Noah Cicero - Best Behavior

Joseph's hair daunted me. I was a writer. I wasn't really a writer. I had not made enough money to live as a writer and call myself a writer. My parents ingrained in me being so deep that it’s part of myself the concept that a person cannot call themselves something unless they are making money doing it. If a person golfs on the weekend, they like to golf. They are not a golfer. Tiger Woods was a golfer, not Bob the shift manager at Denny's. If you acted in cheap horror movies on Thursday and you could not pay your car insurance with cheap horror movies then you were not an actor.

Joseph yelled, he was always very excited, “How was work?”

It occurred to me say it was bleak but I said, “It wasn't memorable.”

He laughed and said, “We're all going to Monica's after the bar closes and playing Monopoly.”

Monopoly was a game with a little metal shoe.

“I have to get up early and get on a bus.”

“We'll get you there.”

Amanda heard and said, “He's always nervous about getting to places on time.”

“It is important to be on time.” I'm always on time because I know my hair looks terrible.

“We'll get you there on time.”

“I'm going to get really drunk.”

“That's cool. This is a bar.”

“I suppose this is the place where a person can get drunk.”

“Can't do it at a cell phone store.”

“No, this is the place.”

I went to the bar to get another drink, the bartender came over. His name was Tom. Tom dated Sarah for a while. It was a six month pointless relationship. They fought all the time and were jealous of each other. Sarah had to text message Tom every hour or Tom would get worried that Sarah was fucking somebody else. Sarah even bought a special cellphone with a keypad so she could type quicker to Tom.

Tom came over and said, “Hey, how's it going?”

“Life is awesome, Captain and coke.”

Then Tom said with a serious face. Tom always had a serious face. He considered everything he said to be serious, essential and vital. Tom said, “I didn't hit her.”

“You didn't what.”

“Hit her. She broke three of my fingers.”

Sarah was on the other side of the bar almost passed out sipping on a drink while he spoke.

“How did she break your fingers?” I said.

“She slammed them in a car door.”

“That must have hurt.”

“Yeah, it fucking hurt. There was fucking blood everywhere. I was drunk and bleeding everywhere. She kept yelling like a fucking retard. I kept yelling back at her with blood pouring out of my fingers. Then she started pushing me. Then she started punching me. I couldn't do anything to get her to stop.”

It occurred to me he could have ran away. He could have realized she was a crazy bitch and gone home.

Tom went on, “So I pushed her. I was like, 'fuck this,' and pushed her back. It wasn't like I was trying to beat up a woman. Then she called the police.”

“I heard the police got called.”

“Yeah, she fucking called the police. The police showed up and of course took her side of the story. I had to spend a night in jail. I had to hire a lawyer and go to court for assault and battery. I had to spend a thousand fucking dollars for all that shit.”

“What did the court decide?”

“The lawyer showed pictures of my broken fingers and showed the hospital records. And they dropped the charges. But what the fuck is that? She brought me to court for pushing her.”

“She never mentioned breaking your fingers.”

“Of course she didn't. She also said that all you guys hated me for being a violent woman-beater.”

“I never hated you.”

I honestly couldn't remember ever thinking about him. But I doubt he cared about hearing that.

Tom looked stressed out, like he was in Iraq and had to enter the house of a known insurgent and kill everybody in the house before they killed him. I wasn't sure what he was so stressed about.

Tom said, “Look at her now, all drunk. Broken up with another guy. I'm happy about it. She deserves her life. She's alone over there, drunk, and no one cares. It is so predictable.”

“The desire for self-destruction is stronger in some.”

“Yeah, that's what I'm saying. She's self-destructive. She doesn't care who gets in the way. She builds up her life. Then destroys it.”

“She's bored. There isn't anything to do here.”

“I don't know why she does it. Everybody has their problems.”

“True that.”

“I gotta get back to work. I just wanted to find out if you hated me.”

“No, I don't hate you Tom.”

Tom went back to work. I stood at the bar drinking my Captain and coke. Tom, like Sarah, was a person with a dead father. It was always the same stories: these patriarchs who had left, these patriarchs who didn't love, and these patriarchs who died. Western civilization was dominated by these patriarchal influences. There was God and Jesus, Mars and Romulus, Mohammad and Fatima, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush and finally God the Father. Our fathers weren't much. They would come home from work and take naps. They would bring us to a baseball game and not talk to us while we were there. Sometimes they would beat us for being annoying. Over half of my generation's fathers had left them with their bitter mothers. It wasn't terrible. We were Americans and had food, air-conditioning, and indoor plumbing. But people for whatever reason like to have their fathers around. And they like their fathers not to be jackasses. Which was a problem because consumerist attention deficit disorder based societies produce in mass jackasses. But we still like our jackasses to be around. Tom and Sarah's jackasses died. Neither of their fathers were around and then they died. They were reared by sad bitter women who never remarried but had a thousand boyfriends over their lives. Women who constantly showed a sense of disdain for the opposite sex who left them to die with their children.

Went up to a girl that Amanda worked with named Marissa. Marissa was a small white girl that looked like she was from northern Europe. Like she was from a tribe that herded Reindeer. I wanted to call her Ingrid or Olga.

I went up to her and yelled, “Marissa!”

“Hey, what's going on?”

“I feel very happy right now.”

“That's good. So am I. I'm drunk.”

“Good, we are equals then.”

“Yes, unity through alcohol,” Marissa said excitedly.

“Are you looking for romance?”

“You are so silly.”

“No, I'm serious. Romance. Like in a Jennifer Aniston movie. I'll be that guy you know that isn't perfect but can be fixed. And you can fix me. Don't you want to fix me.”

“I do enjoy fixing men.”

“I'm a total fixer upper. I need a good woman to make me right. To make me into a man. To make this pile of human waste to a functional adult that produces and feeds his babies.”

“I've only met you twice.”

“Twice is enough for love. Doesn't anybody believe in love at first sight anymore? This would be love at third sight. But still it would be love. And the production of babies.”

“I haven't considered reproduction. I just graduated from college.”

“That's perfect. Now that you've graduated you can reproduce. I'll work at Indelex and you can stay home and watch the babies.”

“They just closed Indelex.”

“I'll work at Craftmaid.”

“They laid off everybody there.”

“Goddamn woman, how are we supposed to reproduce and carry on the human species if there are no jobs?”

“I don't know.”

“People without jobs have babies all the time.”

“I don't wanna raise my babies on welfare,” said Marissa.

“You're right. What degree did you get anyway?”