Plebeian Sketches: Stability

[Brownlie]

I've always wanted to find a woman to give my life some stability, but I've yet to meet a stable woman. Or anything close.

It's always similar stuff. It feels like some ironic curse, because I always go for the high class, clean looking girls. Yet I'll see the most beautiful, stylish and intelligent looking woman, that carries herself gracefully, is well spoken, and very fun and interesting. Then I'll see her boyfriend, and it'll be some scrawny white guy with a backwards baseball cap and baggy clothes talking on his cellphone, mumbling something about how he's "gonna cut somebody"; and he'll have three kids with three different teenage girls. And I think to myself, There's no goddamned way I'd get away with having a kid with a teenage girl. I'd be buried beneath the prison, and they'd print my books just so they could burn them.

Or the boyfriend's a drug addict, or has some STD; so I can't even get with the girl if she breaks up with him.

I know I have to be some horrendous creep if I'm getting rejected in favor of drug addicts with STDs that have sex with underage girls.

My friend had a girlfriend that had a kid with one of these kinds of guys. That guy was twenty-three, and still slept with my friend's girlfriend every once in a while; his current girlfriend, at the time, was fourteen and had rich parents; so they bought him a house and a car as reward for seducing their daughter. He didn't have a job. I tried seducing her myself: I figured, why the hell not? There's even a picture of us together somewhere in my room. But she thought my poetry was too creepy. Girls always tell me that.

Underage girls are always trying to mess with me. I don't even see them coming. Just last year I was walking away from a place where I'd been drinking, and this eleven year old came running across the street, she almost got hit by a car, and I had to step out in front of it to try to make it swerve. She told me she ran away from her granddad, that she wanted to know if she could go home with me. I asked her what made her think I'd take her home; and she said that she thought I looked like a criminal. I asked her what it was about me that made her think that: she said that it was the way I walked; then she demonstrated....I gave her three dollars, which was all I had left, and told her to go call one of her friends. She said she had friends, but didn't know their numbers, she only talked to them on Facebook. The word "Facebook" makes me feel sick inside; and I considered changing it for the telling of this story to "Facepage" like I did in my novel, Fool's Paradise, but you'd still know what I was talking about; and worse than that, I'd know....She asked me if I wanted her to "earn that money", she said she enjoyed that kind of work, and started grinding her hips around. I asked her what if I was a killer or some kind of mad scientist that wanted to take her home and sew her lips to some Asian guy's asshole; though, seemingly half Asian herself, that last detail didn't have so much impact. She said I was starting to sound like a real freak. And I told her that was good; maybe she'd learn her lesson, trying to pick up strange, shady looking characters like me while she's only eleven years old and don't even have the good know how to cross the street by herself. She said, "No. A freak's a good thing. I love the freaky stuff." I told her that she might end up in the trunk of a car with her head cut off; because that's what my dad used to always tell me in my room at night when I was 5 years old, before I went to sleep....I often wonder to myself where all these kinds of girls were when I was eleven. No doubt they were off making some middle-aged pervert the happiest man alive....I just took her to the Walmart and told her to go buy some M&Ms; and while she was away I got the fuck out of there.

I told my friend about it, and he said he would have taken the girl home, that he knows guys that do that kind of stuff all the time. That was one of the many times my friend has made me feel like a loser for not being a creep....And it's hard not to feel like a creep.

I think there are two kinds of creeps: A selfish creep; and a pathetic creep. The selfish creep is your run of the mill psychopath, or douchebag, that just gets what he wants, and fuck everything and everyone else. Those sorts of creeps are more respectable. Then there's the pathetic creep that doesn't want to be thought of as a creep, and, in fact, spends an insurmountable amount of time trying not to say or do anything creepy; but just seems to exude creepiness, as if no matter how hard he tries to comb his hair differently and no matter how often he gets a haircut, his hair is always just a little too long to look average, and a little too short to be stylish, and just refuses not to be parted on the left side.

Another time, I was sitting in a restaurant, I was only twenty-one then, and rarely even ordered alcohol or drank in public. I was thin, and clean cut, with nice clean clothes. I looked over at a table down the way, and this really cute girl with long brown hair was sitting with a big group of high school kids, and she smiled, and I smiled back. Later as she was leaving she came over and just sat down next to me, leaning in real close so I could smell her hair and admire her shiny lips. She asked me all kinds of questions; and acted like she was amazed with my answers. I thought it might have been a joke; but the other high school kids were just talking and fooling over the check, and didn't seem to be paying any attention to us. She got out a pen and wrote a phone number on one of my napkins. She said if her dad answered just to hang up. I asked how old she was, and she said fifteen. I asked her how old she thought I was, and she said seventeen.

And maybe I should have been.

I don't know where you're from but American culture does seem to be intolerant of weakness and insecurity. The vaulted male seems to be the charismatic pot head, party animal, or some sort of psuedo nerd hybrid you would see in the hangover. (of course you can tell there is some bitterness speaking from within me.) I suppose a psychopath is more respectable because he is stronger or perhaps people can comfortably hate that person. As for the pathetic creep I feel bad for the guy as long as he's not hurting anyone. I've never been to into facebook if I had friends on it I guess I might use it. You can pretend to be anything on the site. It's a pity to see people construct themselves into what they think they should be. A rant for a rant I suppose.