This Modern Love

by Ray Hecht

  Another man came, conversation was had, and it was suggested they all bounce.

  Before Carla left, she sent a smile to the way of the sad girl in glasses.

  A slight smile was returned.

  The next place was a small danceclub that was new to Carla. A new place, unfamiliar, the sort that popped in and out of existence like a quantum particle. Here today, and tomorrow the place may well be selling vintage frocks.

  For now, the floor was a clean black tile. Carla was staring deeply into the geometric patterns, when she was nudged by Sharon to dance.

  “LET’S DANCE!”

  “OKAY!”

  Thunderous sounds pulled at the body to move, like puppet strings, albeit a willing puppet, and the hums of the speakers vibrated the skin in a rhythmic, soft massage.

  The girls danced for several hours. Only taking the briefest of breaks to hydrate and to urinate. Various men passed in and out of their lives. Each one garnered for attention, demanded to be the one, and gave up after a failed attempt to leave the dance floor arm in arm. Sweat poured down cleavage. Toes left injured. The grinding of the teeth gave the skull a feeling of heightened awareness which complemented the powerful vibratory beats.

  Some of the men kissed her. It felt like swimming in a warm pile of fleshy strawberries. Like the substance of the man’s lips and the cavern within her own mouth could melt all together into one big scented candle wax, and that would be good and that would be beautiful.

  Some forced their bodies together. The brief feeling of skin on skin betwixt faces and hands was not quite sexual (the stiff rods below the waist were only a curious oddity, barely perceptible), but did create a desire to remove all cumbersome cloth and let the melting process be complete. If only it were possible, she would take off all her clothes and dance nude with everyone else until the end of time and all bodies become a cosmic one.

  It was a major surprise when exhaustion hit.

  Strange when the moment passed over, a moment in which the quick pulse of her heart left a pain in her chest instead of a rush of excitement.

  A deep breath, a strange yawn.

  She was supremely tired. Tired. What was that? She had forgotten there could be such a thing as tired.

  Right on cue, the music abruptly stopped. “Last call!” yelled the bartender. The dancefloor, thin as it was, immediately dissipated into a wisp of vapor. Carla was left alone in the center, a little self-conscious. Though the lighting was dim, a single lamp pointed straight down on her head and it could have been a spotlight. Suddenly, everything was smaller. Uglier. Messier.

  Sharon waved from a corner. A strange man had his hand around her waist. His face was narrow and his eyes lusted.

  “We’re going to get out of here now,” she said, not bothering to introduce the man.

  “Afterparty at my place…” he said, voice hoarse. The echo of the ellipses, hinting at more, filled the air.

  “I’m going to go for a walk,” Carla said back, and didn’t offer up any more. “I need some water.”

  The man knew what to do, and led Sharon outside. They disappeared into the shadows. Carla drank a glass and tipped a buck. She shivered from the feeling of wind on her wet skin.

  “Hey you,” said a lonely man who waited for her at the door. She may or may not have kissed him the previous hour. Long threads of cooked hair stuck to the cheeks around his lips, it was pretty, somewhat familiar, and Carla knew she wouldn’t mind kissing that face again.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “What a night.”

  “Yeah.”

  They didn’t have much to say.

  “Shall we?”

  Carla took a second to think. The thoughts wouldn’t form. She just moved. One foot in front of the other. She didn’t even mouth an um. Declining in silent fashion, she smiled, walked, and kept on walking. No one followed.

  On the hard concrete sidewalk, step after step clicking way, she took out her phone and texted a happy face to each and everyone one of her friends.

  * * *

  Carla’s drug dealer was currently in trouble with a female he on-again-off-again dated (currently on), due to having been caught sending dick pics to several other girls.

  When Carla texted him the first time, he was in the middle of a fight. His current girlfriend was screaming at him, and he felt very defensive, and several glasses were smashed.

  Though it was late at night, no neighbors complained. The drug dealer lived in squalor, and likened himself to a starving artist. The dilapidated building he lived in, an old public housing unit in the barrio long since privatized, had been through hard times. The southside neighborhood was not the kind of place where people complained of noise.

  The apartment did have ample closet space, which he used to grow local strains of marijuana plants. Armed with a duel major in botany and metaphysical poetry as well as an array of electronic horticultural items, mainly consisting of lighting equipment ordered from bidding websites, the miniature garden was a success. This was his primary source of income, and gave him enough free time to work on his poetry.

  He also enjoyed flirting with girls, and on the night before he had drunken and smoked a bit too much and made the spontaneous choice to film himself masturbating. It didn’t go well, but after several screenshots he was sufficiently turned on and mailed pictures to four of his most attractive contacts. As of the following morning, three of the girls didn’t even reply. The fourth responded in kind with a set of topless poses in front of the mirror, and those were the ones his current date discovered over dinner.

  He was trying to impress upon her that it was not a big deal, that she was prudish and unfair and just plain backwards in this day and age, and she was having none of it. She was especially angry when he refrained from contributing to the argument by responding to fresh text messages.

  It was his job. He had to take the messages. How else could he afford to take her out to dinner?

  She wasn’t very understanding.

  When he realized that Carla was asking for MDMA, he cut off the talk entirely in order to focus on contacting a supplier higher up the food chain. He needed to procure some pills fast.

  Finally, the female stormed out.

  He took a smoke break, and tried to calm down. He had to admit it to himself—it hurt. During the course of the fight he was angry, full of rage, burning red in his eyes. Yet after she left, his heart turned empty and depressed. He took another smoke break.

  Later, he was lucky enough to get the MDMA quickly on a deal just down the street, as well as save a dozen leftover pills for his personal stash. The pills were near the end of their long journey since being synthesized in a laboratory in Israel and hidden in a freight container beneath organic vitamin-enriched foodstuffs before finally reaching the shores of the United States and entered by way of bribery at the shipyards. The local distribution organization was happy to buy in bulk, and several rungs down the line later they came into the humble pot dealer’s hands and at last were passed along to a user.

  By the time Carla arrived, it only took thirty minutes to be fully stocked. A rare feat. Carla needn’t have waited much longer, yet as she entered his ruined home the dealer insisted they take several hits of his bowl. He took the time to open up to her. Carla felt embarrassed. Her friend was waiting outside. She tried to be polite. She tried to be sympathetic. The dealer did tell her a censored version of the story, but the cynic in her assumed (rightly so) that he fully deserved it when his girl walked out on him.

  After a suitable amount of time, Carla paid and hugged him and promised to hang out soon and got out.

  Lonely as a trapped animal, he gnawed at his flesh. He continued where he left off, and sent more dick pics, and Searched his courtesan contacts, and masturbated furiously.

  Then, the courtesans too left him to his own devices. He tried to follow. He tried.

  In the end, he had money and product and sexual entertainment and an intense buzz, and past the clock stri
king twelve he was all alone in the world.

  All alone, that is, but for one happy face text betwixt the deep death of night, and that made all the difference.

  9

  Jack

  “I can’t believe I’m on the road,” Jack said to himself on the long drive home. “This is taking forever. A whole county away. Unbelievable.”

  Was it worth it? That’s the question that always comes to mind after sex. It seemed worth it at the time. All the effort led somewhere, for sure. He came. Overall, he shouldn’t complain.

  And yet here he was on the I-607 freeway riding on the edge of night and morning, trying to outrace the rising sun because he had to drive a girl back to her place. In retrospect, perhaps he should have invited her to stay the night. But then again, that would have presented a whole other set of issues.

  By the time he’d get home, he’d be horny again. Not to mention tomorrow’s lunch shift at Bristol’s. Shit, he concluded. I’ll have to masturbate so I can go to right to sleep.

  Although he made that conclusion, Jack couldn’t help that the need of hunger was outweighing all else. Grazing on junk food all day, he never did get to have a proper meal.

  He decided to stop at a diner. One of those small pancake places you see outside the city at rest stops. After passing two exits, the third signaled just such a restaurant and he made the turn.

  “Oh yeah,” he realized as he pulled into the dark, quiet street, and remembered to turn on his phone. What a relief! He couldn’t wait to see what information from the outside world was waiting for him. The worst thing about dating, besides post-coitus blues, was having to turn off the phone.

  At the first stoplight he noticed the missed call. From Mom. A voicemail.

  At the second stoplight he noticed several emails. One of which was from Janelle. Driving carefully, he opened it and glanced long enough to see that it was crazy long. Like a novel or something. He scanned down and pages upon pages kept going and going, infinitely scrolling.

  “Fuck,” Jack said as he passed the entrance to the parking lot, and had to turn around.

  Fucking restaurants, he thought. So much of my life dedicated to restaurants. Every day, finding somewhere to eat. Searching, searching. By myself. Or taking some girl to the perfect place to convince her to stay with me. The modern hunt. Pathetic.

  Well, goddamn it’s a living.

  He finally parked and entered the establishment, and almost forgot to bring his plug. The phone needed to be charged real bad and he forgot to do so in the car. Entering, there wasn’t even a hostess to show him to his seat, and Jack peaked under the booth tables until he saw a spare outlet.

  Before he could even reflect upon the attractive server, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-peppery hair in a blue apron approached him. “What’ll we be havin?” she asked in a Southern drawl.

  “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” he asked.

  “You young folks always asking that. Be right back, sweetie.”

  The other, a youthful and tall thing, told him the password. He hoped his odor was pleasant, and thanked her profusely. Then she abruptly left and he directed the older woman for hash browns and onions. After much inner turmoil, he decided against the cheese, considering how bad he’d been eating that day.

  Jack went back to the reading. He didn’t know what to make of the email from Janelle.

  —Dear Jack, she began.

  —I know this is crazy, but I want you to know that I forgive you. You’re just a guy. I get that. Believe me, there are worse than you out there.

  Know that you do need forgiving, because you can be a dick at times. A: I acknowledge it. B: I forgive. OK?

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to see you again, and I want you to want to see me again. Despite what happened, or maybe even because of it… One way or another I do want to see you again. I really hope you wish to see me again. Geez, I’m really rambling aren’t I? Well, so what. Is that so bad?

  I know there’s more to you than hooking up all the time. When you get it out of your system, give me a call. I mean it. I don’t want to be all judgy towards you, I know that’s not fair. I been told I do that sometimes and I’m trying to be more open-minded these days.

  ‘Open-minded’ I says. Could mean anything. Haha, I’m not trying to be THAT open-minded! Get your mind out of the gutter ;)

  I just think we have a connection. A tiny spark, didn’t you feel it? I know I felt it. I can’t explain in it scientific terms, but I know it’s true.

  Let’s try to nurture that spark, grow it into a larger feeling. Who knows. You are you and I am me, somehow or another it could work.

  Who knows what the future will be.

  How many ways can I say it--

  Take a chance…

  It went on and on, with personal information about her unfortunate romantic history and why she felt that Jack could be the one, and even if not how it’s still worth a try, and she’s good at sensing deeper things within people, and life, and so on and so on.

  He suspected she was drunk, or high. It was touching, in a weird way.

  For an all too brief moment, Jack considered her proposition. They could be a couple. He could give up the game. Nobody ever truly wins the game, anyway. Everyone gives up eventually. Or maybe that’s not the way to think about it. Maybe that is winning. To find someone who cares.

  Jack, for all his faults, could be very honest with himself on occasion. Yet he knew he wasn’t kind to Janelle, or the other date, or many of the women he’d been with. He knew he didn’t deserve their attention. He even knew that the game wasn’t victimless. It’s all consensual, to be sure, but there are casualties on occasion. Tears and pain.

  He knew how tears and pain were the risks taken when hearts and genitals collide.

  Anything could happen. He was well aware, it’s just that he made the conscious choice to not let his heart be the one hurt in the process. Every time.

  In fact, that was kind of the point.

  It’s not like he never had a girlfriend.

  It’s not like he’d never been in love.

  In fact, he was in love once. He regretted most of the experience, but it did happen.

  * * *

  Gillian Leigh Walker was the love of Jack Davidson’s life. She altered his destiny, and forever scarred his memories.

  Back in college, Jack had a tumultuous romance after meeting her in English 102. They became friends, and she pushed him to join a poetry class. She too sensed something deeper in him, something he felt unworthy of.

  They first kissed a week after meeting. Back then Jack was so nervous. They slept together in her apartment five days later. He moved in a month later, and never felt so full of energy and life.

  They made love multiple times that first day they lived together. It was all downhill from there.

  His grades slipped, and a darkness started growing. She screamed at him for focusing on work rather than an education, for giving up the drama program. He mocked her for believing in poetry and art.

  She often screamed. When he didn’t do housework, when he didn’t return texts, any excuse. They fought like wolves when he was caught flirting with other women.

  It wasn’t completely bad. She was very accommodating to his video game habit. They went to the gym together and were usually in great physical health. Most of all he cherished quiet nights in watching movies.

  He didn’t even discover her antipsychotic meds until the third week of cohabitation.

  Bipolar disorder. Manic depression. Body dysmorphic disorder. A host of personality issues undisclosed.

  She insisted it didn’t matter. He tried to believe her. Things would be fine for a spell, and then they would turn empty, then they would be in therapy together or separately and then she would make a great declaration of quitting her meds and write poems and scream and cry. By osmosis, he couldn’t help but match her emotional states. The worst episode was when he punched the television set and left shards
of metallic black circuitry lodged in a fist aflame with red blood. Anger would lead to shame, then forgiveness. The anger went away quickly, while the shame lingered forever.

  They lived together for two years. Then she didn’t live anymore.

  One day, she went missing. A phone call from her father and a coroner’s note confirmed that she had fallen off a building. Instant peace. At twenty-three years of age, Gillian Leigh Walker was gone.

  The first lonely year was the worst. He didn’t cry much. He didn’t laugh much either. He didn’t do much of anything. A blur of condolences and black suits and weak hugs. Strangely, anger was the most consistent emotion. Not as long-lasting as subtle shame, but in far more powerful bursts when it did come. Anger towards her for leaving. And just as often being the recipient of anger from her loved ones.

  The second year was slightly better. The Walker family and the Davidson family no longer had anything to do with each other. Jack was back to focusing on work and he slowly improved on financial matters, thanks to his own relatives’ compassion. Work ethic replaced the cold emptiness and before he knew it, he had a life.

  By the third year, he was determined to forget about her by any means necessary. He got back into shape, made a few new friends, enjoyed his leisure time, and after a night of online inspiration he decided to pick up girls. Ever since then, he felt like at least he was in control of his life. Succeeding in a certain way. He earned respect from his workmates and management, and over thirty women agreed to sleep with him. He purchased each season’s new gaming system from Q-Set One to Zed, joined a gym, and his Body Mass Index was consistently under 18.5.

  However, sometimes he remembered. Despite himself, the thoughts crept up from the back of his cerebral cortex into conscious vocalization. Sometimes it even enfolded into muscular activity.

  The memories swirled away like a heart-shape in a fresh cup coffee and there he was, back to reality, not knowing how this happened.

  Without realizing it, his thumb had tapped onto the mainline social networking app. And there was her face.