Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 19 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 19

Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall- but don’t rush to pick him up either

Jewish Proverb

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I wanted you to know that I e-mailed Rutherford and I got a very nice e-mail back. We’re on the friendship track again. I actually wasn’t even expecting a response from him, and the good news is I didn’t care one way or another (that’s how over him I am). But when he DID respond, I was happy. I just cannot care too much about how much he decides to mess up his life. I am learning to become detached from the outcomes of everything.

At the same time, my mother was literally screaming at the top of her lungs at me when I told her I was back in touch with him. She thinks I’m headed for a big fall, and she doesn’t understand why I don’t just leave well enough alone and accept the fact that he and I don’t get along and just get on with my life.

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Angela, whenever you make choices that inevitably end up being bad- for whatever reason- the outcome and impact doesn’t just affect you. It affects those who are closest to you at the time (your parents, your friends). And your parents are getting older. They’re the ones you lean on the most, and it can be exhausting for them, not to mention frustrating. I think your family feels that if you could make choices in your life that are sound and well thought out and that put you at least risk of getting hurt, they’ll worry less about you, and any impact your choices may eventually have on THEM. Does this make sense to you? Your living situation coupled with your tendency to have very strong reactions to things, are such that your parents are directly intertwined in your life. And they suffer when you suffer. Maybe even more so.

Lori

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I agree with all that you have said about my parents. And I understand completely how the decisions that I make, good or bad, inevitably affect them and other people who care about me. That having been said, I think my parents were very instrumental in some of the “bad” ways I developed emotionally. I haven’t had a chance to share this with you yet (perhaps we can talk tonight), but I had a HUGE fight with my father Friday night, after which he was giving me three months to “get the hell” out of “his” house. It was brutal, the worst we’ve ever had. It was triggered when he couldn’t stop gushing about how “beautiful” my kid sister, Jamie, looked, before going to her very first dance. He kept saying, “She is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous,” and on and on and on. Suddenly, from the very depths of my soul, I was agonizingly reminded of all the positive reinforcement I DID NOT GET FROM HIM WHILE GROWING UP. And, in fact, I was told that I was decidedly NOT beautiful, never would be, and I just needed to accept that and move on. Now, you tell me, Lori, what child of adolescent age could possibly want to hear that from her beloved father? I don’t give a rat’s ass if the bastard had to LIE to me. HE SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, IN HIS EYES, I WAS INDEED BEAUTIFUL, AND TO HELL WITH THE MORONS AT SCHOOL WHO WERE TELLING ME OTHERWISE.

But understand my anger was not just about what my father had denied me with regard to my physical appearance. It was also the general lack of emotional support for nearly everything I’d ever gone through in my youth- from peer issues, to boys, to friendships. He NEVER seemed to validate my feelings about ANYTHING, instead always making me feel like my feelings were silly and stupid. And later in life, he’d think nothing of telling me I was “sick” in the head.

Add to that, the crappy way I always saw him treat my mother, so intimidating, and verbally abusive … and you have the victim- that would be ME- of a pretty dysfunctional upbringing. If my childhood had been one bit better, it’s quite possible that I would have learned to make much more intelligent, rational decisions with regard to the guys I allow close to me. It’s easy to say, “Take responsibility for your life NOW and just get over it.” But it’s a whole lot more difficult to “just get over” something that has insidiously eaten away at your very soul for your whole life. In fact, it may even be impossible. Feelings of inferiority and not being “good enough” are so indelibly etched in my brain … I fear I may never be able to undo them…

Angela

Lori woke up in the morning to find an avalanche of messages on the computer from Nick.  She would have been flattered by this sudden unsolicited attention had she not become conditioned over time to suspect pure selfish motive as the driving force behind his actions. 

From:  Nick  

HEY HUNNY IT’S NICK HERE

From:  Nick  

so did you miss me??

From:  Nick

hey i called you last night … got machine twice

From:  Lori  

i was at the radio station voicing science reports until midnight

where was Mona?

From:  Nick  

ahh should have called me. we could have done things. hott things

From:  Lori  

wherewuzzzzzzzzzzz mooooooonaaaaaa??????!!!!

From:  Nick  

i dunno

Lori stopped typing. She felt sorry for him. Although she had no idea how oddly or badly he behaved behind the closed doors of his daddy’s basement, where he and Mona were living together, it was clear that he habitually found himself deserted by his young live-in lover.  She found that she was more intrigued, and in some ways saddened, by this strange on-again, off-again affair of his than she was by their own peculiar on-again, off-again relationship. She would have given almost anything to be a cognizant fly on a wall in his abode, to see what weakness hid beneath the veil of bravado.  All the same, she wondered if she really needed to burden herself with the pursuit of someone else’s mystery, as she was still trying hard to uncover her own.

Over the next week, she was inundated with talk so outrageously perverted and graphic it could make a triple X porn star wince and shyly curl up in a fetal position.  She wasn’t sure if she was finding herself more fascinated by the sheer absurdity of what Nick was churning out, or by his shocking millisecond delay promptness in responding to everything she sent to him.  For a solid week, she was his submissive beast of burden, racing back and forth to and from her home computer twenty or more times a day to respond to his conscienceless streams-of-consciousness.  She felt herself becoming more and more defiled with every click of every button on the computer keypad, and yet she was completely powerless to stop.

For so long she had tried to purge herself of the queer, untoward preoccupation she had with this oversexed, overgrown child, and yet she was emerging from her futile struggle even more dishearteningly obsessive than when she had begun it.  For every moment in time that she had thought of and desired him over the time she had known him, she secretly wished for him to think of and desire her.  And so now, being on his mind throughout each and every day for a solid month and a half– even if it was mainly in the form of a large, floating, accommodating orifice– was truly a psychotic’s dream come true.  

From:  Nick  

hey cum over tonight. call me later on my cell phone

From:  Lori  

i have hours … and hours … and HOURS of studying to do tonight…

From:  Nick  

tomorrow night??? i will make you …

From:  Lori  

it’s got to be another night

where’s Mona?

From:  Nick

she does what she wants and i do whats i want …

From:  Lori  

so did you and Mona split? 

From:  Nick  

yeah we sorta split … so she wont be there … 

so what do you want me to do to you? tell me in detail!!!! 

It was decided that they would meet the following Monday night at the Belchertown radio station. Lori impatiently drove her car that evening along the snaking country road that led to the old, dilapidated building.  She pushed hard on the gas pedal, and noticed that her legs felt the same heaviness and numbness that they would otherwise feel right before she had to stand up and give an oral presentation for one of her classes. She felt her heart thumping hard and fast within her chest, and she was finding it difficult to catch her breath. Having done so often in the past the same foolish thing she was about to do, she knew she was putting a bounty on her very own head, and would soon be paying a heavy emotional fine for her lack of restraint, yet again.

An old familiar purple Chevrolet and white minivan sat in the station’s private parking lot, yet there was also an off-white Honda that Lori had never before seen.  She stepped out of her car to round the far corner of the building to see if Nick’s fire engine red Thunderbird was hiding beneath two imposing Satellite dishes planted in the station’s backyard.  The rear of the dark establishment was vacant, although she wondered if perhaps Nick had switched vehicles in the time that had gone by since she had last seen his trademark crimson muscle car. 

Faint sounds of Brazilian music emanating from the second floor suggested that someone was busy playing Spanish disc jockey in one of the upstairs studios. Figuring that perhaps Nick might have been waiting for her inside as well, she stepped into the tiny front corridor of the station and peered through the glass of the inner door.  There was no one in her immediate view, although the door suddenly buzzed loudly and opened up, allowing her to step inside the building.

 She peered down the main, narrow hallway and began to search all dark and dank levels of the station for signs of human life.  The Brazilian music continued to vibrate the walls from a small, secluded studio at the top of a staircase. She figured that this was the only room in the entire house that was occupied.

She walked back to the front doorway and stood there, peering out into the warm, breezy night.  The same vehicles she had seen earlier flanked her own in the parking lot, and any new cars coming into the vicinity of the station merely flashed their blinding headlights for a second in her direction before continuing to fly by on the busy nearby thoroughfare.

She walked outside again, quietly climbed back inside her car, and stuck her key into the ignition. She was about to leave when she heard the sound of an engine grow louder as a car turned from the road into the parking lot and pulled itself into a vacant space by the minivan.  She started to breathe heavily and she felt the muscles in her thighs tighten as though she had just died and rigor mortis was setting in. She opened her car door, still sitting and facing forward, still clutching her car key and keeping it in place inside the ignition slot.  In her periphery, she saw a figure emerging from the car. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the figure walking behind the minivan toward her. 

“I was just about to go,” she said quietly. She stared up at the figure. 

Nick stood with his hands in his pockets a few feet away from her.  Despite his strange, unkempt Unabomber look, with a long, bushy ZZ-Top beard and wild, wavy dark hair, she could still manage to find the boy behind the beast that made her heart race.

“Why?” he asked, softly.

“I’m nervous,” she said, stepping outside of her car. 

“But why?” he asked again. He drew himself near to where she stood and leaned his back against her car.  He placed his hands on her waist and lifted her shirt to see and touch what lay underneath. Then he pulled her close so he could kiss her hard on her lips and grab at her rear. 

“Come on. Let’s go,” he said. He motioned for her to join him for a ride to his daddy’s house. She sat down in his fur-lined passenger bucket seat and said as little as she could while he took her on a tour of a residential neighborhood several miles away from the station.  She was afraid to open her mouth and say anything, a post-traumatic stress reaction to the last time that she was alone in a car with him. She sat in silence and forced him to fill the uncomfortable void with whatever shallow topics he was able to come up with. She wondered how she could feel so drawn to someone she was so frightened of, and what the pathology was that lay beneath her need to repeatedly place herself in harm’s way.

A fluffy white cat raced out of his home and toward the car when they arrived.  Only seconds after Lori stepped up onto the front porch leading into the house, she was guided through an open door leading away from what appeared to be papa’s kitchen, and down into the basement.  A dirty welcome mat greeted her at the base of the stairwell, and she smiled at the irony of its existence in the home of someone she would hesitate to label as typically “congenial.” Behind a large, covered pool table sat a small brown dresser with a plastic box filled with hair ornaments and picks sitting on top of it.

“See? Mona’s still got some of her stuff here,” he said, pointing to what Lori had already figured out was hers.  It seemed important to him for Lori to know that she did, indeed, exist in his world.

“Where is she?” Lori asked. She sat down on a plush off-white couch encircling a big screen television set.

“She’s been workin’ at a hotel.  They’re letting her sleep there.” He ran up the stairs to fetch “cheap beer” that he thought his father had stored in their refrigerator.  He returned seconds later with one can and one bottle of ale for the two of them. 

“Would you like to see my room?” he asked.

Lori stood up, clutching her unopened, frosty beer can. She walked into a small alcove. The floor was almost completely covered by a queen-sized bed decorated with a dark blue comforter and many soft, full pillows.  Another television set sat on a black dresser near the doorway, and Grateful Dead posters filled almost every inch of wall space.  

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to two strips of brown and white fur nailed into one of the few free patches of wall adjacent to his bed.

“It’s an animal,” he said obscurely. He reached for her jeans and tugged at them until they dropped to the floor. She stepped outside of the masses of wrinkled denim and was surprised to find him taking the care to pull her socks off of her feet, one by one.

  As they frolicked, with daddy sleeping only feet away in an upstairs bedroom, Nick seemed much more attentive to her than he had been months earlier. He was pleasant, patient, almost tinkering on the edge of being sweet, although still in a rough and tumbled back street boy kind of way.  

“Can I put my arm around you?” Lori asked, as he lay on his side next to her on the bed.

“Yeah. I’m right here,” he responded coolly, continuing to balance his weight on one elbow as he stared at her body from several inches away. “Go ahead.”

She placed her left arm under his torso, wanting to pull him close, yet unable to do much more than touch his bare skin with her own.  Nick had just seen heaven moments earlier, and now it was her turn to do the same. Yet what he didn’t seem to realize was that anything and everything that Lori needed to taste forbidden paradise was the complete opposite of what he apparently thought she needed. Or the complete opposite of what he was willing to let her have.

“Pretend I’m on the phone,” he said, suddenly, sitting up and leaning over her. With closed eyes, she reached for his leg and felt him jerk it away. “Pretend I’m not here. I’m not here.  I’m just a voice.  There’s no one here but you. You … and … two guys.  Just you and two guys. Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, climbing all over you.”

“Are you there, too, with me?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“But you’re the only one I want in the fantasy,” she said. “I don’t know the other two … I don’t care about the other two.”

“O.K., O.K.,” he said, frantically. “I’m there. In the fantasy.”

 Lori opened her eyes just long enough to watch him do a little jig while stark naked near the edge of his bed. “How’s this? Does this get you excited?” he asked as he shook his shoulders and wiggled his hips and caused every free chest hair and dangling appendage to sway in rhythm right along with him.

Lori sat up in his bed and started gathering her clothes. “I think I’m done,” she said gently.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s … too much pressure,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

They began driving back to the radio station. Again, she sat in near silence as he struggled for things to say to ward off the gaps in the conversation. She responded only to subjects that he brought up, making sure to make her statements as brief and to the point as their e-mail messages to one another had always been. She felt that this was the only type of communication that Nick could handle, as anything more layered would bore or disturb him. Or bring him too close. Her most revealing gesture was the presentation of a newspaper clipping of an anticancer drug her brother had been working on. After a brief explanation of what it was, she set the folded article down behind the gearbox.

“O.K., hun,” he said.  He drove into the lot and pulled up next to her car.  He shifted into the parked position and turned to face her, but she had already opened the passenger side door and placed one leg outside and onto the pavement. In a quick fit of latent revenge, she tried to run away from him almost as callously as he had run away from her months ago.  Yet she could only be so heartless. She softly said “good-night” to him as she pulled her other leg outside and set her foot on the ground.

“I’ll read this,” he called to her, holding up her brother’s article. “But honestly, I’m really just into reading about stuff having to do with my own condition.”

His condition.  She often forgot about it, since it wasn’t a subject that had come up again between the two of them since the day she met him. Then again, there weren’t many subjects that tended to come up between them, even though they could find themselves interacting conservatively seventy or eighty times a day for stretches of weeks at a time. 

She had difficulty seeing the lock of her car in the shadowy darkness, and she hunched over it for several seconds, cursing under her breath and trying to get the key to slide into it. She noticed that Nick was still sitting in his car, very possibly chivalrously waiting for her to get the door ajar before he slowly pulled his car out of the lot.

Lori drove home without so much as turning on the radio, feeling nothing in particular.  It may have been little more than fatigue draining her of her ability to feel any real, solid emotion.  Yet it may have been the sputtering, wheezing finale of weeks and weeks of steady and steamy libidinous build-up.  Build-up that was predicted to be followed by even more of an anticlimactic thud, were Nick to follow his old time love‘em and leave ‘em tradition. 

She knew they were nothing to each other but sex. What held them together was so primitive, so raw, that it made just about any demeaning, demoralizing, or dehumanizing behavior on either of their parts completely excusable. Removing him from her life, if that was what she decided to do, would actually be quite easy.  All she had to do was stop pursuing or responding to him.  He’d eventually go away.  But getting him out of her mind was something that would take considerably more strength.  Perhaps a certain degree of genius.

The pure, dense, black and white reasoning Lori knew from when she was a child had somehow over the years turned gray and pixilated. She thought she knew what she needed to get through life, to get through life in a “path of least resistance” kind of way. Yet there was also the question of what she wanted. What she believed she wanted was not at all the same thing as what she needed. What she believed she needed seemed to be all she was expected to have. And all she was expected to have just didn’t seem to be enough.

She wondered how her cravings got to be so complex, so difficult to fulfill in a simple, straightforward way. Whether it was what she was doing or whom she was doing, she seemed to have the same forces tugging at her in opposing directions.  She wanted serenity and stability, yet she didn’t want boredom.  She wanted mystery and excitement, yet she didn’t want trouble.  She wanted to live her life like there was no tomorrow, experience all there was to experience and not feel the least bit of regret for not doing what she wanted. At the same time, she didn’t want to regret having done what she wanted because it in the end was not the right thing to do.

From:  Lori  

‘tis the day after …

shall we do that again from time to time?

From:  Nick

sounds maybe like a plan

Nick’s last message was just enough to satiate the hunger of the wailing uncertainty that resided deep within her. After all, it was the day after, the traditional gray zone, where light met darkness, fire met frost, and delusion met reality. “Sounds maybe like a plan” spoke volumes to the little Pollyanna that occasionally jumped in place behind the Captain’s wheel in Lori’s head.  “Sounds maybe like a plan” told her to keep steering the Queen of Mayhem, to keep moving forward despite the fact that there was no destination.

Two weeks passed.   The all-business cyber messages she sent to Nick, regarding trivial radio-related matters that served mostly as transparent excuses for her to connect with him, apparently disintegrated in transit.  She received no replies. She had only butterflies filling her stomach with unsettling vibration and ceaseless motion, horseflies filling her head with unyielding turmoil. 

From:  

why are you so into playing GAMES?

From:  Nick  

what you mean girl?

From:  

i send e-mails, you don’t respond

why??

From:  Nick  

ive  just been busy with the billings

havent replied to any one … sorry hun

Lori supposed in her crazed, emotionally debilitated state she had little choice but to accept that.  After all, the stale breadcrumb that had been thrown to the beggar was still edible; the bone tossed to the salivating dog still had some meat on it.  She preoccupied herself just enough with school-related matters to give her some distance from the asphyxiating black hole of cyberspace for a full day and a half.  Yet just because she was not physically banging away at a keyboard did not mean she didn’t every half hour or so look over at the computer terminal and sigh wistfully into her textbooks. 

From:  

so are you planning on responding?

From:  Nick  

hey i sent one yesterday i think i’m not sure …

our cart ready system died so ive been busy working on that and other technical junk

From:  

i miss discussing … certain … things … 

do you?

From:  Nick  

say that again

From:  

say what again?

From:  Nick  

what you were wrote me earlier

From:  

huh? what i was wrote you earlier?

translation?

From:  Nick  

oh im sorry … just going nuts over here … hehe

He was preoccupied. She wished that she, too, were preoccupied with something, anything other than him. The piercing pain of missing someone, of wanting to hear a voice, touch a hand, laugh at a misspelled word on a computer screen, was an agony she had grown to know too well in the time that she had known him.

From:  

so do you miss talking about … things with me? 

From:  Nick  

ive just been busy hun.  yeah i think about it

From:  

think about … what exactly?

From:  Nick  

things

From:  

good things, or bad?

From:  Nick

i dunno

I dunno.  I dunno.  What did that mean? Where was he coming from? What was on his mind? And how could Lori be so intrigued with someone past the age of twelve who used the phrase “I dunno?”

She allowed two days of excruciating anguish to unfold, two days of her overwhelming fixation to rattle and shake, and very nearly break her.  For it was two full days of simply not knowing, yet fully understanding that the passing silence could easily be the most telling and hurtful of all.

From:  

so what’s your answer?

good thoughts, or bad?

From:  Nick  

oops I deleted the email you were talking about after i read it

hehe.  nah ive been pretty good lately.  busy as hell.  trying to work on a couple girls ive been flirting with on line.  i got a date with one tomorrow night.  Whoohooo.… yummy … lol.…

From:  

so what does that mean?

do you still want to play, Nick?

From:  Nick

i’ll be in the mood to play more

From:  

we’re still “playmates?”

From:  Nick

yeah

Lori didn’t interpret his stinging candidness as a conscious attempt to hurt her.  She might have if they were playing by traditional rules guided by normal, human expectations and intention.  Yet they were doing anything but that.

Their periodic unions were like cream in coffee: there for taste, there for consumption, and swallowed in thirsty gulps by the passing night and the emerging dawn. There was no permanence, and certainly no commitment.  A small part of her actually appreciated his unfiltered honesty; a small part of her believed it helped to define who they were to each other.  Yet every so often, this same small part of her would allow itself to feel the empty sadness of impending loss, and fear and anxiety would rush in and replace her seeming indifference.  Her personal bipolar cycle ran its own nauseating course while Nick’s did the same.  Unfortunately, their cycles rarely, if ever, seemed to coincide.

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I’d love to have din-din with you tonight. I hope you get this e-mail. Wanna meet at our usual place? PLEEEEEEEASE…. I NEEEEEEEEEEED TO SEEEEEEEEEEE YOU, MY LL/SF. 

I’m actually growing my hair out another four to five inches. I can’t wait for you to see how much longer it’s gotten. I’ve been told that I look GREAT and very sexy with longer hair. That isn’t to say, though, girlfriend, that one still doesn’t need a good trim and shaping. Your hair looked a little frayed at the ends the last time I saw you. JUST a suggestion, LL/SF.

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I need to shower first. I’ve been going straight since five AM. Didn’t have the chance to shower today.

Lori

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

You disgusting floozy. Maybe you shouldn’t shower. I kind of like the “sweaty, greasy” look. LOL!

Oh, lord! I have to appear on TV tomorrow. We’re joining with Channel 7 in an all day telethon, and all the “talent” has to go on TV for an hour to beg for pledges. Yuck. I am WAY too fat for TV nowadays, and I am going to be SO self-conscious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Oh, stop! You’ll be great. Just focus on the higher purpose of your television appearance!

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

screw the higher purpose.

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

tramp

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

you suck suck suck

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

at least i don’t randomly screw higher purposes

tart

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

WHERE DID YOU GO???!!!!!!!!!!

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I’m here, I’m here. You can’t keep me out late tonight, because this telethon is going right into the evening and I’m going to have to cover it as a news story in addition to participating in it. Tomorrow is just going to be crazy. And I’m already exhausted… Beyond exhausted. I’ll tell you about that later.

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I won’t keep you out late. Promise.

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

you’d better not, you little person who sucks!

When they arrived at the restaurant, Lori didn’t observe anything out of the ordinary with Angela’s appearance until they were sitting for a while at a table, facing one another. Lori began to notice little dark folds of flesh under Angela’s eyes. After they were served, she noticed Angela blinking hard while staring down at the slice of pizza in front of her.  She slowly stripped slices of onions off of it and lethargically set them back on the surface of the remainder of the pie.

“We could have ordered it without, you know,” Lori said.

“Lori, I barely know I’m alive.  I’m too far-gone tonight to catch something like onions on pizza.  I was up all night fretting about a million silly things.”

“What kinds of silly things?” Lori asked, biting into her pizza, onions and all.

“Look at this,” Angela said. She pushed against the tip of her nose with her forefinger. “Look how wide and visible my nostrils are. My nose turns up too much. When I first had it done, the job just wasn’t done the right way. I’m thinking about having it done again, if they can.”

“I like your nose. It gives your face character,” Lori said.

Angela laughed. “I knew you’d say that. I knew you’d say ‘character.’ But everyone who knows me tells me that my nose isn’t the right fit for my face. I hear this from everyone.”

 “Well, I think your nose is fine. But if it bothers you, then I’m all for doing something about it.”

“Also I’m fat,” Angela said. She lifted a lace-lined square of fabric dangling over the top half of the dress she was wearing. “I’m disgusting,” she said, pointing to her abdomen. 

“You’re not disgusting, Angela. Come on. You’re always way too hard on yourself.”

“Look,” Angela said. She stood up and turned sideways. “Look at this. Look at this!” She ran her hand across her stomach, trying hard to highlight for Lori its convex shape. She poked at it a few times with her finger so Lori could appreciate its thickness, density, and fluidity. 

Lori sat in silence, not knowing what to say.

“I feel ugly and gross,” Angela said. 

“Angela, come on. You’re very attractive. You dress beautifully. Your hair and make-up always look great. I mean,” Lori paused. “Should you lose weight for health reasons? Y-yeeaah.  It’s your life, for Christ’s sake, and I’ve told you this I don’t know how many times. But I’m not gonna sit here and agree with you that you’re gross or ugly. Because it’s simply not true.”

“Well, then, I have to disagree with you on not agreeing with me.” She took a large sip of Cabernet Savignon. She set her glass down, and then lifted it back up to empty what was left in one gulp. “Look,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to tell you that one other thing that was keeping me awake last night was you.”

“Me?”

“You.” Angela lowered her empty glass to the table and traced the rim of it with her pinky.

“What about me?” Lori asked, a string of pizza cheese dangling from her chin.

“Lori, I think that as long as you keep any kind of contact going with Nick, you’re doomed.  I don’t care how much you think you might be finally ‘getting to know’ him.  He’ll give you any little crumb if he thinks he can keep you among his little reservoir of ‘playmates.’  He wants nothing more from you but sex.  Nothing, Lori.”

Lori’s eyes fell. “I know,” she said, softly. 

“You know that I used to be ‘hooked’ on my version of Nick,” Angela said.  “At the time, I had no one in my life, and he came along when I was vulnerable. Yet, once I realized that sex was all he wanted, I cut him loose.  I gave him one chance to redeem himself.  But that was it.  It hurt,” she said.  “It hurt like hell, not to get that connection that I wanted.  But you cannot squeeze blood from a stone.  And some people are stones, Lori.  Nick is one of them.”

Lori nodded, feeling like she had the floppy head of a rag doll getting shaken by an irate toddler.

 “It’s only draining your energy!” Angela yelled.  “And for a girl with so much going on already, why do you need this guy? Why can’t you just cut him loose, Lori? You know, I think you need to be asking yourself more questions about why in hell you are continuing this and less about what makes Nick tick.  The issue isn’t him. It is you.  You’ve got an extremely unhealthy attachment to this so-called ‘person’… and that’s a reflection of you, not him.  He’s obviously perfectly fine with who he is.  It’s you that wants him to change… be ‘nicer,’ more able to ‘connect’ emotionally. What is the “sickness” in you that seems hell-bent on getting that stone to bleed?  Don’t you see? He is a sex machine.  He wants only sex from whomever he can get it, wherever, whenever. Just drop him Lori.  Like a piece of bad, smelly rubbish.  Your connection with him only brings you down to his level.  Makes you seem just as scummy as he is.  Which I know you aren’t.”

Lori dropped what was left of her pizza slice on her plate, figuring that this was a good time for her to lose her appetite. She slowly wiped the grease from her fingertips onto a napkin as she continued to listen to what Angela had to say.

  “Look, Lori,” she said, her tone softening. “I’m being this brutally honest with you because I love you.  I love you so much … partly because I see so much of myself in you.  And I see that if you don’t stop this craziness while you are ahead, you’ll lose so much of what’s really important to you.  Please, Lori.  I am begging you.  Pleading with you … to get this poison out of your life.  Forever.  Never to look back.”

Lori felt a tapping on her shoulder. A lean, black teenager with large, soulful eyes leaned his head in toward hers and opened his mouth. He was heavily inebriated, and in between slurs and heavy streams of saliva slipping out of the corner of his mouth and down his chin, he managed to say, “I hope you don’t mind me listenin’ in on yo convuhsation… But misshh, I get the impression that you ah only hearin’ what yo friend is sayin’ to you. You ah not listenin’. That guy… It is a guy you’re talking about, ain’t tit? I mean, it?”

Angela smiled at him and nodded. “It’s a jerk we’re talking about,” she said.

The drunken boy continued. “Yeah. That guy is a jerk-off . You listen to your friend. Don’t just hear huh. She’s a good, good person. She’s a good, good friend.”

After they paid the check and walked out of the restaurant, Angela said, laughing, “That kid and I were making eye contact the whole time I was talking. I couldn’t believe he started talking to us!”

“Angela,” Lori said, putting her arm around her and leaning in closely. “The next time you see someone eavesdropping on our private conversation in the middle of a crowded restaurant, behind my turned back, could you please give me the heads up so my life’s story isn’t spilled out to someone who’s so centrally and peripherally anesthetized with alcohol that they can’t swallow?”

“But Lori,” Angela said. “I’m taking his presence tonight to mean much more than you are. He made so much sense with what he said that I honestly think he’s your guardian angel!”

As Lori hugged her good-bye, she said, “Figures that my guardian angel is a rip roaring drunk.”

(stay tuned for chapter 20…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)