Geometry Pt. 1: Third Person Squared (Batter Up)

“…She thinks she might like the boy in the middle. She took a motorbike ride with him once (wherein she squealed appreciatively in a charming manner). She’s had a couple of decent “We’ve got friends in common, we probably have other things in common” conversations with him. She’s battered her eyes at him. She has pretty eyes, she’s heard…”

“Wait a minute…Battered her eyes?”

The author was slightly drunk.

“That can’t be right. It’s not “battered,” for Christ’s sake.”

She was just past the buzzed stage, having had to pinch pennies at the bar tonight and come home early, alone. She’d spent the evening watching two musicians she’d previously slept with play a show (they’re in the same band), sitting behind a friend of theirs that she thinks she might like. When she came home, she decided it’d be a good story. She likes writing rambling little tales of woe she pretends aren’t about her (God, does she love third person), but at least the stories are better than the songs she used to write. She really can’t sing to save her life.

“She thinks she might like the boy in the middle…” Ooh, good beginning. She’d smiled and managed a sip from her plastic cup of cheap screw-top wine without extinguishing her dangling cigarette (she thinks she looks really romantic when she does this, by the way). The words flew out in a dazzling, piquantly drunken manner…Love, longing, self-hate, a piteous but subdued hope…It was all there. She wrapped up her tiny opus with a flip, slightly despondent sentence (her trademark) and brushed a fragment of cigarette ash off her chest. The warm glow of accomplishment and $5 Chablis spread through her as she leaned back to read.

“Battered? That’s not right. What the fuck?”

Sad to say, it took her a good five minutes to recall the proper term was “Batted.” Then she couldn’t decide if the correct present tense was “Batt” or “Bat.”

That night she had nightmares about people dipping their faces in a mixture of eggs, flour, and milk (salt and pepper to taste), followed by the deep frying of eyelashes.

The image is still kind of haunting her.

Geometry Pt. 2 : (Run On) Bermuda Triangle

She thinks she might like the boy in the middle. She took a motorbike ride with him once (wherein she squealed appreciatively in a charming manner). She’s had a couple of decent “We’ve got friends in common, we probably have other things in common” conversations with him. She’s batted her eyes at him. She has pretty eyes, she’s heard.

The boy to the left, she slept with three times. She didn’t quite love him (as she was fond of saying) but she almost did. She’ll admit she came damn near to, though if she was at all honest with herself (which she isn’t, it’s one of the things she loves about herself), she would accept the fact that he made her feel the way she felt that one time. The time she loved this boy that used to love her. When she alternately felt like absolute gold and absolute shit every other minute and second of the day (it was the point where she first decided maybe the joy of love isn’t worth the pain, she still hasn’t decided for sure) but she loved that boy too late and eventually he couldn‘t love her anymore. Though in the case of the boy on the left, she loved too early, if she indeed did love. Anyway, she’s already used the term “love” too many times to describe the situation and you know that can’t be good.

The boy on the right she slept with twice. He’s best friends with the boy on the left. She nearly didn’t have sex with the boy on the right (that first time) because he knew that she liked the boy on the left, and (as he informed her in a moment where her heart actually cracked, just a little) he knew the boy on the left liked her. The boy on the right admitted in the same moment that he liked her too, just a little. And if the boy on the left had never been involved, she totally would have gone for the boy on the right. But at the time, the boy on the left was so very there (even though he wasn’t really there, for a million convoluted, fucked up reasons). So they left it at that, after a million, fucked up convoluted moments. Months later, after any possibility with the boy on the left (through no fault of her own, she’s pretty sure) was dead and gone…She slept with the boy on her right again. He had a girl on HIS left this time. A girl that was probably right for all the right reasons. And coincidentally, a girl that was good friends with the boy on the left. But for all of that…The boy on the right knew exactly what she wanted. Just like before, he did everything right, he was rough and brutal and un-asking…A talent for hurting in all the best ways. She still melts a little, when she thinks of it. She still has to fight to be (somewhat) good when he looks at her.

So now she sits, with a boy on each side. Guilt tints one memory. Self-hate colors the other. She feels better about the ‘guilty” one (in her mind, it’s a lesser evil), than the one she still (if she’d admit it to herself) aches for (it‘s probably not the one you think…or maybe it is). She tries to position her mind towards the boy in the middle. Like a compass. Baser urges and something else (that she can’t quite admit to) pull her in other directions. But she focuses. Batts her eyes. Asks insightful and practiced questions…The type that make the questioned feel like they’re the most important person in the world…She tries to make the boy in the middle feel like he’s amazing. She hopes he likes her.

She hopes she likes him.