Exit Nothing

by KUBOA

I became obsessed with Tara. We communicated all the time, usually by a computer chat program. Eventually I told her I loved her. This was a problem. She was married and I had a woman who was in love with me.

  It didn’t bother Tara too much that she was married. She was trying to figure out how best to tell her husband she wanted a divorce. But she had also been talking to a poet in England and she was going to visit him in a few weeks. Apparently she had a thing for writers, but only one at a time.

  “You should be with me,” I wrote.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “We have a psychic connection.”

  “I know.”

  A few days later I was at the supermarket. I was on a break, sitting outside on a bench smoking a cigarette. Anne called.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You changed your Facespace status to single.”

  Oh yeah. So I had.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” she said.

  I paused for a second to gather my thoughts. “I just don’t know if I feel the same way about you anymore.”

  It was time for her to pause. “You don’t feel the same way? I don’t know what’s changed.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” I said. “I just think we need a break.”

  I could hear her crying. “A break. Yeah. OK. Look, I’ve gotta go. Just promise me one thing—tell me we won’t stop being friends. I don’t want to totally lose you.”

  “We’ll still be friends,” I said.

  She hung up. I felt like an asshole. Again. I did want to break up with Anne but I did it in the most twenty-first century chickenshit way possible.

  But I pressed on with Tara. I didn’t doubt that I’d win her over eventually. We kept communicating with our computers nearly every night after I got off of work. Things were going great. I was gonna get this girl.

  But then Tara e-mailed me. She wasn’t happy. She was permanently breaking off communication. I had fucked up again.

  I had also been e-mailing another female writer. We did some flirting, some role-playing, that kind of thing. One night, I had been drinking a little too much and I told this chick everything about my relationship with Tara. How we had cybersex and phone sex. It turned out that that this woman and Tara fucking hated each other. Now, neither of them wanted anything to do with me.

  I called Tara a few times but she never picked up. I sent her e-mails. Nothing. I had lost another one.

  It was early January 2008. I met up with a writer friend named Paula at the Depot, a little club in Baltimore’s Station North arts district. It was 80’s night. They played the Cure, Warrant, that kind of stuff. Paula was sitting at a little table with a friend, a chubby blonde in her mid-thirties. Paula’s friend had powerful thighs. I went to the bar and got a can of beer and then went over to their table.

  “You didn’t bring Anne,” Paula said.

  “We broke up,” I said.

  “That sucks. I’ve just started the online dating thing myself. You two were giving me hope!”

  “Well,” I said, “we’re still gonna be friends, so I guess things turned out reasonably well.” I wasn’t entirely convinced of what I said. It had been weeks since me and Anne broke up and we hadn’t even talked on the phone yet.

  Paula and her friend and I talked about nothing special. Then Paula’s friend got up to get another drink. Paula leaned across the table and said, “I think my friend’s into you.” I smiled. It felt good to be wanted.

  Later in the month, I did finally hang out with Anne. She met me at my dad’s house and we drove to a mall about ten miles away. We wanted to see a funny movie. I was glad we were hanging out.

  We got our movie tickets and then went over to a nearby sports bar. We had a couple hours before the movie started and getting food and drink seemed like a good way to kill some time.

  We walked into the place and a hostess greeted us. “It’ll be about thirty minutes before we have a table ready,” she said. “You can wait at the bar if you’d like.”

  “To the bar!” I said.

  The bar was lined with sad-faced drunks, some staring into their drinks, others watching a soccer game on the flat screen TV above the bar. As we sat down on our barstools, I had an idea.

  “You know,” I said, “I think I’d make a good bartender. I’d make better money and get to hang out with my kind of people all night. I dunno, maybe I could go to bartending school during the day and work at night.”

  Anne nodded. “That’s a really good idea.” She wasn’t being condescending either. She was sincere.

  “So what’ve you been up to?” I said.

  “The other day I was outside work on a smoke break and this black guy comes up to me and starts talking about how I’m the kind of girl he likes to date. Well, yeah, of course. I’m a fat white girl!”

  “Did you give him your number?” I said.

  “No. He was creepy. Besides, I really don’t think I’m ready to date right now.”

  “Why not?” I said. “I’d be dating someone right now if I hadn’t fucked up again.”

  “Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to hear things like that. Listen—I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “This, you know, being friends stuff. I thought I could handle it. But now I don’t know. Look, you didn’t even call me until yesterday.”

  “I thought we needed some time to cool off,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Things were getting a little tense. I waved the bartender over. “Hey, man,” I said, “what’s the weirdest shot you can make?”

  He thought about it. “It’s called a Bloody Abortion. Actually tastes pretty good.”

  “Excellent!” I said. “We’ll both take one.”

  It took him a little over a minute to mix the shots. The drinks were dark red and had a glob of white goo at the bottom. The goo did, in fact, resemble a sort of back alley abortion. Anne and I toasted and drank up.

  I had another couple drinks at the bar and then we were taken to a table. During our meal, I had another few drinks. I was pretty tipsy when we left the restaurant and went to the movie.

  Later, at my dad’s house, Anne said that she didn’t want to drive the forty minutes back to her place that night. I told her she could sleep in my room. We sat on the bed and I flirted with her and tickled her belly. We laughed goofy and I kissed her and then kissed her again. Then we were naked and our lust took over.

  Afterward, I sat on the edge of the bed, putting my clothes back on. “You can sleep here with me,” Anne said.

  “Don’t you think that’d be a little awkward?” I said.

  “We just had sex.”

  “I don’t know. It might be a little much. I should probably just sleep on the couch.”

  “If that’s really what you want to do,” she said.

  I got a few blankets from the closet and then went upstairs to sleep on the couch. She didn’t tell me until much later, but, that night, Anne cried herself to sleep.

  As the days passed, I started a run of heavy drinking. I was alone and I felt it. I’d finish a bottle of whiskey almost every night. One night I was drinking whiskey and chasing it with beer. Which is to say, I was taking a shot of whiskey and then chugging a can of beer. After getting another can of beer from the fridge upstairs, I started walking back downstairs to my bedroom and tripped on the stairs. I tumbled down to the floor below. I laid there on the fuzzy carpet, whimpering. My nose was bleeding and my neck hurt like hell. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t move. It was all too absurd. My dad and stepmom were on vacation and so I was all alone in the house, an obese naked man writhing on the floor and whimpering.

  I was embarrassed. I felt rotten. I was alone and pathetic. I didn’t bother even trying to get up. I fell asleep where I lay.

  Th
e next day I called Anne and told her what happened. She was wonderful and loyal and came right over. We sat on the couch in the living room. I talked. She just let me talk. About everything, anything. She just listened.

  “I’m an idiot,” I finally said. “You’re the only girl who’s ever loved me unconditionally. I’m a fucking fool for trying to get rid of you.”

  “Well, at least you admit it,” she said. She started to laugh a little.

  “I’m so sorry. I need you in my life.”

  We talked for a while longer and then went downstairs to get to know each other again.

  Wheels Spinning Past Prime