Sociopathic Algebra - A.J. Cole (speed reading book txt) 📗

I’m a jerk. My girlfriend just educated me about this. She’s standing in front of me right now, telling me to stop writing, and looking like she’d like to tear my head off. I mean, this is what I do. I write. A lot. It keeps me out of therapy, so I’m told.

Okay, now she’s shouting, and since we’re in a public park, and I don’t need some well-meaning asshole to start lecturing me about girlfriend neglect, I’m going to stop. [Bad word muttered by me…putting my pen down.]

So it – yeah, I’m back. It’s about six hours later and she’s gone home. And even though she claims to get my whole need-to-write thing, she says I choose all the wrong moments to do it. Like when we’re supposed to be enjoying a nice walk through the park during her lunch hour. Or when we’re sitting in a restaurant having dinner.

She’s right about the timing, but what she doesn’t get is that I don’t “choose” when to write – the moments choose me. Anyway, here’s what was said after I stopped earlier:

“Okay, I stopped.”

Miri shook her head. “You don’t sound at all apologetic.”

“I’m…I’m not. I mean, you know I need to do this.”

“Yes, but you choose all the wrong moments.” The glare of a young woman preparing to plunge her hand into someone’s torso to rip out a gut or two softened and she sat next to me (I’d gone to the first unoccupied bench on the path we were walking, the need to write about how I hated tiny, yappy dogs overwhelming me). “Don’t you realize how awful that is for the person you’re with?”

“Don’t you realize how awful it is for me? I mean, I know that while I’m writing, I’m totally ignoring you, and I’m sorry about it, but I can’t help it.” There. That had sounded reasonable. Not entirely true, since I wasn’t sorry at all, but reasonable. Maybe I am a jerk.

“That’s hard to believe. What about when we were out two nights ago. We waited three weeks for that reservation, we’re sitting in one of the best restaurants in the city, and right in the middle of placing your order, you pull out that stupid notebook thing of yours and start scribbling! The waiter had no idea what to do, so I finished ordering for you.”

“It’s a diary, sort of. Well, more like a journal.”

“I don’t care what the hell you call it, Jassi! Don’t nitpick to try and distract me!”

Was that was I was doing? I dunno. More like geeking out a little. Words are important, after all. Another thing that was important was my urgent need to write about the way some restaurants trained their wait staff to treat customers not wearing Armani with condescension. Anyhow, I saw there was no point in arguing about it so I shrugged. Someone else might have swept her into his arms and given her a passionate kiss to shut her up. I shrugged.

She turned away and over her shoulder asked me if I was going to join her.

“You look like you’re in one piece to me,” I muttered, but got up, not caring if she’d heard that.

When I caught up with her a few steps later, she grabbed my left hand (I’d made sure to approach her right side, because I was holding my journal with my right). “That’s better. Are you hungry?”

“Why? You already ate. And no. I had a huge breakfast.”

“Okay. Just thought you might want a snack or something.”

At the intersection of one of the side paths up ahead and this one, a food cart of some kind sat glowing in sunlight sprinkling down between thick summer leaves, the metal sides quilted, a dark blue canopy covering whatever was steaming within. I hated food from food carts, but since I’d already written about that a few days ago, I didn’t need to now. And the reason I hated food from food carts was because it always tasted boiled, no matter what it was. Except pretzels, of course. “Not now, but thanks for asking.” That was nice of me – maybe she’d take off a jerk-point or two.

She returned to work not long after, but made me walk with her to the massive granite and glass structure where she got paid to make coffee and type financial reports for an investment company. I wonder how much of her salary had to do with her butt. I mean, it’s a nice one – round, muscular, not too big or too small. Sexist of me? Yup. Am I a guy? Yup. Can I help wanting to stroke that part of her anatomy every time I see it? Nope. So why would her boss (she worked for a guy whose name sounded like it belonged on the marquee of a car dealership) be any different?

After that, I decided to find someplace where almost nothing would irritate me, so I ended up in the research section of the library – you know, the part where you can only read the books, not check them out. I liked that. It meant those books would always be there when you wanted them. Not being able to find a book in the library was another thing I hated. I didn’t need to write while I was here, therefore, just veg out at one of the tables, a book about something irrelevant to my life open in front of me.

I’m back home now, by the way. And because I started thinking about the park right after I finished eating, I needed to write, just as I’ve been doing for the past six months. I write about whatever is immediate, but not much about how I ended up in this state.

So here’s something I’ve never written down, but maybe I should because it’s good, so I’m told, to acknowledge things in your life that need to be addressed and eventually fixed: I’m a sociopath. All those things I hate? Yeah. Like the yappy dogs. If I didn’t write down how much I hated them, every time I passed one of the noisy things, I’d grab the little bitch and snap its neck, then throw the corpse at the owner and walk away feeling much, much better. Or feeling nothing at all, except relief that the barking stopped.

And the wait staff thing? I’d once tried to calculate how deeply into an eye socket a fork would have to be driven to kill the bastard hovering over me with his order pad and patronizing smirk at the restaurant where my parents and I were having dinner. None of us owned Armani, or anything like that because my parents weren’t pretentious jackasses. Rich as shit, but not jackasses. Something the son-of-a-bitch waiter couldn’t have known. But his ignorance was no excuse for his attitude, thus the curiosity about how to murder him.

Here’s the bottom line: I write as a substitute for committing felonies. It’s that simple. An easy substitution – my personal, glitch-correcting algebra. Which means my girlfriend is right. I’m a jerk. At least, though, if I can keep her off my back well and long enough to write stuff when we’re together, we’ll continue to have mind-blowing sex because I probably won’t kill her.

As I said, this is what I do. I write. It keeps me out of therapy…and out of prison.

Or so I’m told.

Publication Date: 06-05-2017

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