Stacey Richter - When to Use

saw you either leaving, sucking face or actually doing it with the weird, over-tan guy with the tattooed forehead, and of course all the products in the world will not restore you to "clean" or "fresh." A word about relief: This product does not support the idea of "do-overs," as when playing pool and missing the ball entirely, in which case certain women feel the right to call out "do-over" and shoot again without penalty of any sort. We consider this cheating. Therefore, it doesn't make it better if, on the night in question, your regular boyfriend was off "taking some time to think about things," which means, as we've learned in earlier sets of instruction, that he's off thinking about how badly he wants to dump you and start "seeing" one of your very stacked friends. Who knows? Maybe he would have stayed if you hadn't drunkenly turned yourself over to the first unwashed mouth-breather who made suggestive comments about the shape of your ass. But it's too late, there shall be no do-overs, and you're destined to remain pathetic, manless and a known slut. You will be largely ignored by your social circle, with the exception of certain guys in shiny shirts who've begun to stare openly at your inadequate breasts. You may start to fantasize while walking or driving around, grief-struck and miserable, about a fresh, clean start where everything is suddenly crisp and blank, like bleached bed sheets, newly washed chalkboards, refinished floors-the ultimate do-over. These instructions have this to say about that wish: ha! You should be so lucky. Let's face facts, little lady. It's girls like you who force us to include warnings like Do Not Administer Orally. We're not going to let you out of this one that easy.

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Stacey Richteris the author of the collection My Date with Satan. Her stories have been published in GQ, Zoetrope, Granta, The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXII and XXIV, and elsewhere. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and is a licensed cosmetologist.

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"When to Use," by Stacey Richter, © 2000 by Stacey Richter, first appeared in Nerve (Nerve Publishing LLC, 2000); www.nerve.com. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.