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…or, Involuntary Commitments

A rap on the door woke me up. I grabbed my boxers and threw them on. I knew it was Marlot from the sound of it even before I looked through the peephole and saw her hat; there was no mistaking her cane for a fist.

“So, apparently, your mom has been talking to my mom,” she said as I opened the door. “She seemed to think I was going to be really upset about something.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, stepping back to let her in. I closed the door behind her and pulled out my desk chair for her.

“So, then somehow, something I said gave her the idea that I really was suicidal,” she said, sitting down heavily. “She told the school, and a couple of campus guards came to my room with Jennifer and some lady from the healing center.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. I forced a smile. Marlot was more apt to see the humor in that kind of situation than I was. “That must have been embarrassing, huh?”

“Embarrassing? Jamie, they had me involuntarily committed,” she said. “I spent the last seventy-two hours under suicide watch.”

“Oh, Khersis, Mar,” I said. In my defense, I had just woken up. “I’m so—oh, fuck you!”

“It didn’t work, though,” she went on. “I totally killed myself anyway.”

“Sometimes I hate you so much, it hurts,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. Turn around,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Missy told me about your dragon,” she said.

“Oh, right,” I said. I turned so she could see Vera.

“Nice inksmanship,” she said. “Should I assume your sudden decision to unburden your soul to your mother was a shameless attempt to deflect her attention from this?”

“No, actually, it was over the earrings,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not quite dumb enough to tell her I got a tattoo.”

“But, wasn’t she trying to convince your dad to get them?” she asked.

“Yeah, but in my case it was less ‘how could you do that to your body?’ and more ‘how could you throw your money away?’” I said. “She actually believed I could have afforded this kind of shininess on my own.”

“Were they really that expensive?”

“Uh, platinum and diamond, Mar,” I said. “Put that together with the enchantments, and it adds up a little.”

“Well, I can’t tell that on sight,” she said. “I figured logically, that much sparkly stuff couldn’t be real.”

“You figured right,” I said. “Except for the part where you used logic. Iason apparently has more money than brains, even allowing for the possibility that he’s got a whole cellar full of brains stashed away somewhere.”

“So, now your fuck buddy’s a sugar daddy,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I don’t like that term.”

“Which one?”

“Either,” I said. “Even if it was just for the sex, ‘fuck buddy’ makes it sound like—I don’t know what it makes it sound like. I’m just not comfortable with it, and the last thing I want is a sugar daddy.”

“Well, just for the sake of argument, are you sure about that?” Marlot asked.

“Just for the sake of argument? Yes, yes I am.”

“It’s not like you’ve got another plan for your life,” Marlot said.

“So? I’m eighteen,” I said. “It’s not like I’m the only person who’s ever been undeclared at the start of freshman year. I can spend a little time figuring out what I want to do with my life.”

“True,” Marlot said. “I actually think that’s college’s true function, anyway.”

“What?”

“To give directionless upper-middle-class kids a buffer between high school and the real world,” she said. “Otherwise, they’d explode on contact, like the stuff that crosses the borders of the elemental planes.”

“Oh, sure, and the education is incidental,” I said.

“No, it’s more like an elaborate practical joke,” she said. “Only nobody’s quite sure who’s playing it on whom.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Anyway, what’s the deal with you sleeping with a guy you just—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Take your pick,” she said. “Don’t go there, don’t do that, don’t be that guy.”

“I’m just curious why one week into college, you’re—”

“Don’t,” she said. “I know what I’m doing, Jamie.”

“Okay,” I said.

I didn’t really think that she did. She was being stubborn, though. I’d have to wait until she was in a better mood and approach the subject from a different angle.

“So, you have misgivings about Iason’s givings?” Marlot asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Especially since most of them seem to be designed to mark me in some way. I mean, he wanted his crest tattooed on me, but I got the one I wanted. He wanted me to get pierced, you know, all over, but I held to just the place I would have gotten pierced anyway.”

“‘All over’?”

“Yeah, uh, he wanted to do my cock and nipples, too.”

“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head and looking at my crotch. “I think he might be onto something, there.”

I turned away and hastily rearranged the fly of my shorts.

“You know, on the subject of your boy-bits—”

“Man-bits,” I said, going and sitting down on the couch with my legs closed.

“That doesn’t alliterate,” she said. “On the subject of your man-muscle, Missy treated me to an in-depth comparison of it to her favorite imaginary friends.”

“How’d I rate?”

“Somewhere in the middle,” Marlot said. “If you let Iason pierce you and you could get the head to rotate, I think you’d jump at least two places on the list.”

“How big is the list, exactly?”

“She was giving me a top ten,” Marlot said. “I’m not sure out of how many.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this with her,” I said. “But I can’t just break it off with her.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re stuck with her,” I said.

“What? No, I’m not,” Marlot said. “Rooms can be reassigned. Anyway, we’re both big girls, and it’s not like you spend a lot of time in my room, anyway.”

“No,” I said. “I suppose if I wanted to let her down gently, I could tell her I’m focusing on things with Iason.”

“Right, put off the chance of a blow-up now for the inevitability of one later, when you get involved with another girl,” she said. “Unless you really plan on getting serious with Iason?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I tried to downplay things with him.”

“But?”

“Who said there’s a but?”

“I did,” Marlot said. “But?”

I sighed.

“But he’s hot, and he’s really into me, and all of this attention feels kind of good,” I said.

“So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that even the but has a but,” I said. “He’s cocky—”

“Cocky buts,” Marlot said. “Such a gay problem.”

“Ha ha,” I said. “He’s cocky, he’s a liar, and he’s sexist.”

“How sexist?”

“Why does it matter how sexist?” I asked. “Isn’t even a little bit too much?”

“Sure, but there are degrees,” she said. “For instance, there’s you giving me grief for sleeping with a guy I just met when you’re doing the same thing, and then there’s saying women should be barefoot and in the kitchen.”

“Okay, I’m not sexist,” I said. “Just concerned about a friend. And as for Iason? I’m not sure he approves of women touching his food.”

“Ouch,” she said. “I hope that’s hyperbole.”

“I don’t know if it is or isn’t,” I said. “Part of me is hoping that he’s just got ‘being a dick to women’ tied up with his idea of manliness and he can learn to separate them. He honestly seemed shocked that I wasn’t impressed when he was a jerk at the restaurant.”

“Interesting,” Marlot said. “I think I’m going to have to have a little sit-down with your Iason.”

“Yeah, well, give me a chance to work on him a little more first,” I said.

“Oh, Jamie, no.”

“What?”

“Don’t stay with him thinking you can change him,” she said.

“Well, maybe he can change himself,” I said. “I think this is his first real relationship, too.”

“What makes you think that?” Marlot said.

“Even if he always spends so much on a first date, I’m sure he doesn’t have a closet full of these lying around,” I said, holding my arm up to display the wooden deer bracelet. “He says he wasn’t thinking things through when he gave it to me, which I actually believe. I think it was infatuation at first sight. He’s talking about getting married.”

“Already?”

“Someday.”

“So he’s already talking about getting married, someday,” Marlot said.

“He seems to think it’s the natural progression for any relationship,” I said. “It’s like he can’t imagine why we’d bother going out with each other if that’s not the eventual goal.”

“Okay, yeah, that does sound like somebody in their first serious relationship,” Marlot said. “So, if you do break it off with him, are you going to try to get rid of that thing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I might not be able to do that without ‘breaking it off’, so to speak. He doesn’t know any way to remove it, and it might not be possible to remove the binding enchantment without destroying the whole thing.”

“Well, there is a pretty good enchantment program here,” Marlot said. “You could always take it in and get an informed opinion about that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to seem like I’m planning on dumping him,” I said.

“So, you do like him,” Marlot said.

I thought about it, but she was right.

“I don’t like how he treats other people,” I said. “But I love how he treats me.”

“Well, you’re eighteen,” Marlot said. “You’re allowed to be selfish for a little while longer.”

“How long’s that, exactly?”

“Until I tell you otherwise,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am!” I said, snapping her a salute.

“Yeah, uh, don’t say that again,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said. “So, enough about me and my guy. Let’s hear about yours.”

“My what?” she asked.

“Your guy,” I said.

“I don’t have a guy,” she said. “I had a nice time with a nice boy, who I may or may not see again.”

“So, it was a one night stand,” I said.

“So far,” Marlot said.

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Given that there’s been a grand total of zero nights since the one, I’m not sure I see the alternative,” Marlot said.

“Seriously, Mar,” I said. “If he never called on you again, you’d just be okay with that?”

“Why not?”

“You think it’s okay for a guy to just use you for sex?”

“As long as it’s mutual?” she said. “Anyway, just because it isn’t a relationship doesn’t mean it’s ‘just sex’. There can be a connection between two people for a minute or a day, and I think that’s worth recognizing.”

“I want to meet this guy,” I said.

“Oh, he wasn’t that good,” she said.

“I’m serious,” I said. “If you’re getting involved with somebody, I want—”

“Oh, stop,” Marlot said. “You’ve got a guy buying you the imperial crown jewels and proposing marriage, and you’re getting all paternal because I had a hook-up over coffee.”

“I’m concerned because a week ago, you weren’t the sort of person who had ‘hook-ups’,” I said.

“A week ago, I didn’t know anybody I’d want to have hook-ups with,” Marlot said. “A week ago, you were still in denial about the sexings with boys.”

“I wasn’t ‘in denial’,” I said. “I just wasn’t open about it and wasn’t expecting it to come up. I didn’t realize exactly how much my circumstances had changed.”

“Well, that may be the case for you, but I did realize how much my circumstances had changed,” Marlot said. “Do you realize the freshman class here is bigger than the population of our entire town? Even if most of them are still going to look at me as the fat, gimpy nerd with freckles, there are still going to be some decent guys who think freckles are cute.”

“I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with your freckles,” I said.

“Well, there is,” she said. “One of them is a quarter inch too far to the left, but most people completely miss that.”

“Well, of course. That’s why we never dated,” I said. “But, on a semi-related subject, you need to start looking up seafood restaurants in Enwich.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve come into some money, and I am taking you for a semi-classy semi-night on the town,” I said.

“Oh, Jamie, that’s semi-sweet of you, but I don’t want you mooching from Iason on my behalf,” she said.

“Hey, I am not mooching on Iason,” I said. “I have some pride. This money’s from my mom.”

“Oh, well, that’s a different story.”

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