Noah Cicero - Best Behavior

“Don't expect me to buy you drinks and dinner. I don't have the money.”

“I know you won't. You don't care if I'm pretty. Usually men come in here and start saying all kinds of crazy shit about me being attractive and wonderful and smart. You just came in and sat down not giving a shit about flattering me at all. I'm not used to it. But it is fun to have a new experience every once and awhile.”

While not looking at her I said, “I do consider you attractive. But I assume you've been told that before. And probably already know you're attractive.”

“You like to not tell me I'm attractive. You know that people tell me that and it makes me feel good. And you deprive me of that flattery because you know it disorients me and pisses me off. You're enjoying pissing me off.”

“I have screwed cute, ugly, fat and skinny girls. And it is my experience that whether or not the experience was worth it was not based on how the girl looked. I once screwed a hairy girl and had a lot of fun. If you want to screw someone or love someone just because they are attractive, then why not masturbate to porn where all the women are attractive and you don't have to buy them drinks and dinner?”

“Do you want to masturbate on me?”

“Do you want to tell yourself that I ejaculated because you are so attractive?”

“I like to be thought of as attractive and I prefer when men have huge orgasms on or in me,” said Petra.

“But you're taking advantage of your endowments then. You are endowed with a beautiful face and body because of no doing of your own. It is not your fault you're attractive. Being happy about that is like a rich kid being happy because they have a huge apartment and expensive education because their parents paid for it. It is capitalistic. You view your own body as capital.”

“My body is capital.”

“I'm fucking with you because I'm not that attractive. I've never been known as attractive. People don't talk about Benny being attractive.”

“You're okay looking.”

“When I smile my face makes all these weird lines.”

“Don't smile.”

“I try not to, but when people take pictures you're supposed to smile, so I smile, and my face looks bad and then they post it on the Internet,” I said.

“That is bad.”

“I know. I saw that Youtube video you made, you were walking around with a chicken in Texas.”

“I like chickens.”

“When I was little my family had chickens. It wasn't like a chicken farm. There was only like five hens and two roosters. My dad would make me feed them and bring them water.”

“When I lived in Tennessee my neighbors had chickens. They would walk into our yard. Chickens are like cats they seem to be concerned with their own things.”

Petra went to the bathroom and put make-up on. I sat and looked around her room. It didn't seem like a big deal that I was with her. She didn't seem like an asshole. There seemed no chance of marrying her and impregnating her. It was life. She was there and I needed the friendship of a woman.

We slowly walked down the sidewalk with meaningless steps. It was different than walking with Tom White. With Tom it was serious. The city was a disaster. New York was a nightmare of futility and gluttony. Walking beside Petra, it was a different city. New York had become a romantic city full of meaning and purpose. It became a city where people could fall in love. She was not the kind of person that cared about the philosophical constructs of the United States Constitution. She didn't watch cable news programs analyzing the daily events. Petra didn't read Hegel or Wittgenstein. I didn't have to engage in intellectual conversation that would force me to feel uncomfortable and talk out my ass at times. She wasn't uneducated though: she had a psychology degree and knew her profession well. She knew all the big words intellectuals say. I didn't have to watch how I spoke like I did when I was work. I didn't have to make sure I didn't appear a snob. She had her profession of psychology, case studies, cognitive behavior therapy, behaviorism, and abnormal psyche. I had my literature and political philosophy. So we met somewhere else, as two people that had a sincere love for life. It wasn't that we were both sophisticated, or knew about things or both had ambition. It was that life interested us.

Snow started falling and I said, “New York is pretty with the snow falling.”

She responded, “It should be for how much I pay in rent to live here.”

Petra's eyes stared out of her head drifting and floating around. It was like she couldn't focus her gaze. They were eyes that wandered around the landscape looking for meaning. They weren't the strong eyes of a person that had authority and power. They weren't the cold intellectual eyes of an old dean of a philosophy department. And they weren't the eyes of an angry blue collar worker who never had authority and has worked with his hands all his life. They were a different kind of eyes. A lot of people in New York had them. They weren't the eyes of a person who could take control and make people do what they wanted. They were sad whimsical confused eyes, constantly scouring the landscape for more entertainment.

She had a small Asian body. It was thin and taut with muscle. It was so different than what I was used to. My experiences with the female body consisted of Northern European white girls who were wide and always had a little meat on them. And black girls with loads of muscle. The women I had dated could pick this woman up and smash her. I felt weird walking along with Petra's Asian body… like I was betraying the strong bodies and hard eyes of the women back in Youngstown. I imagined them saying, “Look at Benny, what does he think he's doing walking around with that frail little bitch?”

We stopped in front a bar and Petra said, “Here it is, isn't it great?”

I looked at the bar and said, “It's small.”

“All the bars are small here.”

I threw my cigarette down and we went in.

We went up to the bar. The bartender had a mustache. Petra said, “You look like Freddie Mercury.”

The guy was very excited and said, “You think so?”

“Oh, you look really good. Freddie Mercury was awesome.”

He looked really happy. Several of the men had mustaches in the bar.

We got Pabst and sat on a couch.

I said, “Why does everyone have a mustache. Cops have mustaches. Have hipsters become obsessed with cops?”

“No, that's the new hipster apparel.”

“We have beards in Youngstown.”

“Beards are so two years ago.”

“I like beards. I think men look good with beards,” I said honestly.

“No, beards are gone.”

“I don't like men with shaved faces, they look like penises.”

“Yeah, they do. They look like flaccid penises.”

“Like a sad weak penis that can't find a pussy.”

“I don't think they are trying to look attractive with their mustaches.”

“They are hip,” I said.

“The mustache says, 'Look, I'm really trying to look stupid to look cool. Imagine how good I am in bed.'”

“When they give head you can feel hair brushing against the area above your vagina.”

She looks off into the horizon and says, “I don't think I like that. When it’s short, it's all prickly. But if he has a bushy beard, you can't feel it.”

“His mustache is prickly.”

“Yeah, it is.” She patted my knee and said, “Come on, let’s go play video games.”

It was the first time she had really touched me. I felt nervous. There was a woman and she was being nice to me. Every time I ever got into a situation like that. A situation where there is a woman and she is showing signs of possible sex mixed with alcohol I feel like a block of stone walking around all stone-like staring out of my head wondering what the hell I should be doing. I felt like running out of the building down the street calling Tom White on the phone and having him come to get me. Tom would never make me feel nervous. I would go in his apartment and he would give me a glass of water, a pillow, blanket, and place to sleep.