You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(45)

They are the worst words in the English language, and I sigh. “I have a black eye.”

A disgusted grunt. “So?”

“So, I got jumped. My boss won’t even let me be upstairs. I can’t go to a bar.”

“Dude,” he says. “Fight Club. Chicks love a wounded bird….” He laughs, and I wish they never made that book into a movie. “A black eye is baller, son.”

Amazing, how the word son means something different when he says it than when Mooney says it, and I say it a-fucking-gain. “I told you. I got my ass kicked.”

“Sure,” he says. “But here’s my pitch. You tell the honeys who are all desperate to score before V-Day that you got jacked when you chased down a mugger to help a little old lady. Seduce and Destroy. The hero bit, kid. It’s not like they can prove you’re lying. You feel me?”

I’m quiet, too quiet, and Dick tells me that he’s only playing, that I need to lighten the fuck up. “But, Dick…I can’t go out there and lie to girls and…I don’t know.”

“You’re not lying to these girls, Joe. They’re lying to us. The makeup and the Wonderbras and the ‘I never do this kind of thing’ after they suck you off in a cab…Girls want to believe I’m a producer, so I tell ’em I’m a producer. That way, when I blow them off, they can really feel like they missed out on something. It’s actually, if you think about it, it’s the least we can do to give ’em a reason to get outta bed in the morning, you know?”

I’m not him and I never will be. I’ve never had my dick sucked in a cab, but he won’t take no for an answer, so a few hours later…

I’m the third amigo at Passerby. It’s sad, the way it’s not dressed up for V-Day. Like they don’t believe in true love, in Serendipity. Alas, it’s a nice break from my cardboard box, what with Dumb and Dumber teasing me about getting my ass kicked while their astrology sluts ignore me because I’m soft again. I lost it, the swagger. Passerby was a mistake. Drunk people all amped up over the floor tiles that light up like Saturday Night Fever, and what a joke.

No one in here knows how to dance like John Travolta. No one is looking for love.

They buy overpriced drinks just to spill them and you like this place, and I don’t like this place. I can’t take it anymore. The noise. The way I had you one minute and didn’t the next. The world has some nerve to just go on like everything didn’t end for me. Even Angus is on the way to a better place, and Vagina…She’ll be there tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. The blue tile becomes red only so it can go back to being blue ten seconds later and do other people do this?

Do they sulk in public and live in their black-and-blue heads?

“Goldberg.”

That’s Dick. Annoyed at me again. “What?”

“Let’s do a shot of Goldschl?ger. In your honor, my boy.”

I say no, and Schlitz rolls his eyes. He’s sick of me. These guys won’t be inviting me out again because I’m a loser, baby, and I belong in a basement with a typewriter named Hector. The music isn’t helping either. “Golden Years.” Bowie’s ode to love that lasts. Did you love me? Don’t you want your scarf? Am I really that easy to leave?

Some motherfucker bumps into me and I hold my loser ground, lodged behind Dick and Schlitz, hanging on like the third bloated, banged-up banana that I am. There’s no denying it tonight. I’m a round peg, and the bar is like the world. It’s like you.

A square fucking hole.

I don’t belong here, and I don’t belong in my home, and I don’t want to read a book or scour the sidewalks for old typewriters. I’m ruined. The swarms of girls, girls, girls don’t do it for me anymore. I want you.

You you you you you.

And this isn’t me. I’m the guy who wants all women all the time and what happened to me, Vail? Why are all girls dead to me? Is it because of you? Are you a witch? Why don’t I want the astrology slut eyeing me? Why can’t I stop thinking about you? I can’t blame Dick for telling me to stop being such a girl because he’s right, on a level.

You are just some girl. You’re not my girl. And like he says…What even was it? What was so great? Yeah, we hung out. A few cups of coffee, a little rat-a-tat-tat on IM, all that fucking phone tag. We had our 9/11 in the sinking living room. But it’s not like we ever did it. We never shipped the boat out. I shouldn’t be this down. There’s a whole world out there, in here. People date. They sleep around. Dudes want to put it in this girl and that girl, in all girls, and I only want to put it in you. Girls, guys, everyone…People go out with someone a few times and they turn around and they go out with someone else. But not me, nope. I should jump off the boat and hit on that astrology slut and I should also stop using that phrase.

It’s not fair. It’s not kind. It’s not the man I want to be.

And then I feel it in my gut. In the moldy meat loaf that won’t quite go away.

I should leave New York. You ruined it, Vail. Everywhere I go, it’s the same, every place is just a place where I don’t get to see…Wait.

Someone taps my shoulder and I want it to be you and I turn around and Frampton comes alive. It’s you. “Is that you, Joe?”

Yes! Yes, it’s me and yes, it’s you. You’re here, in this bar. You gasp and yawp and love me with your eyes, with your hands. You take my chin in your hand like I’m the one.