After one of their fights, and after a few too many, he found himself in the lobby listening to her caterwauling in the empty theater.
She did it out of a passive-aggressive need to have her voice heard. And he imagined, how she was already living in a future where she hated him for being gone. Rather than an ugly present where he imagined she hated him for being present.
She wasn't enough of a drama queen to actually do it in front of an audience, and force everyone to watch her perform her pain. He actually admired her for that. For all the things about her that were the opposite of him.
People came up to him, trying to start a conversation. But at the end of the evening, all his charm had worn off, and, he suspected, all his glamour. The people who came up now were the groupies of the groupies, the boyfriends who wanted a broken memory. Of him, tired and old at the end of the night. An emasculated dragon, a drunken defanged demon. The joke about him being the only exception to their rule of fidelity. ("My girlfriend wouldn't want him, except as a pity fuck")
He stood (or sat) guard outside the door, until she was done. The stagehands had struck and she only had her headphones. Next time he should bribe the stagehands to let her into the soundbooth after hours. He'd rather Judy's voice was blasted in the room, and the poor girl would scream to drown her out. It would be an easier ride home if she were the one who didn't have a voice, instead of him. Sometimes silence was better.
"The Man That Got Away"
She did it out of a passive-aggressive need to have her voice heard. And he imagined, how she was already living in a future where she hated him for being gone. Rather than an ugly present where he imagined she hated him for being present.
She wasn't enough of a drama queen to actually do it in front of an audience, and force everyone to watch her perform her pain. He actually admired her for that. For all the things about her that were the opposite of him.
People came up to him, trying to start a conversation. But at the end of the evening, all his charm had worn off, and, he suspected, all his glamour. The people who came up now were the groupies of the groupies, the boyfriends who wanted a broken memory. Of him, tired and old at the end of the night. An emasculated dragon, a drunken defanged demon. The joke about him being the only exception to their rule of fidelity. ("My girlfriend wouldn't want him, except as a pity fuck")
He stood (or sat) guard outside the door, until she was done. The stagehands had struck and she only had her headphones. Next time he should bribe the stagehands to let her into the soundbooth after hours. He'd rather Judy's voice was blasted in the room, and the poor girl would scream to drown her out. It would be an easier ride home if she were the one who didn't have a voice, instead of him. Sometimes silence was better.
"The Man That Got Away"
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