Tell Me Something to Make Me Hate you

     "Rich," says that one girl, "tell me a story."
     "Okay.  This--"
     "No, wait.  Tell me something that will make me hate you."
     "You sure?"
     She nods vigorously.
     "Okay.  You remember when I was in school, that humor magazine
I edited?"
     More nodding.  She arranges herself, Indian-style, on the bed,
one hand resting on a thigh, the other alighting first on a knee,
then a breast, then on the cool sheets before her.
     "You *sure* you...?"
     She nods again and bites her lower lip.
     "Okay, but remember, *you* asked."
     "Go on."
     "Well, I would organize meetings to try and get some help
putting out our various issues.  At least, that's what it *looked*
like the meetings were for.  They were really just to hone my
stand-up and to get laid."
     She stretches her legs out straight, rests her achilles'
tendons on shins.
     "Well, at one meeting this heinous-looking girl showed up. 
Zits a-plenty, and always wearing this same idiot grin.  Well, she
turned out to be quite eager to do most of the shit work that
needed to be done.  I had no problem with this, even if it meant
spending hours with her at my house in the room where we put
together the magazine.  Or in the computer room.  It didn't bother
me when my housemates pointed and whistled or when Nina(her real
name) became a running joke in the house."
     "Guys are mean."
     "Yeah, like you're not."
     "Yeah, so what's your point?"
     "Just sayin..."
     "Oh.  Okay.  So, one day, I wanted to see some movie but I had
no idea what time it was playing.  I knew she read the paper, so I
called her up and got the times from her.  She very casually asked
me to which show I thought I'd be going.  Oh, the early one.  I'm
kinda tired... So, she finds me in line for the 9:30 show.  She'd
just seen the 7:30 one and is buying another ticket.  After the
movie, I head back to my house.  She follows.  Right at the point
where normally she would turn to head back to her dorm she says
'So, what are you gonna do now?'  'Um, I'm kinda tired.  Probably
just head back and crash.  You?'  She just looked down and grunted
out a 'Hoormph' or something.  And she followed me.  Right into my
house.  I get her upstairs as quick as I can, hoping none of my
housemates see me.  They don't.  I look at her and remember what a
friend of mine from the basketball team had told me in high
school."
     "James?" she says, and unbuttons her shirt.
     "A friend of his.  He said 'Pussy has no face.  Some things
just stay with you, you know."
     She leans forward and looks back under her skirt.  "Mine
does."
     "Does what?"
     "Has a face.  It does."
     "Does not."
     She shows me.
     "No.  It has a nose..."
     "Hee,"
     "So we're up there.  She's sitting on the bed, I'm standing by
the window.  It is so awkward I just want to disappear and crawl
under my door into the hall.  I pull the shade down and start
unbuttoning my shirt.  She does the same.  When I am naked, I sit
next to her on the bed.  She lays back, opens herself up.  I go
down on her for a while, wondering what the hell I'm doing here... 
She squeezes her left quadricep.  'I've got running thighs...' 
'And sores', the evil voice said.  I slipped on a rubber, moved up
and was poised right there when she looked up and said, 'Rich, I've
been hurt before.'  'I'll never hurt you.'  'You have to really
care.'"
     "Yikes."
     "I'll say.  But you know me.  So I look deep into her eyes,
prepare my voice to crack, and say 'I care.  I care.'"
     She hits me with a shoe to the temple.
     "I could stop now.
     "No, don't."
     I look at her and say "I care" but silently mouth the word
'don't' in between.  "I (don't) care.  I (don't) care."
     "You!"  Another shoe.
     "Can I go on?"
     She nods.
     "So I realize that she is very very tight.  She was a virgin. 
She'd made up the story about the guy so I wouldn't be scared away. 
They say your first time's supposed to be special..."
     "Ouch.  I hurt for a long time."
     "Well, you know I can't come in a condom, so, after oh, maybe
forty minutes or so of this, it was clear that i wasn't going to
come, and tears were about to come out of her eyes, which seemed
locked into perpetual wince.  I pretended to come, pulled out, and
went back down on her.  As soon as i breathed on her mons, she
said, 'it hurts.'  Yeah, well, things hurt..."
     "Gimme back my shoes."
     "No, you'll wing em at me again."
     "Give me em."
     "Here.  So there I was.  I couldn't fuck her, couldn't eat
her, and I had one of those hard-ons from hell..."
     "Know the type."
     "Thought you might.  So I turned her over, spit on my hand,
rubbed it on, and--"
     "Oh no..."
     "Fucked her ass.  Hey, stop laughing.  This is the evil one,
remember?  So I didn't come but fell asleep, and in the morning all
I wanted was to sneak her out past my housemates and send her on
along.  Only thing was, my housemates were all in the living room,
waiting, and they applauded as we came down.  'We always knew you
two'd end up together,' said Kevin.  'You crazy kids.'  'Barangus',
said the Gresge, 'Just Barangus.'  So on the porch, I'm trying to
get her to walk home when age turns and looks at me.  'Rich, I--I
think I--'  'I know.  It's okay.  Get back home.'  Will you call?' 
'If I can.'"
     "Oh dear."
     "So for the next few weeks, I fell prey to what my housemates
so eloquently dubbed 'FFS'."
     "FFS?"
     "First Fuck Syndrome.  She learned my class schedules, work
times in the computer lab, everything, did the whole puppy dog
thing."
     "Oh no."  She looks down and fiddles with the hem of her
skirt.  "I've done that.  Remember the waiter I told you about..."
     "Yeah yeah yeah whatever whatever."
     "Hey!"  The shoe thing again.  "I want the *story* to make me
hate you, not--"
     "YYYWW.  Shall I go on?"
     "Please."
     "So all I could say to this girl was I was just too busy, my
life just too complicated right now for a 'relationship'.  What
with work and classes and the magazine and..."
     "And getting stoned, and chasing girls, and renting porn, and
snorting--"
     "Yyy, you know the drill.  But it didn't seem to be sinking
in.  For weeks she was following me around, and--"
     "Why didn't you just tell her the truth?"
     "You know how I hate to hurt people.  Ow!"
     Deadly with a shoe.
     "In any case, I kinda just hoped it'd end.  But then I met
that girl who would become my girlfriend for the next couple years
and started hanging out with her a lot, so it must have been pretty
clear to Nina that I had, in fact, the 'time for a relationship'. 
Hate me yet?"
     "Getting there.  There's more?"
     "Natch.  So one day, after I hadn't seen Nina in nearly a
week, she storms into the computer lab, drops this tightly folded-
up, multi-page note on yellow paper on my desk, and leaves.  Well,
I thought, this is cool.  Hard copy.  I knew right then that
whatever she'd written, my housemates'd love it.  So I unfolded the
thing and started reading it.  Yow!"
     "Yow?"
     "It was the most evil, bitter thing I think I've ever read. 
It was glorious.  Ow!"
     "You deserved that.  Hold on a sec." She stands up and
retrieves her heels from the closet.  "Ok.  Go on."
     "Well, here's the best part of the note, which was mostly
about what a liar I was, about the whole 'time' thing.  It said,
'Oh, and by the way, thank you for taking the time out of your busy
schedule to fuck me.  You do remember that, don't you?'"
     This time, blood was drawn.
     "Well, my housemates managed to get a hold of this note--"
     "Managed?  What a liar you are."
     "All right, I left it on the couch.  But they *loved* it, and
would repeat huge sections of it at odd times, usually when Jill
was over."
     "You didn't care.  You love that."
     "I do.  But you know, I was thinking about the whole thing,
and the way I see it is :  at least, even if it never happens
again, at least, for that one moment, she *felt* something that
strongly.  You know--"
     "You really believe that--"
     "I have to.  Who said 'Between grief and nothing, I choose to
give grief'?"
     "Faulkner you, pretty boy."
     "Thought you'd never ask," I say, pulling my shirt out of my
pants,  "But let's hurry.  There's a lot I want to do today."
     And then she's on me, with shoes and skin.

RICHH
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