John Hughes: A Man of Sophisticated Taste

I have loved John Hughes' films all of my life. When I was 7 years old I rigged up Rube Goldberg machines in the living room trying to be Macauley Culkin in Home Alone. When I was in high school I skipped school and karaoked "Twist and Shout" like Ferris Bueller (though I was probably more like Cameron Frye). My family watches Planes, Trains and Automobiles everything Thanksgiving. In recent years, as my tastes have developed, and as I continue to watch Hughes' films, I have come to notice that, although his subject matter was somewhat unextraordinary (the suburban upper middle class American experience), and he worked within the confines of commercial Hollywood, Hughes very much demonstrated the qualities of an "auteur," and his films are strewn with clues revealing the man's sophisticated artistic ambitions and tastes.

Hughes is an important link between Mike Nichols' pioneering use of Simon and Garfunkel in The Graduate to today's soundtrack cinema of Wes and P.T. Anderson. Hughes' soundtracks are eclectic, to say the least, as much mixtapes as accompanyment for a film, loaded with everything from Oingo Boingo and Kajagoogoo to Patsy Cline and obscure R&B gems from the 50s. He was never indulgent with his soundtracks though, always matching the character, the mood, with the song. In Uncle Buck John Candy, an old school Chicago guy complete with cigar and porkpie hat, barrels around in his broken down bomber of a Caddy to the rolling beats of Big Joe Turner and LaVern Baker. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Matthew Broderick models himself philosophically on the teachings of the Beatles, and could easily be described, using Timothy Leary's famous description of the Beatles, as a "laughing freeman" (I am sure Hughes casting of Broderick had something to do with his not faint resemblance to a young Paul McCartney). Bueller, however, like Hughes, is not simply a casual Beatles fan. "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me," Ferris quotes, a lyric, not from a Beatles song, but one of Lennon's controversial solo singles, "God". Bueller is also obsessed with the Wayne Newton song "Danke Schoen" and later, in one of the most joyful sequences in cinema, performs it on a double bill with "Twist and Shout". It was rare for a Hughes film not to feature a memorable musical sequence: Who could forget John Candy playing keys on the dash to Ray Charles' "Mess Around?" The "chica-chic-ahh" of Yello's "Oh Yeah"? Anthony Michael Hall talking shop with old bluesmen in Weird Science? Perhaps Hughes' only musical misstep was the atrocious score for Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which comes close to ruining an otherwise brilliant film.



Hughes, not surprisingly, had impeccable tastes regarding actors as well. He cast Richard Edson (pictured right) of Jarmusch's hip minimalist masterpiece "Stranger Than Paradise" and the original drummer of Sonic Youth, as a garage attendant in Bueller when Edson had acted in almost no other films. The bit parts in Hughes' films were almost always infused with life, with texture, by brilliant actors. Where would Ben Stein be if not for his famous "Bueller? Bueller?" scene? No one seems to mention the other teacher in Bueller, the pontificating English teacher, but he is played by Del Close, the man who taught Bill Murray, John Belushi, Harold Ramis and countless others how to be funny at Second City. Dylan Baker was given one of his first roles as Owen ("Her first baby come out sideways. She didn't scream or nuthin'.") in Planes, Trains. Michael McKean plays a bit part as a state trooper in the same film. Hughes cast Robert Downey Jr., Bill Paxton, Steve Carrell, and Laurie Metcalf, among others, in some of their earliest film roles. Even the actors who didn't go on to bigger parts are wonderful. In a Hughes film, Edie McClurg (the red-headed receptionist with the Wisconsin accent) is a star.

In Bueller, Ed Rooney consoles Sloan Peterson for the (fake) death of her grandmother with the last line of William Faulkner's The Wild Palms: "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief." Hughes was probably a Faulkner fan (Uncle Buck is the name of a character in Go Down, Moses), but this line is doubly significant because it was quoted by Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's seminal New Wave classic Breathless. One can clearly the see the influence of Godard's Pierrot Le Fou vibrant color scheme on Bueller, particularly in the close-up shots of the Ferrari, as red as a firetruck, and the blue of the shot with Bueller and Sloan kissing in front of the stained glass window. Undoubtedly, Hughes was a fan of Truffaut, as the two men shared a tender affection towards adolescence and their depictions of the rigors of school are perhaps unmatched in cinema. Hughes was also interested in theatre (he spoke of turning The Breakfast Club into a stage play; when he cast Broderick and Alan Ruck in Bueller they were appearing together on Broadway in "Biloxi Blues") and art (the art gallery from Bueller).

Where Hughes was original, where the true genius of his work lies, was in his ability to create indelible comedic archetypes out of the stuff of your average Middle American life. It is very hard to write about something like high school, about family vacations, without seeming fickle or self-indulgent, but Hughes wrote about little else. He gave us nerds and jocks, Prom Kings and Queens, teachers, secretaries, principals, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, who were real people, not just stereotypes. My favorite Hughes film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, has a comedic set-up that is so simple and elegant: an uptight ad-man (Steve Martin) trying to get home for Thanksgiving finds himself stuck on an odyssey with an annoying but loveable shower curtain ring salesman (John Candy). It is a film filled with many beautiful moments, but probably my favorite comes at the end, when Martin, on the El train finally nearing home, cycles through the memories of his misadventures with Candy and, finding something in Candy's story that doesn't add up, turns around to find him sitting alone in the train station, lonely, with no home to return to. We find out Marie, Candy's wife, has been dead for years and Martin, rather than turn his back on Candy as he has done throughout the film, offers a place for him at his family's Thanksgiving table. Together, the two men carry Candy's cumbersome trunk down Martin's suburban street towards Thanksgiving dinner, a poetic image that unites and expresses all that Hughes celebrated: family, home, friendship. Things that, upon seeing his friend and greatest collaborator John Candy worked to death by Hollywood, he willingly sacrificed his career as a filmmaker to preserve.

Worker's Compensation

Russ put his broom up and leaned on it, his face, back, chest all doused with sweat. "They don’t pay us enough for this shit," he said.

"The view is good, we’re getting a tan, a workout," Woody said. Woody was handsome, jaw hard as poured concrete, but spoke with the cretinous lisp of a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant.

For a week they had been on top of the Adams Tower, a dormitory that could be seen from miles around alongside its twin, Morris, both 15 stories tall. The wind blew hard up there, but the sun bouncing off the tar was so hot that it pretty much negated any refreshment it might have brought. In high school Russ had been pudgy and pale, but his three summers with Kyber Roofing had pounded and baked his flesh into sturdier shape. He hated the work, and told himself he was going to quit all the time, but after drunkenly charging through a red light at 3 am and subsequently flirting his way to an OMVI and a suspended license, he didn’t have much choice but to keep at it, as Woody, his roommate and bestfriend since they met at 6th grade wrestling camp, could drive him to work.

“Jesus Christ, what time is it?” Russ said.

“It’s almost five.”

The radio played country music in the background. Russ looked out at the city, the football stadium, the campus, the rivers, the freeway, downtown. He could see for miles. He had spent so much time on the roofs that he had almost forgotten the danger of falling. He remembered seeing those pictures from the 20s and 30s of guys in newsboy caps and overalls eating their lunches on thin steel beams, high above the faint grey mist of a city, as casually as if they were sitting on a park bench. He used to think those guys were crazy, and though he’d never worked on a skyscraper, mostly because they didn’t build skyscrapers in Columbus, if they paid him, he probably would’ve. You only fall if you’re a dumbass.

Russ didn’t do much of anything as the last fifteen minutes of his shift dripped away. At five o’clock he and Woody took the regular elevator down, at the chance they might see some co-eds, whereas the other guys took the service elevator. There were no girls on the elevator, and they got in Woody’s pick-up and flipped the air-conditioner to full and it chilled them like a wonderful arctic blast. They lived in one of those apartment complexes where people are filed away into little rooms furnished with beer pong tables and cinder block shelves. To them it was a kind of paradise though. They were living alone for the first time in their lives, making money, with little responsibility to anyone but themselves. The amenities were great; A lake, too muddy and shallow to swim in, belonging to the ducks, with a rather limp fountain gurgling in the center, but good for fishing; a pool with a waterfall and built-in concrete bar stools; a small gym, and what was advertised as a movie theatre but was actually just a a small room with a couch, a few folding chairs and a projection TV with an image of a basketball game burned into the screen. They got home, cracked a couple beers and headed to the pool, where one of their neighbors, a carpenter named Bobby, was sitting at the concrete bar. Bobby had a hunch in his back, and could no longer rotate his neck, but rather turned his whole body to focus on whoever was speaking. He nodded from his chest and seemed to have a different injured-on-the-job story every night.

“I fell down a set of stairs on this site over by Ravenwood, tripped over a bucket of nails, fell 13 concrete steps to the basement floor. Cement. Fucked my spine all up. They had to take 3 vertebrae out of my lumbar, fused a couple together in my neck. They gave me a shitload of oxycotin and vicodin though, so I feel fucking great.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to drink while you were taking that stuff,” Russ said, commenting on Bobby’s margarita.

“Shit, I don’t know. Half the stuff Doctor’s say you gotta figure is bullshit.” Bobby said. Russ and Woody shared a laugh. “If you want any I’ll sell’em to you, 20 bucks a pop. Tell your friends. I got hundreds of the little beauties.”

“I’ll take some,” Woody said.

“Come on by the place. I’ll hook you up,” Bobby said.

“Hell yeah,” Woody said.

“Cost fifty grand for the surgery, course my medical shit’s all covered so I don’t have to worry about that. I can’t hardly bend anymore, except from the waist, but I get compensation out the ass. I just sit around high as a motherfucker watchin’ Speed channel all day, cashing checks. Beats the shit outta working for a living.”

Russ laughed and shook his head.

***

On the last day of work on the tower, after they’d packed everything into the truck and everyone else had left, Russ asked Woody to take a picture of him with his camera phone on the roof in front of the football stadium. He stood near the three foot wall that rimmed the roof.

“You gotta get closer to the edge,” Woody said, looking at the screen. “I can’t get you and the field from this far back.”

“I’m standing two feet from the edge, dickhead,” Russ said.

“More like two yards,” Woody squinted and maneuvered the camera around different heights and angles, trying to frame Russ. “You’re gonna have to sit on the edge or something.”

“Just hold the camera higher,” Russ said, “Point it down.”

“I’d have to be ten feet tall,” Woody said. He got an empty gray bucket, placed it upside down and stood on it. “Since you’re such a pussy and won’t go near the edge.”

“I don’t care about the edge. The edge doesn’t bother me, it’s just that you don’t know how to take a fucking picture,” Russ laughed.

“Bullshit, I took Photography all four years in high school,” Woody clicked a few pictures. “Who are you, Johnny fuckin’ Kodak?”

“Johnny Kodak? Who the fuck is Johnny Kodak?”

“Shut up. I couldn’t think of anybody famous who takes pictures.”

“I took some pretty famous pictures with your mom.”

Woody lost his balance and the bucket teetered a bit.

“Don’t fall there buddy,” Russ said.

“I’m not gonna fall,” Woody hopped down from the bucket and held the phone so they could both look through the pictures. The sun was too bright so Russ took the phone and shielded the screen with his hand.

“Dude, your fucking thumb is blocking out half the picture.”

Woody laughed and looked at the phone. “Sorry dude.”

Russ held the camera at arm’s length and took a picture of himself. “Now I’m gonna look all emo taking my own picture.”

“Cause you are emo. You’re a pussy who wouldn’t go near the edge.”

Russ faked like he was going to punch Woody and Woody flinched and laughed. “I’ll bet you 500 bucks right now I’ll hang down over the side,” Russ said off-handedly as he cycled through the pictures.

“Deal.”

“Bullshit,” Russ pulled a can of chewing tobacco from his pocket and stuffed a load into his mouth.

“500 bucks. Right now. Do it.”

“You got 500 bucks on you?”

“I’ll go to the ATM.”

Russ stroked his chin, considering the bet. He spit a thread of juice. “I don’t know. I want to see the money first.”

“Dude, it’s me. I live with you. What am I gonna do, not pay you?”

Russ wasn’t afraid. He trusted his own strength. He was smiling, tantalized by the idea.

“I’ll tell you what, you climb over the edge, hang there for 30 seconds, I’ll pay your share of the rent this month,” Woody said. “And the utilities. That’s more than 500 bucks.”

Russ examined the roof, figuring the logistical aspects: what he’d grasp onto, how he’d pull himself up, where he’d put his feet. “I feel like we should get a video camera or something.”

“I’ve got one on my phone.”

“What if Ronnie comes back up and finds my ass hanging over the roof.”

“Ronnie’s not gonna bring his fatass back up here. We already took everything down. He’s probably in the drive-through at McDonald’s by now. If he comes up, we’ll just say you tripped.”

Russ chewed his tobacco slowly. “Would you do it?”

“Fuck yeah I’d do it. Piece of cake. Easiest 500 bucks you’ll ever make.”

“You gonna pull me up if I start to slip?”

“Fuck no dude. You’re on your own,” Woody said. “Of course I got you. I won’t pay you the full 500, but I got you.”

“How much if you pull me up?”

Woody considered it. "None."

"None?"

"It's an all or nothing deal, bro."

Russ hocked his wad of chewing tobacco over the side. He watched it twist and fall, its path bending until it hit the ground in the gravel near a bank of air-conditioners with blades whirling. “30 seconds?”

“I’ll count.”

“All right,” Russ said. He clapped his hands together, breaking from the stillness of his consideration.

“All right?” Woody said, surprised at the answer.

“Let’s do it,” Russ said. “Shake on it.” They shook hands. Woody snapped his phone open and clicked the camera on. Russ stepped one foot over the wall, clasping it between his ankles. He knelt down, hugged the wall and gently let his legs down, one at a time. He was hanging from the edge.

“Count Motherfucker,” he said.

Woody began to count, “One-one thousand, two-one thousand...”

Russ’ face, normally a tomato-red, grew to the purple of an eggplant as the numbers got higher. He could feel the breeze against his legs. His steel-toed workboots dragged at his feet, but he didn’t have to strain to keep himself up. He felt the sweat on his forearms slide from the rim like butter on a hot pan, his grip slipping. He clamped his fingers harder against the gritty stucco wall.

“...Twenty-one thousand, twenty-one-one thousand...”

Russ scraped his boots against the side of the tower, pushing himself back up, as if he were getting out of a pool.

“Twenty-nine-one thousand, Thirty-one thousand.”

Russ threw a leg over the wall and rolled onto the tacky black roof.

“You motherfucker,” Woody said.

Russ laughed and huffed in great breaths of air, rolling back and forth in ecstacy. He stood up and pumped his fist, held his arms over his head victoriously.

“I can’t believe you did that. You’re crazy, dude.”

“You said you’d do it!”

“No fuckin’ way! You fall you’re a dead man.”

“Did you get the video?”

“Yeah dude,” Russ sidled around to look at the screen and they watched the video, “Holy-shit”ing” and “Dude”-ing and spinning around as if they’d just won the Super Bowl.

“You gotta put that on facebook,” Russ said. “You better pay up.”

“Of course I’m gonna pay.”

“Beer’s on me tonight.”

“Damn right beer’s on you.”

They walked towards the door to the stairs, the sun still flaming in the sky.

“Shit,” Russ said, “I’da done it for free if you’da asked me.”

These Songs

These songs have potholes
in their cheeks. These songs do not
wear capri pants. These songs
say what they can in
Japanese. These songs do not
bend like the horizon. These songs
are half-starved and delirious,
imagining cake, stomachs
bloating like the universe.
These songs are the amalgamated
pieces of every invisible
sound you’ve ever caught
with your ears, butterflies
in a net, legions fluttering
in formation.
They are not even songs.
They are the combination
to a safe holding
your own heart.

Perfume

He found a blond wisp of hair near his pillow, unmistakably her length and twine, slightly curled, like a line of cursive. He pulled it taut and smelled it, but the lonely strand no longer carried the fragrance. He had been thinking of her often recently, how she used to lay her head on his shoulder and he’d put his nose in her hair like a bouquet, but he couldn't quite remember what she smelled like. Shampoo, certainly, but what kind? Summer storm? Tangerine Dream? Lilac Wine?

On an August day he was riding his bike near her house and a warm wind was blowing and all at once the scent floated down like music. The flowers in the trees smelled exactly of her hair. He stopped pedaling and put his nose up and drew in deep, rapid breaths, one on top of another, trying to possess the smell. He rode in circles beneath the trees, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing, but it eluded him, and soon drifted away like a current of warm water in a cold lake. He pedaled off.

Skin

A skinhead handed Henry a beer. When you’re alone, other loners find you, and they are often alone because they’re fucking weird and the Lower East Side of New York City has the most professional weirdoes on the planet.

“Mickey Skin,” he said. He ran his hand over his scalp, then held his fist in Henry’s face, knuckles tattooed “SKIN.”

Henry nodded, feigning appreciation. “Henry,” he said. They shook.

“Hank,” Skin said, “This is a cool joint, but there’s too many fags.”

Henry usually smiled and nodded with most of the sentiments offered in a conversation, whether he agreed with them or not, simply out of convenience, but he did not smile or nod at this. He stalled, wanting neither to concur, nor to rile up the short, muscular skinhead. Henry figured his Doc Martin’s had probably kicked their share of shit.

“This music’s gay,” Skin said. The bar was called Mix-Tape and the jukebox was loaded with garage rock and new wave. Hip, but not excessively so for the Lower East Side.

“I like it,” Henry shrugged, quietly rebelling against Skin’s prejudice. He wanted to escape but figured since the guy had bought him a beer he owed him a few minutes of conversation. He didn’t really have anyone else to talk to either, and part of the reason for being in New York was to experience new things. Conversing with a skinhead was certainly new to Henry.

“I’m going to this party in BK,” Skin said, “Wanna come?”

“BK? Brooklyn? I’m supposed to meet some friends here in a bit,” Henry said. A lie. He had no friends in this place.

Skin rolled his eyes. He was wearing a yellow backpack with a cell phone slung between the straps. He whipped the phone open and held it away from his face like a tape recorder. “Yo, where you at?” There was no reply. “”Fuckin’ thing.”

“Why don’t you text them?” Henry said, pressing mime buttons with his thumb.

“I don’t know how to do that shit,” Skin holstered the phone.

The two men stood there, out of things to talk about. Henry sipped his beer to camouflage the silence. Two black girls passed and stood at the bar.

Skin nudged Henry and mumbled. “Why don’t you get on that?” Shyness and desire hid behind his mask of aggression.

Henry was surprised at his choice of women. “Me? I never know what to say.”

“Yeah, me neither man. That’s always my problem,” Skin said. The conversation sprung into momentum.

“You just gotta go talk to them. The more you stand around thinking about it, the more nervous you’re gonna get. You just gotta turn off your brain and go.”

“So do it.”

“I'm not the one who likes them," Henry said.

"That's why you should go. Set me up."

Henry sipped his beer. A guy with dark hair splayed on his scalp like a banana peel started talking to Skin.

Henry was suddenly struck with paranoia that Skin had put something in his drink; some kind of drug or poison. He pretended to sip it while he looked around the bar, then he slipped into the bathroom and dumped it down the sink. He looked at himself in the mirror while he peed, his face lazy with drink. He went back into the bar and saw Skin pretending to punch the banana-haired man in slow motion. Henry thought he should try to find an exit out the back so he wouldn’t have to walk past Skin on his way out. He sifted through the pages of the jukebox, stalling for time, and decided, finally, that the bouncer, a large black man, would probably take his side if Skin attacked him, so he headed out the front door. He checked over his shoulder a couple of times as he went down the street, but Mickey Skin wasn’t following him.

A Gypsy in New York

A Gypsy in New York from Matt Proctor on Vimeo.

A short film I finished today.

The Girlwatcher

This is a short video, followed by the story which it was based on.



I’m in love with this girl. She doesn’t really like me. I mean, she thinks I’m nice and everything, she’s cordial, and I would like to believe that someday, if I played my cards absolutely impeccably, she would let me quietly hump her in my own pathetic little way, but I know that she doesn’t lie in bed at night with the sheets all snaked and clinched between her knees and ache for me like I do for her. I do open mic every Wednesday at the coffee house where she works. There’s usually a bunch of people there but I’m sure that even though I’m wearing sunglasses cause I’m nervous she has to know I’m singing directly to her. I have conversations with her whenever I can invite the courage, conversations that swelter in my body all week like lava, conversations where my words erupt and spill over.

She started working at the coffee shop after my ex and I had broken up, so I don’t think she would have made the connection. My ex is a vindictive bitch. She’s bisexual, which was nice when we were together, got a little menage action every once in a while, but it’s not nice anymore. I only mention it because I’m out the other day and I see her walking down the street hand in hand with this new girl that I’m in love with, the coffee shop girl.

I didn’t really understand what was going on at first so I sort of started following them a little bit, on the other side of the street about 50, 100 yards back. I know that sounds creepy, but it was harmless. It’s not like I'm OJ, like I wanted to kill anybody or anything. It hurt my feelings to see them together. I can’t help that I’m in love. I’m a jealous guy, I’ll admit that, but what’s wrong with caring about somebody? People always make you feel bad for caring. It’s bullshit.

I tried to be sneaky at first, pressing my back to the brick walls and peeking around and springing to the next doorway or crevice between buildings, but I stopped giving a shit. I didn’t care if anyone noticed me in the middle of a busy downtown sidewalk looking through binoculars (I like to go birdwatching in the park every once in a while). I watched them swinging their linked hands back and forth. They would stop and press their faces up to the window of a boutique and then go in and I would go into the store across the street and watch through the front window and they would come out licking ice cream cones or carrying a little trinket they had bought. I didn’t pretend to be reading a magazine in the convenience store or to be looking at the leather masks and ball gags in the sex shop. More than one proprietor forced me out of his store. Homeless people came up on the street and asked me for change, asked me what I was looking at. I ignored them too. I couldn’t see anything but the two girls I had most recently been in love with.

We ended up at my ex’s apartment on the third floor of a bulding where I lived with her for ten months. We used to wake up in the morning and spread the curtains and make love right in the bay window overlooking the trees. We broke up two months before the lease was up. It was a bad break up. I fooled around with this bartender chick and the ex threw all my stuff out into the street just like in the movies.

I jumped in the dumpster in the alley across the way and watched as my ex and the coffee house chick walked up the steps to the porch with the swing in the back. I could smell the rust and beer and rotten food as I watched my ex-pin the new girl up against the wall with a kiss. What I began to feel I had never felt before, this rage like a hot stove. I felt like I could have swung a whale by its tail up through the goddamn panoramic third floor fuckin’ bay window. I felt like I could’ve drilled through a mountain like John Henry. I felt like I could’ve brought down the columns of the world and busted through the sky with my fist as it tumbled down on top of everything. The ex took the new girl by the hand and they went inside.

I started humming the mantra my Tai Chi teacher taught me. I climbed up into a tree to see into her window but it was Springtime and there were too many leaves. I swung down from a branch and dropped to the sidewalk. I circled the building but at no angle could I see into the apartment. I went up to the porch and waited for a few minutes to see if one of my old neighbors would come out, or maybe Yanni the Super, but no one came out. I'd had to climb up the fire escape a few times when I forgot my key, but it was a real bitch and I only did it after I'd tried everything else. As I sat there, I began to get the idea that maybe they wanted me to come after them. Women don't want timid guys. They want cavemen. They want guys to drag them by their hair into the cave and have their way with them. All I had to do was climb the fire escape and go right in the window, which I could see from the street was open (we had an air conditioner but the ex would never let me turn it on. Too expensive). The girls would be shocked at first and try to cover their nakedness, but then they’d see how right it was. We’d all fall in love, the new girl with me, me with the new girl, the ex and me, me and the ex, the ex and the new girl, the new girl and the ex. When something is meant to be, you can’t fight it and the three of us were meant to be; We were meant to be a triumvirate of passion, a trifecta of lust, the holy trinity of sex.

I jumped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder. This was always the hardest part; catching the ladder probably eight or ten feet off the ground like a basketball rim and pulling all of your weight up with your arms, legs thrashing like a hanged man’s. Though I go to the dojo twice a week it was a pain in the ass pulling myself up that ladder. I braced my forearms against the bars below my hands for leverage and lifted my foot so high to get it on the ladder that I nearly ripped open my sack. I pushed my self up by my foot and after placing my other foot on the ladder it was easy to climb up onto the first platform of the escape. I rubbed my forearms, which throbbed as if they were about split like wishbones, and waited for minute to catch my breath before I quietly went up the mesh iron steps.

When I got to the third floor I paused against the wall next to the open window. I watched, through the thin curtain flowing in the window, my ex take off the coffee shop girl’s tank top. They were not five feet away from me and I could hear their breath, their lips sucking at each other and parting with a pluck and plunging back together again. I was enjoying the show and didn’t want to interrupt too soon, and I knelt down so my face would be level with theirs. I felt almost like I was a part of it. It was weird, my heart was being broken and pieced back together all at once. I really believed that I could love them both, that they would both love me. I wouldn’t be jealous of my ex. If she were some douche bag getting with the coffee shop girl I might want to shatter his face with a sledgehammer, but the new girl had somehow rekindled my love for my ex. She would heal over our pain like a splint over a broken bone, and we would fuse together stronger than we were before.

I put my leg through the window and set it down quietly on the hardwood floor beside the bed. I ducked beneath the window frame and snuck through. I lifted my other leg and, as I was putting it through I accidentally knocked out the wooden slate that was holding the window up and it dropped down on my shin.

The two girls jumped apart. My ex’s face tightened savagely.

“Charles?” she said, “What the fuck?”

I clambered to pry my leg out from the window. I realized that the new girl probably didn’t know what was going on and I might be able to save face with her. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, “I thought this was the fourth floor. Terribly sorry.”

I freed my leg and went out the window as my ex bitched me out. I climbed up the fire escape to the fourth floor and my ex poked her head out and yelled up at me.

“Jesus Christ, Charles. You’re a fucking creep,” she said. “Come down from there.”

I knocked on the window of the fourth floor apartment, hoping that they might let me in, but no one answered.

“I’m calling the cops,” the ex said and disappeared back into the apartment. I meekly climbed down the ladder back to the third floor and, seeing that my ex was on the phone and the coffee house girl was on the bed, I thought I might have time to explain things and peeked my head in the window.

“Window’s locked,” I said, indicating “my” apartment upstairs. “Hey, you work at the Midnight Cafe, don’t you?”

She nodded. My ex saw that I was talking to her and threw a blue high heeled shoe at me. I blocked it with my elbow and offered a quick apology to the new girl.

“Hey look, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude or anything. I live upstairs.” The ex slammed the phone down and came after me. I ducked out the window and the ex yelled things at me as I scurried down the fire escape and down the alley behind the house.

The best thing I ever heard about love my 8 year old brother told me. “Mary likes me,” he said. “How do you know that?” I asked. “She laughs at me and when I look at her she smiles,” he said. Now, I know that that’s one hundred percent true, but it never really works out that way for me.