Guys didn't read, and therefore, didn't believe in fairytales. They weren't raised to be princes. They weren't taught to seek out Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. There were no dragons to slay, curses to break, or glass slippers to fill. There was no such thing as true love, love at first sight or a soul mate.
It was fuck or be fucked, and you left this world just as alone as when you entered it.
He couldn't say for certain when he became so cynical, so pessimistic, so jaded as to the turns his life would eventually take. He only knew he was doomed.
No matter what small fortune, what minor miracle, what benevolent being may enter into his life, at the end of the day, everything always returned to ruins. He would never be anything more than he was, and no matter what the Lord saw fit to give him, someone always came and took it away.
He was just born under a bad sign, he supposed. Not that he believed any of that shit. A man made his own luck; he just hadn't found the right recipe.
But . . . this latest development in his life, had him hoping beyond all reason that there was just a
little
bit of magic left in the world, and just one, small smidgen of an iota was reserved for him . . . and her . . .
"You're such a prude, Daniel." She laughed, raising up on tiptoes, stretching her right arm high above her head to fill the empty slot she'd created just seconds before on one of his shop's topmost shelves.
Any other man would have been irritated, if not outright offended at the verbal jibe, but he'd known her so long, they'd been through so much, and her laughter was just so damned . . . soothing . . . that even if she cussed your mother, burned down your house, totaled your car and kicked your dog, you wouldn't, no,
couldn't
get mad at her because her laughter was just so alive, just so musical, just so lyrical that you had no choice but listen to every word she said with a smile on your face as your head nodded time to her rhythm and your lips mimicked the words spilling from her mouth.
She was an unknowing Siren, you were her knowing slave, and you couldn't imagine life any other way.
Some man
owning
her,
possessing
her, attempting to break her with whips and chains? Impossible. Slavery may have been in the history of her people, but he could see no such manacles
ever
marring that beautifully bronzed skin, that tightly toned flesh, that softly shimmering complexion that spoke not only of health, but of . . . un-use . . . or maybe disuse was the more appropriate term.
His cousin, Terri, who happened to be Mecca's (yes, that was her name) best friend, had said she hadn't let a man touch her in over five years. Considering her attractiveness and obviously open attitude about sex, he found that hard to believe. But, in one of their awkwardly intimate moments they often shared but seldom spoke of, she confessed something to him that she swore she'd never told another living soul.
He couldn't really remember how the conversation began, but it took a turn (as it often did) to the differences between men and women. He'd said that women were duplicitous and untrustworthy, freely shouting out useless shit, but never telling you the things you really needed to know--like STDs. He'd been bored one night and couldn't sleep, and while channel-surfing he'd come across a report about Herpes on The Learning Channel.
It
said that one out of every four women had Herpes and either a)didn't know or b)knew and had no intention of telling you.
She was sitting in the store's empty window seat, her back towards the glass, her legs folded beneath her, her fingers fiddling with a loose thread on the bottom of her tank top. She was dressed from head-to-toe in white except for this wicked pair of dark brown gladiator sandals that snaked all the way up to her knees and tied neatly behind them. "All men are dogs," she'd said. "They'll fuck anything that moves whether you want them to or not, and they don't even have the sense to know there's something
wrong
with that."
Then she spewed out a statistic of her own.
"Did you know that by the age of 18
one
out of every
four
women will have been sexually assaulted?"
He didn't really know what to say.
"And nobody really does anything about it. They're just numbers. Just statistics. But it's pretty scary when you think about it. I mean, think of four women you know, and odds are
at least
one of them has been forced to do something they didn't wanna do."
He still didn't know what to say, but he felt if he stayed silent, she'd sort him in the same category as all the others. "Not all men rape." It sounded weak, without any real conviction; a hollow statement meant to pacify as opposed to console.
"Yeah? Well, not every chick has Herpes or is trying to
hide
the fact that she has Herpes. Hiding other things, though..."
Things got uncomfortably quiet, and he felt the unconscious need to make himself busy in the back room by performing price checks and other mindless tasks that would remove him from the situation, but keep him from looking like a total ass. This
was
his shop, after all. He
did
have a job he was supposed to be doing. The movies, CDs, games, systems and controllers weren't gonna stock themselves.
She continued to sit there as he made his way to the back, behind the black curtain he'd hung up as a makeshift divider between his "office" and the actual "store." He had shelves and shelves of DVDs, stacks upon stacks of CDs, and rows upon rows of games and VHS tapes haphazardly arranged in his crowded little cubby hole. There was a 27" TV in front of him, connected to a PS2, an XBOX and a VCR. His computer desk was behind him, cluttered with various action figures, sports memorabilia and actual office supplies you'd need to run a business--pencils, pens, paper clips, a stapler, staples, rubber bands, and a somewhat outdated computer, equipped with Windows 98. And all his back-stock surrounded him.
If you were claustrophobic, you would've suffocated back there. But he wasn't claustrophobic and was quite comforted by his odd arrangement of possessions. Superman had his Fortress of Solitude, and he had his . . . Cavern of Clutter-tude.
He smiled to himself and settled back into his desk chair, then wheeled it around to face the TV. Just as he was about to click it "On," she appeared on the other side of the curtain. It didn't completely touch the opposing wall. There was a "doorway," of sorts that could comfortably accommodate two full-sized adults and a decorative mirror that he used to keep his eye on potential shoplifters.
"Do you . . . do you think I could use your bathroom? Normally, I'd just go home, but . . ."
He was so . . . fascinated by the thought of her bare ass touching his porcelain seat, he couldn't form a single, coherent word; he merely nodded in the direction she was to go.
There was a doorway (depending on which way he was facing) off to his immediate left/right. Once inside, straight ahead was a less-than-sophisticated sound system and the sudden left held a room longer than it was wide. To the far left was a personal shrine of sorts, composed of various religious images, Good Luck cards from his opening, and a vase containing a single, artificial black rose, Mecca, herself, had seen fit to give him. It wasn't a curse, or anything. Black was his favorite color, and they hadn't known each other long enough for any other color to be given with any amount of sincerity. The toilet, a mirror and a sink were to the far right. All of which, luckily, he'd just cleaned.
He heard the light switch flick "On" and the sound of flat shoes on vinyl flooring. The footsteps stopped and (he didn't
mean
to listen so hard) he swore he could hear every tooth of her zipper as it came undone. Or, perhaps it was just his mind playing tricks on him. It had been well over two years since that particular sound had graced his ears, and when it was his ex, Alicia, doing the undressing it was always accompanied by an irritated/exasperated look and a sigh of utter boredom. He'd managed to fuck her twice before the effort it took to maintain an erection with her became greater than the pleasure of mutual release.
Not that she ever came for him, he ruefully recalled. She'd "tolerate" his touch. She'd put up with his grunting and grinding. He could lick and suck and fuck where he may, but she refused to enjoy it. Two times was all he could take. She'd mentally castrated him their first time together, and the second time was an exercise in futility. He wanted to prove that he wasn't as "whipped" as his friends had said. He'd fuck this bitch till his come filled her every orifice, she was so bow-legged all her friends would call her "Hoss," and she'd break the world's record for the highest note hit, inaudible to man.
