Spring Days In Exile (Part 2) kinda long

The next day I met George in fast food Chinese restaurant, still a bit nauseous from the night before. I ordered first and was already digging into my greasy Kung Pao Chicken when he sat across from me.

"I think that girl at the register likes you Evan," he said while he grabbed a cup to get water.

"Oh, you mean the sweaty one with the noticeable mustache?" I joked.

George laughed the whole way to the soda machine.

The restaurant was mostly empty despite being so near lunchtime and the few people there looked so sad. Sometimes I wonder if we do anything without spite anymore.

"So what's up man, where were you last night? We were playing poker. I won thirty bucks, it paid for this delicious meal here."

Ah poker night. A tradition we started in High School where we could put our limited money on the table, poke fun at each other, and smoke cigars. We stopped smoking cigars years ago, but we still played poker.

"Oh yeah I forgot but you'll like this," I said. "I went out to a bar with Adele and her friends last night."

"Whoa, hold the press, Evan Jimenez went out with a girl, a cute one no less," he said rather loud. The miserable people around us looked for a second before burying their pathetic faces back into orange chicken.

“I didn’t say we went out, like it wasn’t a date or anything, but we were talking online and she invited me, it’s really no big deal.”

Already his face has twisted itself into an expression that told me what he was going to say long before it came out.

“What are you talking about. She likes you man, why can’t you see that. You should be thanking me that I ever introduced you.”

“I’ll make sure to mention that in the wedding toast.”

We both laughed and silently dug into the mound of food before us. A group of girl scouts walked in and I found it an odd place for them to be on a Saturday afternoon. They skipped back and forth in their adorable little outfits and shined toothless grins. I realized that I’d never seen a girl scout outside the context of selling cookies in front of grocery stores or door to door. I wonder what they use that money for? Do girl scouts camp? However, one look at the rather rotund den mother cleared up any questions about who decided to go out for Chinese food and possibly what the cookie funds were for.

“So how did your night out, for the sake of clarity we’ll call it a group date, go last night,” George finally blurted out. “I know something happened or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“It was a lot of fun actually, well, yeah it was fun overall.”

He noticed the hesitation.

“But? I know there is a but.”

“No there’s no but, It was a lot of fun. We went to this bar called The Crush in downtown. It’s a really cool place, a lot better than those old man buffalo wings places our friends usually go to.

I drove to her house, knock on the door and her brother opens it and gives me a look that said he knows what I’m all about and without saying a word to me calls for his sister. Which kind of got me thinking that she has probably had a more than a few guys come to her house before.”

“Well yeah, not everyone is a hermit like you Evan, especially pretty girls. They have guys picking them up so much it’s probably like another form of public transportation.” George interrupted.

There is nothing like a close friend to put you in your place. They know who you are and your tendencies so well they could pick you apart with surgeon-like precision, it was like always being roasted. George knew too much about me, so it was hard to talk to him sometimes.

“Anyways she comes to the door and I sort of didn’t know what to do, cause like I don’t know her well enough to hug her and shaking hands is kind of too formal. But I ended up awkwardly shaking her hand after all. She didn’t seem to notice how strange it was so I wasn’t about to push the issue.”

“You should have hugged her. Girls will hug any guy. In fact, at least it would have looked bold on your part which is, coincidentally, another thing girls like,” he said with a mouthful of chow mein.

“I guess I should have had you come with me then, ass. You know I don’t know what I’m doing and then you go and point out all the things I’m doing wrong. I know I did it wrong, why do you think I never want to try?”

Silence.

I continued.

“So we hang out at her house for a few minutes and then her friends arrive to pick us up. Two girls and a guy. The guy was dating one of them and the other was Adele’s sorority sister from college or something, Chelsea or something.

We get to the bar and this place is packed. But it’s not so bad, we buy drinks and find a spot to stand and talk a little bit.

I’m talking with Adele making a few jokes, shes laughing which always makes me feel good and out of nowhere this tall white guy walks up behind her and pokes her in the sides with his fingers.

It turns out it was an old friend of hers and no sooner had he appeared than they went outside to have a smoke. So the rest of us order new drinks and I start talking with Chelsea because the other two were doing the closed off lovey dovey thing. Chelsea and I got along pretty well and we had a pretty good conversation. Mostly about school, she was studying history and that’s always been one of my favorite subjects.

It was really easy to talk to her because, well, I wasn’t attracted to her. You know that about me. I can only speak to girls who are neutral. I guess I don’t really care what I say to them as much so I open up better.

However, in the course of conversation I start to realize that she is really interested in what I’m saying. I mean really interested.

She was leaning in and smiling and nodding and laughing at all the really corny stuff I was saying and it dawned on me that this girl might actually be liking me.”

“So long story short you ended up going home with her.” George butted in.

We both laughed.

“Yeah totally man, it was a wild night. But seriously, long story short, Adele comes back with that dude and we find a booth and I end up sitting next to Chelsea instead of Adele for the rest of the night. The two of them go to the bathroom together and at the table start whispering stuff at each other and I realize that this whole evening might not have been just an invitation to hang out with Adele, but they were actually trying to set me and Chelsea up.

After that I stayed pretty much quiet, but it was too late. Chelsea kept talking, Adele kept smiling at us and I could do nothing about it. So yeah, it was fun, but I really don’t think Adele likes me. It sort of sucks to think I was getting somewhere only to end up at square one.”

George was done with his food now and he gave me a rather obviously annoyed look. I knew what was coming again.

“Alright dude, it wasn’t a date. But don’t you sit here and tell me that no girl likes you or whatever downer interpretation of last night you concocted because girls don’t invite random guys to hang out with them on Friday nights. Believe me, I’ve done the hang out with friends thing before and you know where that leads? Hanging out alone. And I don’t know what you do with girls alone, probably cry about how nobody likes you, but I know what I do.”

I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t believe him, I was there, I knew what I saw. I shouldn’t have replied to her message that night because I liked Adele too much to be pawned off to someone else.

I went back home I feeling little more nauseous than before.


That night I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a person I did not like. It was 2:24AM, and I could not sleep again. My arms were positioned like the limbs of a compass, propping up my ever increasing frame. The mirror was a map of the present, plotting a course in current time, but indicating to me what was to be a grim future.

I stared into my own face, bloated and unrecognizable. My cheeks were smooth and plump, pushing together the sides of the mouth and framing my chin. The only thing I recognized was the portion above the equator of my ears despite the ever decreasing hairline. My head was in two uneven hemispheres, the the north with a melting ice cap and the south engorged with magma.

What was perhaps a vain novelty to most was a true struggle for me. I hated the way people saw me. I was either the "Big Guy" or "Extra Large Tshirt" or "5 spot on basketball." I was always the biggest of the small or smallest of the big, neither being an enviable position.

On the outside I might have looked large but I never perceived myself that way. It wasn't until I crossed my reflection that I would realize my girth. In that way, the mirror betrayed me.

So did my friends. Telling me that I looked fine, that I wasn't fat, that the right person would love me for who I was.

I really hated that. Or when my plump brethren would flaunt their appearance and say that the world needed to conform its image to them rather than the polar opposite. Big was the new beautiful.

It didn't feel that way to me. I knew how girls saw me. How Adele probably saw me. Funny maybe, friendly sure, but not ever a consideration beyond that. I was for some other "lucky" girl, but never them.

There were times when I looked at my misshapen form and wished I could cut out the fat with a knife and be done with it. There were other times when I wished I was invisible all together.

It didn't depress me to look in the mirror, it defined me.

"I can't fucking stand it!" I yelled at myself.

Taking a handful of skin and flesh in in my grip I shuttered and cried out.

"All my life this held me back. Every time a girl passed me over, or a shirt didn't fit, or a doctor told me to lose weight, it got worse."

I slammed my fist down on the fake marble counter. I slammed it again.

"I can take it sometimes, but it just builds up and it kills me, it honestly goddamned kills me."

My hand was red and shaking from the two full force impacts. In a short while it would hurt a lot more. A trickle of blood started down from my left nostril, flowing to the framing crease in my cheek like a flash flood through a desert riverbed.

"Ok Evan, calm down." I said while holding the bridge of my nose with my right hand and blindly searching for a tissue with the other.

I knew it wasn't my body that hurt me so much. It was my mind holding me hostage, forcing me to feel in exile on nurturing spring days.

In my heart I still wished the best for me though. My mind had no control over that.