FREED VERSE

Never have I been more red in the face. My professor just announced to our class that we are apparently “behaving like children” and that he “never thought he would have to tell a class of college students how to act.” Not directed at anyone in particular, apparently, but come on.

I came to college to be a student, to be more than the burnout recluse sitting in the back of the classroom I was in high school. But now, here I am, still just as much of a loser. Not even the cool kind of loser, either, the kind that is the perfect amount of disheveled and who sweats pheromones instead of BO. No, I’m still just as much of a desperate virgin as I was back then, too.

I am painfully reminded of this when I see her. Her, on the other side of the room, silently taking notes. She’s the type to get looked at when she walks into a room, less because of her face (don’t get me wrong, that part of her’s astonishing, too), but more because of her energy. The way she carries herself, the way she creates a world around her that I’m desperate to see just an inch of.

She doesn’t notice me. The lead in her mechanical pencil just broke. Her angry face is just as beautiful as her neutral face, her RBF, her smile. Her eyes almost make me forget how dreary everything else is. But she’s there, and I’m here, and I look like shit and she looks like that and there’s all this goddamn space between us.

I don’t have a chance in hell. But, that ticked-off professor’s right. I’m an adult. I need to start acting like it. My chair drags against the linoleum floor as I stand up, blood rushing to my head and my vision going white for a moment. I walk towards her, my eyes locked on those earth-shattering eyes. I see her, I can’t see, I can’t hear. I hear everything all at once.

Then the world starts spinning. I wish I was speaking metaphorically, but the reality-shifting stone in my pocket is burning hot and before I know it, my feet are planted firmly on the ground of the stickiest beer-stained bar floor you’d ever seen. Sammy’s is only three blocks from campus. They could cover their walls with the all the fake IDs they’ve confiscated this year alone.

“OK, so maybe I overshot the whole grown-up thing,” I think. “Less put-together confident man, more college? I’m in a college bar as a college student, so I ought to act like it. If I don’t want to end up as the next 40-year-old virgin, I should go for a hook-up or two.”

Or three. Or four? How do I do this? This isn’t what I imagined doing, how I imagined my love story playing out. This isn’t the feeling I was always told would make my cheeks burn and my heart fill with joy.

I’m not blushing, but my face is red by my third beer and that is enough for me. I’m not a lightweight, but I’m a hell of an actor. I have just enough alcohol on my breath for stumbling up to the bar and telling the first girl I see she’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen seem not-creepy enough. In her eyes, I’m just another drunk fool and she’s a beautiful lady that might pity him enough to let him sleep with her.

If that’s not what she’s thinking, anyways, it’s how she’s acting. Her hand is on the nape of my neck, her fingers tracing the back of my ear. She’s leaning in to whisper something to me, to get her sticky vodka-stained breath all over my skin.

But then, foiled again. The world spins, and the bar fades. My neck is cold where her hand once was. This white padded white room I find myself transported into must be a sign from above to STOP WHORING MYSELF OUT! PERVERTED FREAK! Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. I made another mistake. I should get used to it by now. I’ve been put in time out. I don’t even have anyone to strike out with. Some me time is what I really need, I guess.

The walls are blank enough to remind me of that journal I haven’t touched in how many months? and that bullshit “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else” influencer mantra. World’s worst earworm. Fine, then, you interminable, indecisive asshole. Sit criss cross applesauce in this asylum and love yourself. Cakewalk.

Arms crossed, the padded floor is a nice cushion. My hips are starting to get sore from sitting like this. I’m not used to being a statue. The only thing that’s moving is my mind, my angry thoughts cursing the fact that my head’s not clear, that I can’t be alone because only worthless self-loathing people can’t be alone. What a miserable schizoid.

You know, it doesn’t even matter if I die alone because no one will be around to judge me, anyways.

I breathe. It’s nice here all of the sudden. It’s still. Here, I die alone, and that’s that. It’s simple, it’s bleak, and it’s mine.

But then I can feel hot asphalt through the soles of my shoes. The rusted handle of a gas station bathroom’s door is clammy to the touch. If I never get the chance to get an STD, at least this’ll get me Hepatitis A. STD-adjacent. A story to tell.

There’s grime between the flooring tiles and the room smells like shit. There’s the truck stop charm I know and love. I don’t need to take a leak, but a grimy bathroom stall calls my name anyways. I choose the one with a pair of feet next to it and I’m mildly delighted to see a glory hole carved out under the empty toilet paper dispenser that’s barely attached to the wall. Somehow, almost instinctively, I know to knock twice above it.

In a few moments, I finally get the opportunity to de-virginify myself. Anticlimactic, if you ask me. Not worth the hype. I didn’t even bother to write down whatever trucker’s number was scrawled on the bathroom wall. “Call me for a good time.” Psh. You wouldn’t know it if it hit you in the face.