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Young Cavaliers

by Benji Brite

April 2011

Jesus. She knows she's gorgeous.

Mallory entered and slinked around to my side of the room where she pulled up a chair next to me. It was a college classroom, nothing remarkable, if not repetitive. She was late and therefore quiet. Her mousiness made her more attractive. Too bad she took off her jacket.

Underneath the sleeves of her thick leather jacket were two undernourished arms. She looked famished and picked clean, both of muscle and impurities; the equivalent of a venus carved by neighborhood kids from fresh snow, barley held together with whatever objects were laying about. I looked down at her brown shirt covered with a Lichtenstein-esque mug of Frank Zappa and proceeded with quiet judging that never stopped: I knew she never owned a Mothers of Invention album, she was probably still operating under the notion that the face on her shirt was Charles Manson. In her closet it hung next to a Dead Kennedys shirt that an old boyfriend gave her; another band she never listened to but memorized enough song titles to pass as a casual fan.

I had seen too many of these culturalist, mini-mall products, artfully disguised as people, more and more so recently. I was tired of the slavishness of it. On college campuses they seemed to multiply faster than designer fleece and horrendous boots. I imagined somewhere there was a little old lady trying to crochet enough yarn berets to keep up with demand.

Almost always of the fairer sex, they were queens of vinyl sided castles and dead end neighborhoods. Drawing attention was their own personal sport. One upsmanship was their saber. Their wasted bodies were intentional, caused by a combination of vanity and neurosis, or vanity that lead to neurosis, then just became a disorder. They most likely had a solidly performed story about a feely uncle, or late night step dad. They lied about their background because being upper middle class was too passe for how interesting they felt were; another wannabe calamity from the wrong side of the cal de sac. Only when there social status was in question did they admit to being raised by a dentist in a gated community. .

“Seeing as the author of the piece you read last night has just arrived, why don't we start discussing it?” The professor's voice interrupted my internal diatribe.

I realized the author he was referring to was Mallory. As was customary, she read an excerpt aloud before sitting back and letting the room full of young writers gnaw it apart with the voracity of a pack of jackals. Or lick her wounds like kittens.

Despite being well written, the first person voice of her story was that of an unlikeable narcissist. This fact only reinforced my perfectly executed assessment her total lack of any good human qualities that weren't physical. A predictable heroin, Mallory's protagonist could have any man or woman that she wanted. No matter how hard Mallory's anti-hero tried to make herself unattractive, she had to beat both sexes off with a stick, all the while being a star actor in her theatre troupe. Everyone wanted her, but nobody could have her. Blah, blah, fucking blah.

I refrained from the forum totally, biting my lip even harder when Mallory admitted that she indeed did work as an actor in a theatre troupe. It was the only time she spoke or acknowledged people speaking during the hour that her obnoxiously vane heroine was discussed. She mostly just sat with her pen at her paper drawing doodles with childish curly hair. She was cavalier, as bold as a train dodge, and surely carried the malice of forethought

“Did you hate it?”

I turned to realize I was caught. She was asking me, and I was a horrible liar, on top of the fact that sometimes I couldn't resist being an asshole due mostly to misplaced feelings of righteousness.

“I think you do a good job of creating an unlikeable character.”

“Do you think she's unlikeable or do you resent her?”

The poor attempt at profundity was worse than the blatancy of the question. It was no longer about a fictional character, if it ever was to start with.

“Is there a difference, really?”

She pretended to think, I actually made the door before she could answer.

For the next couple weeks Mallory sat next to me, but said little. Workshops were sporadic at best so her writing and phoniness sat on the shelf. One day, following an hour in which she claimed to attend both the poorest school in West Virginia and the best boarding school in Virginia, she stormed out of room crying over the shootings at Virginia Tech. She had a flimsily crafted tale about knowing someone who had died there. Per the usual I judged her, once again calculating the odds and figuring bullshit was the retort. Just the queen's game getting out of hand. Despite the visible shaking of my head, most likely complimented by eye rolling, I couldn't resist offering her the bandanna from my wrist when she came back with fog in her eyes. Unfortunately this endeared her to me and created what I was trying to avoid; a friendship with a well versed impostor.

Through the next few weeks I tried to pull back from what I had gotten myself in to. My ears fought with my eyes over Mallory daily and my ears seemed to be winning. Her writing was the same. Graphic scenes of sexual encounters, multiple uses of the word “cunt,” profanity laced sentences for the sake of profanity. It was an obvious ploy at attracting attention. Unfortunately due to my not so contrived vocabulary, my profanity came off the same way. She was dragging me down, and worse, she felt that through our writing we must have been kindred spirits. I was on the hook, and no amount of head shaking was going to shed it. I counted my blessings that she was attractive and hated her behind her back.

As the weeks went by Mallory pulled me in as close as I could stand to be and her facade was expanding. Some days her dad was lawyer, some days he was a researcher, some others a writer. She was the only non-Greek voted homecoming queen at an unnamed Ivy League institution. Her boyfriend beat her, yet she showed no bruises. Her best friend was a well known actor that she didn't want to name. She saw the mothman on more than one occasion. She was just twenty and her life was forty years of experiences.

Questions were starting to be directed at me from others. “What's the deal with your liar friend?” “Does she have problems?” I didn't answer. I wanted to tell them all of the judgements I had formulated. The certainty that she was no more than an only child that had an overwhelming need to be the center of focus. A classic narcissist of her own making. A resident of fantasy land, where she sits atop a throne, guarded by the Israeli Moussad, watching films that she had written for Kubrick, while genetically engineering the finest in marijuana with a wave her magical brain. Alas, I was too connected, and even if I hadn't been, I preferred a person to be in earshot before I trashed them.

Finally my chance came to unravel Mallory's lies when she invited me to her house for a beer.

My plan was to sit down and slowly unravel them with the sure evidence that would be around her place; a picture of her dad's dentist office, or her gated community home. Unfortunately I needed not spy or ask questions. No sooner than I took a seat Mallory reached into an old bureau, pulled a piece of foil and a glass stem from it. She baked the foil in her lap with a Bic lighter revamped to burn as a small torch, and breathed a deep through the stem above. Afterword she simply melted into her couch and smiled. It wasn't the first time I'd seen someone fix in front of me, but this wasn't a biker party or a shooting gallery. She was cavalier, but as it turned out, she had no malice of forethought. The delusions of grandeur she had weren't manufactured due to her need to be the capital of her kingdom, they were tragic manifestations of the addiction. The aftermath of a bonny cataclysm.

I stayed as long as I could, wading through her vague, elusive, stream of conscience dialogue for some signs of her. She breathed heavily between syllables, cried real tears, and cursed me. She walked the dog before singing me a song about the disparity between the size of her last two boyfriend's penises. I stood there frightened, clueless, and helpless. I realized that her world was on the table not to be boastful, but to be vulnerable, to let some help in. Unfortunately the only person that made their way through was me. I stood there on her tracks momentarily, but couldn't face the train. I left her there alone to fall, or die, or fade, or slip into a bottom. I was nothing as cavalier or bold or as beautiful as she was.

My name is Benji Brite. I grew up outside of Athens Ohio, a small college town in the Appalachian region. Currently I live in Denver, CO where I have a small shop where I do custom motorcycle and auto work.