Crimson

So, yeah. I didn’t, technically, have to fucking do anything.

No one held a pistol to my head and forced me to screw Patrick Lalime. No one forced me to skulk around, hiding it, for a year. No one forced me to fuck him twice more and THEN tell my boyfriend about it. It wasn’t something I strictly had to do.

I chose to tell him. I chose to get in a screaming match because I thought it would clear the air. I chose to beg for forgiveness. I still chose to blow my second chance.

And I chose to walk around the streets of Montreal at midnight, rehashing my conversation with Jose again and again in my head, mentally substituting things I should have said but was too slow-witted to actually say them. I even started to believe my stupid little lies to myself, until I gave in and realized where I was.

I could have at least started off better than “Erm…Jose…I think you need to know something.”

“And just what would that be?”

“You’re not going to like this.” Definitely not one of my finer phrases. At least it sounded more elegant because it was all in French.

“How about if you fucking tell me first and then I decide?” Jose gets pissed if you tease him maliciously like that. I speak from experience—trust me, I know.

“Okay. You know Patrick Lalime, right?”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Yeah. He and I fucked around three times.”

A short pause. In my happy little memory-land rendition, this pause was loaded—silence—and concluded with Jose kissing me and telling me he forgave me. Sadly, that didn’t happen.

“Is your full name Jocelyn Blunt Thibault? Or maybe Jocelyn Idiot? Or Jocelyn Can’t Keep His Dick In His Pants?”

“God, I’m so sorry.”

“Really, now. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“God! Do you have to sound like my mom? I SAID I was sorry, what fucking more do you want? I can’t un-fuck him,” I said hotly.

“Would you try? Please? Or just leave.” Jose slumped against his doorjamb, arms crossed, but with his fingers twitching like he’d appreciate someone to hold me down so he could beat me, repeatedly, with his shoes and my shoes and possibly a very large sledgehammer. Not that I blamed him.

“I wouldn’t fucking be telling you this if I wasn’t sorry.”

“Do I care? Well, let’s look at me.” He looked down at himself, then looked back at me. “Oop, looks like I do not care. Screw you and goodnight, Jocelyn.” He started to shut the door, but I wedged my arm in there.

“Please! I’m telling you, I’m begging you, and I want you to forgive me. Why won’t you?”

Admittedly, I am not terribly bright in times of stress.

“Because that was your second goddamn chance? Shall I bring to your mind the angelic visage of a certain man with the initials P. R., whom you evidently found irresistible on the TWO FUCKING DAYS you were in the same town? Never mind the fact that during that period he sported a haircut that made him resemble an enraged BRUSSELS SPROUT, you fucked him and lied to me about it and I heard it secondhand. First chance: blown. Second chance, you went a good long while, but you fucked Limey behind me back, your goddamn fault, end of story.”

After I replayed his monologue in my head, I’d reached my destination—a seedy vice shop on the bad side of Rene-Levesque, selling smokes, alcohol, porn, and guns. Drugs available on request, but you had better damn well know the guy at the counter.

I made my purchases (fifth of vodka and a pack of filterless cigarettes, if you’re taking notes or something) and ambled back out to some park past the Jiffi-Shits and Kwik-Kraps and lamented the disgusting quality of the street. Steam rose from the sewers and some listless drops of half-rain half-snow fell from the sky.

“YOU slept with Patrick Roy, too, not too goddamn long ago, either. Remember that? Remember how I fucking forgave you? Whatever happened to that?” I’d shouted.

“That was different.” Vague. Laconic. I resisted the urge to hit Jose, hard.

“Fuck you, too, thanks.”

God damn. Everything Jose had said was true.

I sucked down two or three swallows of alcohol and lit the first of twenty cigarettes. Spare me the lecture, though—I know I play for a professional hockey team, I know I’m going to give myself lung cancer one day, I don’t do it regularly, but high school was a bitch and fuck, sometimes vodka and cigarettes can taste like honey and ambrosia.

Really, no one forced me to go fuck around. But I’m one of those sad stereotypical guys with no willpower. The first time I screwed around behind Jose’s back, I was young and hormone-y and lustful (it was Patrick Roy, there is no other explanation). The second time—Patrick Lalime is sexy and adorable and that’s all there is to it.

Furthermore, no one forced me to smoke twenty cigarettes end-to-end and ash into a nearby tree. No one made me finish off the vodka, smash the glass on the ground (thereby contributing to Montreal’s littering problem, but not caring because I was too damn upset) and then try and pick up the pieces.

They cut me and I bled, fingertips stained crimson in a pool of dead electric light. No one held a gun to my head and forced me to fuck up my life.