked-up feelings had me in some kind of vice. Or maybe I should just say that my rage stayed with me, but great clarity came with it. I didn’t see him as some pathetic loser; I saw a man who had been defeated and who needed to get up off his slowly fattening ass and take care of himself.

“So your job is shit.”

He stared at me, like a child. I felt my little demon inside wanting to tear him down all the way. I had him now.

“It really is,” he said, surprisingly calm. I thought he should be afraid of me, but he wasn’t. That was intensely clarifying. He was no boy; he was simply innocent, a good man. I broke down so fucking hard. I felt so fucking guilty! I covered my face with my hands. My tears were hot, and vicious, I felt like a lioness humbled by her stupid husband. But I let the tears burst out of me, I had to do that to find a way back to calm.

Why didn’t I realize how fucking judgmental of him I’d become? I bought into the whole game, that fucking job—he should have left it, found something better, somewhere he would be appreciated.

I repeated my own thoughts to myself like a mantra: he’s a good man. Which just caused the cataract of painful emotion to dump all over me again, and a collapsed into my chair. I covered my face with my hands; I wanted to hide, I hated the dress I was wearing. I kicked off my shoes and they flew across several tables.

Which made me laugh.

“What is this?” he said. “Is this you? You’re fucking amazing, Cheryl. Why did you hook up with a schmuck like me?”

Oh, that fucking did it. All I’d just gone through was just fucking preamble?

“Listen to me, you idiot. It’s them, it’s not you.

“You’re a good man, do you understand that? You’re too fucking good for them.”

The people at a nearby table clapped at my ‘performance’. It was not performance. It was a foundational moment. I really loved this pathetic shit of a husband. I wanted him to succeed. I wasn’t giving him my soul to abuse, but I would support him, tell him the truth.

“That’s the truth,” I said. I got control of myself. I was still enraged, but I was so fucking focused. I could see the truth in my life! Holy shit, you know?

He looked at me for a long while. We were both standing. I sat. He sat. We just kind of looked at each other for a while.

I realized we were lucky the wait staff hadn’t thrown us out on the street. I wiped at my face. I use too much mascara; my face must have been a tart’s.

He stared at me, I said nothing, he said nothing, but somehow we also said everything that needed to be said between us.

“I have to leave that place,” he said.

I nodded. “Sure.”

We sat quietly for many minutes. Someone brought fresh drinks. We ignored all that. We didn’t, like stare into each other souls, but I thought then that we finally knew something about each other.

At some point, he threw an arm over the back of his chair, and relaxed. At some point, I sat up straight and felt proud. You are only a loser if you give up trying.
We stared at each other; him, I suppose, having the same kind of thoughts I was having…thinking about changes, struggle, recovery, all that.
“You won’t believe this,” he said. “The car lights flashing on the ceiling make you look like you’ve got a halo.”