Breakfast with Lonely People

A Story by ginsy

It's complicated. They're okay with that.

There's something comforting about milling around in a dive bar that's older and dirtier than yourself. It really boosts your self esteem. The girls are all drunk, the boys are all desperate, and somehow, it's just really uplifting in the most bizarre and unsanitary way.

The bar itself was smokey and packed, the entire place reeking of sweat and cheap alcohol. Some unknown hipster alternative rock band played on the dinky stage and the sounds they produced sounded more like a dying cat than music, but it had a beat and that meant people could dance along.

Gwendolyn (“Call me Gwen, please.”) nodded her head along halfheartedly and signaled the bar tender for another bad coke-and-rum. She was pleasantly buzzed and happily wallowing in her self-loathing, and scanning the crowds for a suitable male to take back to a hotel.

She had little luck, however, as the bar was mostly filled with middle aged divorcees, no thank you, and twenty-something hipsters, no thank you. She was about to give up when she spotted a small group of non-hipster, non-forty year old guys, milling about in the far end of the bar and drinking bad beer. Two of them were obviously gay and either currently together or soon to be together, one of them was way too drunk, which left the last one.

The last of the group was a tall, scrawny, guy who looked like he probably worked in tech-support and said things like “Hi my name is Stephen, did you try turning it off and on?” for a living. Perfect. Smiling sharply, she made her way over.

Stephen the probable tech-support worker didn't even look up until she was right in front of him, and when he did, he looked suspiciously likely to piss his pants.

“You look like you're having a blast,” Gwen stated sarcastically, nodding to him in greeting. His drunk friend had wandered off to go molest some equally drunk college-age hipster girls, and the two ambiguously gay guys were too busy having a fantastically homoerotic eye sex contest to pay them any mind.

“Bars aren't really my thing. To, um, loud. I guess,” currently nameless possible guy replied, looking vaguely uncomfortable and a little bit nauseous.

Gwen nodded in agreement. “Bars aren't really my thing either, but you can't exactly find sex in a book store, so . . .,” she trailed off, shrugging.

“Oh, you're here for . . . ?” he started, still looking like he wanted to sink into the floor, or pass out.

“Oh no, I come here for the ambiance and fantastic drinks,” she replied, rolling her eyes, “But anyway, you never told me your name?”

He gulped down his cheap beer, and shifted from foot to foot for a second, seemingly debating on whether or not to give it to her.

“Ian, it's Ian. My name, that is,” he mumbled. Gwen raised an eyebrow at his awkwardness, but otherwise refrained from commenting.

“Well, Ian, what do you say we go find an only mildly disgusting hotel and have desperate lonely sex to stave off the crushing reality that is human existence?” Gwen smiled openly, teeth showing, and hands on her hips.

Ian just stared at her, his facial expression shouting “what the f**k just happened” loud and clear, and that was perfectly fine. Gwen just kept smiling, waiting for a response. Ian glanced at his drunken friend, then at the gay maybe-couple (still making goo-goo eyes at each other and smiling like dopes)

Ian smiled crookedly. “Okay.”

They did eventually manage to find an only slightly disgusting and unsanitary hotel, after driving around in Gwen's tacky power blue Volkswagen. Ian talked to fill the silence, Gwen interjected occasionally with sarcastic or cynical comments, and her radio played vintage rock cassettes, and both of them thought, at the same time (though they would never know that), I could get used to this.

When they finally pulled up to the hotel, Gwen slid out of the car and Ian followed, noticeably less gracefully, as they booked a room, one night, and made their way to it. Ian noted, mentally, that there was no tension really, they just walked and Gwen held the elevator door open for him and smiled easily as she pressed the button for their floor. It was easy. Everything was easy, and it was making him nervous.

They did eventually reach their room, and as they stepped inside the tension still didn't appear Gwen laughed as she mentioned that she hadn't shaved her legs in a few days, and pulled her ratty tee-shirt over her head, dropping it to the floor.

Ian informed her he didn't mind, and though he didn't mention it, she assured him his pale rear end wouldn't blind her, nor would his scrawny physique disappoint her.

Really, it was all too nice.

They had sex and it wasn't mind blowing, fantastic, or the best sex he'd ever had, but it was comfortable and friendly, almost platonic (if one could say that about sex), and really, he didn't think he'd want it any other way.

The next morning

4:30 AM was a horrible, terrible hour and nobody could or would ever tell Gwen otherwise. Her eyes were crusted with sleep and she ran a hand down her face in a pathetic attempt to wake herself up more. They'd already payed for their one night only hotel, so she had zero qualms about jumping ship now before having to make an awkward “you had your penis in my vagina” small talk.

She rolled out of bed with a dull thud, and lay still for a moment listening for any signs of waking up from her bed partner, safely nestled on the other side of the bed. There was none. She lurched up and went about feeling along the floor for her pants and shirt. She had just about found her articles of clothing before ramming headfirst into something distinctly head-shaped that made a very person-like sound on impact.

“Are my pants over there?” Gwen whispered, so as not to disturb the cold silence of early morning.

“Uh, I don't know, maybe. Should we turn a light on?” Ian suggested and Gwen could just imagine the scrunched face he was probably making, at the suggestion.

“That would be more proactive than feeling along in the dark, yes,” she replied.

Ian stumbled around her and ran into the night stand and wall at least twice before he finally managed to locate a light switch. He flicked it on and the room was illuminated in tacky florescent light. Gwen would have made a comment about the quality of the light fixtures, which was really sub-par, but she was too busy laughing and choking on her own spit at the sight of the two of them.

Ian had his boxers on, which were hilarious in and of themselves, as they were Star Wars and Yoda smirked proudly from his a*s (if he could talk, she imagined he'd say something like “go get'em tiger!” because why not), and only one sock on. What were definitely her jeans are pulled up on one of his legs. She herself was still in her underwear, and just noticed that she never took her socks off.

“Are you wearing Star Wars underwear,” she asked, more as a statement than an actual question.

“I like Star Wars, okay?” he muttered pulling off the jeans and throwing them in her general direction.

Gwen laughed at that and a silence fell over the two as they got dressed. She tossed him his shirt which had somehow gotten wedged between the bed and the wall and they quietly got dressed. When they were finally clothed they both stood awkwardly by the door.

“Uh, I guess this is goodbye?” Ian asked, and Gwen purposefully ignored the hopeful tone in his voice.

“Sure, if you want. I was going to go hunt up some breakfast though, if you want to tag along.”

He raised an eyebrow, and a little sliver of a sarcastic and cocky Ian peeped out nervously, “It's 5:00 AM. I don't think IHOP is open at 5 AM.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Waffle House is 24/7 and their food is mostly edible. Come on.”

She pulled the door open and marched out, with a purpose, and even if he didn't need a ride back to the bar to get his car, Ian thought he'd still probably follow her to the parking lot and to the Waffle House, even if he wasn't sure exactly why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

That was how he found himself sitting at a table in a dingy and mostly empty Waffle House on the far side of no where eating a fruit cup and drinking apple juice, which Gwen had mocked him for mercilessly. Gwen herself was guzzling down black coffee like it was liquid gold and thanked the waitress wholeheartedly (and a little bit flirtatiously, if he were being honest) when she brought her order of sausage to their booth.

“We're in a Waffle House in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere; you're supposed to pig out,” Gwen informed him, poking judgmentally at the fruit cup with her fork.

“Diabetus runs in my family,” he shrugged, popping a grape in his mouth.

Gwen laughed. “Say that again.”

“Say what again?”

“Diabetes!”

Ian sighed. “Diabetus.”

Gwen cackled in delight at his pronunciation of the word. He just rolled his eyes.

“You're such an a*****e,” Ian informs her, without a single trace of malice or discontent in his voice.

“Like I didn't already know that.” Gwen smirks and looks like she's about the make a lewd joke out of the moment, but stops herself when Ian glares at her.

“No seriously, you're kind of a twat. I still like you alright though. I guess,” Ian shrugged, but it wasn't the same helpless shrug from early, this shrug had more camaraderie in it.

What Gwen had internally been calling Real Sassy Ian was peeping through again and waving for attention.

“Well, I am adorable, it's understandable that you would find me irresistible.”

“Um, would you maybe possible want to to go dinner or get coffee or something, sometime?” Ian inquired slowly, peeping over his menu which he had pulled up to hide his face.

Gwen just gulped down the last of her coffee and popped the last bit of sausage in her mouth before standing.

“If 'out of coffee' is code for 'more sex', then sure. But I don't date, sorry,” she answered, not sounding sorry at all, before patting his head and strutting back to her car.

It took Ian a while to remember that she was his ride back into town, and to his car, but by then, she was already gone.

Two months later

Ian was standing outside his apartment, several boxes surrounding him, and his pet turtle, Terrence, in hand. Who gets kicked out of their apartment because of a turtle? Ian, apparently. He wasn't even positive how it happened. Logically, he could point out what happened first, and then the last and everything in between, but here, standing on the sidewalk with his things and his turtle, he couldn't form it into a cohesive story.

Slowly, and steadily, he began loading his things into his dumb of a car, barely making them fit. Two suitcases, a box of technical books, and a grocery bag of nicknacks later, he was basically ready to go. It still seemed surreal, but he supposed he did just get evicted from his apartment, so it was bound to feel at least marginally catatonic.

His turtle was firmly strapped into the passenger side seat, and if that didn't really personify the state of his life right now he wasn't sure what did, and he was off to . . . where was he off to? Ian froze there, foot hovering about the gas and key in the ignition, where was he off to? He had nowhere to go, no friends he could stay with, no family near by. His stomached rumbled menacingly, however, and he eventually decided to go find food and caffeine before thinking to hard about it.

That was how Gwen found him, almost half an hour later, sitting forlornly in some dinky hipster-hide out. If Gwen were a romantic, she would call it fate or magic (or some s**t), but she wasn't and she certainly didn't believe in fate. So instead she decided on the most realistic option, happy if vaguely tedious coincidence, and accepts it for what it is.

Ian is looking more angsty than he was the last time she saw him, granted, that was a little under two months ago. He didn't just look angsty, he looked confused, as if the universe were playing some kind of insane practical joke on him that everybody but himself was in on. It would have been hilarious, and under any other circumstance she would have mocked him mercilessly and wandered away because Gwen is kind of an a*****e like that, but for once in her short and not terribly exciting existence,she decides to take pity on this poor, lost soul.

Gwen, with much enthusiasm, plops down in the seat across from him.

“Hey there sugar bear, how's it going?”

Ian shot her an incredulous look, eyebrows raised in some alien form of communication that she had not yet mastered. He soon aborted this communication attempt and instead opted for the more commonly accepted English.

“Oh, you know. The usual. Got evicted from my apartment, nothing new,” he said in a way that really should have been sarcastic, but since Ian was the most non-sarcastic person Gwen had ever met in her entire life, she really doubted that he was being anything other than literal.

She nods at him sagely, and motions for him to elaborate. He sighs, not quite dramatically, but definitely louder than what is strictly necessary.

“It's stupid and it doesn't matter. My apartment has a 'no pets' policy, they gave me several warnings, and I didn't dispose of my pet, so I got evicted. End of story,” Ian answers her, but in a way that makes her believe that is totally not the end of the story and so she presses on.

“What kind of pet was it? Dog, or cat?”

Ian muttered something inaudibly in her general direction, face flushed crimson.

“Sorry, what was that?” she smirked, knowing it must be something good.

“It was a turtle. Uh, my turtle. Terrence.”

Gwen busted out laughing, head thrown back and eyes closed. She laughed with her entire body, shoulders bobbing and head shaking.

“Your turtle, Terrence, got you kicked out of your apartment?”

Ian paused, blushing red.

“Yes, that is correct.”

Gwen was still laughing, although quieter, her shoulders shaking lightly and Ian thought to himself I wish I could be like you because wouldn't it be nice to laugh, and smile, and yes, have sex with zero inhibitions?

Gwen finally stopped her chuckling to clarify: “So you don't have a place to live right now?”

Ian rolled his eyes, f*****g duh he didn't have a place to live, but replied all the same.

“No, I don't have a place to live right now.”

Gwen smiled, even though generally being homeless was nothing to smile about, and continued rather melodramatically:

“In that case, come with me if you want to live,” she said this in her best impression of a bad action movie star, deep booming voice and sweeping hand motions included, before standing up and leaving almost exactly the same way she had left those months ago, only this time, Ian stood up and trailed after her.

They arrive at Gwen apartment after quickly, apparently she only lived a few minutes from the coffee shop. It seemed strange that she could have inhabited his life so closely but he had never run into her until they were both far from home. He didn't believe in fate, and neither did she, but it was definitely an interesting coincidence.

She trotted up the stairs and stopped in front of an ugly lime green apartment door with peeling paint and a rusting doorknob. Gwen fumbled with her keys for a moment before wrenching the door open with an ear-drum splitting screech. She left the door open for him and wandered in, and out of sight.

Ian followed her and if it wasn't for his current status as homeless he probably would've walked out of the place without another word. It was filthy, trash stern on the floor, laundry peeping from the closed in closet where the washer supposedly was, and the whole place smelled like mold.

“Me casa es su casa,” Gwen informed him waving her arm around.

“There's another bedroom around that way, I used to have a roommate but she got pregnant and got crabs from her stupid boyfriend so she's living with him now. You might want to wash the sheets before sleeping in them, unless you like STDs.”

Gwen shrugged in a kind of 'what can you do' gesture. Ian laughs and stands outside the bedroom door awkwardly, bags in hand. The silence isn't exactly penetrating, but it's definitely pregnant (and if that isn't ironic, Ian had no idea what was) and Gwen seemed to realize this too and raised her eyebrow at it.

“So . . .”

Gwen rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically before informing him: “Yes, we can have sex. But later, I'm f*****g hungry.”

Ian to his credit, didn't really look that surprised.

Life went on.

For all that Ian worried he'd have to explain the new living situation to everybody, he found that most people didn't really care that much. He told people Gwen was his roommate, which he guessed was technically true, despite the sex that seemed to happen rather frequently.

His mother was being a huge b***h about it, but he was enough of a functioning adult to admit that she was a huge b***h about pretty much anything. Still though, he'd much rather avoid the judgment of her (and his friends, come to think of it) than admit the truth, so he let her come to whatever conclusions she wanted to.

Gwen was just as 'larger than life' as she was when they first met. Everything she did, she did because that was just what she wanted to do. No thought to consequences or any of that. He didn't know her family, and her friends showed up randomly at all hours with no explanation, and she never let anything bother her. Everything rolled right off her back, and Ian was a little bit in love with her.

Gwen wasn't in love with anybody. Ian wasn't even sure that Gwen liked anybody. She talked to him just like she talked to all her weird friends that showed up in the middle of the night.

He supposed they were friends though. They argued about whether they were going to watch Next Top Model (Ian's choice) or Biggest Loser (Gwen's choice) on the nights they came on, and what kind of take-out they wanted, and who was going to take the garbage out.

Arguing was Gwen's made method of communication, apparently. That was okay, because Ian was adopting it as his too.

For all that he insisted again and again to his mother, to his friends, and to his co-workers that Gwen was not his girlfriend, just his weird friend, he couldn't help but imagine she was his girlfriend. What would Gwen even be like as a girlfriend? Probably f*****g awful.

This is how it's supposed to work. Meet a nice girl, move in with her, get married, live your life, die.

(His co-worker had accused him of putting Gwen on a pedestal which was such a load of s**t. Gwen was inhuman and larger than life and completely f*****g insane and sometimes it was a little hard to remember she was just a person with actual thoughts and feelings, but that didn't mean he was a goddamn sociopath or some s**t.)

But, again, life goes on for them.

They're sitting on the couch watching Biggest Loser when it happens. The phone rings. The phone, which exactly nobody has ever called their apartment on, rings. Gwen looks like she saw a ghost taking a s**t on her bed.

She answers the phone though, after listening to it ring for a moment.

“Hello.”

Ian doesn't mean to eavesdrop.

“Yes, I know.”

He really doesn't mean to.

“Yes, dad, I know.”

Maybe he does, just a bit.

“Yeah, see you then, bye.”

He may have mentioned this a couple million times, but Gwen lets everything roll right off her back. She doesn't care that much about anything, it's all trivial to her. So seeing her shoulders bunched like that, brow furrowed in what seems like repressed anger, and seeing her fists clenched like she wants to strangle somebody, honestly freaks Ian out a bit.

“Who was that?”

“Oh, you know, just my friend none of your f*****g business,” Gwen snaps, and plops back down on the couch next to him, turning the sound back on on the TV.

“Are you going to see them?”

“They're coming over here.”

“Well, then you kinda have to tell me who it is.”

“No, actually, I f*****g don't.”

Ian drops it. In his experience the best way to get anything from Gwen is to act like she's won. They watch the end of the Biggest Loser episode. It's alright, not as interesting as last weeks.

Gwen stands up to throw away the paper plates they've been eating off of. Ian stands up to walk to his bedroom.

“Night Gwen.”

“It was my dad.”

“What?”

“My parents are coming.”

“I didn't know you had parents, I thought you were spawned. Like the aliens in the Sigourney Weaver movies.”

“Bite me, fuckwad.”

“Whatever. Goodnight.”

Gwen doesn't respond, and when Ian glances over his shoulder at her, she's staring at the swirling mess of uneaten Chinese food that's going down the garbage disposal with a look of impending doom darkening her sharp features.

Ian goes to bed without a comment after that.

It seems that Gwen becomes angrier and more normal in the next month. She snaps about things like Ian not doing his dishes right away, or not picking up his laundry off the bathroom floor. She yells at him when he doesn't bother to throw out the milk after it passes it's expiration date.

Ian is fed up with her.

You can't be one person forever and then just change and set new expectations for a month because your f*****g parents are coming, he rationalized. Old-Gwen would never have yelled at him for being a slob, or cared about the s**t that she decided she cared about now.

Old-Gwen was weird and aloof but she was also not an uptight b***h.

(His co-worker just mutters “pedestal” in his direction when he complained about it)

He tells Gwen as much next time she grouses at him.

“I'm sorry, when did you become such a b***h?”

She stops dead.

She pivots on her heel.

She stares him dead in the eye.

“You want to repeat that to my face?”

Ian hesitates.

“When did you become such a b***h?”

“My f*****g parents are coming, and I'm super-duper sorry if me wanting you to stop acting like the f*****g slob you are for a few weeks is so draining to you, but you're going to have to get the f**k over it.”

“Since when do you care what people think of you?” Ian shouts at her, arms in the air.

“F**k you, you don't get a say in how I run my own f*****g apartment. The apartment which you have been paying minimal rent for, if I can just remind you. I don't know what f*****g YA lit novels you've been reading, but sometimes s**t happens and I have to accommodate. Right now, my s****y over-bearing parents are coming t visit, and then is me accommodating. Get over it.”

Ian stands there, dumbfounded. What do you say to that? Ian decides on option D, nothing, and goes back to quietly cleaning the up the dishes.

They have a few hours until Gwen's parents show up. Ian doesn't see why this whole thing is such a big deal, but Gwen's been working to look like her store-bought roast chicken is home cooked for the past half-hour and rearranging their s****y plastic dining room table every fifteen minutes.

“Would you calm the f**k down?”

“F**k off, I'm still mad at you.”

“Get over it.”

“Bite me.”

“Whatever.”

Gwen goes back to poking at the roast chicken with a fork.

“It looks fine, come watch TV with me.”

“F**k off.”

“Seriously, I don't see what the big deal is.”

“The big deal is my parents are passive aggressive a******s who are overly critical of f*****g everything. They piss me off, and I don't want to fight with them. Do not start s**t or I will f*****g kick you out.”

“Kay. Come watch TV.”

“Only if we can watch 90210.”

They've got fifteen minutes till Gwen's parents show up, at best, and Gwen is freaking out. Ian, on the other hand, still doesn't see what the big deal is.

Gwen understands what her parents are like, she understands why this is going to be a b***h to deal with. Ian does not know her parents. She gets that because he doesn't know her parents, he can't possibly know what huge dicknuts they are, and therefore, his s**t isn't really his fault. But, at the same time, it totally is, so her anger is warranted.

A knock on the door, and Gwen wondered how far it was to the ground if she jumped out the window.

Ian didn't seem bothered.

“You gonna get the door?”

No response from Gwen.

She finally pulls herself up from the couch, flips off the TV, and opens their front door. Ian walks up behind her and peers over her shoulder. Her parents are surprisingly normal looking. He's not quite sure what he expected, more tattoos and body piercings or perhaps a shaved head, but they look like most white middle class Americans.

They smiled, and he couldn't help but feel like a rat being cornered by a snake.

“Gweny, it's been way too long. You never call or write, not like Brad does,” her mother coos and while Ian's initial thought his “Who the f**k is Brad?” he also notices the dig at Gwen right away and he thinks he understands what she's been talking about in that moment.

Gwen just smiles politely and invites them in.

“So you finally got a boyfriend, eh? I was beginning to worry you'd never get over that 'independent woman' s**t,” her father says, a slightly mocking laugh in his voice, and he looks at Ian when he says it.

“Ha, yeah.”

The night pretty much goes on like that.

Gwen's mother makes a snotty comment about their table, her father insists on cutting the chicken, even though it's a store-bought roast chicken and not Christmas dinner, and keeps making jokes about how glad he is that Gwen finally settled down.

Ian smiles politely, Gwen stabs her chicken with her fork with more force that necessary.

“You see, before you, she was with some w***e who had tricked her into believing she was some kind of deviant. I didn't buy that for a second, no sir, and I was right.”

Gwen clenches her fork in her hands but doesn't say anything, keeping her eyes glued to her plate.

The dinner goes on like that.

When they do finally go to bed, Ian turns to look at Gwen.

“Don't.”

“What? I wasn't going to say anything,” he mutters.

“You were. I don't want to hear it. Go to bed, I'll see you in the morning.”

She turned and walked away, closing the door softly behind her. It was so jarring because Gwen never did anything softly or politely. Gwen was unapologetic in every move that she made, and everything that she said. Gwen was always so strong and it was strange to see her be so contained.

The next morning Anne and him were the only people up.

As they stood in the kitchen she looked at him from the corner of her eye and murmured a soft “Sorry.”

“For what?” he asked.

She paused.

“Nothing.”

Ian hated her a little bit in that moment.

Dinner that night is uncomfortable, and it reaches a point where Gwen looks like she almost wants to fight back but Bill cows her with a sharp glance in her direction and a question about when she's planning on going back to college.

She picks at her food, barely eats it, and her parents chatter on about this and that and Ian thinks that by the end of it he's learned something about the both of them and himself. Gwen is only person in the apartment that isn't a total c**t.

When they leave, he shuts the door before they say goodbye and he doesn't feel bad about it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks her.

“No, I don't want to f*****g talk about it. I don't even want to f*****g think about it.”

She rubs her temples and her shoulders are so hunched up and so Ian pulls her into his chest and besides a half-hearted “don't f*****g touch be douchebag” she leans into him. When she does, he says: “I'm sorry your parents are such dicks and that I'm such a dick. You don't deserve that s**t.”

She doesn't say anything for a moment, but finally she shoves him off and yells “damn straight” before turning Biggest Loser on and plopping down on the couch. He sits next to her, and later on they'll argue about what to watch and wrestle the remote out of each other's hands and have sex but right now, he just enjoys her company.

The next time his mother calls he promptly tells her that he lives with Gwen and has sex with her and loves her but he's not in love with her and he never will be and if she and her stupid friends aren't okay with that then she can go f**k herself.

After the tirade he goes and sits next to Gwen on the couch, she just pats him on the knee, congratulates him for “finally nutting up”, and tunes back into the television.

In those evenings, curled up in the holes they carved for themselves within one another, they'll think about a long time ago. They'll think about a shared breakfast over nothing but two cups of coffee and a couple of lonely people.

© 2014 ginsy

Author's Note

Gwen can be read as aromantic if you wish, that's how I wrote her.

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Reviews

Delmar Cooper

Thanks for sharing this story. I thought it was fresh and candid. I admire writers who write fearlessly and you did in this piece. There are the usual nits to pick, some spelling and grammatical misteps, but no big deal.

Thanks for permission to read Gwen as "aromantic." I read a romantic as aromatic at first and sniffed her up and down. She smells fine. Keep up the good writing.