Page 80 of Total Exposure

and all the things they made me play

until they sucked me dry

and left me standing there alone

small, but tall

and refusing to cry.

I am just a diamond ring.

That’s why I’m here.

Hmmm. I have to read it like fifteen times. Not because I don’t understand her metaphors, or literary interpretation of what a diamond ring is. But because I do.

I wasn’t going to write more of my story, but maybe she just needs to know… well, that people have fucked-up experiences and they’re OK afterward.

Except I’m not really a good example, am I?

Rational me pops up, taking my side for once, telling me, Could’ve been worse.

Could’ve.

You’re still here.

I am.

You’re helping her.

Just another stand-up guy, I guess.

Which makes me sigh. And roll my eyes. And pick up the pen and start to write.

I could start my story with boring details about how we all met, what we all do, and how it all intertwined to make us what we are today. But no one wants the boring backstory and I’m sure you’re far more interested in what she looked like. Or what he and I saw in her, or how we ended up fucking each other just a few years later.

She was a foul-mouthed tomboy who did her best not to look like she was modeling underwear on a catwalk while wearing wings, but failing miserably at it. But that was how it came off.

She is that girl. The elusive dream woman who can play poker and look like she’s only there as a prop for her equally beautiful boyfriend until she kicks your ass and leaves you broke.

We had the same passion. Filmmaking.

Jordan was in undergrad at Stanford at the time. She and I went to UCLA. Alexander, the fourth wheel in this quasi-quad, was a consultant for the film industry. He, like Jordan, fell in love with Augustine the moment he saw her.

It’s just a natural consequence of meeting her.

She fell in love with me.

But not the way they thought.

She dated them both. Sometimes together, sometimes not. It was always a game.

I was just her best friend. A guy she could—and would—come to, just to talk things through. Just to get a bad day off her mind. Just to have fun and not have the night end with drama or jealousy.

Alexander and Jordan shared her regularly for a couple years. And it was fine because Jordan was up at Stanford and the rest of us were in LA, and he only came down every once in a while and Alexander didn’t mind sharing a few times a year if it meant he could have her to himself all those other nights in between.

But then Jordan got into UCLA law school and suddenly there he was. Every day, every night, every time we turned around, there he was.

And he said to me one night, “Ixion…” I can remember that night like it’s happening right now. What we were wearing, what we had for dinner, what we were drinking. How he almost whispered the words in the bar that night. He said, “Ixion, why haven’t you ever…”