New story, written years ago.

A friend of mine got a DWI a few years back. I took him to court. I watched people and dreamed up this little sick love story.


We met in court. That fact alone should have clued me in to the type of relationship we would forge together. I knew it would eventually go badly looking back, but I always think things will go badly. I’m a pessimist, and so was she, but we met in a time of forced optimism for both of us. Neither of us wanted to get sent to jail. I was there for driving intoxicated and she was there on a charge of aggravated assault after she got in a fight at a bar and slugged the bouncer. We both had booze in common, and that was all we needed at the time, that and lonliness, I guess.
If you’ve ever had to deal with the legal system before you will know that it is extremely boring. There is a lot of time sitting around waiting. So we waited. And in the process we found ourselves conversing with the other various miscreants present. It was the usual assortment—drug violations, traffic situations, and the lot—regular people having a bad week. We sort of found eachother by default. We were the same age and race, so we had similar backgrounds. It was court so we were on our best behavior. I was dressed in my cleanest clothes, I was showered, shaved, and I had my hair neatly put into place. She was wearing the type of suit you would expect a female CEO of a fortune 500 company to wear. It was new, she bought it for the occasion. She was quite beautiful, but that was the first and only time I would ever see her looking like that. After hours of sitting and chatting together we decided to have dinner. We had, as a result of the days proceedings, both lost our driving privledges, so we took a cab to a bar and grill to celebrate not having to go to jail.
As I said, we had booze in common, so it is not unusual that we found ourselves to soon be uncommonly drunk. After dinner and many cocktails we stummbled down the street together laughing at nothing in particular. We were having the time of our lives. We were like two soldiers surviving combat sharing in our mutual joy with gleeful camaraderie. We would pause every few blocks or so and make out. Eventually we stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka and a case of beer and went back to her place.
The rest of the night was quite blurry. We drank and we fucked. Then we ordered chinese food, ate, and then drank and fucked some more. When I woke up it was still dark outside. My mouth was dry and my head was spinning. For a moment I had no idea where the hell I was. I sat up and as my eyes ajusted to the darkness it became clear that I was lying on the floor somewhere. I was in a hallway. I focused on a cobweb in the corner of the wall and the ceiling for a minute and then rested my gaze on a poster on the wall that was half lighted from an outside street lamp. It was from some foreign movie I had never heard of. I looked at it for a seeming eternity. It featured a man in a cape on a horse holding a sword. “Who the hell is this broad anyway?” I kept wondering to myself. Then I picked myself up off the floor and noticed a pile of rice and vegetables splattered on the floor next to me. It was on my chest too. I was naked. I found the bathroom, washed myself off and took gargantuan gulps of water from the faucet. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were blood red, my face was pale, and I still had bits of undigested rice in my sticky hair that looked like maggots to me. “Why am I such a hopeless lout?” I derided myself. “Well at least I got laid.” I smiled at my reflection but the smile I received seemed beleagered and sad. I went to look for my clothes.
I found my underwear in the kitchen and my pants on the radiator. I put my pants on and cleaned up my vomit with my underwear. I threw the whole mess in the bathroom garbage and went looking for my shirt. I was still too shaky and still too drunk to feel guilty, but I knew the guilt was coming. If only my mother could see me know, I thought, she’d be so proud. That actually made me laugh at the time.
I couldn’t find my shirt anywhere and I knew it had to be behind the closed door to the bedroom. I was reticent to enter. She was in there. I was embarrassed. I considered walking home topless, but as I heard the birds chirping in dawn and the early morning hum of the busses outside, I decided not to subject the working people of the city to that type of weirdness. The sun was rising. Orange light splashed on the furniture in the room. It was lovely. I layed down on the couch and fell asleep once more.
When I awoke next I was hot. The sun was shining brightly upon me. I was thirsty. I sat up quickly and stared about the room. Everything was still strangely quiet. The poster of the horseman stared back at me. I went to the fridge and grabbed a beer. I drank it down in four gulps. Then I walked gently to the bedroom door. I knocked lightly, and upon hearing nothing I carefully and slowly turned the knob and peered inside. She was still sleeping. The shade was drawn and the room looked gray. She was on the bed at an angle. The covers were on the floor. She was wearing my shirt but below the waist she was naked. There was a dark spot on the bed next to her. She must have pissed the bed, I thought, or maybe I did before I ended up in the hallway. She looked so peaceful. I looked at her legs pressed together and at her triangle vagina, I actually yearned to lie next to her and be her boyfriend. The clock by her bed read 10:47. I had missed work. Again. I climbed in bed beside her and spooned her avoiding the pee stain, and fell asleep again.
I opened my eyes. The clock read 1:26. She was gone. I rose and went to the bathroom. She was in there, brushing her teeth. She smiled at me through foam and toothbrush. I smiled back and went to the couch and sat down. A minute later she came out and sat next to me and put her arms around me.
“Thanks for staying”, she said.
“I almost didn’t”, I admitted. “But you were too cute in my shirt.”
She laughed and tossled my hair, but soon she lept back and stated, “You’re gross, get in the shower. I’ll put our clothes in the laundry. Feel free to use my toothbrush too.”
After my shower I put on one of her robes and went into the kitchen where she was cooking. The rest of the apartment looked clean.
“Your clothes will be done in an hour or so, until then we’ll have omlettes. The grease will be good for your hangover”, she said while stirring.
We ate our breakfast in silence, and once my clothes were dry she handed them to me straight faced.
“So I guess you have to go home and take care of missing work and everything”, she said.
“Yeah, and I have to try to get my drivers license back.” I looked at her and she seemed sad, or was it the same guilt that I felt for being so drunk and stupid the night before.
We kissed goodbye and it was one of those unemotional kisses, an uncomfortable kiss, a kiss that is merely protocol for the situation. I promised to call her and went out the door. I walked down the hall and pressed the down button on the elevator. The doors opened. I stepped inside. Then, just as the doors were closing I put my hand out, the doors reopenened and I went back to her door and knocked. She opened the door and smiled at me with such beauty that I pulled her to me and kissed her for real. She kissed me back passionately. We stumbled back into her apartment and I made love to her on the sun drenched sofa. That was the beginning of our relationship.

Her friends hated me. I hated them too. Hell, I think they hated her. They were all getting married and starting families, and she was off getting involved with another drunk. I can’t blame them for hating me, I hated me too. We ruined all their parties with our recklessness. I fell into a china cabinet once and I even sneezed on one of their babies. We were never invited out again.
My friends liked her okay. They thought she was cute enough, but never tried to get to know her. She didn’t get along with their wives or girlfriends, so we weren’t invited out much. We remained very much alone, and we remained very drunk. We were in love, so the rest of the world could fuck off for all we cared.
We drank together all the time. We rarely had sex at all. Drinking was our pleasure. Sometimes we would fuck in the morning to shake off a hangover, but mostly we drank. We would work, and then we would drink.
Strangely enough her parents loved me. Her family were a bunch of rednecks who thought of me as “good people”. My mother also loved her. She just wanted me to get her pregnant. She figured the responsibility of children would cure us of our wayward lifestyle. But we both hated our families, because we were elitist asshole city slickers. Actually we hated everybody.
We had grand times together, avoiding other people. We had hot dogs on thanksgiving, and we made turkey dinner for the fourth of July. But eventually we started to hate eachother as well. She drank too much, and so did I. It wasn’t long before we were in court for breaking probation. We were ordered to go into treatment and that was the end of us. We didn’t have anything in common after that.
I got sober eventually and I met someone in my new life, got married, and started a family. She killed herself a year after treatment. I think of her everyday.