ENTRY 19
One Saturday on a rare time that I go to church, Molly meets me at Sacramento and Van Ness after the service ends. I give her a quick kiss then we head south. I’m wearing a blue sharkskin suit, she’s in tight brown velvet pants, a tight black top, with a bright green cardigan and big sunglasses. Her brown-blonde hair, three inches long stands up messy. We stride along soaking up each other’s presence.
“I’m all, I don’t have to fuck you just because I’m your girlfriend,” Molly goes on about her unavoidable relationship troubles with Frank. Two early-twenties yuppie type chicks approach us climbing north on Van Ness. “Oh my fucking God!” One of them exclaims as she takes in the two of us.
We go into a Crown Books store. I look at some sports magazines and Molly wanders about behind me looking at the bargain shelf. The men’s magazine section is located just a few feet away. There’s a guy around sixty or so checking out a Hustler. He’s breathing a little more than what you would call heavy. I can actually hear a bit of a moan coming with his breaths.
“Did you hear that old dude in there?” Molly asks me after we exit the place. “I thought he was gonna blow his load in his pants right there.”
“I hung out with Michelle yesterday. I needed a little down time with a sister to try and put all this shit into perspective,” Molly tells me inferring about our situation. “We went down to Sunset Beach, the weather was beautiful and we ended up wading out into the water and getting all wet. Anyway, I confided in her. I just needed to talk to somebody about it and I ended up telling her the whole thing, Arroyo Grande and everything. I hope that’s okay I just had to talk to somebody about it.”
I assure Molly that it’s not a problem and inside I’m just a little glad, a little proud that Michelle knows about this. I’m also somewhat afraid she might spill the beans to Linda.
“So then we came back to the apartment,” she continues. “And Frank was there and we end up having the whole thing out, not the whole thing but basically the fact that me and Frank's relationship hasn’t been normal lately and Michelle acting like a counselor, making us talk this thing out without talking about me and you. And Frank, all pissed is like, ‘You could start improving things here by givin’ it up every once in a while!’ ”
“So you still haven’t fucked him since you been back?” I ask.
“No,” Molly confirms her abstinence to my delight.
“Have you fucked Linda since she got back from New York?”
“No… I want you to break up with him.”
“I want to too, but how?”
“Just make up somethin’ just go psycho on him out of the blue someday. You can pull it off, believe me, he’s got it comin’ from all directions on this one.”
One reason I am able to stomach plotting against my best friend is the fact that he does, indeed, have a big karma debt when it comes to the whole fucking around and fucking your friends’ girlfriends thing. This was all in New Orleans, but it’s not just this that drives me on, my feeling for Molly is my main purpose here. But beside my feelings for her it’s really sort of a revenge thing that gives me impetus. It’s not only that Frank has it coming, but also my own strange need to get even with him. This is driven by memories of scores of girls coming home with him over that two year period in Louisiana. Him taking them back to his room and me being able to hear the goings on while sitting in my room doing not being able to do anything but play with my pee-pee.
Of course Frank was never in my face with an, ‘I’m gettin’ laid and you’re not,’ attitude. But there were times like when he’d spent the night with Doug Slut’s girlfriend, like when he’d gotten her back to our place one night, then comes out in the morning, knocks on the real wood paneling on the wall of the den and says, “Dude, her ass is this hard.”
This kind of stuff drove me nuts and the feeling of exacting revenge on Frank drives me on. The fact that I was not getting laid while he was getting all kinds of pussy thrown at him helps me enjoy betraying him. And the fact that a fair amount of the pussy he was getting was his friends’ girlfriends, in some cases good, old friends, really drives me on. It helps me enjoy what I’m doing, helps me ignore the guilt that comes to me when spending time with him. Like times when we might be drinking scotch together playing pool at a bar, joking about a brunette across the room, about how she might like being fucked. Looking at him, at his handsome face and messed up blondish hair thinking, “I love him, how can I do this to him?”
“Are you gonna break up with Linda?”
“I’ll break up with her if you’ll break up with Frank.”
“Okay,” Molly agrees.
“Okay, I’ll break up with Linda but what are you gonna do after breaking up with Frank. Is he gonna move out or you?”
“I don’t know, the apartment is in my name but I can’t really see kicking him out. We just got settled there a couple of months ago.”
“Well it’s too bad you can’t live with me, my bedroom is huge but it just wouldn’t work out he’d find out sooner or later.”
I can’t imagine what life is going to be like if I do, indeed, steal Molly from Frank. If I steal her, great! I’ve got the love of my life. The girl I’ve always been waiting for. But the fact that I will be basically trading him for her becomes more and more obvious to me. I can’t envision keeping this relationship from him forever.
“Maybe we’ll keep it under wraps for a year,” Molly had said on one occasion. “And then we’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah! We got together. Saw each other at a club one night or something and the rest is history.” When she had said it I couldn’t help but agree to it, but knew that it wouldn’t work in reality, that in the end I’d lose my best friend for good.
So I agree to break up with Linda as Molly agrees to end her relationship with Frank somehow. Breaking up with Linda is no more complicated than breaking a sweet girl’s heart. At least we don’t live together. And she and Molly are no more than acquaintances.
Photo by Hoffacurse