the author of this ongoing train wreck of a shortstory makes thefollowing disclaimer: if you think you recognize yourself, someone we both know, or any part of yourself or of someone we both know,you're probably right. Sorry. But, hey, don't you feel clever, like you're included on some sort of inside joke? If not, I suppose you could always send me a hateful email. God knows,I've sent enough hateful emails in my life to deserve a few sent mydirection. So go crazy. But don't send hateful emails based on an autobiographical reading. These events are stolen from the real life a friend of a friend of a friend from about six yearsago. None of this happened to me. Or you. I don't act like this, and neither do you. Or anyone you know, probably. I mean, there's sort of an outside chance...but it's unlikely to say the least. Also, you may noticed I've changed some names. I don't know why all guys under forty have one of about seven names, but they do. It's damn inconvenient for my purposes, but I've made some changes there to prevent those autobiographical readings I so discourage. By the way, I'm not especially good at fiction, especially the dialogue part. I just thought while I'm writing disclaimers and qualifications, I should let you know I realize my many limitations. Also, I'm not very tall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two kinds of girls, I think. The girls who think they're smart, and the girls who think they're beautiful. Actually, there's three kinds of girls. The third kind is the one that gives you trouble: the ones that thinkthey're smart and beautiful. And they're right. Harlow's that kind of girl. Those girls are the kind of girls that fuck up everything. To be perfectly fair, there're are many more kinds ofgirls than three. The girls who think they're neither smart nor beautiful. And the girls who are too busy, I dunno, contemplating oneness with the universe or kittens or alternative energysources to worry about either subject. Not to mention thegirls who are neither beautiful nor intellegent. The last thing I need is to become known as some sexist asshole. Actually, the last thing I need is...God, I don't knowwhat the last thing I need is. The first thing I need is probably some pretentious Belgian beer or, at the very least, about a gallon of PBR and a trashcan to vomit in. Because the last thing I need is another to leave another vomity puddle someplace. That is the last thing I need. We met at a record store. Jimmy's over on...well,you either know where it is or you couldn't be more indifferent to the location of a place you've never been. It's a record store. The platonic record store actually. When I die, cremate me andscatter me at Jimmy's. God knows it'll be years before they sweepme up. Its not a bad place to spend most of eternity. Or however long it takes for Jimmy to die and someone to put in a Starbucks or a Virgin Megastore. "Look at that girl." "Marc." That's Marc. Marc is a sexist asshole. But a successful one. It defies explanation. "C'mon. C'mon. Look at her." I was trying to find a gently, lovingly used John Lee Hooker vinyl some well-intentioned fool of a record store employee had given an absurdly low price. I forget which album. "She's got big ears." Marc has the loudest voice in the world. Top five anyway. I fucking hate Marc. "You know what they say about girls with big ears." He sniggered. Nobody says anything about girls with big ears. I mean, what's there to say? "Big ears, goodhearing?" Her ears were big, though. Translucent pinkishwings sprouting through the tangle of her hair. Her hair was blue. There is some reasonable common knowledge about girls with blue hair. Girls with blue hair are usually fans of punk rock and are either too young to know better, emo fans for instance with Jawbreaker patches and hearts and little skulls scribbled on their backpacks, or are scary. This girl looked scary. Or at least she didn't look that young. But she had her back to me, soit was really impossible to know anything but that she had big ears and, you know, the blue hair. "I'm going to go talk to her." The girl turned a little and squatted to look in a crate of records someone had shoved under a display case. All Icould think about when I looked at her was how small her facewas. She'd quirked her little pink mouth to the side,concentrating on whatever she was looking for. She looked like a girl in a JD Salinger short story. "Marc." "What." "Leave her alone." "Leave her alone?" "Yeah... I mean, she's clearly looking for something and, you know, probably doesn't want to be bothered." Marc is twentysix and really much too old to be such a walking erection. He thinks he looks like Jim Morrison. That sweaty mad prophet look is compelling to a certain kind of girl. I wear my hair the same way my dad does. We both have a high foreheads. It's unfortunate. "She probably doesn't want to be bothered?" He said this in the same voice he might've said "you think she probably has a third nipple?" "Yeah." I went back to looking for my gently, lovingly used John Lee Hooker record. "You want to fuck her, don't you." I moved from the H section into the Is and Js. Sometimes things get stuck under the wrong letter here. Organization is not one of Jimmy's strengths. "You do. You want to fuck her." "I don't fucking know her." I fucking hate Marc. "Talk to her. Ask for her number. Ask her out. Ask her to fucking marry you." She looked over at us. Her eyes were so brown,you couldn't separate the pupil from the iris, not from a distance anyway. She rolled her eyes and looked away. I could've talked to her. I could've walked overand stuck out my hand and told her my name. Hi. I'm Jackson. People do it all the time. I don't, though. "You're kind of a pussy, aren't you." "Fuck off." "I'm going to meet Allison. Are you coming with?" "Of course not." "See you tonight then." "Yeah." I gave up on blues and moved to jazz to look for early Marlena Shaw or something. I was having a big black American music music from the 1950s and '60s moment then. "Who's your friend?" Her voice was in my ear. I stood up fast and almost knocked over some tilty wire rack of broken cornered postcards. "Easy, killer." She laughed, and her teeth were impossibly small and impossibly white. "My friend?" "The guy you were with there a minute ago?" "Oh. Him." God, I fucking hate Marc. "His name is Marc." "He looks familiar. For some reason." "Oh." "But so do you." "Oh." "Oh?" "Oh." She quirked her mouth again. I was suddenly and painfully aware of every coil and kink of my intestines. I looked at my hands and they were much larger than they had been. Sweatier too. "My name is Harlow." "Oh." Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. "First or last?" "Yes." She smelled like oranges. Not like perfume or something but like the fruit itself, like peelings left in the front seat of a car parked in the sun. "My name is Jackson." There. That's better. "Hi." "First or last?" "What?" "Is Jackson your first name or your last?" "Ah, first." "Hi Jackson." "Hi." "Hi." I looked down at the white tops of her breasts. She was wearing one of those men's undershirts. She smirked and I looked away fast. "Listen. I'm gonna buy this. And get out of here." She brandished a cd. I forget what it was, but I know whatever it was made me want to go to bed with her and never get up again. The cd's jewel case was cracked. I don't know why secondhand cds always come in cracked cases. Probably people switch cases just to get rid of the cracked ones. If you want the cd enough, it doesn't really matter anyway. A cracked case's not like a torn record sleeve. It doesn't really affect anything. "So maybe I'll see you later?" "Yeah. Hey. It was nice meeting you. Harlow." "Yeah." She paid for her cd and shoved it into the bag she carried and left. I didn't chase after her and ask her phonenumber or her email. I didn't tell her that I'm in a band and that she should come us play sometime. I didn't ask her out. I didn't ask her to marry me. I thought about all ofthose things, but I didn't do any of them. So that was the first time I met her. Like I said, that was before everything was fucked up. | 
