HUMOR COMBAT TACTICAL SPECIALIST
Code Name: VERSUS

File Name: CLASSIFIED SN: RA645524881
Primary Military Specialty: Pop Culture References
Secondary Military Specialty: Play-on-words
Birthplace: West Iglooville, Canada

Last Known Status: RETIRED

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“I’ve never met anyone so in tune with the current state of the chicken finger market.”
Noreport

“He’s ruined all other men for me.”
Female, name withheld

“If I could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, I’d order a steak.”
Versus

* * *

From the Myspace blog, circa January 2008:

The Truth In Lies

This isn't how I expected it to end, although I can't say that I'm entirely surprised. She was always one for theatrics. There were numerous subtle hints leading up to this point. Hell, she all but told me she was going to cheat on me. It was just a matter of when and with whom. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I'd had my mind on other things for a while now, and honestly, I'd stopped caring about what was happening around me. Everything was shifting and moving, excusing itself, bumping against me while it walked by, driving by while I slept, all without any interference from me. I was coming to realize this like a true revelation. I was no one and no one cared.

"What are you writing?" she asked, holding a pot of coffee.

Sitting where I was, in a quiet restaurant, it took very little to break my concentration. Unlike in a library or in a church, silence was a luxury, not a necessity. I was being waited on, and I should have understood its implications.

"I beg your pardon?" I replied.
"I asked what you're writing about," she said.

She, the waitress, that is, couldn't have been older than nineteen. That'd be my guess, anyway. She was much younger than I. This, I was certain of. She had the look of someone who was going out of her way to get noticed, either by boys, maybe girls, but definitely not by old men like me. For a moment, I actually felt embarrassed for my asking her to repeat the question. I had heard her perfectly fine, but out of habit, I pretended not to understand.

I was hanging the tip of my pen over a folded-over notebook. Luckily for me, my writing is completely illegible to everyone else. An advantage until it comes time to leave important notes for others to see.

"This?" I hesitated, "This is nothing. I mean nothing important. Just scribbles."

This was an awkward moment for the both of us, mostly because her question was posed out of fabricated politeness. She didn't actually care for an answer, let alone a stupid one. She was standing there, now smiling nervously, because all she really wanted to do was either pour me a fresh cup, or to tell me I had to leave. I didn't care for more coffee, and I was perfectly okay with being kicked out of a dead restaurant. Although, my clothes were still kind of soaked.

"Could I please get a piece of pumpkin pie?" I asked.
"We only have apple left."
"That’s fine. I’ll have that."

We were back to business again, acting like we weren't just about to have a conversation that didn't revolve around specials or the soup of the day. She smiles and walks away, without even topping off my cup, even as a courtesy.

My name is Faux. It's French for false or fake. My dad chose it. At least the one I've always treated as my dad. It turns out my mom, while 'discovering' herself in Europe at the age of eighteen, met a young man in Marseilles who turned out to be more virile than either of them could have imagined. She found out she was pregnant a week after she got home.

Her boyfriend at the time, the man I would come to know as my father, didn't do the math and thought the baby growing inside his girlfriend's stomach was his'. My mom, riddled with guilt, tearfully told my dad three weeks before I came into the world that he wasn't really the father of her baby. It was getting harder for her to convince him that she was only seven months pregnant when it looked more like she was about to give birth to quadruplets. She had even thought to pretend she was premature when the time came, but didn't know how to angle it in a convincing way. She opted in the end to just come clean, which worked out well for her, but not so much for me. You see, instead of blowing up and storming out, my dad decided right then and there that the only way he could ever forgive her was if she let him name me. Anything for him, she said.

And so, my dad hit the library and did some research. The next day, he walked into the doctor's office and wrote down the best name he could find: Faux.

Most people pronounce it 'fox' rather than 'foe', and to be honest, I never feel the need to correct them.

"Here's your pie, sir," she said, "And I put some ice cream on top, no charge. You look like you could use some cheering up."

Did I really? I wasn't particularly upset. Disappointed seemed to be the better fit tonight. After all, I was alone in a vacant restaurant, with only a cold cup of coffee and a few scribbled notes in front of me, and only a couple of hours ago, I had a girlfriend who turned out to be a wannabe porn star. At least, in hindsight, that's what makes the most sense to me at this point.

I had met Dahlia in college. She and I were in some of the same classes, English Literature mostly. She stood out like a sore thumb from day one. At first, she came across as being pretty full of herself, trying to appear worldly because she had read Dante or Vonnegut. She would misquote common sayings like 'Two in the hand is like one in the bush', and not even flinch. Nevertheless, I was interested in finding out more about her. Not surprisingly, however, she took it upon herself to ask me out, rather than wait for me to make a move. I've never considered myself to be the aggressor in any respect.

After a few dates, she invited me into her apartment, which to me was the perfect opportunity to really know what she was all about.

"You know," the waitress said, "I'm hoping to become a writer myself."
"It's over-rated." I replied.

Dahlia never wanted to become a writer, despite all the English courses she was taking. She was in it for the recommendations, like an expensive book club. Her shelves had more Cosmo magazines than actual novels. Bookmarks stuck out within the first few of pages of every book, only a couple of chapters into each one and casually left to collect dust. And her selections left little to the imagination: The Joy Luck Club, The English Patient, The Bridges Of Madison County. I was sure her movie collection was eerily similar.

We ended up on the couch, in what would amount to a standard make-out session. After about fifty solid minutes of trying to chew each other's face off, Dahlia started to shed layers, personality-wise.

"My professor says that writing is like a guided dream," said the waitress.
"Unless you're being taught by Jorge Luis Borges," I scoffed, "Your prof is a hack."

Without saying a word, Dahlia turned away from me and then pressed her back against my chest, in an almost upright spooning position on the couch. She reached behind her neck and pulled her hair up to unveil some interesting tattoos. One was of a rose with hearts for its pedals. Another was of a crescent moon with what appeared to be a fishing line tied from one end of its peak to a tiny blue star below, dangling like bait for what I could only imagine was some kind of cosmic fish.

"Bite me as hard as you can," Dahlia said.
"I beg your pardon?" I replied.

As always, I had heard her clear as a bell, but this time, I needed her to repeat herself more out of my own disbelief. We were clearly crossing into uncharted territory, but I suddenly got the feeling she already had a very detailed map. And it instantly made me more apprehensive about her request for fear that I would either come off as a dud for not biting hard enough or as a freak for biting too hard. And the longer I waited to proceed, the colder it started to feel on that couch.

My dad wouldn't have hesitated to sink his teeth. Not for a second. In fact, one of the few qualities my so-called father had ever revealed to me was his wandering eyes. It seemed my mother's indiscretions in her youth nurtured his indiscretions in his later years. He never acted on his impulses to seek outside affection while he and my mother were still together though, so he could keep his title of being an honorable man - an honorable man with shame as his son.

And seeing how I wasn't really his son, he didn't feel he had to rear me in any way. Much of what I would ever learn in life was either through my mother, television or vicariously through my friends' parents. No one outside of my house knew about my mother's transatlantic mistake, and no one questioned why a man named William Harold Templeton VI would name his only son Faux.

He broke my arm when I was six. He said he was trying to teach me a lesson, though I can't remember what it was about. Don't stick your arm out of the window of a moving car? Look both ways before crossing the street? Whatever it was, the only rule I gathered from it was don't reach your hand out to a man who has hated you since the day you were born. He may have never wanted me as a son, but I was his burden to bear as long as he stuck around. You can't deny what you can't accept. He left us when I was nine.

Dahlia and I moved into a downtown apartment after graduation. She had dropped out of college and was going to business school and I had just started working for one of the newspapers as an intern. It was a half the size of Dahlia's old place, but we managed to keep it spacious enough.

"Just so that you know," the waitress said, "We'll be closing up in ten minutes."

She slid the bill onto the table and walked away.

The apartment was a twenty-minute walk from the restaurant. And tonight was not a good night for walking. It had been raining non-stop since ten o'clock this morning and didn't look like it was going to end any time soon. At least I had my raincoat with me this time.

I was greeted with the familiar smell of my apartment when I got home from work just after six, soaked to the skin under my less than water repellent fleece jacket. The storm of the season had somehow been missed in the forecast this morning, so needless to say, I was unprepared for this evening's downpour.

I was also met at the door by something far less familiar, what seemed to be someone else's clothes strewn across the floor leading to the bedroom door. Like I said before, this wasn't coming as a surprise to me. She all but told me it was going to happen.

Dahlia was the type of girl who'd yell out really inappropriate things while we were in our most vulnerable state. I'd like to say we were making love, and I certainly wouldn't simplify it by saying we were fucking, because in truth, it was neither. It was the act, not the substance. I had quickly learned that her tastes didn't differ from one guy to the next, so long as he was ready to do what he was told, regardless of the location or of the occasion. She once tried to give me a hand job the first time we had dinner with my dad. He thought she was exquisite.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone to sleep with my back to the wall. That's how scared I was of Dahlia's anywhere anytime porn star mentality.

Of course, most guys would be completely stoked about having a girl like Dahlia as a girlfriend, but I think it was my inexperience as a lover that fuelled her ambition to break me in. I didn't want to be conquered, or even freed. I just wanted a normal relationship with someone who didn't see me as the biggest mistake of their life.

My mother tried her best to reassure me after my so-called father left. He had his reasons for leaving just as he had his reasons for staying. Maybe he was holding out on the hope that I really was his son, and that I would eventually start looking like him. But unfortunately for us both, my eyes never turned blue, nor did my hair ever lighten to blond. He left, but he didn't disappear. However, I've been seeing him less as the years have gone by.

Dahlia and her friend were interlocking on my favorite chair. It was my first major purchase when I was living on my own, and now it was being desecrated by their collective sweat. She was facing me when I opened the bedroom door, and because I had made so little noise, her friend was unaware of my presence as he filled the room with his grunts. Dahlia, on the other hand, was completely expressionless while she looked at me, and trying her best not to crack a smile. The trail of clothes, the time of day, my soon-to-be-incinerated chair, this was as good as she could have scripted it, trying to make it as painful and devastating for me as possible.

The truth is I saw this coming the night I first walked into her apartment years ago. I knew this was going to happen. Her attempt at hurting me had failed; all because I wouldn't hurt her when she asked me to.

I slipped out of my soaked jacket and dropped it onto the floor in the hallway, adding to the clutter that had accumulated tonight. I reached into the closet, grabbed my raincoat, my book bag and walked out.

It's amazing how much of a mess you could make in such a short amount of time. Just glancing at the table in front of me, it looked like someone dumped a trash bin around my hands. Scrunched up paper, napkins, dried drops of coffee, crumbs from the apple pie, melted vanilla ice cream pooling on the plate and a waiting bill for four dollars and fifteen cents with the name 'Leila' scribbled on the top of it, with the 'i' dotted with a heart. The things we do to get noticed.

I piled my notes together and jammed everything into my book bag. It was time to leave, and I could tell Leila was waiting to go home for the night. I, however, wasn't in any rush to do the same. Dahlia was probably long gone by now, but I wasn't about to phone my own apartment to check. One of us had to leave for good. One of us had their clothes to pick up. One of us had a favorite chair to burn in an unceremonious fashion. I made my way over to the cash counter and handed Leila a ten dollar bill, said thanks, and put my raincoat back on.

"You knew this was going to happen, Faux," said a raspier Dahlia on my answering machine, "We're so different. I mean, you're so boring, and I can't stand being bored. This is the way I am, and I'm not about to change."

Dahlia wrote an essay on Romeo and Juliet for our Shakespearean Studies course and twice referred to Romeo as Leonardo. I thought it was kind of funny then. I obviously didn't care how clueless she really was. I thought she loved me. And I thought I loved her back. But we never said it. Not once. I was saving it for when I really meant it, when it mattered. It was better to hold back than to lie for the sake of appearances.

When it gets really cold out, like it was that night, my arm hurts where the bone was snapped. Like a dull, lingering pain right above my wrist. Never hold your hand out for someone who's hated you since the day you were born. And never tell someone who puts full length mirrors along the side of the bed that you love her. And never keep a girl waiting, especially when she just wants to go home to her boyfriend who would probably bite her if she asked him to.

And most importantly, never believe what the weatherman tells you. He's just looking at the sky like everyone else.

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