“Be good, and you will be lonesome.” - Mark Twain

So basically, I went through the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the depression, and then the acceptance in all the time it takes to listen to my pathetically limited John Coltrane collection twice over, and by the end of it, I came to an important realization. Inspired by that realization I decided to go over to Lily’s place the following night.

“Rod, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lily said with a bewildered expression, after the initial shock of my query wore off. “Blue in Green” was playing in the background. She was wearing that white sweater that drives me nuts—not too tight, but which shows off the curves of her body really well. She has a really good body. She used to be in gymnastics before she grew about eight inches too tall for it, and now she was teaching four year-olds how to somersault and tiptoe along the high beam, an unfortunate waste of her talents. She still has a beautiful frame, with wide and rounded shoulders, but the years of not going at the gymnastics hard-core had let the rest of her soften up a little. Even on bad days she looks pretty awesome.

“Why not?” I asked, maneuvering myself a little closer. She inhaled and sat back, but not so that I thought she was trying to keep herself away. She squared herself into the corner of the couch to face me, and bent one leg in to hug her knee close, and then she put it back on the ground again, I guess because she didn’t want me to think she was closing herself off. She’s like that, confused about things. She’s doing really well in all her subjects at college, but she doesn’t know what sort of career she wants. In many ways, I guess, Lily is a bit of an enigma. She’s a really sweet person, but she always seems to attract these jock idiots on different university varsity teams, always the sort of guy who has no notion how to treat a woman properly. I guess I should be careful talking like that—with my realization and all, that’s the sort of guy I’m preparing myself to be.

But she didn’t know that.

“I don’t know,” Lily said, bringing her curly blonde hair around to the side of her face to fidget with it. The mood was perfect. The jazz was slow, and the lights in the room had thrown a soft shadow onto everything. I was counting on that. I knew if I leaned my head forward just right, my face would be completely dark, except for my eyes. She always used to tell her friends what nice eyes I had. She had neat eyes herself, though. Pure green, almost button-like, the sort with very little white surrounding them. Whenever she got excited, they’d light up furiously. “I’ve seen what it can do to friends. It’s not pretty.”

“I know,” I said. I leaned back into my cushion and laughed self-consciously. On purpose, of course. A convincing self-conscious laugh can do wonders in tight situations. “Jesus Christ, I know... Fuck, I know how strange this is, Lily.”

She didn’t say anything. She straightened her back, and scratched the tip of her nose. She has a tiny little nose, sharp. I liked that about her—such delicate features on her face, and yet, the most beautiful body... Alright, you know what? I’m going to say it. She has fantastic breasts. They’re the really full kind, but they’re also taut against her lithe figure. That white sweater of hers, with “West Hellespont Recreation” written across the back, fell thickly over her breasts, like snow would over a rooftop.

“It’s just...” I said, and that’s when I gave her the tilted look, where my eyes light up in the dark. “It’s just, when Desiree dumped me... you know what I was like when I was with her—always pissed off because we were never on the same wavelength, always wishing she’d tell me something interesting about herself instead of dodging any conversation that was even remotely personal, you know? Christ, sometimes I don’t even think I was ever really attracted to her.” Lily continued to stare at me. Even in the soft shadows over her face, I could see the glitter starting in her eyes. “It wasn’t like we ever connected on anything important, anyways. We never talked for hours about things. We never went and did things we both enjoyed. It was always something I hated or she hated.” I was getting ready to play the wild card here. Lily and I were about as good friends as you could be without calling each other “best” friends. You know that weird sort of rapport you have before you’re jaded with someone? We had it. We almost always did something on the weekends, either go see a rugby game or watch a movie—Lily and I had the exact same taste in movies—or go up and sit on a bench at the Lookout for an hour here and there and throw pebbles over the edge. God, was I the Good Man or what? “We couldn’t speak to each other,” I added, shuffling forward. “All we did was bore each other or piss each other off.” And Lily and I could talk forever if we wanted to, either about the hell I was going through with my girlfriend or the latest shit a date had tried on her, and then we’d talk about life and stuff, and before we knew it the entire day would be gone. In particular, there was always one joke that kept coming up. “And then, last night, I got to thinking about what we always say, that if by the end of the century neither one of us is taken, we’d get married.”

I stopped there. That was the biggy. As I’d talked, she’d brought her leg back onto the couch like she’d wanted to before, and her hands hugged her foot as she rested her chin on top of her knee. Her eyes were full-on glitter then. “I hope to God you’re not suggesting-” she started saying after we’d been quiet for a few seconds, and I laughed and shook my head, and looked down at her leg, propped up on the couch, before touching her fingers, which were locked into each other over her ankle. And then I glanced up at her with the look I had planned before.

“Jesus, Rod,” she said quickly, getting up. “I was thinking about setting you up with Harriet, for Christ’s sake.” She walked over to the stereo on the other side of the room and turned off the Miles Davis that was playing. With the sad trumpet gone, there was complete silence, and nothing to fill it. I didn’t say anything to respond to the Harriet thing. I just turned myself towards her and stared expectantly.

“Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” she asked, pulling out an elastic and doing up her ponytail. This was perfect. I’d told her a million times how much I love ponytails. Consciously or unconsciously, she was trying to make herself look the way I wanted her to look.

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to tell her that doing what I was doing now had only occurred to me last night.

She sighed. “I guess...” she began. Then she looked at me and collected herself. “I guess the thought’s crossed my mind, too.” Rain had started up outside in the last couple of minutes. She looked at the pattering against her living room window and shook her head. “I wish we could be talking about this outdoors.”

I got up and went over to her stereo, and put on “All Blues”, which seemed like the perfect music for this, what with the rain and the moment and everything. As the back-and-forth melody started, I went over to her, and took her hand softly, but convincingly, in mine. She looked up at me and with her free hand she stroked my face. She leaned in and kissed me once, a long but careful kiss, the way children dip their toes into the lake before diving off. Then she leaned back, and after a quiet moment said, “God, you have nice eyes.”

And that was pretty well that. I’d never touched Lily’s breasts before except by accident, with my elbow or something, but now I knew exactly how they curved down and around and under, and how heavy they were, and how a gentle rubbing with one finger over the nipple could get a reaction even with the sweater over top. And then before I knew it she was standing back, and lifting that sweater over her head, almost bringing her shirt up with it, briefly showing a quick glimpse of that perfect stomach. She had soft skin, and as we kissed I caressed every bit of it that was exposed. I even played with the ends of her sleeves, bringing them up a little so I could touch her shoulders. Then she leaned back—this is when the woman, in my experience, lets you know whether or not the shirt is going to come off—and she didn’t say anything. She just stood there, waiting.

I didn’t lift the shirt up, or touch her breasts again, although in one long embrace I pulled her in close, so she could feel on her stomach just how hard I was inside my pants. But in the end we sat down on her couch, and hugged, and talked about how crazy this was, before I dropped the Gentleman Wall on her, saying I should go home and do my laundry. I acted awkward about it, but said with as much earnest and meaning as I could that I would call, tomorrow after class, so we could “ahem, talk.” She let go a full body giggle, kissed my hand and smiled, her eyes glittering like mad in the darkness, and she walked me to her front door. We hugged, and when I pulled myself away, I waved and smiled as sadly as I could. I turned towards the stairs of her apartment building, and for the life of me I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
It was just so goddamned easy.

I guess I should say what that realization was that I came to. I was basically pissed off because even though things hadn’t worked out with Desiree, it wasn’t because I hadn’t tried. I had tried pretty damned hard, in fact. I don’t think she put near the amount of effort that I did, and it was she who dumped me. Here I was, being the Good Man with her, not sure if this was the smart thing to do willing to give it a shot anyways, and she dumps me. And that’s when I went through my six-hour Coltrane brooding, decided I should be fucking thrilled I was out of that goddamned relationship, and I came to my realization about the Good Man and the asshole.

Here it is. The reason why the Good Man finishes last and the asshole doesn’t is because the asshole has his priorities straight. When things get rough, the Good Man whines and moans about how the world is such a shitty place. The asshole, on the other hand, knows this all along. He knows exactly who he can trust and care about without getting hurt—himself. The Good Man is constantly unsure about this sort of thing, constantly trying to figure out whether or not it is better to care more for himself or for other people. What he doesn’t understand is that, basically, life is like a contact sport, and anybody who’s ever played a contact sport will tell you the same thing—if you go out onto the playing field and you’re unsure about what the hell you want to be doing out there, you’re going to get hurt.

I’ve spent my time since last night at Lily’s thinking about what I’d done with her, and now I feel a little annoyed with myself. Not as much annoyed about what this will do to my friendship with Lily—I’m through playing the Good Man for the moment. What I’m annoyed with has more to do with the fact that I wish I’d learned what I know now a long time ago.

Of course, I didn’t really get much proof, I’ve decided. After all, Lily’s predisposed to being taken advantage of, from what I’ve gathered from the things she’s told me. The fact that I had done what I had done proves nothing about whether or not playing the asshole and dropping the Wall on people is really the ticket out of the annoying patterns of victimization that come with living as a Good Man. Lily, God help her, is going to have to learn this for herself. I mean, she’s a terrific person and all, and really good-looking too, but I’m not about to involve myself with a woman who’s willing to turn into a simp as easily as I used to, no matter how good a friend she could potentially otherwise be, or how good a soul she might have.

So, tonight, instead of calling her after class, I call Steve. We make arrangements to have a few beers at Nemesis, and I get dressed up and go downtown.