The Naed Philosopher

"You have a self-destructive streak in you, Brian."

Lisa wasn't smiling, but she looked better than she had at the house, Brian thought. "The worst thing about that is the collateral damage." he said.

Lisa nodded and took a bite of her manicotti. The crowd at Scarpelli's was curious, but they kept their distance. Brian had his own reserved corner booth now. It afforded some privacy, but they still had to keep their voices down.

"It's worrying either way." Lisa said.

"It scared the hell out of me, Lisa. I've never done anything like that. Never knew I could."

She looked up at him over her plate. "You probably have and just didn't recognize it for what it was." She took a sip of her Coke. She gave him a hard look. "What do you want from this?"

The question startled him. "I want that to have never happened."

That was when Brian saw the scolding, disappointed version of Lisa's knowing smile. It gave him chills. "Aside from that, I don't know. I want to do whatever makes you hurt less." he said.

"Should have thought of that when I was sucking your dick." she said bitterly. But her face relaxed, looked apologetic. "Sorry. That wasn't fair. You've probably told yourself that a thousand times."

Brian nodded. Lisa ran her finger around the rim of her glass, thinking. He asked her, "What do you want from this, then?"

"I haven't decided yet. I guess I want to find the thing in you I saw that night. To see it again. To know that that is who you really are."

"I don't know if it is." Brian admitted. "I haven't known who I really am for a while now."

"Since the test?"

"Yeah. It turned my whole life upside down."

"Dream come true."

"Hardly." He responded.

"Really? There's nothing good about it?"

He stared at her. "I ruined the best thing that came from it."

"You damaged it."

Brian wasn't sure what to think. It wasn't ruined? He didn't dare think there was even the remotest chance they could get back together. Part of him didn't want it. It would complicate things, a lot. He wanted to ask how he could fix the damage, but that sounded too much like asking to get back together with her.

"It's the damage to you I'm worried about."

"Yes, Brian, you've established that." Her tone was impatience, annoyance, but not yet anger.

"What do you want me to say, then?" A little pique crept into his own voice. God, don't let this turn into a fight.

"You should come on my show."

Brian leapt at the chance to give her something, anything. "If that will help, then I will."

Lisa put her fork down and took another sip of her Coke. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. She stood, her meal less than half finished. "It's not for me, it's for you. That's the only thing you can do for me, is to help yourself." She walked purposefully out of the restaurant.

Brian sat stunned, his lunch looking anything but appetizing any more. He wanted to run after her, but even he knew enough to know that wasn't a 'chase me' kind of departure.

What pissed her off so much? He just wanted to help her, help her heal, as she said on her show. He assumed her wanting him on was because everyone and their uncle would tune in...

He closed his eyes and dropped his head. 'I'm an idiot' he thought.

====

By the time he got back home, his mood was less dark and more terrified. Of course Lisa didn't want him on the show for ratings. He felt like an asshole all over again for suggesting it. It was an insult.

No, it was worse than that. She was trying to get him naked. The Naked Philosopher, baring all to her audience. You don't get invited on a show with that premise without doing the same. Sitting in her dorm-room studio with her her unclothed was the least of it.

She was going to strip him down to his bare skin, and not stop there. She was going to slice him open, dig her hands in, and keep digging till she found what makes him tick. She'd almost said as much when she told him she needed to see what she saw that night.

It would have been hard enough to do that one on one with her. Hell, even to do it in the clinical confidentiality guaranteed office of a psychiatrist. This will be in front of tens of thousands of people. The whole campus. The recording will never go away, for the rest of the time she maintained her site, it will be there, for anybody who wanted to hear it.

He thought about what Stockton, his history professor had said, that his name would be in future history books. That a hundred years from now, one of every 2500 people on earth, give or take some percentage, would be descended from him. When the Great Unwinding was fully unwound, and we were struggling to bring civilization back to the wasteland, the people doing it would have his genes, his name.

They probably wouldn't have the time or resources to write history books. For a while, at least. The internet may not make it, but the internet never forgets, and in one form or another, his words will still be there somewhere.

His raw, naked psyche will be there, flayed open, unprotected, for everyone to examine.

He realized he was not thinking of going on her show as an "if". When Lisa poured her heart across the internet, he'd felt that he had to match her courage. He had to put his name out there, to tell the world who she was talking about, so she could hear what he needed to tell her.

He couldn't stop now. He picked up his phone and found Lisa in his contacts.

Brian: --When?--

====

It seemed strange that Abby could smile at him like that. She'd been hard on him the day after it all went down. Tough love, he thought, but could she really love him? This would be their fifth date. They certainly felt something for each other, and Brian had drunkenly confessed his love that horrible night.

He didn't feel any mad, passionate love, but he did feel something warmer, calmer, more comfortable. Maybe that head over heels thing required the anticipation, the hope for something new, to give it that mad, aching edge.

He wanted that with her, but he'd kept telling himself that he didn't want it until the time was right. Maybe he'd taken that too far. He didn't even let himself want it, to experience the wanting, the hoping. Not yet.

He wanted to love her, he wanted to want her. But the raw truth was, he didn't need to do either. He thought of Sandra, both Sandras, actually. Two girls he'd fucked. Just fucked, nothing else. Physical release for him, more complicated motives for them, but there was no real relationship goals from either side. No caring, no intimacy.

With the second Sandra, there was intimacy, just not with her. The moment he and Lisa shared while he ejaculated into Sandra was something... something very intimate. And the sex he'd had with Lisa later was as well. It was different. It was what he'd always wanted. Almost.

He put his arm around Abby in the back seat of the big SUV he got driven around in since he had become a literal National Treasure, and pulled her closer. When he'd arrived to pick her up, they shared a hug, a kiss, and a big smile. A smile he felt he didn't deserve, for a variety of reasons.

The familiar landmarks of the campus passed outside the windows in the dim light of early evening this late in the year. Familiar, but foreign in a way. It had all changed in the last few weeks.

No, he had. It hadn't changed, he was seeing it with different eyes. He was a different person. He turned to Abby, and she was smiling at him. They kissed, and missed the scenery for the rest of the way to the restaurant.

"You seem preoccupied." Abby said after they'd ordered their appetizers and looked over the menus. He reached across the table and took her hand.

"I'm worried." he said.

"Let me guess..."

He smiled. "I saw Lisa for lunch."

Abby's face brightened. "Oh? How did it go?"

"Strange."

"How so?"

"She says I should go on her podcast."

He felt Abby's hand stiffen in his. Her face changed, to what he could not tell. "Naked." she said.

Brian nodded. "You know what that means, for her."

"Yeah." she looked down at the table. "You think you can handle it?"

"I don't have a choice." He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. "Abby, I'm going to have to give up the old Brian. Give up what I always wanted."

Abby looked worried, a little scared. For herself. He looked in her eyes. "I love you Abby." he said.

Her face changed again. Her eyes were probing, looking for something.

"I'm stone cold sober" Brian said.

Abby nodded and took a deep breath. She didn't say anything, then the waitress returned and broke the spell.

====

"I'm not anyone's confessor." Lisa began. Brian could see her bare breasts over the small desk that served as Lisa's studio. He was nude as well, and was about to be naked for the whole world to see.

"I don't want to listen to a recitation of your sins." Lisa went on, looking straight into his eyes. "I don't want an apology, I don't want an explanation, I don't want to hear how you'll pay for your crimes.

"I want to hear why you hurt. I want to hear that darkness in you, the one you hide from the world, and from yourself. I want to see you naked."

She turned her eyes from him and punched a key on the laptop sitting on a stack of milk crates next to her. He looked at her breasts, at her face in profile. She was in her element. Two microphones sat on the desk, sheathed in thick black foam. A control box sat to one side, plugged into her laptop.

"With me in the studio tonight for the Naked Philosopher is Brian Abernathy. I don't need to explain who he is, or why I invited him here. If you've listened to my last two episodes, you know. If you haven't, well, I'll leave it to you to catch up.

Brian could see a counter on the screen of the laptop. It was currently around 3500, wavering up and down by a few. As he watched, it started ticking up more than down, and the number climbed.

"What are you wearing, Brian?" she asked into the microphone, a smile on her face and in her voice. She wasn't looking at him.

Brian leaned into the microphone, then felt silly. He didn't have to do that. The mics were positioned so they could speak naturally. He tried to steady himself. Suddenly, the nervousness of what he was about to go through paled in the face of simple stage fright. 'Picture your audience in their underwear', the old saying went, but it didn't help him here. It still left them at an advantage. That was why Lisa did it this way.

"Nothing, Lisa" he said as neutrally as possible, but his voice still cracked once. He took a sip of water.

Lisa averted her eyes from him and smiled. It was reflected in her voice. "You're the first guest I've ever had on The Naked Philosopher. The first of many, I hope, all of them as bare as you are now."

She looked across at him. He didn't know if he was supposed to say something. He didn't. "Are you ready for this?" she asked, looking straight at him. She wasn't smiling.

"Not even close." he said. The one thing he had to remember, the only thing that counted, was to be completely honest. There was no hiding here, and trying to would bring disaster.

"Let's ease you into it then. Any advice for all the girls out there that would like to attract your attention?"

That was easing into it? "Don't try to act like a porn star. You look ridiculous. Just be yourself."

Lisa smirked at the microphone. "You heard him, ladies, toss out those high heels and thongs." she looked at Brian again. "Ginger or MaryAnne?"

The question caught him off guard. Out of context like that, it took him a second to get the reference. "MaryAnne, hands down."

"Inara, Zooey, Kaylee, or River?"

That reference he got. It was one of his favorite shows, even if there was only one season, goddammit. "Can I take them in alphabetical order?"

Lisa smiled, at him for once. But it was brief. "You probably could, but I have you pegged as a Kaylee kind of guy."

"Guilty." Brian said, smiling.

"Big tits or small?"

Brian laughed. "Depends what day you ask me."

"Fair enough. I guess you get to make a fresh choice or three every day, don't you?"

Was that a rhetorical question? Lisa was looking at him, obviously looking for a response. "I guess, give or take." he said.

"Shaved or hairy?"

"Same answer" Brian responded immediately. "Like I said, I like a girl who is just herself."

"I have a sponsored question from 'EloiMuskrat'. Twenty dollars, thank you so much, Eloi. They ask 'Which one are you, Lisa?'" She smiled, and looked over at Brian. "I'll let Brian answer that one."

Brian blushed a little, but he answered. "Smooth as silk, Eloi. And beautiful."

She smiled at the microphone again. "Thank you, Brian."

"What's the first thing you did when you found out you were an Ace?"

There it was. She knew what that question meant to him. She knew that was the root of everything that had happened. It felt like a shot to the gut.

His eyes flicked over to the counter. over 10000 listeners now, and still rising. Word had gotten out.

"It's just me and you now, Brian." Lisa said, seeing his eyes flit.

And thousands of voyeurs, Brian thought. He tried to put them out of his head, without really succeeding.

He stared at Lisa for a long moment. She made no effort to fill the dead air, just stared at him. He took a deep breath, probably audible on the stream.

"I had sex with the nurse that administered the test." he said, his voice barely audible. "That's how I found out, actually. She didn't tell me my results, exactly. She just made up a story about how she wanted to be my first, and when she got what she wanted, she just turned and walked away."

"She didn't even thank you?"

"Actually she did, in the same way somebody might thank you for holding a door open for them. That was how I knew, though I tried... I tried to convince myself that wasn't it."

"Most guys would be thrilled. You don't sound to happy about it." She was looking at him now, still not smiling, but her expression was soft, sympathetic.

"I'm.... I'm not."

"Was she ugly or smell bad or something?"

"No, she was not bad looking." he looked at Lisa as if to signal that she should ask the next question, but she just looked at him.

"It was my first time." He confessed to the entire internet. Though anybody that cared could have known that fairly easily. "I had always hoped that would be something more."

"More what?" Lisa asked gently.

Brian stared at her for a long time. She let the silence go on as long as he needed. Finally, he broke it.

"More romantic, more intimate. Like two people who were together before and would be together after. A real relationship. Like two people who cared about each other, who were in it together, learning something about each other and the world. More like something that leads to a morning after where you lie in bed naked and cuddly and flirty, but you are in no hurry, and everything seems right with the world."

Lisa audibly gasped at the repetition of her own description of their morning after, before he had thrown it all away.

Brian thought of Abby. Of course she was listening. He'd tried to prepare her for this. He was going to be completely honest here, so he was completely honest with Abby, for better or worse. Now she was going to hear it told to Lisa. She, along with everyone else, would be eavesdropping on a private conversation.

"Like what we had." Lisa said. No more inferences, she told the world straight up that it was Brian she had been talking about. That she and the guest in front of her in her studio had had sex.

"Like what we almost had." Brian said. He had enough brutal truth to go around. "Lisa, we hadn't been together before we made love. It was wonderful, it was meaningful. That and the morning after. But we had not been together. We'd only met hours before. Yes, we had something more, but not enough. Not yet at least.

"I had a great time that night, when we went out for dinner, and talked after. That moment we shared, when I was... servicing the other girl and we looked into each other's eyes. We weren't touching each other, but we climaxed together. Together, me and you, sharing something amazing.

"I felt something at that moment, and felt it even more strongly after. But whatever it was, it was just starting. It was not yet something that either of us could know was... well, that it was a real and lasting thing. It could have become that, but it wasn't there yet.

"The next morning was everything you described it as. But it was too soon for us. Too soon for me. And what you were about to do, I'd dreamed of it, I'd fantasized about it. But it was too soon, too soon for it to mean what it was starting to feel like it meant. What I always wanted it to mean."

Lisa was watching him, hardly blinking. She was a good listener. One of the things that made for a great interviewer, Brian realized. If you got your subject talking, don't interrupt, don't cut them short. Let it play out.

He meant to take advantage of that. "That nurse, she took something from me. She took that first time, full of innocence mixed with desire mixed with nervous anticipation. That first time of two people taking a big step into the unknown together, giving each other the strength to go through with it.

"Ever since, I'd been trying to find a way to get that back. To put the genie back in the bottle. But I can't go back, I realized that after we had lunch, Lisa.

"I can't go back, not ever. Trying to, trying to hold on to it when it couldn't exist anymore, it led to disaster. I ruined what we had. I tried to keep an impossible fantasy from slipping through my fingers. I almost ruined what I did have with..."

He remembered there was an audience. He shouldn't name names, even though Lisa knew full well who it was. "I almost ruined what I did have with someone else. I refused to acknowledge what we had because it didn't fit that fantasy, that impossible fantasy.

"Lisa, I told her for the first time a few days ago that I love her. Because I realized it's true. I had drunk texted it that awful night. That was my subconscious telling me something. I was wasted enough to let the truth bubble up, to escape that hard, dark tomb I had buried it in. The truth that I could never get it back, and refusing to let it go was the only thing in the way of something good, something wonderful, and that I couldn't let that be destroyed too.

He remembered.

~~~

"I love you Abby." he said again when the waitress dropped off their appetizers. He poured out everything he'd just told Lisa.

Abby bit her lip and her eyes got soft and misty. He wasn't sure how to interpret it.

"Abby, what we have is not the thing I always wanted. But it is something, something wonderful, something real, something that might be better than what I always wanted, if I let it. I don't want to lose it."

She squeezed his hand. Then she made a scene.

She jumped out of her chair and came around to his side of the table. She threw her arms around him and kissed him. It wasn't a timid kiss. It was full of hope and promise and relief and need. Brian stood and wrapped his arms around her. He didn't care that the whole restaurant was watching.

"I love you too." she said. He returned the kiss, and more. Their hands roamed over each others' bodies while their lips frantically explored each other. They almost started pulling their clothes off, but before they went that far, Abby started pulling him toward the door, laughing and crying at the same time.

He staggered, realizing he had to pay their bill. He frantically reached into his pants and took out his wallet. He grabbed a few bills that probably amounted to triple the cost of the food and threw them on the table.

By the time Archie pulled the SUV up to his door, Brian's shirt and Abby's blouse were open. Brian was palming her breasts through her sheer black bra. Abby's was starting to push her hand into his unsnapped pants.