Sofa, So Good



Sofa, So Good?

“ To dream of reclining on a couch indicates

that false hopes will be entertained.”

- 10,000 Dreams Interpreted

I park my car and have to walk ten blocks to my apartment because the old lady who lives downstairs has taken my parking space. Well, I wouldn’t say she lives downstairs. It’s more like she hasn’t yet died downstairs. Her whole apartment is a hovel. Trash is strewn everywhere; the floors are stacked with yellowing newspapers and the place just reeks of decaying food. No wait... that’s my apartment. My bad.

The old lady has been eyeing my parking spot for three months now like a buzzard who doesn’t even have the decency to wait until an animal is entirely dead before swooping in. She’s like one of those parking meter cops who hover around a meter that only has one minute left before expiring. Her beady eyes would follow me every time I left the building, staring through the slits of her window blinds, just waiting to see if I was taking the car so she could scurry down and get my spot. Sometimes I would mess with her mind by opening my car door and then shutting it again before going to catch the subway. It was kinda fun seeing that bright gleam in her eye become transformed into her old lady scowl.

I don’t even know why she has a car. The only time I ever see her drive is when she’s moving her car to a better parking spot. That’s why I hate living in the same building as elderly retired people. They have nothing better to do than devise clever ways to screw with your life. They also always reveal the ending to Murder, She Wrote reruns before I’ve gotten a chance to watch them. That is just so entirely rude.

I continue walking towards my apartment. Everything I pass reminds me of Laura - though maybe that’s because Laura has broken up with me in at least a third of the restaurants in this strip. She even broke up with me in the Chuck E. Cheese because of my excessive victory strutting after beating her in a game of Skee-Ball.

My feet start to grow tired. I haven’t walked this far since I took part in Hands Across America and had to walk three miles before I found two people who looked like they wouldn’t spend the whole time talking about Bible stuff. The ten blocks to my apartment give me way too much time to think and thoughts just bounce around in my head like the man-bosoms of the hairy, 300- pound, shirtless guy riding a Harley who just passed by. And I must say, for the record, that he’s not one of those attractive hairy, 300-pound, shirtless guys on a Harley that you often read about.

As I walk, I keep replaying the Peter Gabriel incident over and over again - to an extent that one can only do with either the abject failures of one’s life or a hot porn scene that is too short and always ends before you can finish masturbating. I can’t believe I messed things up. Why did it have to be Shock the Monkey? Why couldn’t it be one of Peter Gabriel’s more romantic songs like Sledgehammer?

I approach my favorite bakery. Their doughnuts are even good enough to risk having to converse with customers buying birthday cakes with Marmaduke icing on them. Thoughts of Laura fill my brain as I look into the bakery window. Our first kiss came at this bakery and it’s hard to describe, but everything seemed so uncomplicated back then. It wasn’t about marriage or the future. It was just about a kiss made a bit sweeter by a little powdered sugar on the lips.

I continue staring into the bakery window. The sunlight glints off the bakery window and I see my image peering back at me. Unfortunately it’s not my reflection peering back at me, but rather a grainy photograph warning the cashiers not to accept personal checks from me anymore.

I debate whether I should go in and get a doughnut. Laura would be pissed off if she knew I were here. Our eighth break-up happened at this bakery, although I have officially contested that break-up. About an hour after break-up #7, Laura passed by the bakery and got upset that I was enjoying a jelly doughnut rather than feeling sad that we had broken up, so she broke up with me again even though we were still technically broken up. She called this new one a “break-up with attitude.” I personally don’t think you should count a break-up if it happens while you’re already broken up. That’s like finding two parking tickets on your car for the same parking offense. It may be technically legal, but it doesn’t mean that it’s right.

Despite my reservations, I decide to get a doughnut. I have to step over a homeless person to enter the bakery. If I were homeless, I think this is where I would beg for change. I bet he gets a lot more money smelling like doughnuts than smelling like another homeless person’s urine. People with money are shallow that way. I look down at the homeless guy and notice he is sobbing. There is nothing sadder than seeing a homeless person cry - except maybe seeing a fast food worker at Subway who is forced to wear one of those pins declaring himself a “sandwich artist”. The homeless man’s face is buried in a baseball cap as he sobs and all I can see is the top of his head. He has that odd balding pattern where there’s a little clump of hair towards the front, then a circular bald spot and then long hair in the back. It kinda looks like those circles that appear mysteriously in crop fields after a supposed UFO landing. It occurs to me that I have never seen a bald, homeless person before. I suppose I always thought it was just nature’s way of giving them just a little something to be happy about.

Maybe I should give the homeless guy some money. I usually don’t, but I figure if I feel the need for a drink this early in the afternoon, he probably does too. I reach into my back pocket and realize I left my wallet at home. I only have a stray dollar in my pockets. I could give it to him, but I figure that while the joy in helping others is nice, the memory of a good doughnut is forever.

I leave the bakery with my doughnut and continue walking. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’ve gotten a raspberry jelly stain on my shirt. Why is it that the only time you spill something is the day you are wearing a white shirt or the day when you’ve entered a contest where you’re not supposed to spill stuff? Now I have a jelly line on my shirt where the jelly hit the shirt and then slid down until lodging in my belt. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a wise idea to eat a jelly doughnut with the jelly hole pointing downwards. Yet again, gravity has proven to be my nemesis - a lesson I learned the hard way when I fell ten feet while climbing the ropes in high school gym class. I still curse the day my gym teacher blew the whistle to start the dodge ball game while I was trying to climb down the ropes.

I want to wipe the jelly off my shirt, but I forgot to get napkins from the bakery. Places should always give out napkins without you asking. Forget that whole “service with a smile” stuff, just give me a fucking napkin. And a free blow job wouldn’t hurt either. I mean who doesn’t like a free blow job? Blow jobs are like a bowl of peanuts at a bar. Even if you’re not really in the mood, if it’s placed right in front of you, it’s almost impossible to just push it away. But if I can’t have the blow job, at the very least, give me the fucking napkin.

I need to stop cursing so much. I never cursed when I was younger. When I was growing up, my family had this jar in the living room where you had to deposit a quarter if you said the “F” word. Although it was successful in decreasing our profanity, it was embarrassing to explain to guests why we had a container full of quarters in our living room with a big label on it reading “Fuck Jar”. On the plus side, our family did earn about a third of our income getting quarters from house guests foolish enough to ask what a “Fuck Jar” was. The other two-thirds came from engaging in games of Slap Jack with people who had arthritis.

I take my finger and clean away the blob of jelly stuck on my belt. I look around to see if anyone is watching and then I eat the jelly real quickly. How dirty can a belt be anyway? I need to get the jelly off my shirt before it sets. I rummage around in my pocket and find a used Kleenex most likely from a week ago when I last wore this pair of pants. I don’t have any water on me so I spit on the napkin and try to wipe the stain away. Unfortunately, there was still jelly in my mouth when I spat and I end up spreading even more jelly on the shirt.

I give up on the shirt and try to focus on Laura. I don’t know if I should even try to win Laura back. Maybe Thelma’s right. Maybe we really are the worst thing in the world for each other. But I love Laura so much and I think she still loves me too. Laura didn’t throw anything at me this time - to me that’s a very good sign. I’m all in favor of maintaining consciousness. Except maybe during the latter hours of the Jerry Lewis telethon when you see Dom Deluise heading to the stage for a medley of Italian novelty songs about food.

As I round the corner and reach my apartment, it finally dawns on me. How could I have not thought of this before??? I must be the stupidest person on the planet - and that’s saying a lot when you consider all the guests on the Jerry Springer show who still look surprised when someone gives them bad news. If it wasn’t Laura on the phone, who did I propose to? I smell a disaster looming and it’s not just because I’m approaching a movie theater showing the new Freddie Prinze Jr. romantic comedy.

I finally arrive at my apartment and see the old lady heading to her car. Maybe I can get my parking spot back if I hurry. I watch as the old lady opens the driver’s side door and then immediately shuts the door again. She heads directly back to the building and smiles as she watches the bright gleam in my eye give way to my really bitter man scowl. She looks back one more time and, just in case I didn’t understand her motives, she also flashes me her middle finger. Her finger is all veiny and shrunken. It looks like a string bean left on the counter too long. I’m not sure what I find more disconcerting: the way her finger looks or the fact that I’ve just been flipped off by someone who drives a car with a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker. I’ve never liked that bumper sticker. It reminds me too much of the “Jesus Loves Everyone But You” sticker that my parents put on all my school lunch boxes.

I search my key ring for the key to unlock the secured entrance to the apartment building. I don't really see how the owners can call this a "secured" entrance. Their idea of safety is wiping up the blood spills quickly so no one slips and hurts themselves. I continue fingering through the nineteen keys on my key ring trying to find the right one. I have way too many keys and fear that I’m only some exposed butt cleavage away from becoming Schneider the handyman from One Day At a Time. Pretty soon I’m going to have to upgrade to one of those gigantic circular key rings that they use to open jail cells in old prison movies. I’ve tried decreasing the number of keys I carry, but I’m never successful. I can’t remember what eight of the keys actually open, but I suspect they are important so I can’t bring myself to actually remove them from my key chain.

I finally find the right key and enter the building, heading towards the elevators which always take forever to arrive. I wish I had a remote control so I could activate the elevator buttons and have the elevator waiting for me the second I arrived at the elevator doors. There are three elevators, but none of them seem to be moving and they all seem to be stuck on the same exact floor. Why is it that the more elevators a building has, the longer it takes for one to actually arrive? I stare at the brown elevator doors, thinking about how bland elevator doors look. They’re always brown or black or metallic silver. You’d think someone would start making elevator doors with Andy Warhol prints on them to make your elevator waiting experience more pleasant. Or maybe some nice Roy Lichtenstein prints. Basically anything would be fine except for those 3-D stereograms with the hidden pictures. I’ve never been able to decipher them and they always give me a headache. Not necessarily from having to cross my eyes so much - more from having to listen to people try to explain to me what I’m supposed to be seeing.

I press the up button every five seconds even though I know it doesn’t make the elevator come any faster. After about a minute I also press the down button hoping it will make the elevator come faster. It doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from pressing the down button every five seconds either.

I debate taking the stairs, but decide against it. I always run into yuppies eating Power Bars who think it's hip to walk up them for exercise. They’re one of the groups of people I get along with least - they’re right up there with people who describe themselves as being Kafka-esque. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I know I don’t like ‘em. I wouldn’t mind so much if the yuppies were neat eaters, but they spill food all over the stairwell. It’s rather embarrassing when you’re at the hospital being treated for a sprained ankle and have to list “slipped on granola” as the cause of your accident. The nurses made fun of me for hours the last time it happened. Evidently seeing me in pain transformed these angels of mercy from Florence Nightingale to Florence the maid on the Jeffersons. The last time I was in the hospital, the nurses had to sedate me after I got upset at their jokes and threatened to go all Weazie on them.

The elevator finally arrives and I go to press the button for my floor, but someone has already thoughtfully pressed my floor for me - along with all 30 of the other floor buttons. I hate when kids do that. Sure it’s funny when I do it, but when others do it, it’s just plain annoying. The elevator moves exceedingly slow like those big-haired teenagers in the mall who walk really slow in a horizontal line so that you can’t pass them. I'm convinced it would have taken Philleas Fogg at least eighty-one days to travel around the world if he had encountered an elevator on his voyage.

The elevator continues to rise and I have to listen to that horrible Muzak elevator music. There’s a Muzak version of Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You playing, presumably for people who thought the original was just too hard-rocking. Stevie Wonder’s song ends and the Muzak version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes begins. After all those years of mocking Muzak, Muzak is finally mocking back. Finally the elevator gets to my floor and I head to my apartment.

As I turn the corner to my apartment, I notice Susan is attempting to attach a Post-It note to my door. But it must have lost it’s gumminess because it flutters to the ground every time she tries to attach it to the door. I watch Susan bend over to pick up the Post-It note, but a draft picks up the paper and it levitates in front of her. It’s almost like that scene in American Beauty where that white bag floated poetically through the air. Well, it would be if the scene contained a polyester-clad white girl with numerous Post-It notes stuck to her butt. From afar, it looks like someone is playing the home version of Hollywood Squares on her rear- though maybe that’s because one of the Post-It notes inexplicably has a caricature of Vicki Lawrence in her Mama’s Family wig.

Susan finally notices me and says, “ Sorry to pop by unannounced, but we really need to talk.”

A sense of dread builds up in my stomach - the type of dread that makes you feel like you’re going to throw up even if you haven’t even eaten anything all day. I hope beyond hope that I didn’t propose to Susan. If Laura broke up with me because I accidentally said I loved Susan, I’d hate to see how she’d react if she found out I accidentally proposed to Susan. I’d also hate to see how Laura would react if she found out that I accidentally pooped my pants on the subway a couple of years ago. That was really embarrassing. I’m not sure was worse: realizing how low I must have sunk to be the foulest-smelling person in the subway system or the fact that three women slipped me their phone numbers.

Susan and I enter my apartment and we both sit on the sofa. Susan starts to talk but I can’t concentrate on anything she is saying. All I can think about is whether I proposed to her. I see Susan’s lips move, but it’s like listening to the teachers on the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah mwahhhh. I look deeply into Susan’s eyes, searching for any signs that she was the one I proposed too. Susan gets this awkward, shifty motion. I can tell she’s uncomfortable. Maybe I’m staring too hard and just creeping her out. I decide to be less conspicuous in my staring, so I put down my binoculars and continue the conversation.

" Things between me and Mark are going well,” says Susan, “and it would be so much easier for him if we could get along. And I’m not saying that we have to be best friends, but we should be able to get together without it looking like The Source Hip-Hop awards show.”

I think Susan is right. We are both two mature adults. We can get along without it looking like The Source Hip-Hop awards show. Especially if Susan agrees to stop disrespecting my mad skillz. But something about being civil to each other just doesn’t seem right. Susan and I have tried to work things out in the past, but nothing ever proved successful. We used to play "paper, rock, scissors" to see who was right, but the game always ended with one of us having to go to the school nurse to have a pair of scissors dislodged from our skull. On St. Patrick’s Day we would use those left-handed scissors with the green handles to give the skull a more festive look.

“ Listen,” says Susan. “ We can do this. It's been a long time since we were last together; a lot has changed since then. I even got a nice letter from our old elementary school principal. He’s finally recovered from that nervous breakdown we caused.”

“ That’s not fair. He never sent me a letter.”

“ Well, he mentioned that. Evidently, writing nice letters to the two of us is a part of his 12-step recovery program. He said it’s going to be at least three more steps before he’s mentally able to write to you.”

I've always felt sort of bad about what happened to Principle Maslow, but we shouldn’t have to bear all the guilt. I think he would have improved much more quickly, except it took everyone three years before they realized something was wrong. It was the 70's and everyone thought he was just being groovy.

Susan and I decide to give this whole being pleasant thing a chance. We sit on the sofa and try our best to think of nice things to say to each other, but nothing comes out. We remain silent as we realize that if you take away our mutual dislike of each other, Susan and I have very little in common anymore. Susan still hasn’t mentioned my phone proposal. Maybe it wasn’t Susan I called. I’m starting to feel real paranoid about it and this uncomfortable silence isn’t helping matters.

We just sit there, staring at each other, with forced smiles on our faces. Susan’s smile resembles Martha Stewart’s when she has her nephews on her TV show to help with decorations and the kids start to mess up her design. My face hurts from my forced smile. Why do fake smiles always seem to use more facial muscles than real smiles? The silence is awkward. It’s like the silence that fills a room when a handicapped person in a wheelchair passes gas and everyone is trying not to laugh.

“ So, how long have you and Mark been a couple?” I ask to break the silence.

I suspect it’s been about a month. Mark falls in and out of love so often that he’s no longer allowed to tell me about his girlfriends until at least a month has passed - unless of course she has one of those webcam porn sites. Unfortunately, though, Mark never dates girls like that. Mark likes conservative girls. His idea of a Girl Gone Wild is someone who only shaves her legs every other day.

I wish Mark would be in a steady relationship though. It’s what he has always wanted and he deserves it. I think he just scares his dates off by getting too serious too fast. Talking about marriage and kids on the first date before opening the menu is an even bigger faux pas than asking about vegan options at a place called Hoggy’s BBQ Pit. Mark has been wanting to get married for as long as I’ve known him. I’ve even seen him stiff-arm bridesmaids to catch the wedding bouquet. And from my personal observations, I can safely say that hell hath no fury like a girl in a nasty lime-green chiffon dress scorned.

“ We’ve been a couple for about a month now,” says Susan. “But Mark doesn’t like to call us a couple. He likes to call us a couplet because that sounds more poetic. Isn’t that so cute?”

“ Will you excuse me for a minute. I think I have to go to the bathroom and pukelet.”

“ I thought we were trying to be nice,” says Susan.

“ I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to be so passive aggressive.”

“ Did I blink and miss the passive part?”

“ So, you really like him, huh?” I ask.

And I know that she does. I can see it by the way her face lights up whenever she talks about Mark. If her face glowed any more she’d be in danger of the other reindeer not letting her play in their reindeer games.

“ Yeah, I think he might be the one,” says Susan. “ I know that sounds crazy and I know it’s only been a month, but I think he’s the one. He thinks I’m beautiful. Sometimes you forget how nice it feels to just have someone think that you are beautiful. It’s been a long time since someone made me feel that way. Sometimes when I wake up, I’ll look out the corner of my eye and can see Mark just watching me sleep and he’s smiling and thinking I’m beautiful.”

“ I think people are most beautiful when they’re asleep,” I say. “ It’s the one time they’re not trying so hard.”

“ But it’s also more than the fact he thinks I’m beautiful,” says Susan. “ All my life I’ve never trusted anyone enough to let my defenses down and with Mark, I trust him enough to be vulnerable."

“ We never had that, did we?” I ask.

And it makes me sad to say it. I’ve always known, but saying it aloud makes it more real. Susan and I never allowed ourselves to be vulnerable to each other. We barely even allowed ourselves to avoid spending most of our adolescence in body casts.

“ No, I don’t think we did,” says Susan. “ We had some good things, but we both put up these walls. God, what were we so afraid of back them?”

“ We were young. What weren’t we afraid of back then?”

" I'm not sure if you knew,” says Susan, “ but when I first met you back in kindergarten, I scrawled in my notebook that you were going to be the guy I married," says Susan.

" I knew. It was my blood you used for ink, remember? For what it’s worth, I always thought we would get married someday too. We had something special back then. That last night we had together - I can’t even begin to describe how deep it hit me. It took me years to get over you.”

“ During my first few weeks at college,” says Susan, “ I would sometimes just stare at my dorm room door, almost expecting that you’d knock and tell me you loved me. And whenever my phone rang, my heart would hiccup because I thought it might be you. I wanted you to come after me, to tell me I made a mistake by leaving for California. Why didn't you ever come for me?"

After the prom, Susan and I agreed not to talk about having sex together. We agreed that it was just a big mistake - even bigger than the time I was on the cusp of being accepted by the popular crowd in high school until that fateful day when I wore my Devo hat to school. Susan and I didn’t talk much about anything after the prom. It’s hard when the only thing you both want to talk about is the one thing you’ve agreed not to discuss.

But then the night before Susan was scheduled to fly out to college, she showed up at my house. I was sitting on the porch. I had a few minutes left on my 12:30am curfew; my parents were lax about many things, but the curfew was one thing they strict about. They insisted that I stay out of the house until at least 12:30am. They were big fans of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and evidently my chatting caused them to miss the subtle humor of the Aunt Blabby sketches. I didn’t really mind though. At least it spared me having to see my mom padding around the house wearing her “If the pants are a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’” pajamas. And trust me - that was a door not even Jehovah’s Witnesses would knock at. I might have been able to live with the slogan, but the pajama pants had this velcro flap for easy access that really freaked me out. Even worse, the velcro flaps were on both the front and the back of the pajama pants. I don’t care how close a family is; no one ever needs to know they have a back-door mama.

But that night, I was sitting on our porch bench, swinging back and forth - which was rather difficult since I was sitting on a bench that was bolted to the porch. (I was a really determined kid back then). The air had a mix of fresh rain and skunk scent, which I actually found refreshing. Skunk is one of those odors that people generally find repellent, but I’ve always rather enjoyed. It’s probably one of my favorite smells. It’s right behind the way my urine smells after eating several bowls of Super Sugar Honey Smacks cereal.

I sat on the porch watching the rain pour down even harder when I saw Susan come up the walk. She was wearing this rain poncho and walking on her tippy-toes to avoid all the earthworms that had crawled their way onto the sidewalk to escape their flooded earthworm homes or tepees or igloos or wherever it is that earthworms live. I’m betting on tepees because if I were an earthworm, I think that’s where I would want to live.

Susan walked right up to me and didn’t say anything; she just removed her poncho hood, pulled my face towards hers and kissed me. It was one of those kisses that you wait your whole life for. And she led me to the woods behind my parents house and we had the most amazing sex. The kind of sex you wait your whole life for - especially if you ever had fantasies about fucking the Morton Salt girl when you were growing up. Plus it was the only time in my life that I have been able to use the word poncho-rific in a sentence - though I came close several times while watching episodes of CHIPs on TV. Everything about our final night together was wonderful - except for having to explain to my doctor the next day how I got poison ivy all over my genitals. Especially since it was the eighth time it happened that year.

After we finished making love, Susan and I just lied in the woods for hours. Well, it was actually only 15 minutes, but if it weren’t for the poison ivy, I’m certain it would have been longer.

“ I love you,” I said to Susan. “ I don’t want you to go to California.”

“ I need to go,” said Susan. “ I don’t know why, but I just need to. I wasn’t sure if I should have come here tonight. I didn’t want to make this any harder, but I didn’t want to leave without telling you that I think you’re my soulmate. We’re destined to be together someday. Don’t give up on us... please. But for now, I think it’s going to be too hard to keep in touch. We need to promise not to call or see each other again for awhile - at least until we’re able to hear the other’s voice without it hurting this much.”

And so we agreed. After thirteen years of arguing non-stop, never agreeing on anything, the one thing we finally agreed to was something neither of us wanted. But at the time, it was the easiest solution, so we did it. It wasn’t the smartest solution, or the least painful solution, but it was the easiest and so we did it. I didn’t follow through exactly. I did go to airport. I had to see Susan once last time, but I watched from afar so she wouldn’t see me. I watched as Susan’s plane took off, its engines roaring, drowning out the cries of the mechanic chasing the plane down the runway with a bunch of wires in his hand. I’ve never seen anyone in overalls run that fast - except one time when my lesbian neighbor was trying to prevent her pick-up truck from being towed. I stood at the airport window and watched until her plane disappeared. But after that moment of weakness, I kept our promise. We never talked or saw each other again until Mark brought us back into each others’ lives.

To this day, I’ve always regretted that I didn’t just follow my heart and go after Susan. Or, at the very least, use her social security number to illegally obtain credit cards in her name for my personal use. Even though Susan said we needed a clean break from each other, I knew that we were both in love with each other. I knew it from the way we looked at each other. The way we touched each other. The way we made each other feel better than any human has the right to feel. Yet I didn’t go to her or even call her and I’m not sure why. I guess there’s no easy answers in life - unless you’re taking a test and are able to peek at the exam of the Asian kid sitting right next to you.

" I wanted to come after you,” I say to Susan, “ but with the way we left things, I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do. If I asked you to come back East for me, I think you would have. But you would have hated me for asking. Maybe not right away, but eventually you would have realized that I wasn’t willing to make that same sacrifice for you and you would have hated me for it.”

“ I couldn’t have hated you,” Susan says as she rests her head on my shoulder.

And we settle into this comfort zone with each other and it feels nice. It’s been over a decade since we last touched each other this close and it feels real nice. I wonder if Susan’s thinking the same thoughts that I am right now - that I’m in love with another person, but yet sad about what I might have given up before. Sad about all the letters I wrote, but couldn’t bring myself to mail. Sad that Susan sat alone in her dorm room at night and felt lonely because of me. And mostly sad that at 17, I wasn’t yet the man she needed me to be.

And now we sit on the couch together. Somehow during our conversation we’ve moved closer towards each other. Our thighs rest against each other, touching almost imperceptibly. Our hands are close enough that I can sense warmth from Susan’s hands. We’re in that distance zone that is only invaded by someone I’ve slept with before or really creepy people who always manage to sit right next to me on the bus. Though I must say, for the record, that those aren’t necessarily two mutually exclusive categories.

I look into Susan’s eyes and we exchange that awkward look - not that awkward look when you’ve both been talking bad about another person who suddenly appears and you’re not sure whether they’ve heard everything you said, but rather that awkward look where you both start to lean closer for a kiss. And as we move closer to each other, we both know that this kiss is wrong. So horribly, horribly wrong, but yet we can’t stop. It’s like watching that Joe Millionaire show. But then it happens... we both look into each other’s eyes and realize there’s too much at stake for us to do this - to go through with this one kiss we’ve both been waiting over a decade for. And so we both pull back, knowing that we’ll be spending the next decade wondering what might have happened if we went through with this one kiss. This one complicated kiss that would’ve been made a bit sweeter by a little powdered sugar on the lips.

Susan and I move apart from each other a bit, still sitting on the couch, but feeling really uncomfortable now, knowing how easy it would be to slip into our past.

“ I think I should go,” Susan says hesitantly as she stands up. “ I have to get back to work and...”

“ I’m glad you stopped by,” I quickly add, standing up as well. Then I pause and say, “ You have a good guy in Mark. Treat him right, okay?”

And we give each other this hug. Not a romantic hug, but yet definitely too much breast contact to be considered a frug - that friend hug where both parties consciously avoid any body contact that might be misconstrued by the other party in the hug.

As Susan collects her purse and starts to leave, we hear a sudden knock at the door. Shit! I just know it’s Laura and I know she’ll be wearing her favorite perfume: Eau de Gonna Tear My Spleen Out. There’s no way Laura is going to accept that nothing happened between me and Susan. I just know Laura is going to be furious about it. During break-up #5, Laura popped by unexpectedly to apologize and caught me on the sofa with another woman. I’ve never seen Laura so mad. She started yelling and screaming at me and threw the woman’s purse down the hallway, spilling its contents all over the carpet. To this day, I don’t think my great grandmother has ever forgiven Laura for being so rude.

This is so unfair. I’ve done the right thing and resisted temptation and I’m still going to get screwed over. That’s like sticking to your diet by only ordering a salad at an expensive restaurant and then having the rest of the table decide everyone should split the check evenly. There is another flurry of slightly louder knocks at the door. A sudden rush of adrenaline surges through me as I realize that I am screwed. So horribly, horribly screwed.

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