Three Days in February

Three Days in February

(a Jonas Silversmith story)

Feb. 14, 2015

Maybe I've never told you this, but I truly hate Valentine's Day. I get that it's meant to be a romantic holiday and a celebration of love, but in thirty plus years, I've had someone to celebrate it with exactly once. But every year, I go out to a bar on Valentine's Day, just out of some sense of obligation, that I should be at least

trying

to fill this hole inside of my soul.

My name's Karl Hines, and if there's a prize being given out for shittiest luck with women, I'm pretty sure I'm the lifetime record holder for most successful wins of it. I know, I know, you're used to dude in bars saying they have the worst luck, but I mean it when I tell you that there's something weird going on in my life.

What do I mean? Okay, look, I'm going to answer your question, but when you say you don't believe me, you need to remember that you only have yourself to thank for this. You know the old expression, 'any port in a storm?' Well, I've never docked in the same harbor twice. Not by choice, mind you, but it seems like after one night with me, any girl turns and heads for the hills.

I, my swarthy bartending friend, am the King of Being Ghosted.

My best friend Neil calls me the Sex Magician, because all I gotta do is fuck a girl and she disappears. And I'm not just talking, like, doesn't call me back or doesn't visit the same bars I do anymore. I mean

literally

vanished. At least from my life, anyway.

You'd think I would take it personally, and I guess maybe I did, at first anyway. The first time it happened was high school, and back then I guess, I wrote it off as typical high school bullshit. I was dating this girl, Erika with a K, and we went to prom together, and things were going great. She'd even gone out of her way to get us a hotel room after prom. We were both 18 and felt like it was time we started acting like adults. We weren't allowed to stay out all night, obviously, but she had it in mind that our first time having sex should be in a bed, and I can't say that I disagreed with her. We'd done most of our fooling around in the back of my beat-up old car, but neither of us wanted to lose our virginity that way. It just seemed... cheap.

Anyway, after prom we went to the hotel, and we had a wonderful time together. It wasn't perfect, but shit, nobody's first time is. I like to think that I handled myself pretty well and put in plenty of effort to make sure she got off as much as she could before we got down to the main event, where I don't think either of us put up that much of a remarkable performance, but we got it done. And I made sure not to fall into any of the usual dumbass traps that boys usually do at that age. I made sure to cuddle her before and afterwards. We talked a lot; I told her she was pretty and special and how important she'd made me feel by trusting me with that moment.

But there was a distance to her that hadn't been there before we'd fucked. I didn't know how big a distance. I couldn't even fathom how big it was, and to this day, I still don't know why.

I'd picked her up every day for school, but on the following Monday morning, I went out to my car and found an envelope in a plastic bag on my windshield, I guess in case it rained or in case the morning dew tried to settle in.

It was the first Dear John letter I'd ever received but was extremely far from the last one. I keep them all in a scrapbook at home. Neil says I should publish them in a book or something, but I've told him like a dozen times that since I didn't

write

any of them, I couldn't fairly be called

the author

of that book. Besides, they all sort of blend together.

No lies, it's like a clustering of misery, sympathy and "it's not your fault" over and over again, in a few dozen different tones. Sometimes these days it's a text message, or a series of them. I've got a handful of emails. There was a voicemail once. But it's never an in-person conversation, nothing where I'm allowed to talk back or defend myself or ask questions.

They tell me something isn't sitting right, that they felt so intense before but now there's nothing left, and they don't feel like it would be fair to be with me and just going through the motions, that I deserve better, that I deserve someone who makes me happy. They tell me they aren't good enough for me, and that sooner or later, I'll find the right person, so I just need to keep on getting out there. It's almost uncanny how similar the contents of all the things are, but I keep hoping that at some point I'm going to break the pattern, to figure out what's causing it and to move beyond the weirdness that seems to be stalking me.

The one common thread about all of them is the

lengths

they go to convey to me that it

isn't

my fault, and that I didn't do anything to cause it, nor should I in any way feel guilty about it all. Like, it's happened so much that I can't tell how many times I've gone around and back from suspicious to just confused, over and over again. There's something so very

strange

about all of it, how these women all have the same sort of undercurrent to their opinions about what's stopping them with being with me.

And! And and AND, I should add,

only

after we've fucked! Always the day right after we've fucked! I've tried different things! I've tried stalling out the sex for as long as possible, I've tried rushing into sex with, like, basically not getting to know the girl whatsoever. No matter what kind of influence I try to exert, the result is always the same - we fuck, they bail, game over, man, game over!

When I tell you they bail, I want you to know I mean they

really

bail. With the exception of Erika, they all fucking disappear after we've fucked. And I don't mean, like, they changed what bars or whatever they go to. I mean they upend their lives, and they get the fuck out of town. The power of my tainted cock is so great that apparently it can drive women to break leases, abandon friends and even switch national allegiances.

After I got out of college, when I first moved out here, the first girl I hooked up with, she took me back to her place, we fucked, we fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning, she'd moved all her shit out of the apartment while I slept, and I never saw her again. Her roommate asked me what the fuck had just happened, and all I could tell her was that I hadn't the slightest fucking clue.

Neil has put this to the test because he didn't believe me. He and I have been best friends, mostly, since junior high, and when he moved out to the West Coast after me, he set me up with one of his coworkers, somebody he was convinced was too situated and well-established within the local community to ever pull that kind of stunt. Her name was Opal, and she assured me that there was no possible way my dick could be so life-changing that she would ghost me. I begged her not to go through with it, because she seemed to love who and where she was, and I didn't want to ruin any of that for her. She said there was no possible way that fucking me would make her leave.

Wanna guess who was right?

Since then, Neil's respected how weird all of it is, and we've both agreed that it's probably better if I don't sleep with anyone that I really want a long-term connection with, right? That said, I don't know if you've ever tried to go a long period of time without sex, but lemme tell you, brother, it fucking sucks.

So, after about twenty years of this shit, I came to a conclusion. Just last fall, truth be told. Nothing I do has changed anything, so why fight it, right? Just go with the flow and enjoy things whenever I can.

I mean, there's one other option, but it's not one I'm particularly eager to get into, because it would mean I'd be lying to whoever I hooked up with. I could claim I'm impotent. Oh sure, I'd go down on her or finger her or use toys on her, but I'd have to find some way to prevent myself from getting hard all the fucking time, and on top of that, the shame of lying so much would probably drive me out of my fucking skull.

My life has been an open book from start to finish, and I've done everything I possibly can to not lie, not to anyone about anything. Shit, I'm not even very good at telling the little white lies I'm supposed to tell to make people feel better or to not hurt their feelings. I probably shouldn't have told your coworker Athena that her boyfriend really hated that Taylor Swift concert she dragged him to last month, but she was going on and on and on about how surprised she was that he got into it.

Anyway, this is my first Valentine's Day out since I decided there wasn't any point in thinking about consequences for my actions when it comes to finding love. I can search or I can just ignore it and have fun. The key is to not build any real attachment to anyone I end up hooking up with, and to understand that they're going to take off, and that while it might sort of be my

fault

, nothing I did

caused

it to happen.

What's that, friend? Sure, I can answer a couple of questions for you. Oh! Excuse me, darling, didn't realize you were trying to sit down. Oh,

your

girlfriend, huh? Heh. Well, then she's absolutely safe. No fear of you up and disappearing on us, darling. Anyway, I didn't catch your name, barkeep. Jonas? Like the guy who got swallowed by the whale? Sorry, I bet you hear that all the time. I'll do better, I promise.

How'd you guess I was adopted? Yeah, you got me. You know those weird stories about people being found on the doorstep of an orphanage or the mayor's house or whatever? I was apparently left as a baby just outside of the oldest bookstore in Chicago. The couple that ran it took me in and raised me as their own, even though they'd just become grandparents the week before. I sort of grew up thinking of their real kids as my aunt and uncle.

Well, sure, I think anyone who's adopted has tried one of those genetic tests to figure out where they came from. Mine's sort of a headscratcher, though. I mean, look at me. You're thinking the same thing everyone thinks - he's got to be, like, some weird combination of Northern central European, and you'd pretty much be right. Like, there's a bunch of German, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch rolled up into one big mess, but there's also this block that they don't really know

what

to make of. They think it

might

be some odd strain of Egyptian or Northern African that they haven't seen much of, but it confused them enough that they gave me a refund on the test. They said that stripe probably came from one of my grandparents, and they simply didn't know what to do with it. Being adopted, it's not like there's anybody I can really

ask

about my family history.

Hey, good guess. You're right, whatever weirdness there is in my genetic lottery, it's also made me nearly bulletproof. No broken bones, no major infections, no cavities, no trips to the hospital except the one time, when I was eight, but boy, was that a doozy.

I mean, there's not really a whole lot to tell. It was a weird, freak accident that still doesn't really even make much sense to this day. Me and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood were out playing catch at the local park. Scotty's older sister, Jill, she was like fifteen and babysitting us, but she was mostly reading her Anne Rice novel while we were out playing. Anyway, this big gust of wind kicks up and blowing a bunch of sticks and branches at us, and this sprig shoots up at me and stabs right into my shoulder.

The memory's all kind of jumbled, since I wasn't all that old, but I remember feeling like my whole body was just being drained of energy. Jill's freaking out, Scotty's freaking out, and they picked me up and took me to the hospital, but I have this vague memory of a doctor pulling the sprig out of my shoulder and then suddenly feeling like everything was going to be okay again.

Yeah, right? It really

was

mistletoe, too. My adopted dad called me Baldur off and on for the rest of his life. Weirdest thing.

So yeah, that's my story. Anyway, after his divorce, Neil said he wanted to leave Chicago and have a new start, so he and I moved into an apartment up here in the city late last year. He and his new girlfriend are out tonight while I'm doing whatever it is single guys are supposed to do on Valentine's Day - go out on the prowl for the next Miss Disappear.

Thanks Jonas. I hope shit gets better for me too.

Feb. 14, 2020

Hey! Long time no see, Jonas! How the fuck have you been, man? What's it been, three, four years? No no, the place hasn't changed that much. You were still the best bartender this little San Francisco watering hole had ever seen, but I understand that you and Kelly just needed to get out of the city and see something new. Yeah, Athena went off and married her boyfriend, and they moved off to Tennessee, so it's just the two Timmys running the place these days. Big Timmy and his boyfriend, Luis, finally tied the knot last year. Little Timmy's still dating Georgia, although God knows she's gonna grow sick of his inability to commit sooner or later. Heh, yeah, I know, I know, and you're right, she

would

hook up with me in a heartbeat, but then she'd just be another Dear John letter in the book, and I couldn't bear to do that to her. She's a sweetheart. Besides, she's, what, 25? And I'm gonna turn 40 here in a few weeks. Girl like that has her whole life in front of her.

Yeah, I guess not that much has changed with me, either. Me and Neil ended up buying the house down in Sunset and splitting it in two, sort of. I mean, yeah, it's still one big house with only one kitchen, but other than that, him and his old lady live on the lower floor, and I live upstairs on the second floor by myself, so we're kind of roommates and kind of not. I was going to actually install maybe a lock on my floor, but I guess I'm glad I didn't.

What do you think? Yeah, the curse or whatever you want to call it is still in effect. I tried leaning into the whole "meaningless, emotionless sex" thing, but I'm just not fucking built that way, man. It was hard as hell trying to just be that 'fuck and forget' kind of dude, and I kept telling myself that since I knew they were going to be gone tomorrow, I didn't have to invest any sort of emotional weight into meeting them. But it never seemed to take.

I know, I know, I said that I wasn't going to let it get to me, but there's only so much of a life a person can live without a real connection to anybody else, you feel me? Years and years of knowing that any relationship I got into was going to end with a guaranteed ghosting, that does something to a man, or least it did to me.

And then there was Virginia. Yes, like the song, dickhead. We got to be very good friends, and she wanted more, and God knows I wanted more too, but I know the score, right? I know the rules I have to live by, and I knew that if we slept together, in the morning she'd be gone, and we were getting to be

very

close friends. Like, talking about the meaning of life stuff and legacy stuff and, y'know, the fate of our personal universes and shit.

Virginia's younger than me, like, a

lot

younger than me, but that doesn't seem to matter. She's 23 and just getting started in the world and I'm closer to twice that than I am that. She's a brunette with kicking curves and this sort of angelic smile that makes you feel like you're the only person in the world that matters. We met at a Smashing Pumpkins concert. You remember when they played their residency at the Fillmore? Me, Neil and Neil's old lady Rachel went to a couple of the shows, and we met Virginia at the second of them, and we were having such a good time, we invited her to come with us to Buster's for our traditional post-concert late night cheesesteak.

After that, she and I start hanging out two or three nights a week. That goes on for a few months. One night she wants to stay over, and I know where it's heading, so I start to panic and tell her that I don't know if that's a good idea. She tells me if I'm worried about the age difference that it doesn't mean a fucking thing to her, and I tell her that's not it. Then she tells me, straight up tells me, that she's in love with me, and she knows I'm in love with her, and why the hell I won't act on it, and why I won't let

her

act on it, because believe me, she'd tried more than a couple of time and each time I'd had to try and let her down easy.

Anyway, last December, like a week before Christmas, she comes over to my place, demanding an explanation. And I figure, fine, fuck it, she's not going to believe me, but the truth'll be out there, and I won't be able to say I haven't tried. And so I just come out and tell her. I lay the entire tale out, sparing no detail, explaining the whole weird fucking sordid past.

At first, she laughs, and I don't blame her, because, you know, who wouldn't? The whole thing sounds fucking

stupid

on its face. But then I show her the scrapbook, with all the Dear John letters, and her expression goes from insulted to scared. I cry a bit, and she cries a bit more, and she asks how the fuck I've been living with this for as long as I have without going crazy. I tell her I've probably gone crazy and back a few times over the years, but at the end of the day, I can't think of anything

else

to try and solve the problem, and that's why, despite how much I fucking love the shit out of her, I can't fuck her, because if I do, she's going to disappear, and that's going to fucking break my heart, and I just couldn't live with that kind of disappointment.

The next day, she comes over to my place again, and this time she's got her friend Genesis with her. Now, lemme tell you, Genesis is an utter fucking

smokeshow

but she's also kind of a dim bulb. Not that she's not smart, because she is, but Genesis doesn't have a lick of common sense in her brain. She's this gorgeous natural northern California surfer hippie girl with long golden waves of hair and skin that looks like she was born tanned. She tended bar down in Santa Cruz, so we only saw her a few times a month, but I'd sort of made it a rule not to hit on any of Virginia's friends, because I didn't want them to up and vanish on her.

And that's when Virginia tells me that's

exactly

what Genesis is there to do. She's going to fuck me while Virginia watches, and come tomorrow, whatever crazy spell is on me is going to be gone, because it's all in my head and it doesn't really exist and if it really does exist, she has to see it for herself because it's been driving her crazy. But because she wants to respect me, she's just gonna watch me and Genesis fuck.

Genesis tells me it's just sex and I shouldn't think about it so much and I shouldn't get in my head about it because I've got some negative energy about me, and once she helps me lift that cloud, I'll be able to get on with my life. She's one of those free love chicks who genuinely thinks the whole world will fix itself if she thinks enough good thoughts at it.

I beg Virginia not to make me go through with this, that I'm only going to ruin her friendship with Genesis by doing it, and both of them laugh. Genesis tells me they aren't that great of friends, and that nothing, literally

nothing

will make her leave her hometown of Santa Cruz.

Virginia tells me that if I want her to believe me, this is what it's going to take.

So yeah, fuck it, man, I did it. I fucked Genesis, and it was great,

she

was great, even if it was a little weird with Virginia there telling me what to do, what to say, how to do it. Even weirder, Virginia told me over and over again that I could imagine Genesis was her, if it would make me fuck her even harder, and that she wouldn't mind.