Fish Fry

At about 6:30pm I was stirred from a blissful evening nap by loud,
repetitive, banging on the front door accompanied by the occasional
door chime or five. I sat in bed staring at the ceiling for quite some
time, contemplating leaving the comfortable haven of my award winning
bed for a chance encounter with a potentially enraged individual. I
deduced that such an action would most likely be worthless, but then
my phone began ringing. I hate phones, hate them passionately but for
whatever reason, mostly because sleep is impossible with the incessant
ringing populating your ear drums, I answered. The logic of turning
the phone off had apparently escaped me.

The voice on the other line offered the familiar heeeeeeyyyyyy that I
have come to expect from none other than the ex-convict. He said he
was standing at my front door and I asked why in the world are you
doing that. Trying to amuse me, he told me he was in the neighborhood
and as sarcastically as I could, I replied you live five houses away,
you're always in the neighborhood.

For some equally elusive reason, I made the trek from my bedroom, down
the long hallway towards the front door before realizing that I should
probably put a shirt on. No reason to give this boy a reason to think
that I actually wanted him there.

He stepped in and sat beside me on the couch. Too close for comfort I
might add. He invited me out to the lake house on Saturday and I fed
him some sort of excuse about work, wondering all along why I just
couldn't say the word no to him. He started inquiring about the rest
of my calendar and I was running out of believable reasons to be busy
for the rest of the summer. And then my phone rang and it could not
have been more perfect. It was the boy who is leaving the country and
he wanted to take me to dinner. So I made sure to make the call last
as long as possible and to be as coy as possible as to send quite a
clear message that I am indeed very involved with another man even
though I am really not. But I think it worked. After hanging up, the
ex-convict dejectedly questioned, was that your man? I smiled and said
yes, yes of course and he's taking me to dinner.

But I want to take you to dinner he said. And it took all I had to not
be like awwww, how cute and had to say over and over in my head,
you're a convict! you're a convict! you're a convict! to the point
where I thought I might scream it out loud, which would not have been
the diplomatic thing to do.

Then, the ex-convict proposed the most brilliant of all plans. He said
there should be a competition to determine who is most worthy of my
affection. I love this idea, it nearly makes up for the fact that the
ex-convict is in fact an ex-convict. I told him I would agree only if
I could film it all and sell it to HBO or Showtime. I mean, we have
all seen millions of reality television shows where a girl gets to
pick from thirty guys she's never met before, but it would be much
more interesting if the girl and the dudes already had history. It
could get dirty and vicious! I love it!

Before he left, he valiantly attempted to make out with me, well the
side of my face since I was not cooperating, but then he was gone and
then suddenly I was sitting along side the other boy eating fish by
the lake and talking about politics and ex-boyfriends and
ex-girlfriends and making plans to steal people's dogs and talking
about his departure, trying not to be sad. And then he came over and
sat down on my bed and we didn't talk, there was nothing to talk
about.

Sometime in the night I had a dream, except it was reality, except not
and it made me hate him, it made me scared and sad because I thought
he had gone but when I opened my eyes and found he was staring right
back I didn't feel relief or comfort, I felt sheer panic.