Toxic Guy

"In every male friend group there is one guy who seems to draw women in like he somehow has a special sort of personal gravity. It’s not always the most attractive, wealthiest, or most charming (though those attributes don’t hurt) but there’s one guy that for reasons the rest of us mere mortal don’t understand, attract women like bees to honey, or flies to shit. While the rest of us have to shower and shave, put on nice clothes and borrowed cologne, learn a few lines, develop game, and still bat a little below .500 this lucky motherfucker can sit sipping a long neck in a dark corner wearing a dirty t-shirt and jeans and somehow women will walk across a crowded bar to speak to them."

When I wrote this paragraph I was trying to work my way through a thought that I couldn’t quite land. You can see the ground work in the phrase “like bees to honey, or flies to shit.” In my experience there absolutely are guys who, for whatever reason, attract women. My buddy “Jim” was the positive version of this, charming, polite, friendly and fun, but there’s a darker type. There’s the guy’s who use this power for evil, and the more I wrote about Jim and the night he struck out the more I thought of another guy and another girl and another late night bar parking lot and how the two incidents contrasted and I realized that I had something of a morality tale on my hands, though I couldn’t quite flesh it out in under 3000 words. After the piece about Jim was written and posted I realized that I started at the ending when I should have started at the beginning.

I should have started not with Jim and the dark haired girl in the parking lot of a Canadian bar, but with “Guy” and a plain, sandy haired girl, 3000 miles and eighteen months earlier back on Oahu, but it’s hard to confess your sins publicly.

Guy was shorter than Jim. Hell he was shorter than me, but he made up for it with broad, heavily muscled shoulders, a barrel chest, flat belly and trim waist. He had dark hair that he wore just barely within Army regulations and black eyes that sparkled, sometimes with mischief and sometimes with malice. Guy was from Connecticut, or New Jersey, some Northeastern Yankee state in the shadow of another, more populous and popular Northeastern Yankee state. Still he dressed like a cowboy, wearing starched Wrangler jeans and new Garth Brooks shirts most nights we went out. On occasion, just to mix things up, he dressed like a Billy Joel video character, work boots, blue jeans and a white t-shirt dirty from spending the day working on a shitty old muscle car in the barracks parking lot. I don’t know that he liked music. There was heavy metal on the stereo in his room, hip-hop on the stereo in his car and country music playing at the bars we hung out in but he didn’t seem to be a fan of any one genre. Guy was a fan of girls, or at least a fan of getting drunk and getting laid.

He was Daryl’s buddy at first. Or maybe Evan’s, I don't remember precisely, but he started as a friend of a friend. Like Jim he was a scout, assigned to our headquarters company and we didn’t see him in the field or during the duty day. He was a weekend friend. Someone who would pop in from time to time to drink with us on the lanais and at our table underneath the paper mache shark that hung from the ceiling of our favorite cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor. I inherited him sometime in 98 after Evan left and Daryl started dating serious, after the dramatic and awful end of my first relationship and my failure with Lorrie at a time in my life when his influence was the absolute last thing I needed.

I’d like to lie and say I didn’t know what he was, but I did. We all did. He made no attempt to hide it. Every Friday and Saturday night there was a new girl who’s name we never learned. Every week there was another tale of conquest, sport fucking, the type of raw, emotionless sex that seems ideal when you’re a 20 year old idiot educated with abstinence only sex ed and battered copies of Hustler found in barracks latrines but now seems so grim looking back with an old man's eyes. He had no sexual scruples, zero morals when it came to getting laid. I’m pretty sure he slept with Lorrie. I know he tried. Guy was a misogynist. He was a piece of shit and he was proud of it.

That’s how I know he fucked the girl I was seeing. He told me.

If things hadn’t ended the way they did I’d owe that girl an apology. Hell, even after everything, I still do. Shameful truth is I wasn’t into her. Not really. I knew going in that there was no future. She was getting kicked out of the Army and leaving Oahu in a matter of weeks. I never asked why. I didn’t care. I wasn’t infatuated with her. If I even liked her, if we shared some interest in common, or if we ever had a good conversation I don’t remember. I was attracted to her in the generic, basic, barbaric way all twenty year old boys are attracted to twenty year old girls. She was warm and soft and had curves. If anything the fact that she was leaving soon and we’d never see each other again was appealing. I knew, deep down in that little secret place where the real me stays locked up, that it was wrong even then, but I pursued her because I thought it would be “easy.”

Shit that’s a lie.

At least of omission.

I pursued her because I wanted to be like Guy. I’d spent months being abused in a bad relationship with a girl I thought I was supposed to love, that I HAD to love, who so obviously didn’t care for me. Then I’d spent a few more months in an unrequited relationship with a girl I still think of fondly today. I was twenty years old, lost, confused, scared, horny, and stupid and Guy got laid. Guy was never alone. Guy never got cheated on. Guy never pined away. Guy never had to hide drunken tears in a latrine shower. Guy was always smiling. He always had a girl on his arm. Guy probably, maybe, most likely got to sleep with Lorrie and I never did. I was miserable. Guy was not, at least not outwardly. What he was doing seemed to be working so I set out to imitate him. I was going to “love” that girl and that hard deadline, that Army financed one way flight off of Oahu ensured no matter what that I would also eventually “leave” her.

Except I fucked it all up because I’m not that guy. I’m not Guy. I bought dinner and made phone calls. I picked her up and dropped her off and held her door and pulled out her seat and we made out for hours until my groin ached and yet for two weeks I couldn’t close the damn deal.

During that time my company worked what should have been a cush, easy assignment providing support for a JROTC summer camp. My platoon was detailed to run the confidence course. Each of us were assigned an obstacle to demonstrate to the cadets and then supervise as they made an attempt. This meant a week of no PT. A week where I could stay out late and pursue this girl without paying the painful consequences of running five miles hungover and on two hours sleep. So that's what I did. Every night we'd go out and every night I'd try and every night I'd get shot down. But at least every day all I had to do was hang out in the shade and demonstrate an easy obstacle for a bunch of High School kids.

Not getting laid shouldn't have been a problem. I should've been used to it. Except I was getting soooooo close and my assigned obstacle was the “low belly over.” Eight times a day, for five days, I had to balance on one log and leap onto a taller horizontal log, roll over it, and land on my feet. Which means eight times a day, for five days, my already aching groin impacted a wooden log at high speeds. I then had to roll over the log…. By Thursday I could barely walk. Maybe that’s why that girl took pity. Maybe that’s why she finally gave in late on Thursday evening.

I’ve never quite understood what happened next. I never quite wrapped my head around why she would kick me out of her bed and then take Guy into it before the week was out. Maybe she read me. Maybe she knew exactly what kind of scumbag play I was trying to pull. Maybe she and I were playing the same game for the same reason and she won. That one way plane ticket off of Oahu cut both ways.

No matter how or why it happened if I’d slept with a girl my buddy was dating, or even interested in it would have torn me to pieces but Guy confessed with glee. After all, he was just helping me out, just showing me what that girl…hell all women really were right? If she would sleep with him mere hours after sleeping with me well she wasn’t worth worrying about was she? And sure Guy was being a dirtbag, but he wasn’t hiding it right? He was being honest about who and what he was. He was just trying to help me out. That's an admirable trait in a friend…right?

I tried to shake it off but I was still hurt, and honestly more than a little ashamed. Even now the memory leaves me embarrassed, sad, and feeling dirty. That girl left Oahu a few weeks later. Guy was still there though, sitting right across a bar room table from me every Friday and Saturday night, smiling in the neon glow.

Because I was under aged I’d been sneaking shots of Southern Comfort from a pint bottle hidden under the seat of the truck in the parking lot but Guy was twenty-four and drinking Coors Light long necks from a six pack that he bought at the bar. He was laughing and joking, smoking cigarettes and talking to every girl who passed by while I sat in the shadows slowly getting angrier and angrier because why? Why would he suggest I go after some girl and then sleep with her? Why would he fuck the girl I was dating? We were supposed to be friends.

At some point, in that grim, dark, alcoholic place where the world is still blurry and out of focus but it’s no longer soft and warm, that moment where buzz has long since turned to drunk and drunk is turning sour, that’s when I decided the least my good buddy Guy could do was buy me a beer. So I took one from his six pack without asking.

“Don’t fucking drink my beer.” He warned. “It’s all I’ve got for the night.”

I was twenty years old but Guy didn’t care about MPs or Article 15s he was just worried about running out of beer.

In that moment, humiliated, cuckolded, ashamed of myself and on the start of a downhill slide to black out drunk I didn’t give a shit about any of it. Bouncers, MPs, UCMJ, Guy, none of it fucking mattered. I killed that beer in one long go.

Then I reached for another.

“You take that beer I’ll kick your ass.”

I knew he meant it.

I didn’t care.

I took his beer.

“You drink it then you better meet me in the fucking parking lot.”

Looking him dead in the eyes I downed it. I drank every drop, wiped my lips with the back of my arm and smiled. Guy sighed, grabbed his cigarettes off the table, slid out of his chair and started walking toward the parking lot and I followed grimly behind him, rolling up my sleeves as I went, certain that I was about to lose a fist fight, but angry, ashamed, hurt, and drunk enough that I didn’t care. I stepped into that parking lot ready, almost eager to take a beating, but committed to make Guy earn every shot he landed.

It was foggy and the old yellow lights gave the parking lot an eerie horror movie glow. The air was thick with a mist so heavy that it may as well have been drizzle and the asphalt was slick with water. We squared off between two rows of cars and Guy smiled.

“We’re friends.” He reminded me. “And I know you’re pissed. So how ‘bout this? No hits to the face no hits to the nuts?”

I smacked him square in the nose.

I hadn’t learned to throw a decent punch yet. I didn’t know how to start with my feet planted and fire through the hips. At 156lbs I didn’t have a whole lot of ass to put behind it anyway. I could see that punch stung Guy. It watered his eyes. He didn’t like it. But he shrugged it off and fired a right that caught me on the chin and knocked me flat on my ass on the rain slick asphalt. As I tried to regain my berings Guy took me by the forearm and pulled me to my feet.

“You okay?” he asked. “I fucking told you no hits to the face.”

So I hit him in the body then, good, solid blows that I could hear thudding off his abs. He grunted and backed up. “Oh we’re not done?”

In answer I punched him square in the chest.

He responded with a fast combo that left me once again laying on the rain slick ground. The second time he didn’t help me up. I staggered to my feet and closed with him again, absorbing two or three jabs as I did. I landed another few body shots before his cross connected and once again I found myself gasping for air on the wet ground. That third time he ordered me to “Stay down.”

So I got back up.

I don’t remember how much longer this went on. I’d land a few and Guy knocked me down. He’d beg me to stay down, to just quit, but I got back up every time, and every time he knocked me back on my ass and then begged me, in the end he was pleading, to stay down, but I struggled to my feet and squared off with him again.

It was girls that stopped us. Or they sounded like girls. By then the world had turned misshapen and mean and what I saw were two small silhouettes in the foggy semi-darkness. They said something and the fight was over. Guy straightened his clothes, fixed his hair, smiled and told them, “We’re just playing.”

He hugged me to his side, tightly. “This is my best buddy.” He explained. “We’re just blowing off some steam. Having a little fun.”

I leaned against somebody’s car and tired to light a cigarette while I watched Guy shoot his shot with the vague silhouettes of what I assume were girls. Then I passed out.

I woke the next day around noon laying partially clothed on my bed, my head pounding and my guts churning as tropical sunlight poured into my barracks window. I didn’t know it yet but the left side of my face was swelling. I could see the bruises starting to blacken on my chest and ribs. Someone was pounding on my door.

I knew who I’d find standing in the hallway when I opened the door and sure enough there Guy was, smiling, another six pack of Coors Light clutched in front of him like an offering.

“Hell of a fight.” He told me as he pushed past me into my room.

Bullshit. If it had been a boxing match he would’ve won easily by TKO. He damn sure won on points. The best that could be said about my performance was that Guy never knocked me out. I got back up every time.

“You gave as good as you got.” He told me. “I could barely breath when I woke up this morning.”

I thought he was just yanking my chain.

“No lie.” He promised me. “Look.” And he rolled up his white shirt to reveal his abs and chest both covered in darkening purple bruises shaped like my fists. “I really, really didn’t want you to get back up the last time I knocked you down.”

He pressed a cold beer into my hand. “We’re good right?”

We were.

I don’t know why.

Guy was a misogynist piece of shit. He cuckolded me then beat my ass in a Pearl Harbor parking lot but I finished that six pack with him as we nursed our wounds and we shared a table again that next Friday night. Within a few weeks I’d meet another girl and for nine months Guy dissolved into the background, but he was waiting with a smile and a bottle of Jim Beam when that relationship ended and we picked right back up. There were other nights. Other fights. Running from the Shore Patrol. Dive bars and wrecked cars, forty year old divorcées and one fake Navy SEAL Only my PCS date and my own one way flight off of Oahu ended the chaos. And fuck me I can’t help but smile thinking about it because despite everything, despite how wrong it all was, it was fun.

Is there a moral here? An important conclusion? Did I learn anything? I don’t know.

But two years later in a nightclub above a Mexican restaurant in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada a drunk girl in a mini-skirt leaned on my arm and asked me where I was staying for the night. She smiled when I told her I had a room in the hotel just the other side of the parking lot and told me she’d like to see it. I don’t know if I saw the sad faced, skinny, young Canadian dude with glasses come in with her, but I know he sat down in the seat she abandoned when she drunkenly announced she was going to the ladies room. He was sober. I was far from it. But I listened when he explained that the girl in the miniskirt was his friend and she’d just been through a bad break up. “She’s real drunk.” He told me, unnecessarily. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Be a gentleman.” He asked me.

I don’t know that I thought of that girl in Oahu, or the shame I’d felt at what I’d once tried to do. I know I thought, He wants to fuck her. Maybe I even heard it in my head in Guys voice. Maybe it was even true. Hell maybe he did. I’ll never know because I let the Canadian dude with glasses buy me another drink then I found somewhere else to be. I passed out in my hotel room that night alone.

Because I’d fucked up before and I would fuck up again in vastly different ways but I learned at least one painful lesson. I was never built to be like Guy.

I seriously worried that this unfortunately true tale painted me as too much of a bad guy. I'm not proud of these events and recounting them, even somewhat sanitized, is uncomfortable, but they provide too good of a contrast with the story of "Jim" and I've been looking for ways to talk about toxic masculinity. Dunno if I pulled it off, but I never do.

Speaking of problematic dudes, here's Hank Williams Jr.