Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 00:16:55 -0400
From: jpm 770 <jpm770@gmail.com>
Subject: Joe College, Part 21

Joe College, Part 21

Sam said that Chris flipped out and tried to punch him.  It was only
eleven on a Monday.  Sam was drunk, which made it hard to unpack his
story.  He didn't seem angry about it -- excited, mostly, but it was
complicated, like his nervous energy was splintering out.

I hadn't been home since nine that morning.  I'd had three classes, an
hour at the gym, a couple hours of reading, a library nap, and half
the day at the newspaper.  That included a lengthy session with a
belligerent sophomore who'd written a think piece about what Foucault
would have thought about Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.  ("Dude," I
said, "for one thing, I'm pretty sure Foucault was gay so the Jessica
Simpson horniness line doesn't make sense, but also, we're not an
academic journal or an American Studies seminar.")  The guy acted like
a dick, and while I didn't care if he followed through on his threat
to quit, I enjoyed my authority.  I spent an hour reworking his review
and explaining why a newspaper shouldn't publish that kind of thing,
until he finally conceded.  It seemed like a bigger win than it was.

By the time I got home, my only plan was to brush my teeth and go to bed.

"What did you say that made him flip out?" I asked.

"Oh!" Sam said, indignant.  "Just taking the piss out of him."

"When you use British slang you sound like an idiot.  You're barely
even British anymore.  You're a Canadian prick with a weird accent."

"Aren't you a bloody sod," he said in a different dialect, like he was
Prince Charles.

"Seriously, asshole, what did you say?"

"It doesn't matter," he said.  "It wasn't anything that bad."

"Did he actually hit you?" I said.

He considered my question and said, "He connected, but it was more of
a bitch slap.  Then he seemed upset and stormed out, like just a
little bitch."

"Awesome," I said.

"Oh, like you're his fucking keeper."

"No, I'm *your* fucking keeper, you stupid motherfuckface," I said.

Sam turned mildly dangerous if he was home drunk and it was early.  He
had conversational aggression and excitement to purge, with no
distraction of loud music, short skirts or enthused bros.  it made him
a party of one, seemingly unaware that no one else part of the scene.

He'd been first in the house to turn 21.  Nobody had house parties for
their 21st birthdays.  They went to a bar at midnight with friends who
were already drinking age.  He'd gone to a sports bar called Goal Line
with a dozen people, and then, the next night, out again, for a doomed
effort at 21 shots.  He puked in a bathroom before midnight, tried to
keep going, puked on an open table 30 minutes later, was ordered to
leave, and escorted home by his friends.  They carried him down to bed
and then hung out in our living room for another couple of hours.

Since his birthday, there'd been a small uptick in Sam's outbursts.  I
wasn't home enough to experience them, but if I had, they wouldn't
have bothered me.  I liked Sam's obnoxiousness.  Others were not so
sporting.

"Not wanting you and Chris to start hating each other isn't being a
keeper,"  I said.  "If you need to instigate some shit, go after me or
Katie or Trevor, because we'll destroy you without taking a swing."

My words were wasted.  Even conversing when he was in that condition,
it was like playing tennis around a retriever.

So first I called Chris, and he didn't pick up, which was
understandable because, what, like I was his fucking keeper?  The act
of calling itself might have been patronizing or meddling, as if he
couldn't sort it out with a friend, absent my intervention.

And it *was* meddling.  If two friends had a scuffle like that now,
I'd be mildly amused and ignore it, especially in a showdown between a
drunk asshole and a sensitive manchild.  It's not like Chris beat the
shit out of Sam.

In that time of your life, though, everybody is intensely
over-involved with everyone else.  It feels magnified, not in the
high-school way or the office-rumor way, where people yank threads of
gossip or knit drama as part of a social hierarchy.  Everything felt
more earnest then.  I *actually* didn't want Chris and Sam to start
hating each other; *of* *course* it was my business to negotiate a
peace treaty.  These things were everybody's business, because why
not?  There was no parent or spouse to tend to things.  Certain
standards had to be maintained.  It only worked if you policed each
other.

I first looked for Chris in the coffee houses, then found him at
Charterhouse, where it was quiet on a Monday.  A table of drunk frat
types sat near the front, but most people studied in quiet groups over
cigarettes, fried food and slow beers.

Chris had a booth to himself.  The following items were on his table:
The Norton Critical Edition of Huckleberry Finn; an issue of Sports
Illustrated with Lebron James on the cover; a cup of black coffee; and
an empty plate, smeared with grease and the remains of a ketchup pool.
 He wasn't paying attention to any of that, though, as he peered up at
the end of a Monday Night Football broadcast playing soundlessly on a
screen mounted near the ceiling.

"Hey," I said, dropping my backpack on the seat across from him.

He didn't look away from the screen.  "Dude, this is a really good
game.  New England had to take a safety on purpose on fourth and one.
Denver's up by three but Brady's driving."

"Brady's such a badass," I said.  "Did you get my call?"

"How'd you know I was here?" he said, his eyes locked on the screen.

"I didn't," I said.  "I was at the newspaper.  Stephanie called a
couple of hours ago and said that she was here so I figured I'd meet
her, and I thought you might feel like hanging out with us.  Weirdly,
it looks like Stephanie's not here, but you are."

"Yeah, that's funny."  He concentrated on the TV, barely listening.  I
thought that he would be in a bad state, but he was just Chris,
pretending to study while he watched TV and ate bad food.  I wondered
if Sam exaggerated.

The table of frat dudes at the front of the bar shouted and Chris
gently raised his hands in a touchdown sign.  "Dude, did you see
that?" he said.

"Awesome," I said.  Brady had thrown a touchdown from about the 20.
Only 30 seconds remained.

"I don't even care about New England or Denver," he said, taking his
eyes off the TV and looking at me for the first time.  "I just wanted
to see them pull that off.  Taking the safety on purpose was gutsy."

"Why are you hanging out here?" I said.  "Were you with somebody?"

"Nah," he said.  "I just felt like getting out of the house for awhile."

"Cool.  Did you see Stephanie when you got here?"

He shook his head and turned his attention away as the game's last 30
seconds bled out.  "Yeah, that was awesome," he said.

At this point, I was no longer concerned about Chris in my capacity as
his fucking keeper.  It became basic curiosity.

"Actually," I said, "and I don't want to make this weird, but I partly
called you because Sam called me and said that he severely pissed you
off and you ran out of the house."

"I figured that out," Chris said.

"Right.  Well, Sam is pretty wasted," I said.

"That's, like, borderline redundant," Chris said.

"Even so," I said.  "Dude, you shouldn't let him get to you."

"Sam doesn't talk to you the way that he talks to me."

"Right.  He talks worse to me, but you shouldn't let it get to you,
especially when he's drunk like that."

"I don't need him to talk to me that way.  I don't care if he's drunk.
 I still like the guy.  I don't have anything against him.  But
really, I sort of hate him."

"He fucking loves you.  He can't help himself."

"Why do you make excuses for people?"

"Sam says nasty things but it's all a game.  It's like he's on stage,
pretty much all of the time, and he acts like that because many of us
actively cheer him on.  As soon as he gets into Crazy Sam mode, with
me, it's like, `Oh, game on,' and if I'm not in the mood for it, I'm
like, `Sam, shut the fuck up, not now,' and he stops.  And on the very
few occasions when I've needed to talk seriously with him, he's
actually very thoughtful and sincere, right?  He was generally
freaking out that he'd made you so upset."

"I know that you're close with him," Chris said.  "I'm not going to
bash him and I'm not super-pissed, but I've been down this with him
two or three times before.  It's shouldn't be like we're in high
school and I'm some outcast that gets bullied all the time."

What follows is my dramatized, imagined version of how the
confrontation carried out.  Most descriptions about Chris's mood and
thinking are based on my own inferences, not anything that he told me.
 I'm also inventing the dialog, taken from Chris's summary
description.  While I guess you could call it fiction, I'm pretty sure
that it's true.

He'd gotten out of class at four.  Nobody was in the house, and this
was part of his problem.  Chris wasn't in any clubs or organizations.
He spent crushing amounts of time just hanging out.  Everybody else I
knew threw themselves into causes or activities.  It was like, you
went to class, and then worked an unpaid part-time job, going to
meetings and parties and speeches.  Chris just had the people who he
lived with, and all of our respective friends.  He didn't have an
independent social life.  This magnified everything.

That afternoon he tried to study, thinking somebody would come home
soon.  He got bored and decided to go for a run, and then decided that
maybe I'd get home and we could go for a run together.  It wasn't
enough of a big deal to call and ask me -- he could wait while he
watched PTI.

At about six, he put on his running gear and went for a good one --
six miles.  It was cold but with no wind.  When he got back, Trevor
was there, eating Subway and watching a Seinfeld rerun.  They said
hey, but by the time Chris showered and came back down, Trevor was in
his own room, napping.

Chris ordered a large pepperoni pizza and ate three-quarters of it.
He then slept for an hour.

He was lying awake on the couch when Sam came home.

"There's my big boy," Sam had said, and slammed himself down on the
love seat.  "Looks like you're having another spectacular night."

"Nah," Chris said, "just watching football."

"All of your rowdy friends are *not* coming over tonight," Sam said.

"What were you up to?"

"I was at the bar with Jeremy Bernstein," he said.  Jeremy Bernstein
had a fake ID and was an extension of Sam's personality.  Sometimes I
hated Jeremy and then he did something hilarious and I liked him
again.  He was like Sam without the warmth.  "Pieces, once you're 21,
I'm going to take you out to the bar and get you laid."

"You should worry about getting yourself laid," Chris said.  "You're
obviously not doing a good job."

You already know that this was a bad response.  Chris thought that he
was defending himself.  Sam heard an invitation to play.  Sam, in
fact, *didn't* get laid that often, and it invited running jokes that
no one took seriously.

"Don't worry, Pieces," Sam said.  "You know I'm just joking.  I know
all about you and what you want."  Sam would have kicked off his shoes
and put his feet on the coffee table, his socks leaving sweat smears
on the black surface.  "You have that whole thing with Michelle.  This
deep, highly sexual passion."

"Shut up, Sam," Chris would have said, and creased his face in a way
that would have signalled to anyone else that it was time to stop.

"You're too shy, you big beautiful bastard," Sam said.  "You should
hear the way girls talk about you when you're not around.  They're
like, `Chris is soooooo hot.'"  Sam would have done a good vocal fry,
the Long Island/New Jersey/Southern California sorority dialect that
spread through certain girls like an esophageal virus.  "They're all
like, `What's Chris's stooorry.  He's so hot and funny,' and I'm just
like, `Ask him yourself!  I'm not his fucking keeper.'  And then I
look over and you're staring around the ceiling while some girl is
trying to rub her tits up against you.  These girls fucking love you,
brother.  I'm serious.  You need to boost your confidence."

"Whatever, Sam," he would have said.  "My confidence is good.  I don't
have to explain my life to you or everybody else."

"Oh, come on," Sam said.  "No need to be so shy about everything.  I'm
on your team."

"Trust me.  Don't worry about it."

"Is it with Michelle?"  This wasn't a real question.  "And you don't
want people to know because you think it would make things awkward
here?  Like the Trevor-Katie stupidity?"

"Shut up, Sam."

"It is!"  Sam said, even though he knew it wasn't.  "You're porking Michelle!"

"Why do you have to talk about Michelle like that?" Chris said.  "Why
do you have to bring her into stuff?"

"She's lovely.  There's no reason to be embarrassed about Michelle.
It's not like you're humping Joni Chang.  Or do you have an Asian
fetish?"

Joni Chang was one of Michelle's best friends.  She had a weight problem.

"Dude, I'm pretty sure that you're joking," Chris would have said, at
this point his palms sweating and a tremor in his voice, "but just so
we're clear, nothing's going on with me and Michelle.  Yes, she's an
awesome person, but absolutely, positively, nothing's going on there,
and you shouldn't go around telling people that."

"Is it," Sam said, dropping a prolonged pause, "Joe?  I mean, that's
cool.  I get it.  I'm kind of sorry to be left out, but I see how you
and Joe hover over each other."

"Dude, shut off."

Sam would have cackled.

"I can relate, Pieces.  Joe is a beautiful man.  As you know, I shared
a room with him for a year.  I could barely keep my hands off of him.
Who could, with an ass like that?"

"Oh my God, dude," Chris would have said.

He would have angrily pushed himself off the couch to go to the
kitchen, thinking that Sam would get the message.  Sam skipped after
him.  Chris ran the kitchen tap, pretending to ignore Sam while he
filled a smudged glass with cold water.

"Look, Pieces, love between two men can be a beautiful thing," Sam
said.  "The love that dare not speak its name.  I've always known that
the two of you share a special bond.  A fire-and-ice thing.  You guys
go out on these long, mysterious runs, and you're both so sweaty and
happy when you get back.  He's so fucking protective of you that it's
endearing.  Has the thought crossed my mind before?  I'd say yes, but
only in a hypothetical way."

"Shut up, dude.  This is seriously offensive.  I'm not even joking."

"I'm not either!" Sam said, although of course he was.

Chris slammed his glass on the counter.  Water splashed up and out.
He grabbed Sam by the collar and shoved him against the refrigerator,
making it wobble.  Because he was drunk and weighed not more than 150,
Sam stumbled back.  He laughed again, but it was more of a nervous
laughter this time.  At this point, most of us might have retracted
and apologized, but Sam was drunk, and there was a point of pride in
not backing down against Chris Riis.  I mean, if you back down to a
small tantrum by Chris Riis, what kind of a dude are you?  Because in
Sam's world, he wasn't being a dick or a bully.  He was bantering and
having a good time.  Chris took it all far too seriously and was
killing Sam's buzz.  But it was worse than that, because he wanted to
intimidate Sam with physical force, and there's nothing a skinny guy
with a quick mouth and a large brain resents more than a bigger,
slower guy trying to intimidate him.

"Jesus, Pieces, Jesus," Sam would have said, playing with his
contrition.  "You can calm down.  You know I didn't mean anything by
it.  But in all honesty -- and look me in the eyes here -- can you
please describe to me, for my own pleasure, in technical and
non-obscene terms, what it was like the first time that you took Joe's
cock?"

This was immediately followed by the bad punch, the bitch slap, the
imperfect contact between Chris's sweaty hand and Sam's sweaty head, a
gurgled bark by Chris, a flicker of clarity on Sam's part that they
had not, in fact, been having the same conversation, and that his
charming, harmless banter, the kind of rhetoric that he shared with
guys in 70% of social conversation filler, had badly misfired, and
that his friend and roommate -- a dude who he liked a lot -- was
raging for no reason.  In his confusion and hurt, Sam stopped to
consider his next best gesture, but by the time that he decided to
commence remorse, Chris whipped shut the front door.

When Chris explained this to me, in details more halting and shadowy
than I've written them tonight, I felt the fogginess and confusion
lying in their heads.  I mean, at some point, we've all committed the
same sins -- the jokes that went too far, the drunk social
misjudgments; the wound of your secret sore spot, the unearned insult
brought by a friend.  Sam had been the prick in the situation, yes,
but he didn't know that he was jabbing at such unreflective
repression.

But it maybe was worse than that, because you probably recognize what
I did when Chris told me the story: that for him to become so
emotional maybe signaled to Sam that he was onto something real.
Sam's drunkenness was the only reason for doubt.

"Dude, I'm being serious when I tell you this," I told Chris, lowering
my voice on the chance that someone could hear me over the jukebox.
"Whenever guys banter about that, you can't shrink back or stress out,
no matter how uncomfortable it makes you.  I know you didn't play on a
bunch of teams and didn't come from the most macho background, but
guys joke about that all the time, and it's not because they're
prejudiced.  It's just something guys joke about, because they think
it's funny and kind of gross."

"*I* think it's kind of gross," Chris said.

"Okay, right," I said, my heart blurring, "but don't worry about that
for now.  I'm just saying, when guys joke about that, the only thing
you can do is joke back.  If I'd been in your shoes, I would've said
something like, `But you give such awesome head that I don't need
anyone else,' or whatever, something like that.  You don't have to be
that crass.  Flip the joke back on him.  Play with it.  You don't have
to be funny or articulate as long as you treat it like a joke.  You're
not being accused of anything.  He's not saying it because he thinks
it's true.  Nobody would talk like that if they thought that it was
true, so, number one, you shouldn't stress out this badly because he
hit a mark.  He doesn't know that he's hitting a weakness, so don't
freak yourself out a make it a bigger thing.

"But this is key, too.  Girls are different."  Now I was starting to
roll.  I wished I had a cigarette.  "Girls will never joke with you
about this kind of thing.  The problem with girls is when they try to
set you up with their friends.  It's easier to shut them down, though,
because girls are so sensitive.  Every girl is scared, deep down, that
they're not good enough, and that no guy will like them.  So, like,
Katie spent a month trying to get me to go out with Andrea, and I kept
saying no.  It was pissing her off but I stayed polite.  Eventually
she was like, `Andrea's really hot and fun, and I don't know why you
think she's not good enough for you.'  So I said, `It's not that.
She's just not my physical type.'  This pissed Katie off more, so she
was like, `Oh, right.  What's your physical type?' and I said, `I
don't mean this in a rude way, but since you asked, maybe a bigger
rack and fitter legs,' and Katie never brought it up again.  I said
that because I knew Katie couldn't respond, because these girls, man,
they're all so physically self-conscious.  Saying something a little
critical about a girl's body, even if it's not their own, it freaks
them out.  If you say something about liking fitter legs, or legs
being a little big, that'll shut them up right away.  It's perfect
because it doesn't sound crass, but it rattles them.  It implies other
things.

"I mean, fuck it, I'm rambling a little, but I'm just saying, there
are ways of handling uncomfortable situations that are pretty easy,
and nobody's going to suspect anything.  Take a couple of breaths and
keep cool next time.  Am I making sense?"

He'd been staring intensely while I explained, occasionally glancing
around to reassure himself that no one eavesdropped.

"You've thought a lot about this stuff," he said.  "You know, you're
actually pretty good at manipulating people."  It wasn't an accusation
-- more like he was slightly surprised and impressed.

"It's not manipulating," I said.  "I'm sure you agree that my personal
life is none of their business.  If they're going to be annoying or
put me on the spot, I have to defend myself, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm making sure that they respect my privacy the way I respect
theirs, right?  It's not like I run around trying to set them up on
dates or acting like it's gross that Trevor hooked up with some girl."

"Yeah," he said.

"So there's nothing manipulative about this, at all.  It's a matter of
staying independent and keeping your personal life to yourself."

"That's a good point."

"I know," I said.

"Remember that time we were running and I asked you about that thing
Michelle said, and you went crazy?" he said.

"Yeah.  That was embarrassing."

"Why was that different?" he said.

"I don't know.  I flipped out pretty bad.  I was pissed at both of
you.  When I did that, did you think it was because you were right?"

"No," he said.  "I just thought I'd offended you."

"Okay, so that's probably what Sam will think," I said.  "Goddammit.
He's so high energy, sometimes I think he's got a thyroid disorder or
something.'

"Dude," he said, "sometimes all of this stresses me out big time."

"I know it does," I said.

"It's not your fault."  He said it to remind himself, not to reassure
me.  "Sometimes there's, like, real me, and then there's these times
where I give into this other thing, and it's like I'm taken over.  I
don't know if that makes sense."

"Kind of," I said.  "You don't have to talk about it anymore if you
don't want.  It's been a weird night."

"I'll be hanging out and living my life, and everything's normal, and
then what I'm doing hits me out of nowhere.  It seems crazy.  Like,
completely crazy, and I can't stop it."

"Do you want to stop of it?" I said.  "I mean, if you want to stop it
and it's causing you this much stress, we can just stop it.  We don't
have to do any of that."

My heart throbbed as he considered this for several seconds.  I
thought that he wouldn't answer.  He looked at me in a way that seemed
knowingly sexy -- it was a smirk and a squint with his head angled
just right.  He probably didn't mean it to look so impish.

"I want to stop it, yeah.  I can't.  I wish I could," he said.

"Okay, because I don't want to stop it," I said.  "It doesn't have to
be all terrible."

"That part's not terrible," he said.  "The rest of it's terrible."

"Don't think about the terrible parts," I said.  "You have to block it
out.  They'll never know as long as you don't want them to know.  No
one would expect it from you.  No one would expect it from me, either,
but for different reasons."

"Why are you so sure?  Just because you don't seem like it?  Because
I'm not that.  That's not a part of who I am.  This is a unique
situation and it's never going to happen again.  Once this stops it's
over.  It's one of those experiences, and it happens, and it moves
on."

"I just mean that nobody'd ever guess that somethings going on.  They
won't guess it from you because they'd think you're waiting for the
right kind of girl.  With me, they think that I'm with girls that they
don't know about.  It's not as complicated as you think.  Sometimes
you have to give some fake signals to keep it all sane.  You can't
think about it too much."

"That's probably easier said than done," he said.  "I keep waiting for
everything to go back to normal."

"Well, it's normal if you find the right way of thinking about it," I
said, leaving it intentionally vague, and not surprised when he didn't
ask what I meant.

We left about twenty minutes apart.  Chris went first.  By then Katie
was at the house and Sam was asleep on the couch.  Chris shoved his
shoulder to wake him up, and then did what I suggested: He told Sam
that they were cool and he was sorry that he flew off the handle, that
he'd been in a quieter mood, and it was one thing for Sam to make fun
of him but another to talk about their friends like that, and this is
part of why he lost it, because Sam was trying to pit him against
their friends, and that was an unfair thing to do.

>From what I heard through Katie, it was an effective performance.
Still not quite sober, Sam sat hunched over, holding his head in his
hands, partly of shame and partly from grogginess.  He apologized for
any bad feelings.  He'd been drunk and hanging out with Jeremy
Bernstein, and you know how that gets.  I definitely took it too far,
and look, Pieces, brother, I fucking love you, and I love everybody.
It was a bad joke and I'm a prick and part of the reason I need you as
a friend is that you're the kind of person who makes me less of a
prick, right?

By the time I got home, Sam had gone to bed.  Chris and Katie were on
the couch watching Conan.  I waved hello and went upstairs.

The following night I woke up at three in the morning.  Chris was
sitting at the edge of my bed.  I woke because he was stroking my hair
and my cheek stubble.  He was already hard in his basketball shorts.

"Is this okay?" he whispered.

I'd been in deep REM so it took a few seconds.  I reached over and
tugged down his nylon shorts until his dick popped out, hugged halfway
down by his waistband.  I kicked off my boxers and got rid of my
tangle of T-shirt.  Just half-awake, he felt warm and apparitional.
He kissed me so hard that it hurt.  The skin on his face smelled like
he'd just left a coffeehouse.  He breathed from my mouth.

That next weekend, Chris got drunk and made out with a girl for the
first time in a year.  They were near a wall in a dark living room
where the hosts played late-90s rap.  Sam was with us.  You might
think that this stressed me out, but what I thought was, Good.  Let
him get this out of his system.  It'll even things out with Sam, and
he'll feel better.

Sam danced a couple of feet away from me.  I tapped him on the
shoulder and pointed to where Chris leaned forward, kissing this girl.
 Sam grinned and raised his arm for a high five.  I shook my head but
softly hit his hand and we went back to dancing with our random girls.

If you think that my approach was crazy and destructive and enabling a
bunch of bullshit, I'm not going to argue back too hard.  At that
time, I was still haunted by how I behaved after that weekend where
Andy Trafford and I first got off together.  How I'd turned on him,
and fought to shut it off completely, thinking that it would end in
good time.  My priority was to avoid that with Chris.  If he struggled
to articulate his thoughts or he insisted that it was a minor stage,
we could reorganize those items over time.  He'd admitted to me that
he couldn't stop, which was more affirmation than I'd heard from him
before.

I mean, shit, it was only about a year since the first time that Chris
and I did anything.  He handled his first year better than I did.
That he couldn't stand hearing the g-word or needed to make out with a
girl to reassert his masculinity seemed like modest problems.  He
still slipped up to my bedroom at three in the morning, whimpered when
we came, and looked me in the eye the next day.  Do you think I was
going to get anywhere with a heart-to-heart about coming out or
acknowledging his gayness?  He would've closed it all down, gone into
the shell, and who the hell knows what kind of mess he'd be making a
few years from now.  If it kept him in the fold, I wasn't going to
discourage his low profile.

It was maybe thirty minutes later when I was on the front porch having
a cigarette alone.  Chris's makeout partner departed in a black down
jacket.  She was with two other girls.  They were comforting her.  In
a brittle voice, I heard, "He seemed so *nice.*  What a fucking
asshole."

They walked into the cold, dark, fucking night.

Seeing Chris a few minutes later, I leaned forward and shouted over
the music, "What happened to your girl?  I just saw her leaving.  She
looked upset."

"Yeah," Chris said, matter of fact and deep of voice.  "She asked for
my number and I did what you told me.  I was like, `Look, you're
really cute and seem extremely nice, but you're not quite my type.
Your legs are a little bigger than I like them.'"

"No!" I shouted.  I laughed and grabbed his shoulder and spoke in his
ear.  Against the din of 50 Cent, my mouth was so close to his ear
that I could have licked it.  "You don't say that to the girl.  You
say that to the girl who's setting you up with another girl."

"Either way, she really didn't like it," he said.  "I don't think I'll
do it again."