For You, The Stars
Chapter Four: Sweet Child o’ Mine
Installment 1
At work the next day I tried calling Simone, thinking that maybe I could let her down over the phone using the office as a neutral context. Fortunately for my immortal soul, she wasn’t at home and I wasn’t craven enough to break up with her on her answering machine.
I went out for another three hour lunch, this time walking down Market toward the Civic Center and spending twenty bucks in a striptease joint paying disadvantaged women with nicotine breath to sit on my lap and grind while nibbling on my ear. That didn’t help.
When I got home from work I called Simone again and this time she picked up on the first ring.
“It’s not going to work,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I can keep seeing you?”
“But you said you would try to make it work!”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it and I just don’t feel like we should be together anymore.”
She started crying again. I think she did some more pleading with me. It was hugely painful. I was just not used to being the bastard. I’d cried when my Vassar girlfriend had broken up with me, but at least then I had the moral advantage and could act like the wronged one.
I said something lame about how we could try to still be friends and she said “Fuck you,” and hung up. At least the deed was done.
I sat down that evening with Dave to try to work on a song we were writing. Neither of us had any real idea how to write a song. My guitar had been in my closet for months. He could strum some chords and we were literally just picking changes almost at random and I guess somewhat by ear.
I was supposed to be writing the lyrics but everything I came up with was either pretentious or unsingable or both.
I told Dave that I had finally picked the scab with Simone and that at least I didn’t have to go on lying to her anymore. I also told him that Cecilia was going to be staying in my room on the weekend.
“Good,” he said. He liked Cecilia and he wasn’t averse to checking her out as eye candy. Being looked at was her specialty.