You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(92)
You can’t defrost a freezer without blood and sweat, tears and time. And that’s what I’m doing in this warehouse. I am here to defrost our misguided, malevolent “friend” Dick. Chip through the ice to get to the steel walls, to see what, if anything, went down with you two, and, I hope, make him want to stop being such a, well, dick.
It’s a lot on my back, yes. I am sore from cleaning your floors, putting your Skittles where they belong, and bloodying my knuckles to serve you for the second time in a matter of fucking hours while you’re probably at home shoving a boot into your sofa. I say it again.
Girls.
My senses are in overdrive. Every little thing I do is magic. Even sitting in a chair feels like action, like the first time. I keep looking up to make sure he’s there, to make sure I did this—he is; I did—and I take his laptop out of his messenger bag. There’s a blue Post-it taped to the underbelly of his bag.
PROPERTY OF DICK PALMER
[email protected]
AOLIM PASSWORD: #1DICKIZTHEMANNN69
HOTMAIL PASSWORD:
#1DICKIZTHEMANNN69
MOM EMAIL:
[email protected]
I sigh.
Men.
33
Dick is still sleeping it off and that’s a good thing, Vail. He has seventeen AOL IM chats open in his fucking laptop. There’s no internet in here, but that’s okay. I don’t need access to the internet to see the women trapped in Dick’s Web. He is trying to fuck all these girls, which is sad, but even sadder…they’re trying to fuck him. My heart bleeds for all of them.
I’m moving through the white boxes, and I doubt you’re in here. The blow job was probably an isolated incident. A quarter-life crisis right up there with auditioning for the fucking View. I tap and scroll and am I gonna catch an STD from putting my fingers where his fingers go? Or wait. Did you give me an STD with your fingers?
No. My Portnoy is fine. I am fine.
But the girls pining for Dick…How did they get here? Where are their mothers? Because yes, some really are in fucking high school. They buy his bullshit excuses about why he didn’t call, and they come back for more. They want to be Destroyed by this dick who doesn’t even bother to Seduce. To look into this icebox of emotions is to know that what Carrie said in the first episode of Sex and the Godforsaken City is at least a little bit true.
“No one had told her about the end of love in Manhattan.”
But that’s not you. You’re not GailForceWinds and you’re not LaurenIsBored. Every time I close a white box, I brace to confront VailInTheCity in the next one. When the box isn’t yours, I get a high. I’m thrust back into your place, breaking a patch of white ice, one step closer to resurrecting the fucking freezer. You don’t chat with Dick. You are safe. Mine. If it was one stupid blow job on one stupid night, I can do it, dig a grave for your filthy past and put it behind us. Dick is a horndog. A taker who wants any woman, every woman. You were in the right place at the wrong time, vulnerable. You’re not dopey like HeatherFeather, who says Dick deserves a Purple Heart for keeping his brother’s memory alive—OH COME THE FUCK ON, HEATHERFEATHER—and you’re not CarrieComeLately, who forgives Dick for banging the girl’s cousin because the girl was “begging for it” and he “couldn’t let her down.” And, Dick, I know it was a hard day for you, the anniversary of your brother’s death…That has to HURT.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, LADIES?!
I make that box disappear and there are no words for what happens when the next box is revealed. My eyes aren’t playing tricks on me and I can’t make it go away. That’s your name on his screen in a little white box you share with him. I knew this was possible. It still hurts. The sky is falling and I am falling and the calliope crashes to the ground under the weight of this heavy white box.
And it’s not that you talk to him online, Vail. It’s that you talk to him a lot. You talked to him…
Today.
VailInTheCity: Well, hello you. Stalker boy is now also my house boy lol long story. What’s shaking? Last night I had a dream about you. I never remember my dreams and…I have to tell you in person. You will die lol I died.
I die. I cry. You were with me, dreaming of him, and I know you. You never dream. You told me that in the sinking living room on the Upper West Side. I told you that you are normal, that most people are exaggerating their stupid fucking dreams, that you will dream when you aren’t so exhausted, so on fucking call. You said that made you feel good, but here you are chasing Dick, baiting him with fake fucking dreams.
A computer is not a photograph, and I cannot tear it into pieces.
I put my finger on the little felt clitoris on the Dell fucking laptop. I push and I push and I will my eyes into their sockets so I can’t read the words as I scroll and I scroll. The conversation becomes something long. It’s a book. The worst kind of time machine, still going.
My heart is the Hulk—it is pumping like a motherfucker and shredding the cotton that is my thin, nice-guy skin.
I cried at Igby Goes Down! Don’t you know I can’t handle this?
I try to read, but it’s like that first spicy Indian food on my weak white boy belly. I can’t digest. I catch things here and there—uncut frozen hot chocolate child—and I am a reader, Vail. I won’t skim. I started on the last page like Harry, Property of Sally, but I’m going back to the beginning, to page fucking one.