(photo by Jim Thompson)

Fighting For Love On Mars by KEN MCQUEEN

Leo tries to win the affection of a certain disarming female, while his hometown social circle crumbles around him in drunken, bilious mess.

1

"Mornin' Roy! Have a cappucino." I hand Roy a beer. He looks at me like I'm missing out on something.

"Water first..." he mumbles back. Roy gets off the ratty old couch that he slept on. That damn couch has to have a million little mice swimming in it, giving it a nice massage vibration. Maybe that's why Roy always sleeps on it when we're here. "Dude, I was feeling up all the chicks in this place! They all let me have a feel of their tits!"

Trying to change the subject, I say to him, "I think we over did it a little last night," as I notice the vomit on the downstairs window. My view of the first floor isn't the best. All I can see is the door, the window, and the stairs leading up to where I am. But the view out the big bay window directly in front of me is quite nice. Someone either can vomit seven feet out or someone threw it up there. Maybe as a joke since it will never be cleaned and either way, the ridiculousness of the act is impressive.

"You're probably right. Where did everyone go even?" Roy asks me.

"Home I guess. Shit went down hill once the radio broke." I say back, not quite remembering everything.

"Did something happen with you and Tiff last night?"

"Umm... yeah. But it wasn't what us protagonists hope we end up with. Now, let's go get some fucking breakfast."

2

"Everything's set," Dan says. "The ice is salted, the beers are submerged, and people are coming." It's going to be a good night. Friday. Summer. Dusk.

I sit down with these four douche bags I call friends. There's Dan, Jeff, Ted, and Roy. Roy's the only one I would really consider an actual friend. The rest are just people that I drink with.

We're talking about some bullshit that happened last time we did this. A window broke. Ted was punched in a case of mistaken identity. I accidentally pissed my pants by taking them off and then urinating on them while they lay on the floor. The usual party stuff.

A car pulls up. We're on the back balcony, but can hear it from around The Beaver Den. That's where we are, The Beaver Den. Roy's brother's deer camp. A nice little two-story shack of a hovel. It's clad with two couches and a bitchin' flat-screen TV on the top floor. The bottom floor contains a bar and the exits. Those exits are a God-send.

A car door opens and shuts. Then another one. Another. We don't move. It's Dan's girlfriend and her friends. Brigette, Dan's girl, is basically the leader. Her friends, Tabby, Donna, and Amanda are sycophants to Brigette's way. She's an evil dictator with great legs and a smile so shiny that you need a camera obscura just to look at it. These girls are your modern, every-day, Abercrombie & Fitch wearing, "The Hills" watching, all-American stuck-up bitch types. They feel superior because they're attractive. Together, they have an IQ of about 300. We watch them slowly appear over the horizon that is the stairs. One after another. Brigette in the lead of course.

"Hey guys!" I hear Brigette say. She opens the door in between the statement, making the 'Hey' quiet and 'guys!' loud. If she was a man, I'd slap her. The rest of her friends wave and say hi. We all reply in a similar manner.

"Hey babe," Day yells in an attempt to be funny but ends up being more asshole-like.

"Dan... You are a jackass," Jeff tells him in an obvious statement, shaking his head. Jeff and Dan are cousins and have known each other for their entire lives. Jeff's one of these guys that will always tell you what he thinks of you. This usually offends no one and if it does offend a person, that person is a tool and needs to get over themselves. Jeff would be the kind of guy to tattoo 'Love' and 'Hate' on his knuckles if he wasn't afraid of needles.

"Shut the fuck up, Jeff. You're gay!" Dan retorted back. Dan wasn't very clever.

Looking around, everyone seemed to match up. Dan was with Brigette, Jeff was dating Donna, Tabby had a guy in a different group of friends, Roy has the same situation as Tabby. Amanda was freshly single and being persued by these douche bags from an adjacent town. Ted is dating in the same group as Roy. I am the odd man out. The one searching desperately for someone to sleep with while no women wanted to touch me outside of an occasional hug.

I was surrounded by people but I was alone. These people are the most shallow folks on the planet. I felt like an Angler Fish amongst Salmon, even though I was a about three feet deeper than these fools.

3

...And the night advances. Dusk has passed into the early stages of night. A warm dark canvas easing us into our self-propelled idiocy. The conversations have turned at this point, getting more serious. Politics comes into the forum.

"I'm glad we're fighting this war!" says Dan, "It gets it so we can do this." He's referring to sitting on a balcony, drinking beer. Dan's ignorance toward the current occupation is only matched in size by his ego.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I ask him.

"Those sand niggers want to take our rights! I'm glad we're killing them all."

"Most of the people we kill are innocent."

"Well so be it. Why do they hide with the terrorists if they don't deserve to be killed?"

"They are just living in the places they grew up. Just like you and I, Dan."

"Let me ask you a question, Leo. You have a gun to your face. It's between you and three innocent people and it's your call on who gets killed. What would you do?"

"If they're definitely innocent, I'd die. No question about it."

"Yeah, well if you had a gun in your face you'd think differently..."

At that point, Tabby changed subjects which was most likely a good idea.

"Did anyone see the new episode of The Hills? Can you believe it?!" These idiots nodded except for Ted, Roy, and myself.

And thankfully, we heard another car pull up. It was some guys from the adjacent town mentioned earlier.

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