…or, Purl One, Plain Advice
It was still early after Iason left. Sitting around my room just made me feel sorry for myself, which was stupid, or feel sorry for Iason, which was stupider.
Worse, my cock hadn’t gotten the message that it was suddenly dinner for one. Anger apparently looks a lot like horniness, from down there.
I took a shower to take care of the problem. I’d never seen much point to the stereotypical “cold shower” prescribed by conventional wisdom. There was a saying that every crisis was really an opportunity. As long as you had running water, you might as well grapple with the problem directly.
I wasn’t in the mood, though. I had Iason on my mind. Reinforcing my attraction to him seemed like a bad plan. So, I decided to give conventional wisdom a try.
As it turned out, cold showers really suck. And they don’t help all that much. I turned the water back up to warm and got it done, quickly and as dispassionately as could be done.
Then I went to find Marlot. She’d decided to have a warmer meal and work on her knitting in front of the TV after finding out I’d be “occupied” for the evening. She didn’t seem surprised when I came knocking on her open door. She didn’t even look up.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Lousy,” I said. I told her what had gone down.
Marlot was unmoved. My description of Iason’s pain didn’t melt her heart. Neither did my description of his omelets.
“You said what you needed to say,” Marlot said. “It’s shitty, but it had to be done.”
“You don’t think I should have waited for the right time?” I asked.
“Unless you find the hallway where time flows backwards, I don’t think that’d work,” Marlot said. “Because the right time was earlier, before he started treating you like a sex golem. Or back when he first started springing little surprises on you, like a sexy elven slave bracelet.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”
“I think it’s a little accurate,” Marlot said. “So if it sounds harsh, remember that and then tell me how bad you feel about laying down a little law.”
“Okay, if not the ‘right’ time, how about a better time?” I asked.
“You mean a time that’s not right after he does or says something nice?” Marlot asked. “Because I thought the whole point was that he had a pattern of that and you were getting sick of it.”
“I’m just worried about the message I’m sending,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, you might accidentally give him the idea that presents and kisses don’t make everything better,” Marlot said. “You’d better watch out for that.”
“You don’t think I should have just shut up and enjoyed dinner?”
“Sure, and after that you could have laid back and thought of the Mother Isles,” she said. She put her needles down, then reached up and adjusted her hat. That was when I knew she wasn’t just being her lovable self. I’d pissed her off. “For Khersis’s sake, Jamie, I wish I had made a recording of you yesterday morning so I could play back how you sounded, the day after he told you that your pleasure was optional.”
“So you think I did make the right call, then.”
“Jamie! It’s your life,” she said.
“You’re the one who said I should tell him,” I said.
“And you’re the one who decided to do it,” she said. “I just asked you to think about whether or not he was worth it and then act accordingly. You’re old enough to make up your own mind.”
“Are you going to snap at me if I ask you what I should do next?” I asked.
“I won’t snap at you if you ask me what I think you should consider doing next,” she said.
“What do you think I should consider doing next?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I’m really not sure,” she said.
“Then why the hell did you tell me to ask?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I told you I wouldn’t snap at you if you asked me that, and I didn’t. Because it’s a fair question to ask a friend. It’s just not one I have an answer for right now.”
“Well, Iason’s thinking now,” I said. “That’s something at least.”
“He’s probably thinking twice about making you any more omelets,” Marlot said.
“Oh, that’s helpful,” I said.
“It’s like my mother always says: if you can’t be part of the solution, you may as well be part of the problem,” Marlot said. “Didn’t you say you got invited to a party?”
“What? Oh, yeah,” I said. I hadn’t given it much thought. I hadn’t even really looked at the flyer. I pulled it out of my pocket. “Farmhouse Party,” I read. “Boy, they really live it up around here, don’t they?”
“I think the key there is that farmhouse equals countryside, which equals off campus, which equals drinking,” Marlot said.
“Do you think I should go?”
“I think you should decide if you want to go or not, and then do it,” she said.
“Well, I suppose it might be fate or something that I got invited to a party the same day I was going to have a confrontation with Iason,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, because trying to figure out what fate wants you to do is so much better than asking your friend what to do with your life,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to figure out what I should do with my life,” I said. “I’m just asking your advice. Since you’re my friend, and you know me, and I trust your advice. When did that become so wrong?”
“I don’t know, Jamie. Maybe around the time you got someone in your life who wants to turn you into a mindless beast of burden,” Marlot said. It might have sounded harsh, but she just sounded tired. All of a sudden, she seemed to be exhausted. “Maybe I’m worried that part of you really wants that. Maybe I want to be a counterbalancing viewpoint to that. Maybe I’m just a bitch. Or maybe I feel like I’ve got just enough strength to figure out what I’m doing with my own life, with my classes and with Bobby and everything. Maybe a bit of all that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were having problems with Bobby.”
“Not huge ones,” she said. “But everyone has problems. It’s a new thing, for both of us. We’re figuring things out.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“Not right now,” she said. “Eventually, down the road? Probably. Some time we’re not both being moody weepy bullshit emo kids with each other.”
“Hey, we’re not weepy,” I said.
“You don’t understand my pain,” she said.
“You know, it’s still not that late,” I said. “Do you want to go get a burger?”
“Not even a little bit,” she said. She pushed her warmed up spaghetti away. “But I’d kill a cow for a salad, so I guess you can have a burger out of the deal if you want one.”
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