image stolen from conanevolved.wordpress.com
(This is a selection from my book Hot Naked Tits, which you can buy here.)
They were laying in bed. He had her ipad on his lap to watch Conan the Barbarian. Golden Age Schwarzenegger had fled across frozen wastes. He came upon a hut. A woman with 1982 plastic surgery stood in the door. Do you not wish to warm yourself by my fire?
…
I’ve been unfair to you, she said. He paused the movie.
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What?
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I shouldn’t even tell you this but I forgot my texts come to that fucking thing.
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Well I didn’t look. But now you better tell me.
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It might hurt you.
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It’ll hurt me a lot more if I don’t know what it is.
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I’m seeing other people.
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Who, Judah?
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Judah made Youtube videos. He ate unusual flavors of Japanese potato chips and commented on them. They had over 300,000 views. His parents had money.
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No. I mean… maybe. I might see Judah again. But different guys.
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Where are they from, he asked. Thinking: OKCupid. That shit is a gun in your house. You think it’ll save you but it gets used against you.
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Friends of friends.
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He’d met her friends. They owned homes and bought new custom sofas. The women looked good for their age and talked about men like dialogue from romantic comedies. The word “dealbreaker” was used. The men were Vice Presidents of Licensing Sufjan Stevens Music for Volkswagen. When he was with them he felt like he was in an ad in a design magazine.
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Why do you have to see other men.
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Do you want me not to?
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Yes. Don’t go.
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I can’t. I have to.
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Why?
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Because I like you, but I can’t date you.
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He would have asked why, but he knew. She’d been his first date since he stopped drinking. His first normal person. She was Senior Vice President of Sufjan Stevens. She was 32. She needed to get married. The more time passed the more her children might be retarded. Her job was her life and her friends were job friends and she couldn’t bring him around. They had houses and were half famous. He had nothing and he was nothing.
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If you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go. To be honest, I’m not threatened by these guys. We both know they’ll be dorks.
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Probably.
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And what if they’re not, he thought. What if they’re tall, what if they’re funny, what if they’re Disney Channel handsome. What if they take you skydiving. I could never take you skydiving. Why do you have to take this thing we have and kill it. Just let it have its time. Yes, you need to marry some dork. But why now, why now, when I have dreams about the smell of your fucking hair. I don’t want to lose you, he thought. I don’t want to lose you. He didn’t say it.
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**********
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In the morning he edited his OKCupid profile. Changed from “seeing someone” to “single.” His face would appear in a column of updates for age-appropriate women when they signed in. So and so answered a match question. He said yes, consent is sexy. So and so added a photo. Lit from the side this time like the internet told him. And him. “I’m single now!”
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I’m single now.
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He looked for women aged 18-22 and scrolled down to their “looking for” age range. If they weren’t ugly and they weren’t stupid and they said they’d date over 30 he hit Control-V and sent a message.
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I want to go out with you.
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How about it.
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No question mark. A question mark makes the reader hear an upturn in pitch. This connotes weakness.
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There were 5 of them out of 20 he looked at. It was enough. Like the world, OKCupid was 90 per cent men. But most of them were stupid and boring and not over six feet tall. And they smelled like need. He thought the idea of God was ridiculous but he believed that women could smell pheromones through phones and computers. That if he sent the exact same words but didn’t get laid the night before they could tell. Therefore it was important that he message girls today. The shot clock had been reset.
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I think we’ll have fun,
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one of them said back.
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949-555-6879.
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**********
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They were at El Prado. He had mineral water. She had high alcohol content ale. She was maybe 90 lbs, Chinese and 22. So this could happen, he thought. He asked: how was your day.
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To be honest, I just got out of jail.
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Well it’s settled, he thought.
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He liked her. She was a painter and she went to jail for stealing paint. A tube of cobalt blue costs $65 apparently. She’d had to spread her vagina and ass in a cold auditorium while sheriff’s deputies searched for needles. At some point a busload of black male inmates got carted in and started yelling at her, told her hey ninja I’m a eat that sideways pussy. Every other woman was menstruating. The jail toilet was clogged and walled in by a mountain of bloody pads. When the trustee came around with more pads she said no and got yelled at. People keep them as toilet seat cushions. You don’t say no to anything. If you don’t want Kool Aid, you keep it to trade. They mix it with vaseline and make lipstick. I never hated women before but I don’t understand them now, she said. Who the fuck are you wearing lipstick for. I’ve had enough period smell to get my ovaries cut out, she said.
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The night wound down and he said: I walked here. Drive me back up the hill. He took her to the park in back to hear the owls. Got her tits out in the moonlight. Inside he put on “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” They got naked. He got on top of her on the mattress he’d put out for a kid he was babysitting. Got ready to go in.
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What if I have AIDS, she said.
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Well now you got it twice.
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She told him don’t cum in me seven minutes in. Civilization has collapsed and I am a scavenger, he thought. She did have a sideways pussy.
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**********
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They were at El Prado. He had Kombucha. She had Sauvignon Blanc. He’d been fired that day. He’d been sober three months. It was his first date since he stopped drinking. His first normal person. He told her this. Well fuck, she said. What am I getting myself into.
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I’m also on a new path of trying to be honest. And not use other people.
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From AA?
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Yeah.
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Fuckin weird, she said. But I guess it’s a relief.
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What do you mean.
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I mean your profile makes it seem like you just drink and fuck skanks, and it scared me. My friends told me not to go out with you.
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I can see why they’d say that.
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Is that what you’re going to do to me? Take me home and fuck me on your couch and never talk to me again?
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Not the last part.
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How do I know that?
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Look, I wouldn’t believe me either. But I’m going to be honest. This is my last OKCupid date. My sponsor told me to get off it. He told me not to go out with you, actually. But I’m glad I did. There’s a thing about you, fuck– I fucking suck at this. I just like you a lot. I want to see you again.
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Are you saying this so I’ll come home with you?
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No, he said.
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You sure?
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I’m sure, he said. I’m not like that anymore.
delicioustacos 
If I were half the loser you are I might get laid this year.
I love this. Excellent.
Sir, you are a poet.
Shit mate, your writing is definitely getting better all the time.
Said it before, you are the Hunter fucking Thompson of teh internets dating age.
Instead of getting shot out of a cannon, your ashes will be inserted into the vagine of the finest Persian escort…
Wow… she touched you that much huh?
How do you compare your time with her and the vulnerability you felt, to your old routine of quick OKC fucks? Which do you like more?
I may be presumptuous but I feel that even though you were hurt, the novelty of being a real human being and opening up to another person like that stimulated you in ways that you’d almost forgotten. This won’t be the last time…
sheer fuckin’ poetry.
write a goddamn book and take our money already.
i mean, please. I know writing can be like chiselling marble with a dry straw sometimes. I haven’t written a thing since I got fired.
But your vignettes, they’re really cool and true to life, except interesting.
i second that. write a book, tacos. while american dollars are still worth something.
It’s actually prose. Idiot.
i know it’s prose, but have you READ most poetry? It sucks, and it sucks in the worst way possible, which is when nobody has told the poet “this sucks. This poem was from your mind’s womb untimely ripp’d, you should have left it in there for another eight months to gestate before birthshitting out this stanza which you forced me to read. Your poetry sucks.”
Good writers are often humble, because they’re the product of self-criticism and re-evaluation.
Tacos is a poetic writer even if he doesn’t write poems, and he’s a good writer.
As a professional internet commenter, I’m now hoping he steals the above piece of description, even if he isn’t satisfied enough with his output to write a Kindle single.
Dude, I steal all my books off the internet but I would not only buy DT’s books, I would buy them as gifts for friends. What talent.
Trust me, this is the good road. The marrying her and trying to be VP…that’s the self destruct button on your soul.
Yellow fever is a bitch, if she is Asian use shame to keep her.
It’s so hard to find a sexy asian bitch
Beautiful- both the writing and the longing for human connection here. Don’t stop either, please. It’s inspiring.
“I don’t want to lose you. He thought. He didn’t say it.”
…”I’m not like that anymore”
You are the same. Always the same.
Learn to say it and stop writing about her. It’s all a game to you. Sober or not.
It feels deeply inauthentic. Repeating yourself. All scripted–same cues. Women disposable and interchangeable placeholders in the same insincere story. Over and over
Go away, idiot.
Women ARE disposable/interchangeable placeholders. How do you think most marriages happen? The average guy will try to wife-up the first cute girl who (finally!) bats her eyelashes at him.
Any truth to this girl’s comments, DT? Seems like she knows you personally. If this Asian chick hadn’t left would you have just got bored and let the relationship fizzle out anyway?
This what your writing needs–a little more feeling. Remember, Bukowski was very human, above all, and you can sense it in his writing.
I’m new to DT. Just wanted to say I enjoy your material very much. Cheers (mineral water) from Chicago
Read all his shit from the beginning , it is gold.
I can only agree.
Fantastic.
Up above, under the “Categories” heading, this post is tagged as “Fiction”
But the question is, is this really fiction? Or, how much of it is fiction?
how’s your asshole
Does this mean fistfucking is back in the DT comments section?
OK, well, so maybe the above comment was not in any way fistfucking-related. But I’m mentioning it anyway, just so I can put fistfucking back in the comments.
I know you’re tired of hearing this but you really, truly, honestly, are taking your skill set many levels beyond where you were — and that place wasn’t all that bad. The vignette about the Chinese girl’s time in jail is gold. The class differences you described between you and the iPad chick were heartbreaking. They are ridiculous people, those who hustle for others, but when they have the money and the “designer ad” lifestyle it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong.
Oh, come on. Since your shitter works again you can’t be bothered to write??
goddamn it DT, I’ve been reading this blog for way too long and this, finally, breaks my fucking heart, both in content and in how good the writing is.
How can you do that to me man, I’ve got shit to do and now I feel like curling up in ball or crying in some cereals over the sheer raw sadness and miserable immutability of it all.
been following your blog for about a year. who knows if you really quit drinking, but your writing has definitely improved since you said you’ve quit drinking. also, there’s no way in fucking hell i could deal with an okcupid date without booze, so, well done.
Fucking excellent
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