paints smudged cleanish, darkening their seams, The Barbarians looked like kittens waiting to be eaten.
Especially the quiet one I’d been eyeing, he could’ve so easily been anyone else.
We all made Aaron—standing aside and silent of course— into an object we could all focus on as outsider to break the ice and solidify our blossoming bond.
Our crowded box echoed chatter and The Game boomed directly below us.
It took The Barbarians a minute to comprehend that everything was on me, they were all free to order whatever and everything.
They finally got it when the girls arrived.
Offered iced oysters, the girl on my lap explained she felt queasy, estimating she’d eaten $2,000 in oysters that week.
She ranked the men by spending to the girl on The Greek’s lap, who nodded with sympathy between indiscriminate cheers thru halftime.
The girl on The Greek’s lap was cute like cute meat.
Some machinist’s daughter, undoubtedly a monster, cruel like only beautiful people know how to be, I wondered how much had been spent on her oysters that week.
I could never tell anyone’s age until she started talking about her major.
A swarthy, chiseled waiter and the girl on my lap kept eyeing each other.
All the different adult smiles at night, there must be a brief window in each dimly sentient blob’s life, maybe 26 thru 29, that one knows how to time all those smiles.
The girl on my lap’s skin was glossy like a British hot dog.
I sat up to tilt her off and nodded to the girl on The Greek’s lap.
She looked to The Greek.
He nodded to her.
She moved to my lap.
The Greek walked off to pee.
Clearly this one, with her hot teeth, told time according to her lipstick.
The largest pizza in the world might be an accomplishment to look at, but it’s useless without the largest mouth in the world.
And however you cut it, the ratios will be a mess.
The girl excused herself to the ladies’ room.
The Greek returned, making excuses for needing to pee so often to anyone who’d listen.
Then he began his dance alone in the middle of the room, forcing the crowd to navigate around him.
And quickly his dance got serious with pursed lips and furrowed brow.
The second half of The Game began.
O’Malley pulled a girl toward a closet, and when she resisted he promptly fell asleep with his head on a table next to a basket of onion rings and a cup of hot cheese.
The girl who’d been on my lap returned from around a corner, radiating that shared sting of perfect tits moving thru a room.
Pausing for The Greek to spin from her path, she rolled her eyes at his dance, glanced at me and sighed.
And I stood and shouted at the top of my voice, Time to go.
“Duh, unga-bunga!”
The room froze.
One Barbarian looked at me, stunned, with a shrimp tail hanging from his mouth.
With the chatter and romp all at once muted, that one Foreigner song surfaced from the background—he wants to know what love is.
And that dull-souled Barbarian, the slopey-chinned nodder-alonger who I’d earlier appraised at The Other Greek Place, broke the silence.
“But we can all stay, can’t we?”
I sauntered over to him like James Coburn and stood face to face.
He held his breath.
My breath heated his cheek.
He cleared his throat and whimpered, “I mean, you wouldn’t mind if we stayed, would you?”
The steel spike of my vision burrowing into his forehead, he wouldn’t look at me.
No one moved.
Slowly, I raised my hand.
Above my waist, above his elbow, higher than my shoulder.
I inserted my index finger just beyond the cusp of his nostril and held it there.
He didn’t breathe.
Lightly, I scraped at the inner walls of his nose with my fingernail, barely breaking apart the crust.
We locked into a stare, not unlike the swollen moment before a kiss.
Aaron came up quick and stood next to me.
“Sir.”
With a sudden thrust I pushed a little further up there.
I puffed out my chest.
With my finger inserted into his nostril so tightly, it took very little effort to pull his head this way or that.
In the overlapping indexes of neon lights, Aaron by my side, my finger jammed in the quiet Barbarian’s head, no one moved.
Until finally, O’Malley and The Greek cracked open into furious hissing laughter.
We stopped for Polishes on the way home.
CHAPTER 3 Diana Herself
Most commonly, unconsciously, people judge attractiveness according to averageness and youthfulness.
Asymmetry is not aesthetically appealing.
People might prefer slight asymmetry, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
People’s unconscious assumptions about health and beauty propel evolution.
That person’s estrogen is wonky.
That person’s got a bad immune system.
Symmetry implies extraversion, openness, lower neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeability, sociability, intelligence, liveliness, and trustworthiness.
People associate deception with twitching, and twitching tenses the face, causing asymmetry.
But I’ve always found Diana Herself to be nothing less than extraverted, open, not neurotic, conscientious, agreeable,
