A Turning Point

i need you to go get my shit from Steve's house

leave it in your house and I will get it tomorrow

This pair of texts from Carrie, arriving to John's phone on an otherwise uneventful Thursday night came as a bit of a puzzle to John. He responded:

I will be at work tomorrow. Is there any reason you need me to do this tonight?

Why did you have Linda come get it from me?

It was quite perplexing. Carrie had tried and failed to get her stuff from his house multiple times. Why on earth did she want him to move the stuff back to his house after finally having succeeded in moving it to her temporary residence with her friends Linda and Steve?

i know. i dont want to see you shithead

i want my stuff back

This was confusing, even for Carrie, whom he had long ago given up on trying to fully understand. He decided to just call her instead.

"What?" she answered angrily.

"Um, nice to hear from you," he said. "What do you want me to go over to Steve's for? Where are you?"

"Asshole," she said. "Look, just go get my shit. If you have to know, Steve kicked us both out of his house. I need my shit. I'm living in a fucking shithole motel because of you and your stupid fucking cock so you are going to go get my shit for me. Steve's pissed and I'm not going back over there."

"Uh, what?"

"Look, you stupid shithead. I know you fucked Linda. That dumb fucking cunt got herself kicked out of Steve's house because you can't keep your dick out of anything with a pulse and so now I'm kicked out, too, of course. He's fucking pissed. He punched a fucking hole in the wall and I got the fuck out of there as fast as I could. I'm not going back over there."

"Oh my god, I..." John began

"I don't want to fucking hear it, asshole. I don't give a fuck if you're sorry or whatever other dumb shit you're going to say. You are the only person I know who I can send to get my shit who Steve probably won't kill because you're a guy and if he does beat the shit out of you, good, you fucking deserve it. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

John was still formulating an answer when she started talking again.

"Don't! Don't fucking answer that. Just go get my shit and leave it on your porch before you go to work tomorrow. I will come get it and then you can fuck off forever."

"Alright," he said when he judged that she had finished. "I will go over there tonight and get your stuff. Is it just that box of stuff that you left here?"

"No," she said. "It's all my stuff, all my clothes, everything. It's all there because I bolted. That guy, he's a fucking maniac. You should not have fucking touched her, you stupid fucking asshole. He's always been a piece of shit and she's always been a dumb fucking slut, fucking guys behind his back but she went too fucking far this time, I guess. He fucking snapped, like I said, just punched a whole through the fucking drywall."

"Are you alright?" he asked

"No, fuckhead, do you think I'm alright? I'm fucking homeless and all my worldly fucking possessions are trapped at that psycho's house. And the only person I trust

at all

to go get it is you, the stupid dickhead who got me into this situation in the first place by fucking SLEEPING WITH MY BEST FRIEND." She punctuated the sentence by slamming the phone against something hard three times.

"Alright, I will go get your stuff. And if there's anything else I can do to help you out..." he said, switching ears and rubbing the one he felt she had surely just damaged permanently.

"Ok." She took an audible breath, then continued, "And John?"

"Yeah?"

"Fuck you."

...

It was somewhere on the drive between his own house and Steve's, the address of which Carrie had helpfully texted him, along with another

fuck you

, that John began wishing he had more male friends. Really any male friends. He found himself trying to remember the last time he had hung out with a guy whom he hadn't been fucking and failing to dredge up the memory. Now with Liam gone, he didn't really even have that, as much as he would have been hesitant to ask Liam along on such a trip. The kid would have come along with no concern for his own safety, no doubt, but he couldn't help now, being in another state.

So John was just sitting there, visions of getting stabbed or having his head bashed in with a baseball bat running through his mind as he drove across the city with the sun going down.

I'm a fucking idiot,

he thought

Carrie's right, of course. Just can't keep my dick under control and now I'm probably going to get my teeth punched in, and that's assuming this guy doesn't have a gun.

His phone helpfully announced that he was arriving at his destination, although this ended up being unnecessary. He recognized among the heap of boxes and piled clothes on the front lawn some of Carrie's stuff. Much of it he did not recognize but took to be Linda's. He pulled up, sat in the running car for a minute, and decided it was best to leave the car running just in case he really did need to make a quick escape.

Could I not just call the cops or something?

It hardly seemed the type of thing that they would bother with.

Whatever, if I die tonight I guess it will be some kind of cosmic justice or something. Maybe they'll write a folk song about me.

He stepped out of the car. Before he'd even reached the pile of boxes, Steve had appeared, half dressed and with a bottle of some kind of alcohol in one hand.

At least it's not a bat,

he thought. John raised his hands. "Just here for the stuff," John said, looking around to see if there were any potential witnesses. He noticed an older couple sitting on their porch, who fortunately seemed to notice when he followed this up with "I don't want any trouble" loud enough for them and hopefully anyone else around the neighborhood.

Steve seemed to understand despite his state. "Fine," he said after a slight pause, "Fuckin' take all that fuckin' chinky shit. And take all that whore's shit, too." He spat on the lawn, took a drink, and added. "It makes the whole place smell like a fucking whore house."

"Fair enough," John said, considering adding a

Cool racism, bro,

but deciding against it. He slowly moved to pick up a box, keeping his eyes on Steve the whole time. Having gotten a hold of it, he backed up to his car, and cautiously popped the trunk, then shoved the box inside. Steve had not moved, though his eyes were pure hatred. He continued not moving for the next few minutes as John filled his trunk and then the back seat of his car with boxes, forcing them in as best he could while keeping an eye on Steve.

Finally John had finished his task. He went to open the driver's side door when Steve lurched at him. He steeled himself for a bottle to the face that didn't come. Steve was now inches from John's face. The smell of cheap rum was overpowering.

"You know what?" Steve said.

"No, what?" John said, barely able to keep the fear out of his voice.

"Of all the fucking shithead fucks she could have fucked, I'm glad it was you," Steve slurred.

John bit his tongue to prevent replying "Me too."

"You know why?" Steve continued. He didn't wait for John's response this time. "Because you're a fucking faggot. I hope you give that fucking slut AIDS you fucking faggot."

"Alright," John said. He was pressed up against the car, unable to open the door.

Steve's dim eyes watched John's for another few agonizingly long moments before he took a step back. "You two deserve each other," he said finally.

"Alright," John said, "you take care, now." He managed to open the door. He was just about to slide into the driver's seat and take off when Steve's fist crashed into his jaw. The force knocked him back, slamming his body into the side of the car. He crumpled to the ground, not yet having processed what just happened. He instinctively brought his hand to his mouth to find it bleeding a good deal. Somehow this snapped him back to reality.

Steve was a couple feet away, nursing his bloody fist. "Fucking asshole," he was muttering. John hopped to his feet. A deep animal instinct told him to make Steve pay, but for some reason, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the old couple take to their feet. No doubt they'd be calling the cops soon enough.

Fuck this shit,

he thought. He crammed himself into the still-running car and took off.

It wasn't till he'd sped a few miles down the state highway and his nerves had sufficiently settled that he pulled over into a gas station.

Guess I'm going to need a new shirt,

he thought, noticing the massive blood stain that he had been unwittingly producing on it for the last few minutes. He took a look in the rearview to assess the damage. Steve had, unsurprisingly in this drunken state, not been able to land the best of blows, having done no more damage than to split John's lip in a fairly ugly way. No teeth were missing and his jaw, despite the pain, did not seem to be broken.

All in all, not bad for a run-in with the guy who's girl you just fucked,

he conceded.

If not for the racism and homophobia I'd almost feel I should apologize to the guy.

He jammed a wad of tissue into his mouth to sop up the blood, then drove the rest of the way home.

At least he assumed that that's what happened. He had barely noticed any of the remainder of the drive home, having evidently zoned it all out. He went inside, removed the tissue, washed away some blood, got a new wad of tissue to replace the blood-soaked one, and began the process of moving boxes into his house.

I got your stuff. Got a fat lip for my trouble, too.

he texted Carrie when he'd finished putting the boxes and clothes into something of an orderly mess near the front door.

good

she texted back.

He sighed, stripped off his bloody clothes, and went to bed.

...

Click, click, click.

The self-imposed rhythm of the remote's soft button sounds had begun to worm its way into John's brain, so that even when he finally stopped scrolling through his viewing options, the sound continued to emanate, only now from some dark corner of his reptile brain. Even after skipping directly over the multiple categories of Korean dramas that the streaming service had decided he was extremely interested in thanks to Carrie, he could not find anything that held his interest in the slightest on this uneventful Saturday night.

This was to be expected on some level, considering he had spent the majority of the day on this very couch scrolling through and occasionally choosing viewing options. He had finally reached his limit, though, and so took a look around at the mess of variously sized and shaped empty food containers that had at one point contained either his lunch or dinner for the day. In previous periods of mild to moderate depression in his life, he had learned not to fall into drinking as a pastime, but evidently, he decided, he would need to expand that to more generalized binging, whether it be food, alcohol, or even streaming.

Why am I depressed, anyway?

he asked himself.

Well,

his inner monologue helpfully answered,

the girl you were surely falling for despite your best efforts at making it just casual sex turned out to have a boyfriend, the boy you were fucking ran off to the other side of the country, and your ex-turned-fuck-buddy has made you persona non grata, leaving you here wallowing in nothing but the boxers you woke up in. Plus you got punched in the jaw for your trouble

.

Yes, that's all very true,

he answered himself,

but I had only been out with that girl a handful of times, and same thing with the guy. All parties were very clear that these should be temporary, casual hook ups. The ex is her own situation, but she's an ex. All sex with her after the break up should be and is considered bonus sex.

Should be,

he retorted to himself,

is not

is

. You're falling for the old is-ought fallacy. You

ought

not have caught feelings, but that does not mean you

haven't

. If you had developed feelings for one to three other people and they all disappeared from your life in the span of a few days, then you would be justified in being depressed. This seems to be your issue.

No, no, no

John again retorted.

I'll show you. I'll find more casual sex and then be fine.

Good luck with that.

John picked his phone up from the coffee table. He was not surprised to find no new text messages, and so opened the dating app he'd been ignoring. He scrolled through a small list of messages in his inbox, deleting one-by-one those from a series of bots going by Svetlana or Natalya or the like. One, however, caught his eye: a Phoebe.

Odd name for a Russian bot,

he thought, and took the time to read it.

in town for the weekend, hit me up if your profile is real

Definitely not a bot

. He pressed the "reply" button but then paused. Was this going to be another Riley?

In some senses, certainly not,

he answered himself. The likelihood that this was another nympho trans girl hiding a secret boyfriend is pretty much nil, he convinced himself, although dropping any of those conditions of course increased the likelihood significantly. Any girl who responded to his as-yet-unchanged profile ("looking for someone cool. I eat ass" and nothing else) was likely to just be looking for sex.

But that's what I'm after, anyway,

he reminded himself.

Just sex, not feelings. Not going to spend any longer being down than I need to. I should probably look at this girl's profile first, though.

So he found the link to her profile and opened it. Another suspiciously bare profile, he noted, nothing optional provided, just name, gender and "looking for," which was set to the expected "casual" option.

Perfect,

he decided,

for showing my subconscious what's what.

He returned to the reply and quickly fired it off:

profile is very much real. if you're free...?

He roused himself, finally intending to at least accomplish one thing for the day by taking a shower.

A workout would probably be the better option,

he thought, but he had not quite reached that level of energy.

One step at a time, lad.

By the time he had almost finished clearing up the garbage, his phone buzzed, indicating a either a reply from that girl, or, more likely, another bot. He glanced at the phone and was relieved to find it was the former.

Buy me a drink?

This text was followed by another, which arrived as John was still looking at the screen.

I'll be here if you want to buy me that drink

Attached was a link to the location of a bar not far away. He fired off a quick

Be there soon

and went to take one of the fastest showers of his life.

The bar turned out to be attached to a fairly nice hotel and was unsurprisingly almost entirely empty on a Saturday evening. In an area of town mostly surrounded by businesses, it was the type of place, John surmised, that made most of its money off suits just finishing up their work days, so mostly dead on the weekends, save for the business travelers stuck at the hotel, who probably were not planning on arriving till later. With this idea of the place in his head, then, John found it odd that Phoebe was dressed like a sorority girl on vacation when he found her sitting at the bar alone with a glass of something disturbingly pink. She wore a light blue sleeveless top and a pair of pink shorts with something he could not make out but assumed to be "juicy" or similar emblazoned across her ample ass. Her shoes were a pair of cheap looking plastic thong sandals. This all would have made her stand out in the mostly dark browns and blacks of the bar even if her hair hadn't been green. Even so, she would still have stood out in any crowd just from the fact that she was incredibly hot: a nice, fat, round ass, thin waist, and when she turned to greet him he could see, a face like a model's and tits that he guessed were at least D cups, barely contained in that flimsy top.

"John?" she asked simply.

He nodded, "And you must be Phoebe?"

"I must be," she said, gesturing to the bar stool beside hers. "I think we have the place to ourselves," she added.

"It appears that way," John said. "I suspect it will stay that way. Not many business travelers like yourself out on a Saturday night."

"Business travelers, huh?" she said. "You definitely have my number." She gestured to herself in an apparent recognition of the incongruity.

"So, assuming you're not actually a business traveler, what are you in town for the weekend, then, if I might ask?" John asked as he sat next to her.

"Oh, I assure you, it's for business." She punctuated her answer with a faux-serious expression.

"And here I was hoping for pleasure," John smiled.

Phoebe smiled back. "Why not both?"

The bartender arrived and John ordered himself a beer and "...and that drink I owe you?" he asked Phoebe.

"Yes, another one of these, please," she said, to which the bartender responded with a nod and a movement away from them to fetch the drinks.

"And what exactly is that that you are drinking?" John asked.

"Their signature cocktail, of course, the... I forget, it was on the menu. Want a taste?" she proffered the drink, which was served in a glass made for a martini but was definitely no such thing.

John looked at the pink concoction, wondering what could possibly give it its unnatural hue. "Of that?" he said, "No, thanks, I'm good with beer for now."

"Nothing else you'd like a taste of?" she teased. As she spoke her fingers moved aimlessly around the surface of the bar as if surveying its surface.

"You saw my profile," he said. "Although I don't think they serve that here."

"I did see it. They might not serve what you're looking for," Phoebe said as the bartender brought them their drinks and then disappeared. Her tongue made a brief appearance between her lips before darting back into her mouth. "But I might know a place."

"Ah ha," John responded. "And where's that?"

"Oh, it's close," she answered. "Probably you can get there easily. Probably." She glanced meaningfully at the glass doors that led to the hotel lobby for a moment before returning her gaze to John.

"Sounds good," John said. "How about we have some drinks and then maybe later you show me?"

"Maybe," she said with a smile. "Tell me about yourself, John. I liked your profile but I noticed you were going for a mysterious, leave-them-wanting-more approach to the details."

"You've got me there," he replied. "It's not at all that I'm an idiot with computers and didn't fix the first draft. Definitely an intentional choice."

"Definitely," she said.

"Well, what is there to say about me?" He continued, "I'm your average boring white guy, boring white guy job, overstimulated and undersexed, alienated from the means of production and all that."

She laughed a cute little laugh. "Really doing a good job selling yourself there, Marx."

"Yeah, I get a little leftist when I'm a bit down, sorry. What about you? Pardon the cliche, but what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" He gestured vaguely towards the empty tables, all sitting, sterile, evidently ready and waiting for no one.

"Why are you down?" she asked. She pouted her lips and considered his eyes. "Do you not enjoy casual hookups with beautiful bombshells?"

"You're right," John said. "I'm an idiot, like I said. But you didn't answer my question."

"You didn't answer mine, either, so we're even." Her fingers danced along the rim of her glass. John watched their seductive little dance for a moment for a moment before responding.