You may already know me, I'm Lester Burnham. You've probably heard that nightmare of a story that got passed around a few years ago and made into a deeply depressing movie. I wanted to take a moment to set the record straight about the story those asshole Hollywood writers made out of a very small time in my life.
What really happened was actually a lot less dramatic than what had been told in that idiotic and pointless movie.
See, after my wife had her affair with Buddy she left me and she left Jane behind. Jane ended up asking me to let Ricky move in with us to escape his insane father and I agreed to it. I mean Ricky is a decent enough kid after all, even though I knew he was boinking my daughter during my divorce.
The stupid movie suggested that Ricky killed me. Nonsense, the kid loves me.
That brings me to Angela.
It's true I knew about Angela's crush on me but it wasn't something I'd ever acted upon. I mean for Christ's sake, the girl was just sixteen at the time! I'm a fairly fucked up guy but even I have my limits, you know. It's not like I'm Kevin Spacey!
With Jane and Ricky living in the house that meant Angela was over to see them regularly. And that meant I got to see Angela regularly. Truth be told; it's not hard to look at Angela on a regular basis.
Angela's nascent modeling career came to nothing when she refused the advances of some pervert producer and he retaliated by blacklisting her. That left her stuck in Brentwood instead of pursuing a life in Hollywood. While she and Jane were going to Los Medanos College together the two of them also worked at a nearby Blockbuster Video. Not all that glamorous.
Angela's family life was typical of LA in the late Nineties. Her parents were Type A Yuppies and they were first class narcissists. Angela's failure to make it as a model and then her failure to make it into an Ivy League college were embarrassing to those two idiots. It was no surprise that Angela would spend more time at my house with Ricky and Jane than she did at home.
We even set her up with one of the spare rooms as her own since she was at the house so often.
Somewhere along the line Angela found the time for a furtive relationship with a young man she'd met at the college. It was one of those whirlwind romances that burned brightly, burned fast, and then burned out. The experience left her distraught and devastated. She spent some time at home in the weeks after the breakup and when her distant parents didn't comfort her she came back to the house.
One night Ricky and Jane were upstairs and they were noticeably getting it on. Angela and myself were trying to watch a new TV show called 'Firefly' and when we weren't watching the show we were exchanging knowing glances about the sounds we were hearing from the upstairs.
"You want a drink?" I asked her. It wasn't a big deal, really given that she was old enough to drink by this time.
"Yeah, thank you, that'd be nice."
I poured two glasses of ouzo. Over the years Angela and I had developed a fondness for the anise-flavored liquor and it had become 'our' thing.
We sipped our drinks and as were following a particularly quiet episode of the TV show we were treated to the moans from the couple upstairs as they reached their crescendo. What was unsaid was that both Angela and myself were functionally celibate and that called for more ouzo!
It's not like we got drunk but we did get a healthy buzz going.
After both of the shows ended we called it a night and headed to bed. Me in my bed and Angela in hers. I did my usual night time ablutions and I could hear Angela down the hall doing much the same.
Stripping down to my boxers I went to bed and was asleep within a few minutes. Honestly, my thoughts as I fell asleep were on the plot of the TV show and I was happy that Mal was rescued at the end.
I stirred when I felt a delicate hand on my shoulder. It was dark in the room and I was coming out of my sleep to the soft sound of a familiar voice.
