Valentines Day Harlot  − 14 January, 2004

She moves slyly onto the couch, lifting Clint's arm by the wrist and wrapping it around herself. She hands him the bowl of popcorn he'd requested and he takes it wordlessly, jamming a handful into his mouth without taking his eyes of off the television screen. She plays the attentive girlfriend too well, and I'm suspicious of every moment.

"I love you, Clint," she coos, and I swear I throw up in my mouth a little.

She came into Clint's life suddenly and with little prior warning, leaving all involved weak and uncomfortable. Like dysentery, almost. They met in their German class, and I can imagine how smooth Clint must have been about the whole thing, being the charmer that he is. For the longest time Laura was just the current Girl Clint Would Not Shut Up About. He had a new one about every month. His affections moved wantonly to any girl that showed him the slightest bit of attention, but quickly fades when he realizes the girls he's talking to aren't interested in going out with him. My favorite was definitely the Hawaiian. A small, dark haired girl, she had both a boyfriend, and the distinct ability to leave Clint stupefied and useless. I don't know if she did it with malice, or if it was just an innocent byproduct, but either way she got Clint's hopes up, only to have them come crashing down when it became clear that they had no future. I didn't think Laura was going to be any different. The problem with this one, aside from the fact that she was a certified butter face, was the slime with which she greased her wheels. She had "hidden agenda written all over her.

Had it not been Valentine's Day, the holiday that shamelessly ties the heart and wallet together, I doubt things would have worked out like they did. Clint was just beginning to lose interest in Laura, a victim of being yanked around too much, and he was actually thinking of taking some other girl to homecoming. For days he'd been speaking to her on the phone, and I'd begun to think that Laura had somehow found herself left out in the cold. But she caught him after school in the middle of Wal-Mart, stuffed full of Valentine's Day sentiment and most likely with a head full of sleazy poetry. She asked him out, and Clint obliged. I wondered mutely from the sidelines about the other girl. I liked that one, she was cute.

Laura seemed harmless enough the day that I met her. She came home from school with me and Clint, and we spent the afternoon watching television. Well, I spent the afternoon watching television. Clint and Laura took the opportunity to become more familiar with each other's faces. It was probably the most graceless thing I've ever seen. I excused myself and vested my attention elsewhere.

"Yeah, I hate that bitch," Scott says to me as we lay about his sister's house. At this point, the relationship as made it to the sixth month mark. "She seems okay at first, but then she starts to eat at you. I think it's that voice. It gets into your head after a while, and you can't make it stop. It makes me want to stab myself in the throat."

"And her eyes," I added. "They're so fucked up. They're like... corpse fire eyes, or something. You know what I mean? It makes me feel like I'm looking into some rotting pool when I look into them. It's nasty."

"You should put that on a Valentine's day card."

"Yeah, I'd give it to Clint to give to her," I said. I thumb through a few uninteresting channels before ultimately dropping the remote. "'Here you go, baby. Wanna fuck now?' The dumb ass probably wouldn't even read it first before he gave it to her."

"Knowing Laura, she'd probably still take it as a compliment." Scott lit a cigarette and passed the pack to me. I took one, and cringed as I lit it. I hate cheap cigarettes.

"And she gets this rash on her face from using too much makeup," I said.

"Yeah, and you know what she does? She puts on more to cover it up. She's too stupid to realize that she's allergic to the shit in the first place. That," Scott continues, "and that red ring she gets around her mouth."

"Yeah... what the hell is that? It's gross."

"I don't have any idea."

We spent the better part of the afternoon badmouthing Laura, but the one thing neither of us had anything to say about was the rejection that we both felt. It had bubbled up dark and twisting as the months drove on. It eventually would manifest itself into resentment, and it would be this that would ultimately drive a wedge between me and Clint. Our friendship would fizzle, and we would stop speaking altogether.