ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 105
“I mean, no. Why are you done? What’s wrong?”
Another favorite story of mine from Borges is the one where a
gaucho takes over his captain’s crew and sleeps with his captain’s
wife, but gets murdered because he had misunderstood who the
boss really was. Sympathy was part of the story I wanted to spin
for Bobby, just like being done with Ashley was part of the story
he wanted to spin for himself, but neither of us had given much
thought to the possibility that we had misunderstood.
“What’s wrong? I’m fucking done with dumb fucking cunts, so
nothing’s wrong. I’m fucking done.” I understood this as permission.
Drunk, Ashley and I talked on the stairs for maybe an hour about
knowledge and truth, and other lovelies of the artistically inclined.
I remembered that I had described the parting of two clouds and a
ray of sunshine through the tree’s leaves as God. She asked about
my family, if I’d been thinking about them lately. Before I could
answer, she told me about how much she knew that Bobby just
wanted to fuck Katie. I didn’t, then, think about how audible that
comment would be to Brian if he was still on the balcony.
She offered to give me a blowjob in her truck, which, of course, I
accepted, without noting the clear hypocrisy of what she was doing
and what it said about the situation, or the fact that Brian would
hear that, too. Of course I accepted. I clearly did not learn a great
deal from Borges’ habit of savagely mocking the thin justifications
of the stupid and the young.
“If you want more, wake me up in the morning.”
“I will,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, or something close enough to that for
me.
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