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Babar Goes to His Friend's House and Thinks
His single father friend reads Babar to his son. He sits beside them thinking about the woman he's going to have later that night.
 His friend and his son are happy people and Babar is so regal, so placid. But I'm going to have so much sex tonight, he thinks, so though they are happy now, I will have future happiness. I can see my happiness coming towards me and I'll lay it and lay in it and it won't smell like elephant.
We'll sleep a little while, my hand in her hair and then we'll wake up and want each other again and because we won't be in public there will be no games about it. One turn and that's it, there we go.
He decides he must leave a glass of water by the bed, because if he gets up to pour it, he'll have insomnia and she becomes very moody if he wakes her up to have sex because control can be her thing and she has to go into the bank at ten. And sometimes she says weird things about his friend and his son, like how they can't be alright without a mother in that house, and how he's probably feeding his son drugs to calm him. How could such an ugly sentence come out of a face shaped like that?
So he says to her, You're just upset because you want to have a child. I told you we could have one, but I really wanted to see Australia before all that started.
And then she is silent and happiness ends because nobody has much sex after an exchange like that. And since happiness has already been guillotined he reminds her that if you don't have sex you can't have children. No, he wouldn't say that, but she imagines it was something he could say but would withhold because he wanted to hang on to her for the sex and that made it worse.
Then he would be on the couch, his back muscles completely fucked, as down the hall she cried, her throat sometimes opening and Oh God coming out.
After his friend puts his son to sleep, he asks the friend if he can stay the night. Wouldn't you be happier in your own bed? he asks him.
Overtone
He had just broken up with her and felt free, yet horny. Felt kind of happy, yet replete -- though he didn't know what replete meant and he'd left her the dictionary.
Then he began reading a novel about a woman who has a tough time when a relationships ends, so tough that she lurks around trying to find the man in the city they live. Ha, he thought, what a sad sort. I'm so on top of things -- I'm losing weight, I'm watching baseball again, I don't have to worry about being made fun of for taking pictures of ants.
As he continued the novel, he found it bizarre he would still read about a human being so at odds with himself but he wanted to see if the couple got back together in the end. They didn't and he was pleased, because in real life people don't so often get back together. But the novel wasn't real and the woman inside it was so desolate at the end, so crushed. The happiness he felt after closing the book was false.
The author was a good author. She'd won prizes, she'd been translated in Africa and she'd made him complicit in this woman's debacle. He walked around his favorite park wondering if a mistake had been made. He'd broken up with her, yet he felt lost. He wasn't supposed to feel the way he was feeling and beyond ‘lost,' he couldn't describe it in his own words. But the woman author certainly could. She was smarter than him, more successful and she lived alone in a house on the Pacific Ocean.
Goddamn her, he shouted. Goddamn her so much.
After the End
She told him her new boyfriend made her laugh and that she hadn't laughed in she didn't know how long. And he said, No one can make you laugh without you giving them permission and she said the new boyfriend had her permission eternally and he asked if he gained the permission before the laugh. What laugh? she asked. The initial laugh, he said, because any permission granted thereafter would not count. I hate you, she said. And I hate stories about how you laugh, he said. But my hatred is more meaningful, she said, because I hate your entire person, your entire history, even our years together, whereas you only hate a story that contains a man you've come to hate. Then you hate yourself, he said. I used to hate myself because I was with you, she said, but now that I'm not I've forgiven myself. Then how can you hate our time together? he asked. I hate our time together because it is symbolic of everything I used to hate about myself -- a hate that will never disappear, not with forgiveness, not with therapy or holy water, she said and he didn't say anything because he wanted her to say more but she didn't and he offered her a piece of gum and she accepted. I'm glad you still like gum, he said. Oh yeah, gum I could never hate. Maybe we should have chewed more gum, he said. No, then I would hate gum too. But you just said you could never hate gum. That was before gum and you started to have a close relationship. I think I'm growing to hate you too, he said. Yes, she said, don't you see how fun this is?
My Bed-Sty Friend
My Bed-Sty friend insists she has a fat ass. No, I say, you don't. Yes, she says, I do. My Bed-Sty friend is five-foot nine and one-hundred and ten pounds. I once liked to bicycle with my Bed-Sty friend but since she decided she has a fat ass she's refused to ride anymore. They will all be looking at my ass, she says. But we'll bike fast, I say. You'll bike alone.
The change in my Bed-Sty friend predates her discovery of her own fat ass which is completely not fat. We went to a waterpark in New Jersey and when I returned with lemonade she was crying. A text message from Derrick had ripped her heart open. He said he still thought of her, but only when he didn't have another woman to think of.
Don't listen to him, I told her.
I didn't listen to him, it's something I read on my fucking phone.
Does that mean it's easier to dismiss?
I don't like talking to you, you're always on your own side. Then she put a towel around herself though she hadn't gotten wet. Derrick text messages only made her eat less and brought out lean muscle mass but she announced there would be no waterparks in her future, no Coney Island, no Caribbean either.
Soon my Bed-Sty friend does not return my calls because her sister is sick, but she must have forgotten I know she doesn't have a sister. I spend two weeks talking about my Bed-Sty friend with my therapist. I miss work. I miss my mother's birthday. I begin to look at my ass in the mirror every morning. It's getting bigger, I tell my teddy bear. And it's amazing it's getting bigger because I'm not eating food as well. I can't. The penance of not eating will surely bring a halt to the non-ballooning of my Bed-Sty friend's non-existent fat ass, it has to. I buy fireworks and birthday candles to celebrate the disintegration of her fat ass but mine only grows and I have to buy new corduroys. I call my Bed-Sty friend to assure her all the weight she thinks exists in her ass actually had been deposited and continually grows in mine. She is not pleased. Dubs me dumb-ass, but I entreat her to see it for herself and she agrees but we can't meet in Bed-Sty, she insists. Better in Bushwick where no one will recognize my fat ass. Or mine, I add.
So we meet in Bushwick and my Bed-Sty friend is frail -- she doesn't have cheeks, of the face or ass variety and I plead with her and then steer my rump her way and a choking sound starts in her throat and I shimmy because I know my fat ass has charm. I giggle but the giggle rips my cheap-ass corduroys and I will have to go one ass size up.
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