chapter 2: punches

I haven’t seen the man in the brown hat outside of my window for a few days. It is always weird that no matter how scared, or how much you hate a person, the second they leave you begin to miss them. I don’t know if I truly miss him, but now I am fully convinced that he wasn’t real. Every time he isn’t around I accept the fact that he is merely an illusion. A trick of the mind.

I’ve been drinking a lot lately when I don’t have to work, and I don’t have to work for another 3 weeks. Drinking fills me with so much energy. It makes me feel so happy and so relaxed. I begin to feel like a normal person when I drink. All the crazy things I worry about just start to go away. All those paranoid things slide to the back of my mind. It is the most beautiful thing. When I drink everything slows down. I can begin to actually comprehend things. The presence of others begins to entertain me, and I hear what they are saying, rather than just the constant train of monologue that rolls through my mind. A runaway train. No way to stop it. Heading towards some disaster that will end in a giant explosion. A tragedy that will make the news. Usually when people speak I am too nervous to listen. All I can think about is how my face looks when I am listening to them. I feel like a fraud, and I get so nervous I won’t have the right thing to say back to them. There will be some awkward pause, and I will fill it by saying something I meant to keep buried deep under the surface of my brain. When this happens sometimes I completely miss what they say and end up repeating some cliche I wish I never would have said. Listening is one of the hardest things, when it should be so simple. You just have to be there, and be still. I have no idea why I can't do that. When you drink you know how to talk, but more importantly you know how to listen.

The only real problem is that when I drink I become too confident. Too friendly. I make promises that I know I can never keep. I say things I know I don’t truly mean. When I drink I’m the greatest man in the world, and when I wake up all my nightmares come true. I’m the same sad, shy man I’ve been since I can remember and I remember quite a lot when I’m not drinking. Two nights ago when I was nervous about the man in the brown hat outside my home I began to drink early. Usually drinking early works really well, because I become confident when it is still light outside. During this time you know it will be too embarrassing to leave your home, so you sit inside, and send a few texts you know you can just delete later. The problem was that beer wasn’t working, and when beer doesn’t work, I try out liquor. When I try out liquor there is no way to know what will happen.

I guess that after a while I was in such a good mood that I felt like I needed to go out and talk to new people. Why do I do that? No drunk experience has ever become better because you made yourself more public. If I just stayed inside all my worries would subside. I would be relaxed. I would be peaceful, and no one would know. But when I drink, I insist on going out. It’s the worst thing. I cannot imagine having that urge when I am sober.

There is a brewery about a half mile from my home, and that is where I go when I’m feeling social. It’s in an old factory surrounded by a bunch of industrial buildings. I think they keep putting breweries in industrial areas to create some level of irony that makes you spend more money. It’s just like when they make cars look like women. They’re hoping to trigger some subconscious motive that turns you into a zombie with a credit card. When you’re in an industrial area you think you should be at work, and when you realize you are actually at a bar you are relieved, so you drink as much as you possibly can before the place closes down.

The people at the brewery are mostly cool, although the vast majority of the clientele are not there to relax. They are there to be seen. They are there to make a point. When they get their beer they talk about how it tastes. They talk about the ingredients. They talk only about beer. Isn’t that how most people work? When they are doing something they talk only about the thing they are doing. Going somewhere should be an excuse to talk about other things that have some bigger meaning, but yet we never do. At restaurants we talk about the food. At parks we talk about the weather. At stores we talk about the prices. At work we talk about work. That’s just how things go. I have no interest in how beer tastes, I just drink it so I can get drunk. It all really tastes the same to me. The lighter and easier to drink, the better.

Usually when I go to the brewery I am the drunkest one there. Breweries are supposed to have some level of respectability that is lost on me. You are supposed to go out and have a couple drinks with people you barely know. Everyone should be smiling. Everyone should have new fresh haircuts, and perfectly manicured beards to talk about in case the talk of beer becomes stale. Groups of patrons are always laughing, even though there is nothing funny about the process of brewing beer. Pictures are always taken. The best looking guy gets the biggest laughs, and the cutest girl is rewarded with the most attentive ears. They’re just as easy to classify as the small flight of beer in front of them.

The real serious drinking is mostly reserved for dark smoky bars. That’s where people go to relax. At breweries you perform, and when I am there I put on quite a performance. When I go to that brewery they must think I am the funniest, happiest person in the world. It would be so embarrassing to go there sober. I doubt they would even recognize me. I would be totally exposed. One night I was so drunk I woke up back at my home without my credit card. I didn’t know how to go back into the place sober, so I just drank a whole bunch, and then went there the next night and pretended like I meant to leave the card there. I told them to just “open it back up.” I think a lot of people laughed, but I can’t remember if they actually thought it was funny or were just uncomfortable. You never can tell.

Two nights ago when I went there I sat at the bar and ordered a new beer they had just tapped. I talked to the bartender about how it had hops, and was brewed with some orange peels or something. I really had no idea what to say, I was just figuring it out as I went along. While I was sitting there talking to the bartender about the brewing process this red haired woman walked up next to me. She was just absolutely stunning. The way she carried herself made me want to collapse. She was everything I was not: confident, in control; she moved and spoke with purpose. She had freckles, and wore a plain green shirt. The shirt was tucked into these tight, light blue jeans that hit every single curve on her body. She stood completely erect, and looked everyone around her in the eye. I realized after a while had passed that I was practically drooling over this woman so I stared at my beer, and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was just as breathtaking. She had a pack of Marlboro reds tucked into her back pocket. There is something so sexual about a woman who isn’t afraid to take some risks. When a woman smokes you know she isn’t afraid to gamble. Sex is the ultimate gamble. Anything could happen. That is why fear and sex are so closely related. When a woman is willing to gamble on something like her life, you know she doesn’t care at all about you. This is the greatest allure a woman could ever hold.

I immediately knew I had to act fast before the strong men in tight gray shirts a few seats down asked her if she liked the Chicago Cubs. They were playing on one of the big tv screens. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say to her. Nothing I could ever say to her would bridge the gap between my insecurity and her abundance of poise. Just when I thought she would order a beer and walk off to one of the large tables she sat down in the barstool to my right. Earlier I had spent way too much time staring at her and remaining silent to jump right in with some line. Instead I decided to display the confidence the new orange peel lager had given me by talking to the bartender about his blue shirt.

After what felt like hours of consciously ignoring the woman, she noticed a bruise on my arm and asked me what it was from. I couldn’t remember where I actually got the bruise, so I said the first thing that popped into my head. I told her I had been in a fight. It was such a stupid, obvious, redundant joke I immediately regretted saying it. I would never say something so obvious when I was sober, I would say something way more interesting. She just stared hard at me. For awhile I thought there must be something on my face. She looked me in the eye for a solid 20 seconds, and told me without a shred of irony or humor that she wanted to give me more bruises.

I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. What I do remember is suggesting that I would let her do or say whatever she wanted to me, and practically sprinting out of the brewery with her. Initially I thought the whole bruising comment was just a cheap bar trick to suggest she wanted to come home with me, but after awhile I discovered that her claim was quite literal. She wanted to actually bruise me. She told me I looked like the type of man who could take a punch. I do not know if that was a compliment or a putdown, but at this point it did not matter. The mere fact that a woman like this was in my home granted her absolute freedom to do whatever she wanted. She took my shirt off. It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t sensual. She just ripped it off over my head. Then she told me she was going to hit me as hard as she could in the right arm. I flexed my bicep and let her hit me. She hit me about five times and then told me to turn to the other side. I turned. She hit me ten or more times on the left shoulder as I flexed my arm. After this she told me she wanted to hit me in the stomach. I told her she could. I flexed my abs as hard as I could and let her fist collide with my stomach. I collapsed. Fell to the floor.

The next thing I remember was putting my shirt on and sitting on my couch. I turned the tv on. A reality show where couples decided if they were in love based on the compatibility of their dogs was playing. I asked the woman what her name was. She told me it was Rose. Then she told me she was lying. I couldn’t tell if she was lying about her name, or lying about lying about her name. She said we could have sex if I wanted to but that she was axexual. She said she would get no real pleasure from it, but she felt like she should give me some pleasure after all the pleasure I had given her. Oddly enough, the punching was enough for me. I had told her to sleep in my bed, and that I would sleep on the couch, but she told me sleeping in a man’s bed even if it was alone was far too intimate. She slept on the couch, and I slept in my bed.

The next morning I walked out of my room completely clothed, and she was sitting on the couch completely dressed as well. She had the news on tv, but had muted it. She had headphones in, and was listening to music on her phone. Her hands were above her head and she was stretching out her arms. I was still buzzed and happy from drinking the night before. Due to this factor I wanted to spend as much time with this girl as I could before I became sober and my insecurities got the best of me. I asked her if she wanted to go out and get something to eat. She stood up, walked over to me and drew her hand back in a fist. I flinched. For the first time since we met I saw the corner of her mouth raise up into a partial grin. She wrote her number on a fast food receipt sitting on my coffee table and told me she would be happy to punch me again. She once again told me she would be more than willing to have sex with me, but it would be strictly for my own pleasure, not for hers. That it was only fair for me to get something in return. It was weird to think about sex in these terms. I couldn’t tell if it made it more or less appealing. I assured her I got plenty of pleasure from her punches. She looked at me weird so I told her I would text her later. I didn’t know what to say. She left. I guess she walked home?

That was two nights ago. I’m drinking in my house again. Hoping to get the nerve to text her, but I don’t know what to say. The abuse she had given me wasn’t sexual from my perspective, but it was exciting. I want to know more about her. If I understand where her anger came from the punches would be even more exciting. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Right now, this girl is some sort of sexy enigma, and I can't stop thinking about that. If I truly understand her problems it all might make sense. Sexual attraction is a riddle, and once you solve the riddle the attraction goes away. I don't want to think about that right now. Just to have a beautiful woman like that in my house flipped my whole world upside down. I keep drinking and look between my blinds. The man in the brown hat isn't there. I turn the tv on, and there is a game show on where the contestants have to act like chickens, while members of the crowd throw eggs at them. I don’t even think there is a prize. I crack another Bud Light and wait for the warm pulse of calmness to wash over my nerves. Then I will know what to do.