a good woman is hard to find

She laughed, showing off-white teeth and a massive overbite.I smiled back and it was a mirror, one of the pieces of her she lent to me. "You just need a sweet girl to back you up", she laughed again and I smiled wider, drawing circles in the air with the lit end of my cigarette. "Aw, you're all the woman I need, Mom". She smiled, a little sadly, and held onto my shoulder with one hand while her other hand drew another cigarette from the pack we had decided, after a few hours, just to share. "I wish that was true, Ben, but, you're just like your dad. You might only need your mother, but, all the girls that have and will fall in love with you don't know that". I shrugged and felt oddly angry for a second, but, I just put my hand on hers and we stared out onto the sunset.

"You're just like your dad". I couldn't get it out of my head as Ashely and I walked through the H&M, her pulling down black lace skirts and white, button-up blouses and smiling at me with every purchase, as if my presence over her shoulder had guided her to such sartorial treasures. My nerves rattled with boredom and my jaw clenched and unclenched sporadically. My hand was clammy in hers and my eyes wandered across the many women on the floor, imagining myself in their beds and the backs of their roommate's sedan. I had already sexually mastered about 20 women before she finally turned to look at me for more than a second's grin and asked, in a self-aware and falsely cheery tone, "What's that look on your face for?". I love that the English language has a habit of absorbing words and sometimes even whole phrases from other languages and calling it ours when we don't have the proper word in our toolbox. So, from au revoior to modus operandi, why the fuck couldn't we have the french phrase for "I've already cheated on you 30 times today in my head and you asking me such an asinine question you know you won't get a straight answer for is annoying because the redhead behind you looks like she's going to go downstairs to menswear and I wanna get a good look at her face before I fuck her in her room while the dvd menu for The Life Aquatic plays ceaseslessly in the background". I'm sure it'd be something classy and sophisticated sounding, something that would allow her some dignity and perhaps, with a certain wry inevitability, move herself slightly to the left to afford me the view. Such as it is, I have to content myself with "What look?" and a barely masked sigh of disapointment.