Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I loved him in that moment, fiercely, like he was my brother. I walked up to the group, eyes on the blond-brunette. The eyebrow pointed at me now. Then it softened. “Give me your number,” I said to the blond-brunette.

There was the typical pretend indignation: Why should I? Why would I? etcetera.

“Because you want to,” I said. I didn’t try hard. She wanted to, of course.

Her friend stared, lips twisted in a ridiculously bright knot. “I like your lipstick,” I said on walking away with the blond-brunette’s number written on a piece of paper.

I walked up to Jason, standing in the parking lot, watching all of this the way I was watching him before. I threw the piece of paper on the ground. I didn’t look back. Jason laughed, and it almost sounded like he wasn’t faking it.

“Candace, go to bed,” I say into the phone. “I won’t tell Jason about this. And if you’re smart, you’ll make sure he doesn’t figure out that he can do better than you.” I hang up.

The phone rings a few times, then stops.

The next day, I do my workouts according to my routine of squat variations. I eat a healthy breakfast of porridge with berries, a perfect square of old cheddar on whole-grain toast. I erase Candi’s shouty message without listening to the words.

Outside, Dog slaps his tail against the walkway in front of the house. His face is stretched out in an imitation of a smile. I call for him, and we leave for our morning walk.

I don’t believe in animals having much personality or character, but I’m sure there is something in Dog that, if he were capable of judgment, would be able to favourably compare being here to being at home with Gloria wearing a pair of Prada booties.

The beach is just starting to fill up with bodies, and it’s nice to be here before it gets too crowded. I take in the surroundings, the endless blue ocean and the horizon of palm trees at the far end of the shore.

I think about Dolores. I think about what it was like walking here with her, how I had missed all the signs of her instability. I think about her body, the way she shuffled even when she tried to run. How excited she was to see the waterfall beside the beach house, how she took her shirt off and freed her pretty breasts triumphantly, on the balcony overlooking the waterfall, for all the world to see. She was so submissive and open, so ready to be liberated from her obscurity, so ready to have the most wonderful adventure of her life and then live her life a little better, in a more enlightened way, having been touched by beauty and luck. Instead, she succumbed to a delusion.

A shiver runs through my body, a vein flash-freezing all the way from my neck down to my groin. Yet this is a perfectly warm, pleasant morning.

I promise myself to be more careful when picking out a girl this time. I don’t know how I will guard against failure, but I’ll have to keep all of my senses sharp – any indication of insanity and I’m out, no matter how great the challenge, no matter how promising the result.

As I walk, the beach fills with people, and I try to figure out what the summer trends are this year, if there’s anything that I could get fixated on, anything specific like the colourful string bracelets of last season or the cut-off jean shorts before that. So far, nothing pleasant like that. But like everywhere else, there’s one prominent girl trend: shaved heads. Ribbonheads . Named after the two heroines of the tumour campaign vlogs, they are girls whose look announces their solidarity with their idol, $isi, and her triumph as a cancer survivor.

Yes, even here, in this world of overfed girl stock who can’t afford to go to a more attractive beach, where the fit, intellectual bald girls tend to go. I’d expect a shaved head from a girl who goes to college, who goes to all those other, better beaches – good breeding implies a necessary type of sensitivity – but there you have it; it’s here too. I suppose I have myself to thank for the Ribbonheads trend. I’m unsure yet if this is going to be an asset or a liability on a girl. I am fascinated by hair, particularly so-called bad hair – dyed, fried, thin, limp – and lack of hair altogether may be too much, too extreme. I look at all the bald heads around me, but nothing in me responds – my dick remains unimpressed.

AS A YOUNG ADULT I HAD AN ACCIDENT. IT WAS A WARM summer morning and I was rushing to help Jason move his art from his old apartment to a new one.

I didn’t want to help Jason. I wanted to have a leisurely Saturday, with a beautiful girl I was seeing – this was when I was dating beautiful girls – someone whom I only recall as brunette. That’s what I wanted to do instead of helping Jason with his move. But occasionally, I would force myself to do unpleasant selfless things in order to maintain the long-term connections that I felt demanded such things; this is what friendships are like.

I rode my bicycle through the sticky streets of Chinatown, through a market with its fish smells and bakery smells, all of it mixed in with garbage and decades of immigrant effort evaporating from the sidewalks. At one point, I got off the bike to cross the street. I walked onto the street and felt a strange tug on my shin.

I looked down. I could see a small, light blue surface poking out of a red gash on my leg. I had walked my front wheel into my own leg. I sliced it open as the wheel turned, cut down to the muscle.

I bent down to hold the wound with my hand, make it close and stop the blood from flowing out of it. As I tried to pull the flaps of skin together over the blue-white fat tissue, something damp and thick fell out of the gash, a piece of meat. It landed wetly on the ground. And it was that quiet-yet-solid wet sound that did it: The world started turning fuzzy, then black, and then it disappeared. The last thing I heard was metal crashing beside me.

When I came to, there were people all around me. I was lying on the ground with a cold compress on my forehead. A voice said an ambulance was on its way.

This is what I dream about my second night at the beach house, about the accident. I wake up exhausted with my jaw clenched, my body clammy from sweat. Even though I don’t believe in omens, the sinister way the event has repeated itself in my head, in the guise of a dream, seems like a warning.

It is in this melancholic mood that I leave the beach house with Dog to go for our walk. We get out later than usual, as it took me forever to get ready: my exercises were laborious, my shower not very refreshing – sand under my eyes.

I couldn’t eat much, but I screwed around the kitchen nibbling on things before I gave up.

In addition to my troubling mood, the weather is humid, the sun hazy behind a veil of moisture. The day is an out-of-focus photograph.

I want to check out the smoothie shack, to see if I can find any inspiration there, pull myself out of this funk.

It’s not as packed as I expected. Only two Internet stations are occupied and there’s no lineup. I order my usual acai smoothie and a bottle of water for the walk back. The bald girl behind the counter seems stoned, eyelids barely lifting as she confirms the order. A zombie. She doesn’t smile. But then she does a double take, eyes narrowing as if she recognizes me. I’m used to double takes, but this one is off; it’s not curious or friendly.

“What?” I say.

“Oh, sorry. Nothing,” she says and turns around. I watch her skinny ass as she fumbles with the smoothie machine. She hums quietly to herself as she passes me the smoothie and water. She hums completely off-key. I want to tell her to shut up, but I’m a gentleman so I say nothing.