The Stubborn Mule
Based On A Trve Story
Twenty-three. Tall. Blonde.
A couple dumb tattoos… at her age that doesn’t mean much.
As Kaitlyn’s dykey Birkenstocks slide out of that formidable marigold Honda I chew tentatively on a frown, reminding myself that while it might not bode the greatest for tonight’s prospects that she’d deliberately clad herself in such hideous footwear for our very first date (presumably a shit test?), most fillies of her cohort seem altogether pretty flexible about dressing how you’d like once you’ve penetrated them a few times—Leah really was a gem in that Dark Academia getup I got her on Shein—whereas with a girlypop this radiant I’ll likely maintain a wholly serviceable erection through most of the night and morning with minimal chemical assistance assuming the flower proves amenable to washing the bad taste off her soles prior to coitus; deliver the goods past that point and our most reliable of friends oxytocin is all but certain to send those abominable birks the way of the dodo eventually.
Suddenly: two shapely bronze legs—calves taut as a middle schooler’s, thighs almost illicitly meaty for such a willowy recent grad—winding up and into a frayed denim mini that if I’m honest is also quite dykey but more in the way Rebecca used to call “soft masc,” which compared to the birks engenders in me an animus less borne of disgust than sort of corrective rape coded? I smile as I feel my cortisol levels peter off.
Then at last Kait’s torso emerges, as does her attractive head—though I’m not afforded much of a chance to meet her gaze before my own peepers are very nearly gouged from their sockets by a rock-hard pair of fascistically pert young Valkyrie nipples protruding haughtily beneath a flimsy white tank top.
How scandalous...
“Hey luv!” Kaitlyn smiles enigmatically in a manner that may or may not be making fun of me (it’s kind of hard to tell at this distance), and with a fetching cool-girl languor begins to saunter across the parking garage in my direction.
I take a sip of Red Bull and lean back against the wall to look cool, slowly grinning back at my quarry in a manner I’d like to think connotes a certain wry and self-aware roguishness. Good man! Now remember, Jer Bear: less is more here. Try to play it mysterious this time—unpredictable; illegible; a man of few words…
As the maid approaches—her grin somewhat broader now, and head slightly cocked—I crack my neck and finish off what still remains of my Red Bull, dropping its mangled aluminum carcass in the trash bin next to me. Not even going for the hug? Interesting.
Flexing my shoulders in a cool way I launch myself off the concrete and seize Kaitlyn firmly by the back of her neck, reflecting only very briefly on how strange it is that she isn’t seizing up even a little right now as I wrench her face towards mine and begin to suckle wolfishly on her pink and slithering blonde-tongue, which tastes markedly bitterer than I’d anticipated but for the most part fairly nice.
“Mmm…”
I’m allowed to persist in this tomfoolery for maybe fifteen seconds before Kait hisses an exasperated giggle into my mouth and gently pushes herself off my chest.
I scratch my ear and grin daffily. “You weren’t lying about not being the nervous type.”
“I was not….” Kaitlyn nods and sort of sniggers to herself—a bit conspicuously, if you ask me. “But also, like… why would I be? Nervous, I mean. Like I said last night, dude: I prefer bold men. And you seem cool—or did on the phone, at least.”
She takes a mischievous hit of her vape as those lively hazel pools scan me up and down above a big syrupy smile. “Besides… my roommate has your name and face.”
“Right—the black chick.” I bite my cheek.
“Her name is Gabi.” Kait rolls her eyes. “And she’s only half-black.”
“You kind of said that like it’s better...”
She ignores that and blows a puff of vape smoke in my face—black licorice?
I ignore that in turn and smile back politely, if a little rapily. “Just don’t forget to text her later to confirm you’re all good. A few months back some other chick forgot, and…”
Suddenly Kait’s eyes bulge out like Gabi’s probably do during magic tricks, and she whacks one of my roided-out triceps. “Woooow… real classy, Jer! Five minutes into meeting me and you’re already assuming you’ll get lucky tonight?”
I swallow.
And then I scoff.
Then clearing my throat, I lean deep into her and murmur in a black-silk baritone
“Kinda seems at this point I’d have to fuck it up real bad to get UNlucky...”
The bitch bites her lip again—and then bursts out laughing. I’ll take it!
Then, shaking her head, Kait adopts a rather more serious expression and once more narrows those hazels on me, as if to take my measure more fully, and for a few seconds the two of us just stand there in silence sizing each other up. Trying not to stare at her nipples I focus intently on her face, and gradually it dawns on me that at least from this vantage point she’s the spitting image of Cindy Lou Who.
Thus smiling contentedly at my own wretchedness, I very gallantly clasp the hand of my charge and resolutely lead the little Zoomette down through my apartment lobby and out onto the mean streets of Downtown Orlando.
As we stroll past Lake Eola toward Thai Pearl—auntie in the corner can’t stop scowling at me these days; good subtle preselection—Kait turns to me and makes a weird expression.
“So… I think I told you last night that it was Gabi who put me on the site?”
Can we not? “Probably.” Take the hint, babe.
“Well you’ll probably find this hilarious… but she was basically trying to convince me not to come today. Because she… like… lowkey had a sort of bad feeling about you?”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow. “And why’s that? You tell her I’m racist?”
“I… obviously not.” She rolls her eyes. “But I DID show her your profile earlier today, and she said you definitely seem like a douchey financebro…”
I smile like an asshole. “We counting actuaries as financebros now? Guess I’ll take it.”
“So do you, like… listen to Joe Rogan?”
My nostrils fill with air. “Not really. Mostly Richard Spencer still… or like, Hanania.”
“Hanania?” Kaitlyn grins and leans her head back. “Sounds like some kind of desert.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t… I dunno, you familiar with Cumtown at all? Or like, Red Scare?”
“Uh… no?” She looks a little bored. Perhaps I should tell her to fuck off and masturbate?
No no—remember, Jer Bear, this year is all about low time preference!
“Alright, let me guess… Call Her Daddy?”
Kaitlyn pauses and cocks her head slightly. “Erm… sure? I mean, I’ve heard clips. Guess I’m just not much of a podcast gal…”
“I see. What genre of gal are you, then?”
“Not sure I have a genre. Though I guess I’m really into my garden lately?” She shrugs her shoulders. “And sometimes also painting… but only for fun. Not trying to be good at it or anything. Besides that, I like to read… or used to, I dunno. Probably will again at some point. Honestly, dude, I’m kind of a boring person. Sometimes my friends say I remind them of an old lady…”
I grunt in contempt. “You certainly don’t seem boring to me.”
Her eyes narrow again. “You sure about that? Or are you just, like… horny?
“Can’t it be both?” I squeeze her hand. “I mean, if we’re discounting that factor then strictly from a dude’s perspective I’d hazard all of you are super fucking boring.”
She hisses out a giggle through her teeth. “Fair.”
Thrilled to see her rewarding my transgression so early in the night, I squeeze her hand again and bark out: “Bet you anything they’re just jealous.”
And now she looks disgusted, and is scoffing at me, and is pulling her hand away in contempt completely out of nowhere. Seems I need to recalibrate.
“They’re not jealous of shit, dude. My friends aren’t like that. And even if they were, they’d have nothing to be jealous OF because all of them are amazing fucking chicks. And so for you to just fucking assume…”
“…you mean just like Gabi fucking assumed that I’m some kind of douchey financebro who listens to Joe Rogan despite knowing precisely nothing about me—like, at all?”
“Dude…”
I raise my voice. “And then actively tried to convince you not to see me tonight based on literally nothing but a vulgar prejudice no different ontologically from the sentiment that once kept her own forebears at the back of the bus?”
“Dude! People are staring…”
“Good. I like that! Because I want these people around us to hear it spoken loud and clear that you, Kaitlyn Dooley, are best friends and roommates with a bigot—the sort of person who in another universe would be the first person holding the firehose!”
A hefty and confused old Mexican woman walking in the other direction shifts her eyes between us as Kaitlyn groans and runs a hand through her exquisite sunkissed locks—and then turns back to me with a knowing smile.
“You know… you’re actually not wrong on that one. Hence me showing up tonight, exactly as I said I would… because I’m a woman of my word, and my own person, and I really loved our conversation last night…. and cause I think Gabi is wrong about you.”
She smiles.
I smile back, and say “yeah?”
Her smile curdles a bit. “I mean, you’re obviously kind of weird and annoying. But not in the way she thinks you are. I dunno… but it’s like, I just trust my gut on this shit?”
“I see.” Somewhat awkwardly I point her towards the stairwell leading out of the lake and onto Thai Pearl. “And have you always had such a sophisticated palate?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t call it that… but no, not really. Like, believe it or not I’m actually kind of gullible by nature. Sometimes I wonder if I’m, like, autistic or something?”
I sigh and look down at her slightly condescendingly. “You probably aren’t.”
“Agreed. But still, I used to have pretty terrible social skills… and with guys especially. Probably because I never had a dad growing up… I dunno.”
“Shit. Sorry you had to…”
“Don’t be! Dude, my childhood was great. I just had two moms, so….”
“Ah.”
For a moment neither of us says anything.
Then she turns to me. “That bother you? Since you’re like… a Nazi or whatever?”
I roll my eyes at her and sigh. “Not especially. But you sure as shit aren’t allowed to get the ick now when I tell you that my dad once had a gay phase.”
Immediately she collapses into me and bursts out laughing—again a bit too loudly for my taste, though I also can’t help but appreciate the catharsis it lends the situation, to say nothing of the opportunity to ogle her nipnips at my leisure.
By the time she gets ahold of herself we’re just a block away from Thai Pearl, which I notice as we approach it seems rather worryingly unlit. Vainly I try the door, which proves every bit as intractable as that dour old auntie. Perhaps she’s died?
Exhaling in autistic frustration I lean back against the glass and feel terribly uncool.
Thankfully, though, it seems Kaitlyn remains moderately distracted by my earlier gay dad joke, even though it wasn’t that funny. Wiping a tear from her eye, the maid sighs theatrically and leans back against the glass herself in a manner presumably intended to mock my own deportment, and then makes a faux-serious face at me. “So—I’m guessing Mr. Financebro managed to fuck up the easiest part of date plans?”
For a while I don’t say anything.
Then I crack my neck and mutter “He’s in the market for a secretary…”
“You pay better than Target wages?”
“I mean, last night’s offer still stands.”
She bites her lip.
Then she pulls out her phone, and before it even occurs to me to ask her what she’s doing looks up at me and says “The Stubborn Mule is open—that any good?”
The two of us lock eyes a moment—and then I shrug a second time. “Who knows? Can’t say I’ve ever been there.”
“You’ve lived downtown for two years...”
“I mean, it’s probably good. Pretty sure a few chicks have mentioned it here and there.”
“And you never took ANY of them?”
My nostrils fill with air. “Why? Is never going to The Stubborn Mule a red flag now?”
“Well, no, it’s just…” She rolls her eyes brattily. “Like, literally what’s the point of even living downtown if you’re not gonna try out all the cool restaurants here? And what’s the point of dating a fat guy if he won’t even take you out to any of them?”
I cross my arms. “I’m not even that fat.”
“Fat enough to get mad when I say it...”
“Fair.” I uncross them. “Alright, I guess Drunken Mule it is...”
She cups her mouth and smirks through her fingers. “You mean Stubborn Mule, fatso?”
For a moment I just stare at her—my first impulse, of course, being to reproach her for being so unnecessarily mean to me. Thankfully though it occurs to me that this would irredeemably fuck up the night, and so I instead retort “…said the bitch about to get blown out by said fatso because she works at fucking Target.”
For a moment her eyes are saucers.
And now she’s crossing her arms. “Said the first bitch to get this fat faggot to leave his ghetto fucking rape tower and actually take her to The Stubborn Mule. Yes. That bitch.”
I smile back at her warmly. “Again—fair.”
Then I slam her against the glass and squeeze her throat like an anaconda, pressing my lips hard against hers and taking my fill for a second time of her mouth and throat.
This lasts I’d hazard twenty seconds before she pushes me off again, not giggling this time so much as kind of panting. “You fucking shithead! People are staring…”
“Good. I like them seeing me with you.”
“Must be nice! Only, like, do you plan on actually taking me to dinner tonight, or just getting us arrested in the middle of the street like pedophiles?”
Realizing she has a point, I seize my Aryan firebrand firmly by the waist, and with a grunt and a nod begin to haul her back up the street from whence we came.
“I’ll have another Guinness!”
“Um… we actually don’t serve Guinness here, my dude. Very sorry.” The mustachioed hipster waiting on us shrugs his shoulders at me and makes a patronizing fagface.
“Ah… alright then.” I glance at the eatery’s “Signature Mules” list and impulsively ask for the apple pie one—primarily to see if Kait will take the bait and make some dumb retarded foid joke about me being gay because of it, which she doesn’t. Good girl!
For her part she orders “The Cocktail Formerly Known As Purple Rain,” which feels a little reddit but she didn’t make fun of my drink and so I reciprocate the gesture.
She looks at me a moment—more demurely than I would have expected, frankly, given all those fireworks on the street—and then makes an expression I can’t quite parse.
And so I let the moment breathe a bit.
After a while she leans forward, and says “So you’re a Guinness man, Jeremy?”
“I am.”
“That’s also what my mum gets—like, always.”
“Your ‘mum?’ What is this, Hogwarts?”
She rolls her eyes. “Why does literally everything have to be about Harry Potter with you Millennials? No, she’s just, like… literally British.”
“Ah. Is the other one too?”
“Nah—my mom’s American.”
“Huh… so you have a mom and a mum. That’s sort of cute, actually.”
“Aw… thanks, Jer! I’m glad you think so!” Her tone is far more earnest than I would have expected in this moment; one would think a Zoomette in her situation would instead try to jurisdictionally preclude me from having any opinion on the naming schema’s cuteness by way of a more acidic riposte. She must know I’m approaching her entirely in good faith here, which inclines me to lower my own guard a bit.
I scratch my chin. “So which one of them…”
Suddenly Kait scoffs.
“What?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s fine. Just aaaaask.”
“Ask what?”
“What dudes always ask thinking it’s so fucking edgy and hilarious. You know. Like… which one of them is ‘the man’… or on top, or whatever. So fucking gross…”
“Oh. Nah I was just curious as to which one of them gave birth to you.”
She stares back at me quietly, and again I can’t quite parse her expression.
A few seconds later she sighs and
“ALRIGHT! We got a Pie Hard and a Purple Rain for y’all?”
Good service here. I nod gratefully at the hipster—less for the drink than saving the moment—and then attempt to change the subject with some modicum of elegance.
“So…” I say scratching my nose as Kaitlyn stirs her retarded LARPy reddit drink, “Everything solid at Target lately?”
She looks up slowly and at first gives me kind of an incredulous and annoyed glare—and then rolls her eyes, and sighs at me like I’m some Down Syndrome cousin she just caught fucking the dog, and smiles goofily. “Yeah, dude… shit’s greeeeat!” She takes a long slurp of her drink, and then looks up at me again and shrugs. “I mean, it actually is better than Publix by a lot, I’ll give it that much. Not as fun as the nursery, though.”
“Nursery?” I smile like an asshole. “Like in Peter Pan?”
“No. Like with plants.”
“I’m fucking with you, babe. My uncle actually works at one of those.”
“Woah—humble origins!” Kait rolls her eyes. “Anyway, that shit rocked. Super chill, outdoors, barely had to do any real work half the time… like, my first summer there I literally just sat around reading trashy romance novels all day because the manager had this huge crush on me.” She giggles mischievously and stirs her drink.” And yeah, it didn’t pay great or anything—like, I’m actually making more per hour now—but for a job like that I don’t mind being poor. When I was in school they always said they’d give me full time hours after, but by the time I graduated I guess covid had changed that, and my mom was all done paying for my shit at that point, so... well, you know how it goes.” She looks up at me then, a bit miffed. “Or I dunno, actually—do you?”
“I mean, sort of?” I take a swig of my Pie Hard and shrug. “Not really. Like, we were sort of poor for a year or two after my mom went kind of crazy at the same time my dad was still getting his PhD, and that sure sucked. But I guess that’s why I studied actuarial.” Immediately my penis starts to stiffen. “Remind me what your major was?”
She purses her lips. “Environmental biology.”
“Right, that was it. Anyway, I don’t know, babe—I mean, you’re clearly hot enough to get a job at Sea World if you wanted… like explaining facts about penguins and shit?”
“I mean… I guess. Not exactly my scene…” She stirs her drink again. “Don’t get me wrong, animals are chill and all. But I’m kind of just more of a plant bitch.”
I nod and take another sip of Pie Hard—then smile at her sweetly. “Perk up, babe. Covid won’t be forever. The nurseries will fill back up again soon. And until then…”
She leans forward and bites her lip. “You’ll be here to take advantage of me?”
“With tremendous enthusiasm.”
“Omigod, you are SO… FUCKING… GAY…” Kait rolls her eyes and chugs down the rest of her purple drank—and then leans into her balled fist and smiles up at me, sighing. “So I guess it’s lucky for you I like that.”
“You like bold men… who are also kind of gay?”
“Yeah. And I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever met anyone who’s this much of both before. Unironically it’s kind of concerning to me how Not Terrible all this has been.”
“You were hoping for terrible?”
“Well, not *terrible* per se… but I was kind of assuming I’d just meet up with some, like, old Asian dude or something, like Gabi’s guy. And that the date would be kind of boring and shitty, but I’d pretend to be having a good time during… exactly like I do all day at Target, except the hours would be better. Only you’re, like, young. And funny. And seem to like it when I’m mean to you. And I’m kind of thinking to myself, shit—maybe if you lost a few pounds and stropped dressing like a Boomer and were maybe like 30% less racist I could actually, like… date you normally? Isn’t that weird?”
Kaitlyn burps.
“Oh shit—sorry dude! I must be getting more drunk than I thought over here.”
“Why is that weird?”
“Wha…?”
“Us dating normally.” I grip my Pie Hard resolutely as my eyes dart around the restaurant behind Kait’s head, eventually making contact with a large framed photograph of Richard Nixon. “Explain to me: why would that be weird?”
“Erm… I mean, you have quite a few years on me, Jer!”
“Six years. That’s not too crazy. Also: you literally just called me young.”
She rolls her eyes. “Obviously I meant compared to all the old old dudes on the site. But if you and I started dating for real… omigod, Gabi would shit her pants!”
I release my Pie Hard and sigh, my eyes now migrating to a photograph of Ross Perot. “Probably, yeah. But not twenty minutes ago you were proclaiming yourself your own woman, o maybe you can help me understand: is that true only up to a point?”
Kait looks at me thoughtfully for a few seconds—and then exhales and smiles softly and plaintively shows me her palms. “Duuuude… why are you making everything super serious all of a sudden? Like, we literally just met, right? And I’m having a great time with you right now. So can you just, like… take it easy a bit?” She leans in. “Please?”
I suck on my teeth as my eyes settle briefly on a photograph of Lyndon LaRouche.
I grunt at her and nod—then lean back with my Pie Hard.
Kait sighs to herself as her own eyes briefly migrate away.
Then she smirks, and kicks off her disgusting gross Birkenstocks, and nonchalantly places her feet in my lap more or less directly over my cock.
“Hey Jeeeeer… my feet kind of hurt from all that walking around your ghetto-ass apartment. Please will you massage them?”
A chill runs through my spine.
Trying my level best to regain composure, I close my eyes and look away.
When I open them they’ve settled on a photograph of Elvis.
Sighing in exasperation, I turn back to Kaitlyn and glare at her. “This is manipulative as shit, and you fucking know it.” Then immediately I comply with her request, causing her to chortle in girlish delight.
“Call it whatever you want, dude, but I’m literally just trying to help you stop acting so gay... and it looks like it worked! Also, like… literally what are you even moping about? As I said, I’m having a great time with you. And actually I think you misunderstood me earlier… or maybe I misspoke, I dunno. But all I meant to say is I’m feeling a little cautious about letting myself start to like you too much, because Gabi said that’s the dumbest thing you can do in sugaring, and she’s been in this shit a really long time…”
Can someone please just fucking lynch that nigger cunt? As my cortisol levels spike I attempt to achieve some modicum of catharsis by playing with Kait’s index toe.
“You enjoying yourself there?” She giggles and teasingly pulls back her foot.
“It’s okay, I guess.” I grab her by the ankle and forcefully wrench it back over my cock.
“Omigod, you’re so fucking rapey!” She bites her lip and leans in again with narrowed eyes. “And you know what else, dude? Gabi kept saying today I should talk to more guys first, before coming to see you—like, to make sure I’m getting a decent offer?”
“Oh did she, now?” I lock eyes with my date and bite down on a demonic little grin. “You tell her the numbers we discussed?”
“I mean… obviously. But Gabi said it sounded like a scam. She thinks you’re trying to trick me because I’m new to the site and don’t know any better—says all the young guys on there are disrespectful cheapos and full of shit.”
I lean back a bit and pensively scratch my neck. “I mean, that’s actually kind of fair… in a relative sense, at least. Although unless you actively prefer Boomer cock it’s also all kind of just elementary tradeoff logic, no?”
“Tradeoff lo… wait.” Kait’s eyes flash with merriment. “As in, like, economics class?”
“As in economics real life, babe.” I shove her feet off my lap with a patronizing smirk.
“You CAN’T be real right now!”
“And why’s that? Didn’t you say you minored in business?”
“Um, yeah… like, during Covid, dude.” For a moment Kait’s eyes soften—and then she shrugs lackadaisically and snorts. “Honestly, I kind of just cheated my way through everything except my Environmental Science classes.” She shrugs at me a second time, then bats a few disagreeable hairs off her face. “Sorry, not sorry...”
“Right.”
I consider her a moment.
Then ask: “Any chance you recall having to cheat on something called Game Theory?”
She scoffs—and then looks back up at me, a bit plaintively. “I mean, clearly I’ve heard of game theory, dude. It’s like that whole prisoner’s dilemma scenario, right?”
I nod and smile softly “They ever show you that one scene from A Beautiful Mind?”
“Erm… I don’t think so?” Her brow furrows. “I mean… thinking back on it I actually do remember them showing us SOME movie... but I don’t remember any details at all. Except that it was kind of old, I think? Like, maybe back from when you were a kid?” We briefly lock eyes, and the sides of Kait’s mouth twitch prettily.
“Yeah.” I nod. “From when I was a kid—and likely you as well, Kait. Came out in…”
My own brow now furrowing, I retrieve my cell phone from my asscheek pocket to confirm, and am privately delighted to see Kait refrain completely from needling me for having an android. A few seconds thereafter I turn back to her nodding again. “December 2001—which means I would have been eight. And you… two?”
Kait stares at me a second, then rolls her eyes. “Three, fatso—and speaking of, our gap is actually way closer to five years than six—I thought you said you were an actuary?”
“It’s not really about counting.”
“I can see that.” She smirks and reaches across the table to steal my Pie Hard, which I suppose in truth is hers now, by right of conquest.
As she finishes off the libation I slide my mammoth charcoal incel phone over to her, and in seconds her eyes light up like Christmas bulbs. “Ooooh—shit dude! Yeah, that scene with all of them at the bar—they totally did show us that! I mean, obviously never together in class class… but there was definitely a YouTube link on Canvas, and they made us write a whole discussion board about it, so…”
Fuck, she’s cute.
At last feeling the buzz of my Pie Hard, I smile blearily at her and shift around antsily in my seat trying my hardest to stay plausibly focused on what she’s saying instead of letting my thoughts drift to all the ways I’ll be rearranging her innards shortly.
“Actually, wait—so was all of that shit real, then?”
“Huh?”
She flicks back her hair. “Like… back in the day, in Econ world and such… was that a real actual moment that really happened, and actually helped that main dude solve the prisoner’s dilemma and whatnot?”
Again I shift around in my seat, not a little aroused by how stupid that question was, and shrug my shoulders slightly. “I mean… maybe? If I had to guess, though, probably not. I think it was more there to demonstrate to the audience how basic game theory works—or at least how it’s supposed to—with like a super concrete example.”
Kait nods at me slowly, and then frowns. “Wait a minute… wasn’t this that scene where they, like, make some random blonde girl the bad guy out of nowhere?”
“Bad guy?” This bitch drunk already? “She definitely wasn’t a bad guy, babe.”
“Wha… you sure?” Her brow furrows up in skeptical consternation. “I dunno, Jer… cause I actually do remember this part really well now come to think of it, because I got SO FUCKING MAD at the time when they made us watch it. Though I was also kind of a crazy feminist back then—just, like, super fucking man-hatey or whatever…”
“Kind of seems every girl was back then.”
“I mean, with me it was specifically cause of some bad shit that happened at college. But I’ve been to therapy for it, and… anyway, I member thinking that the scene was super fucking dehumanizing and made the blonde chick out to be shitty when she didn’t even do anything wrong! So are you sure you aren’t the one misremembering?”
“Entirely sure, babe. There aren’t any antagonists in that scene—like, literally at all. That blonde chick was just the one all the guys at the bar wanted to bang the most… which I guess in fairness does make it a little dehumanizing, since her only real point as a character was that she was the most desirable and thus highest status girl there, so…”
“Highest status to dudes, maybe—but definitely not to other chicks!”
Now I’m the one with a crumpled brow. “Huh?”
Kaitlyn’s eyes go dead for a moment.
And then she rolls them and says “Seriously? You think the chick at girl’s night who gets the most attention from randos is anything close to the most popular one there? Just think about it a second: whenever it gets too real it doesn’t even matter anymore how nice you are to some of these bitches, because they’ll ALWAYS resent your ass for the absolute dumbest shit unless you constantly make yourself small or unseen or self-deprecating. Any confidence from you, any assertiveness—all that just feels like bitchiness to them unless you permanently give up on the idea of ever being able to kick back and enjoy your life the same as everyone else. But of course the big girl is allowed to fuck whatever dude she wants, no problem—that and also ruin the night for everyone else whenever she gets jealous. Like, what kind of sense does that make?!”
I scratch my nose. “I mean, you still get the better dude when you want him—no?”
She scoffs. “I mean… sure? I guess, yeah. But it’s kind of like who even wants the best guy when you know that fucker will never in his life feel lucky to have you, and you can never be sure that he won’t cheat as soon as he thinks he’ll get away with it, or even, like, not leave you for some nondescript college bitch half your age at some point later on down the line... it’s literally never a sure thing with men. Also, even when you try to date some ugly fat guy EVEN HE will eventually just fuckin cheat on you half the time cause you’ll get that fucker thinking he’s just entitled forever now to a certain level of girl… and meanwhile the woman shit I mentioned never goes away. If anything it gets worse!” Kait sighs to herself and finishes what until recently was my Pie Hard. “Anyway, dude—want to mansplain to me now how the bar scene ackshully goes?”
“Well…” I massage the back of my head. “The guys all game out the collective action problem and ultimately solve it by choosing not to defect on each other… which is to say by agreeing amongst themselves not to poke at all the feminine status hierarchies you mentioned and make any of the brunettes jealous enough to cockblock… which in turn is to say by agreeing communally to none of them hit on the blonde girl...”
“Good. Leave me alone for one night...”
“…and so all the guys there do end up getting laid by approaching only the brunettes, which means it’s paradoxically just the blonde who doesn’t get laid that night, despite prior to equilibriation having easily the highest sexual capital of anyone in that room.”
“So after—what’d you call it? Equilibriation? After that, then she becomes the incel!”
My glance wanders absentmindedly to a Brazilian toddler whacking his scarcely ambulatory father on his bulbous pockmarked snout. Then shaking my head, I turn back to Kait. “I mean, no… that’s plainly retarded. All’s fair in love and war at the end of the day, which means in real life we can’t ever equilibriate in a sexual marketplace since there’s no reliable mechanism for punishing defection in repeat games. Thus in practice the fatties will always stew and cockblock, and apex blondes dispense their headpats and play dumb while internalizing fake and gay leveling bromides, and the brunettes play politic whilst quietly pursuing diagonal arbitrage strategies… and also no one will ever admit to what they’re doing, because sincerity is grossly inefficient compared to cynical machiavellianism and especially self-deception.”
Yawning, I crack my knuckles and quietly admire Kaitlyn’s nipples.
For a moment she’s silent.
Then her brow furrows up once more, and at last she asks me the obvious:
“Jeremy… how’d we even get on this topic? Like, weren’t we supposed to be talking about my allowance here? That and how my best friend in the whole wide world Gabi has been really fucking worried all day that you’re trying to rip me off?”
I rap my fingers on the table.
“Can you remind me why Gabi thinks I’m ripping you off?”
“Cause…” Kaitlyn hesitates a few seconds, and then rolls her eyes. “Because Gabi’s never had anyone on the site offer her the kind of money you and I spoke about last night—okay? Or at least never has from, like… young guys? I don’t fucking know.”
For a moment neither one of us seems especially capable of maintaining eye contact.
Then finally I speak: “So let’s go back to that bar scene…”
“OHMIGOOOOOD!”
“Shut up. Look, I just have one incredibly simple question for you: do you think all those girls in that bar scene would have gotten exactly the same allowance on SA?”
There’s a beat.
Then her lips purse up, tight as a noose.
“You fucker… none of that shit was even about game theory!”
“I mean… it kind of was? But yeah, I dunno babe… like, on the main I kind of just needed to break you out of all that mulatto poopbutt slave morality bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” Kaitlyn bats multiple strands of goldenrod off her face and chews friskily upon her lower lip. “I want you to know that Gabi is literally the best human bei…”
“No doubt. But is that what this is about now?” I sigh and rub my eyes. “Look, Kait: precisely no one said that Gabi isn’t splendiferous company at whatever it is you two do together. But also, like… just imagine the two of you had the same job…”
“We literally did. Gabi and I worked at the nursery together—like, that was literally where the two of us met… which I’m pretty sure I told you last night?”
“Sure. You guys get paid the same there?”
“I mean… obviously not.” Again Kait flicks a few errant locks of hair off her face, and then shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly. “But who even is at a place like that? Like, that would have been the weird thing. Gabi had been there way longer, knew how…”
“Right—so your friend’s skills were more valuable to the nursery than yours, which meant that she got paid more than you. That makes sense! Gabi in that particular context was just straightforwardly the more valuable employee.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. Like, I was always the one who…” Kait scoffs and looks away in disgust. “Look—what are you even trying to say here, dude? Because I don’t know why YOU joined SA, but I’m sure as shit not here to be some kind of gross nasty hooker selling my body like a kit-kat to anyone who’s buying—and I’m most definitely not here to, like, compare my value as a woman to my friend’s. Ugh… that’s so fucking vile!”
I lean across the table and stare her down.
“Literally no one’s asking you to do that, Kait. What I AM asking you to do is not wipe your ass with a fantastic offer because crabs in the bucket can’t bear to imagine a world in which a few of their comrades don’t have to end up on someone’s plate.”
“Fuck. Off. Gabi wants nothing but the best for me!”
“I don’t doubt she earnestly believes that. But I also think the two of you were born into a world that told you both from birth that it was flat, and only now are inhabiting together one of the precious few domains of life that can’t quite maintain that illusion. And so there’s no way now essentially for Gabi to both maintain basic self-respect and let you enter into something like this in good faith without trying to convince you—and herself as well, I’d wager—that I’m not genuine. And I don’t even blame her for that; hell, I’d do the same in her shoes! But it also seems to me this isn’t a realm where chicks should feel especially obliged to take anything but the very best offer just to spare somebody else’s feelings. You feel me, babe?”
Kait is slumped over in her char.
At first she says nothing.
Then, slowly, her eyes drift up toward mine.
“Look, Jer—it’s not that I even think you’re wrong about any of this necessarily… just on like a factual level or whatever. But if this is gonna turn into anything real between us past tonight, I’m gonna need you to understand some shit. Because I REALLY don’t want to live in a world where any guy makes me think about my best friend like this. Like… I don’t even know how many times Gabi and I have promised to each other that we’d never let a man come between us…”
“Not sure that’s healthy, Kait.”
“I don’t expect you to understand it. But you will need to respect it.”
I lean forward further.
“Then she’ll need to respect me.”
Kait stares back placidly a moment—then nods. “Yeah, she will. I think I actually might be able to convince her to with time, though.” She plays with a pepper shaker and smiles weakly. “Honestly, the two of you are super fucking similar in lots of ways.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Like, just for one thing she’s really into politics too—on the other side, of course. But…” She bites her lip, and soon that smile is more of a smirk. “Honestly, she’s almost as racist as you are—maybe more so, even. Like, it’s actually kind of wild how often she’ll just, like, randomly start ranting about white people when I’m literally sitting right there. I mean, she always says I don’t count cause I was right there with her at the marches, and also that it’s different cause her dad’s white, but…”
She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, it’s starting to get really annoying. But I don’t know—like, I guess it’s possible the two of you could, like… cancel each other out?”
“Maybe.”
For a moment we just sit there, and for the first time that evening I permit myself to fully take in her beauty like a big retarded animal without any particular mediation.
She cocks her head at me and smiles. “Penny for your thoughts, good sir?”
“You want to get out of here?”
“We haven’t eaten!”
“You did say that I could stand to lose a few pounds…”
“Suppose I did…” She bites her lip. “Will I be the first bitch to make you do that too?”
“Hey, Kaitlyn.” I grab her by the wrist.
“Omigod… no one ever calls me that!”
“I’m gonna fuck you till you cry tonight.”
I did not, in point of fact, fuck Kaitlyn until she cried.
We did more or less everything else, and after briefly agreeing to stay the night she ended up leaving my place a little after 1AM in those same wretched Birkenstocks.
Later the next day she texted me that she didn’t want to continue our arrangement.
Gabi’s name never appeared in the message.
That said, my German bestie who killed herself the following year—and who almost immediately after the Kait Date agreed to let me fly her out for smexytimes to assess if we’d be compatible in a marriage context—had this to say about the situation:
