The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

  Anyways, after about a month or whatever, I had kind of forgotten that this whole thing was set up so I could meet Brett. At one point Kyle was going to set up a double date with us and Brett and some other girl and I kind of remembered why I started hanging out with Kyle in the first place, but it ended up not happening. Instead we went out with Carl and some other really nerdy girl from their biology lab class or something. But the weird thing was, I actually did like Kyle and it was fun to hang out with him. I looked forward to going out to eat with him or just to like sit around and watch TV or to do anything with him, really. He was a cool guy who was really good at sex and I guess I started to figure out that those things make a pretty good boyfriend, which he still officially wasn’t. He had brought it up a few times, but I was always like, “Kyle, I’m going to be rushing next semester and I’m going to be way too busy to have a boyfriend.” He didn’t like that, but he accepted it I guess.

  Then we were in NorthPark mall one day because there was a new Betsey Johnson store that I had to check out because she’s my favorite designer of like all time, and I met Brett. He was up there to pick up some shoes from Cole Haan that they make custom for him and we bumped into him. He was seriously about as hot as a guy can get.

  Kyle was like, “Hey man, what’s up?”

  Brett was like, “Not much, just picking up some shoes,” then he looked at me and was like, “You must be Heather,” which meant that Kyle had told him about me, which was cool for two reasons: One, Kyle was seriously into me if he was telling his best friend about me, and two, Brett had probably wondered about me at least a few times.

  I shook his hand and was like, “Yeah, are you Brett?”

  He laughed and was like, “Yeah, I’m Brett,” like he knew that I already knew who he was. Then he was like, “So what are you kids doing in the most glorious mall in Dallas?”

  Kyle was like, “She drug me up here to look at some Betsey Johnson store or something.”

  I was like, “She’s my favorite designer.”

  Brett was like, “She’s very good. Maybe we can meet up in the food court after you guys are done and grab some lunch.”

  Kyle was like, “Cool, man. See you in a few.”

  He shook my hand again and was like, “Nice meeting you.”

  I was like, “You too.” And I’m not saying all the stuff I felt for Kyle disappeared right at that moment, but it did start to get harder to forget about why I went out with him in the first place.

  Then we had lunch with Brett. Kyle wanted to get Chick-fil-A, but Brett was like, “Fuck Chick-fil-A. Are you a Neanderthal? Let’s get McCormick and Schmick’s.”

  While we ate, Brett and I had a really great conversation about fraternities and sororities, and Kyle wasn’t even a part of it because he wasn’t going to rush. I could totally tell that Brett and I were on the same wavelength and he would have seriously been a way better boyfriend for me than Kyle.

  So we finished eating and Brett picked up the whole tab. When we were walking out he asked me what I thought of his shoes and I was like, “Those look really great on you,” and they did. They looked like they were made for him, which I guess they were.

  After we left the mall, we went back to Kyle’s room and Dave was gone so we had sex. I thought about what Brett was like when he was having sex. Kyle really was the best guy I’d ever had sex with, but I was pretty sure Brett was probably better.

  chapter nine

  She was a cunt. There was absolutely no question in my mind that Heather was a complete and utter cunt in the truest American sense of the word. She was intellectually vacant and seemed to care only about herself, with necessary interest in the material status of those around her but only as it pertained to herself and how it might serve to elevate her own material status. I had only to eat lunch with her to become aware of her nature because I had been dealing with cunts like this for my entire life. Since the cunts I had known had been able to talk, they had been able to compliment me on my style and my material possessions, which is to say that they had been able to recognize my ability to potentially deliver the same material possessions to them. They disgusted me. Heather was different in no way except that she had the unique distinction of fucking my best friend.

  She had mentioned at our lunch that she was going to rush after Christmas break and hoped to get into Pi Phi or Kappa. I didn’t want to say it to her face—actually I wanted nothing more than to say it to her face, but not with Kyle sitting right there—that she wasn’t of a refined enough caliber to even entertain the thought of belonging to either of those sororities. The truth was, however, that she would most likely become a Kappa due to that specific sorority’s new reputation as a haven for girls who think they have means but, in actuality, have modest means or none. She would be able to pass herself off as a girl of high standing with other girls who were able to do the same. But she would have no chance of convincing the Pi Phis that she belonged in their world. The Pi Phis would smell her desperation and they would see all of the little unrefined nicks and dents Heather’s Us Weekly etiquette training failed to buff out and, ultimately, they would dismiss her despite the fact that her innate instinct to cling to men of resource might have matched even their most ambitious members.

  What would make her acceptance into Kappa Kappa Gamma all the more troublesome for me would be the fact that my fraternity would have regularly scheduled events with her and her sisters. The fact that she was a cunt did little to dissuade me from realizing that I would have several opportunities to put my dick in any hole of hers I chose and that she was attractive. The fact that Kyle seemed to be genuinely falling in love with her was the only thing that might keep me in check. On the other hand, I also rationalized that fucking her might be the best thing I could do for Kyle. Getting this whore out of his life would be a great favor. Seeing her for what she was made it very clear to me that he would never be able to give her the things she required for happiness, which is not to say that I agreed with the things she required for happiness. I didn’t. But even if Kyle did achieve the financial means to make real her superficial dreams of material wealth, he would never succumb to her need for social status. This would ultimately drive her away from him, far down the road. She would seek a divorce if they made it to marriage, and she would take whatever home he had worked so hard to achieve, whatever children they might have spawned (despite Kyle being a better parent most likely), whatever family pets he might have grown attached to, half of his net worth (while never having made a cent of her own), et cetera. Or, still worse, Kyle might submit to her plans and become the unhappily kept man who attends all the social functions against his will. He might do it because he loved her, but soon that love would turn to unbridled hatred for the person forcing him to live a life he could not bear. In either case, Kyle’s happiness was not a part of any life he would live with Heather.

  And yet all of this was conjecture. Who actually knew what would happen—which sorority she would find herself in at the end of the year, whether she and Kyle would remain together through whatever the next years would bring? It was doubtful, I thought, but clearly my instincts were wrong.

  I spent the better part of the day after meeting Heather for the first time attempting to make Kyle understand what a grave mistake it was to allow this whore to take up so much of his time. We were sitting near the fountain in front of Dallas Hall, and Kyle was complaining to me that he had asked Heather several times to be his girlfriend and she kept skirting the issue, citing the fact that she would be rushing a sorority and didn’t know if she’d have time for a relationship. He wasn’t taking it so well.

  I tried to make him realize she was a cunt, but he wouldn’t hear it. She had her hooks in and they were in deeper than I had previously imagined. I launched into what I thought was a very clean argument, and was right in the meat of what I thought was a very logical point—that on this planet there are certainly a finite number of women who are best suited for any given man, and on that
scale a man can only hope to meet someone who is near the top. The odds of a man actually finding the number one best-suited woman for him on the face of the earth must be so astronomically close to zero that they aren’t worth calculating. Furthering the point, I asked Kyle if he thought Heather was even in the top 50 percent of women suited for him, given that she seemed to be so completely interested in joining a sorority, which was something he not only had no interest in, but actively despises. Before he could answer, a girl approached us and made herself known.

  She said something about having met me before and actually having been in my house. She asked me if I would like to go get some dinner with her at some point in the near future. I told her I had no interest in her and didn’t think she had ever been to my house, even though she looked vaguely familiar. I’ve had far more than my fair share of girls pretending they know me from somewhere to feign a more meaningful acquaintance than actually exists. I turned back to Kyle to continue my point after dismissing her, but she wouldn’t leave the conversation.

  She became angry and raised her voice, loud enough, I’m convinced, for most of the other people by the fountain to hear as she proceeded to identify herself more clearly. She explained that she was one of the two girls who had come to my house some weeks prior and that she had been the one who had willingly allowed the other girl to pour Listerine into her vagina. She thought the least I could do to show that I wasn’t a complete asshole was buy her dinner.

  Although I did remember the incident when she brought it up—not because it was memorable but because it wasn’t that long ago—I could not remember her name. When I asked her, it was all she could do to stop from punching me in the face as she spat out through gritted teeth that her name was Jordan.

  I only asked her what her name was so I could more properly address her as I told her to fuck off. I further told her that any girl who would subject herself to a pussy full of Listerine in the hopes of impressing a man should probably do the world a favor and make her next meal a bullet.

  She walked away in tears, just as she had the last time we talked. I expected to see Kyle laughing when I turned back to him, but he wasn’t. Instead he was shaking his head. I tried to tell him that interactions like that with women could only be achieved if you had no connection to them, which would be impossible if he was to make Heather his girlfriend. He insisted that he had no interest in saying such horrible things to a woman, that he liked women.

  I didn’t laugh at him, but I must have smiled because he became slightly angry. I calmed him by pointing out that women will always be subordinate to men because in the sexual act—which is our only purpose as organisms, to repeat the sexual act—they are compromised, ruptured, penetrated, et cetera, by us. Because the very act that sustains us as a species so clearly forces our genders into the roles of dominant and submissive, no woman ever truly wants to be treated equally, not at her core. Subservience is literally programmed into their genes by eons of natural selection. Women have survived as a gender because they have adapted in order to naturally bend to the will of man. Being submissive is part of their biological identity as a gender. They crave to be treated as less than a man because in the sexual act they require a man to fill them, to give them worth, meaning, wholeness, et cetera.

  By the end of this fruitless conversation, Kyle seemed to be in no better a place than he was when it began. He still asserted that he would remain with Heather in any capacity she would allow, be it boyfriend, fuck-buddy, one of one hundred guys who ejaculated on her face per week, et cetera. He had come to the conclusion that he was falling in love with her and was willing to accept their relationship on the terms she required.

  Where before I had recognized envy in myself for his ability to feel this way for a woman, there was only pity now.

  chapter ten

  She kept saying how bad she wanted to go to a homecoming party and I really couldn’t have cared less. At SMU, homecoming was a major hassle. The campus didn’t allow any alcohol at any of the tailgating parties, so if you wanted to drink you had to somehow get invited to one of the off-campus parties, which were usually thrown by frats. They’d have a bus come and pick everyone up and take them to wherever the party was. Heather had no way of getting into one of these parties, but Brett did and she knew it. She kept saying that going to one of these parties would give her a leg up on the other girls rushing in the coming semester because she’d get to meet girls who were already in sororities and all this other bullshit. Even though I really didn’t want to ask Brett, I would have done anything for Heather, so I did.

  I had to meet him over by Meadows because he was taking a painting class to fill a general elective. He told me he’d been planning to take music appreciation, but at the last minute he thought a painting class might give him a better opportunity to meet a very specific kind of girl. His plan was the usual—meet and abuse some poor girl—but he thought it might be more of a challenge if the girl thought she was above “the standard female interest in material wealth,” so he said.

  When I walked up to him, he was in a group of some other students, all painting what was supposed to be the tree they were gathered around. Brett’s painting was more of a third-grade-style vagina, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. I asked him if he could get Heather and me into a homecoming party.

  I remember he said something like, “Kyle, you’re a fucking idiot. You’re not thinking clearly because you think you’re in love. The sad truth is that love doesn’t exist.”

  I said, “I don’t need the shit-talk, man. Can you get us into one of these parties or not? She really wants to go.”

  “Get you into one of these parties? I can throw the best one of these parties SMU has witnessed in the past decade if I want to. That’s not a problem, and I’ll do it because you’re the best friend I’ve ever had and because a party thrown by myself at my father’s house will have more whores with low self-worth whom I can emotionally crush into dust than any other party at SMU. But before I do any of that, I want to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever heard of the second of truth?”

  “No.”

  “Then listen. It’s different for all of us in terms of what we actually think during it, but its purpose is exactly the same for all guys. It’s the second immediately following ejaculation when you see the world for what it is, see it bathed in truth. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “No.”

  “Just after you fire off a load, your mind is cleared. It’s like all of your worries, pains, fears, et cetera rode out of your body in that stream of semen. And it’s in that single second after that release that the world appears to you as it truly is. It’s in that second that you can actually think about things without being hindered by all the other shit in your life. For me, the second of truth holds an image that always repeats. As I ejaculate I imagine that, instead of semen, my dick shoots a giant plume of flames that incinerates the whore I’m fucking. I never have to see her, hear her, deal with her, et cetera. She’s gone, turned to ash by the jet of molten fire being launched out of my cock. That’s my second of truth. Do you know what it means?”

  “That you’re a fucking psychopath?”

  “No. It means that when I see things clearly, for what they are, I don’t want that woman anywhere near me. I’d rather see her dead than deal with her in any way other than sexually, and I bet your second of truth is probably pretty similar.”

  “Are you fucking insane? I have never in my life thought of my dick as a flamethrower.”

  “I misspoke. I didn’t mean that you think of your dick shooting fire like me, but I bet that in your second of truth, if you look at it honestly, you’ll see that you don’t want Heather. I would bet that most guys, in fact, have similar seconds of truth, because we all know deep down that women are good for fucking and not much else.”

  “That’s not how I think, man. I’m actually falling in love with Heather. After we have sex I
actually like to fall asleep with her and to wake up with her and to talk to her about other things. I definitely don’t want to melt her with my dick.”

  “All of the things you’re mentioning have nothing to do with the second of truth. The cuddling and all that shit happens way after the second of truth. You only get a second before all of the concerns you’re burdened with on a daily basis come back to you and lock you back in the cage of who the world thinks you are, not who you really are. And the world tells you that you love Heather, that you should want to cuddle with her, that you should want to stroke her hair, that you should want to make her happy, et cetera.”

  “Do you ever listen to yourself? You’re fucking insane.”

  “You’re the one who got tricked into thinking he’s in love. Fuck, into even thinking love is fucking real and not a lie that women have tricked most poor bastards into believing.”

  “So are you going to throw a homecoming party or not?”

  “If the next time you blow a load you remember to really focus on that second immediately after, really think about what you want, what you think about Heather, what you think about women in general during that second, then yes, I’ll throw a party so you can fall deeper into a hopeless pit of self-delusion.”

  “You just told me you think your dick’s a flamethrower. You have no room to talk about self-delusion.”

  “Do we have a deal? You’ll think about what you really feel for Heather the next time you blow a load and I’ll throw the party in return?”