Big Haired Bitches - 4. Fight Club

The punch hit me square in the jaw. It was a good, solid punch with a nicely trained swing. My jaw felt like it was on fire. My own blood was the extinguisher.

The second hit landed just above my eye. Oh great, I thought. A shiner for the road. I blinked uncontrollably, forced back a tear and then instinctively swung, landing my one and only punch right next to his ear.

My stomach was next, followed by my chest, and only after another punch to the head—this time his fist met my throat—did someone pull him off me.

“What the fucking fuck!” I shouted, doubled over and clutching the side of my face. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I finally opened my eye to see Taylor being carried by two sumo wrestlers in all black, one carrying a blinding flashlight.

“You’re messing with the wrong guy, you fucking faggot,” he was shouting at me. His voice sounded like I was underwater. Everything close to me was frozen while things further away seemed to be spinning. I felt like Charlie Sheen on a Tuesday night bender.

“I will fucking bring you down myself, poser wannabe bitch! She hates you; you know that right? That bitch fucking hates you,” he continued to shout. A second later, sumo wrestler #1 hauled him into a closet and the underwater shouting stopped.

My eye continued to throb even after Tori put a bag of bar ice over it. My stomach and jaw didn’t hurt as much, but my right hand felt like it would never move again. Fighting hurt, I thought. A lot.

I looked at Tori, the face of an angel, as she patted my head with the makeshift cold compress and I knew she had planned the whole thing.

       **

“What was that about in the club?” I asked her on the drive home. The alcohol was still coursing through my veins, more so after the adrenaline from the fight took my tequila and vodka bombs straight to my cerebrum.

“Logan, I can’t apologize enough,” Tori said convincingly. If I was a member of The Academy, I would have handed her a vibrating Oscar right then. “If I had known he would have reacted like that, I never would have had you make the call.”

Bullshit. I wanted to scream it until the windows in her precious little Audi flew off. She knew exactly what Taylor was capable of. She’d counted on him kicking the living shit out of me to teach me my lesson for blackmailing her.

As we drove back to her house in the heart of Summit, I decided not to tell her I was wise to her little plan. She’d set me up good and she’d won that one. Clearly I had underestimated several things about Taylor. He did have a personality, and a feisty one to boot. He also had a surprisingly adept right hook and left jab. I was embarrassed at my surprise, but looking at the pretty boy, I never would have expected much fight in him.

And yet, with my head still spinning, I couldn’t come up with a counter plan. All that surfaced and rose out of me as we drove home was…

“Vomit, oh my god,” Whit shrieked from the backseat of the car. I opened the window and stuck my head out a second too late. Small chunks of fruit on fire flew out of my mouth, some hitting the window and the rest cascading down the side of Tori’s car.

The look on her face was priceless. Her Audi had been defaced. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she demanded a new one on Monday, but for the time being, I took mild enjoyment out of vomiting on the passenger’s side of her custom import car.

       **

“You look like hell,” Eric said to me the next morning. It took me a second to remember where I was. I vaguely remembered vomiting and being carried up a flight of stairs. I didn’t remember passing out or even seeing Eric at all. And his face was difficult to forget.

“Thanks, I love waking up to that kind of flattery,” I said. He kissed me on the forehead and my attitude melted. I sat up in his bed and instinctively rubbed my eye. The sharp pain that shot through my entire head reminded me of the fight that was.

“I’m sorry. I should take better care of my boys, then,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, pimp, you’re slacking. You let a John beat me up,” I said with a faint smile. My head stopped spinning and Eric came into focus.

“Are you going to tell me what you remember?”

“Didn’t Tori tell you the story?” I felt the disdain as I said her name. Eric would be a fool not to have heard it.

“She told me what she saw,” he replied.

“Refresh my memory, please,” I said. “But first, water.”

I tried to push myself up and off the bed and my arm went weak under me. It was then that I realized I was completely naked in Eric’s bed. He told me not to worry about it and a second later, he returned with a bottle of Fiji and a bottle of Gatorade with extra electrolytes. I took several pulls and laid back down. Eric took his shirt off and joined me.

“So Tori said she went to the bar to get another round of lemon drops,” he said.

“This was after Katsuya,” I verified.

“It was at Spin,” he said. I didn’t remember Spin. I didn’t remember going in. There was nothing about Spin that rang a bell. “And she comes back and you’re getting yelled at by Taylor. He’s calling you a fucking fruitcake, a switchcoat, and a newbie. He said you were trying to Yoko Ono the original band.”

“Seriously?” I asked, flabbergasted that he took it there. “He called me Yoko Ono. Does he think he’s some kind of Ringo Starr?”

Eric shrugged. “No idea. Anyway, she saw him lunge at you and you almost teetered over. And then you said something about that being the prissiest hit you’ve ever felt. Some words about South Houston were exchanged and the punches flew. The bouncers peeled him off.”

As Eric described the scene, I started to get flashes of memory back. I remembered Taylor calling me a switchcoat and a wannabe. I remember him coming at me; I certainly remembered the fight itself.

And then I remembered what led up to it.

“How do you feel after your first brawl?”

“Eric, I don’t think the fight was a random happening,” I said softly. I nursed a sip of water as he gave me a quizzical look. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think Tori set me up.”

“That’s absurd,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” I replied. “She had me call and cancel on Taylor. She must have known he’s some sort of psycho and that he’d come after me.”

“Tori wouldn’t do that,” Eric defended. It wasn’t like I was stuttering or hesitating. I gave him no indication that I was fabricating the truth, and yet he didn’t believe me for a second.

“Eric, look, okay, I’m not saying I know it for a fact or anything, but it makes sense and you have to admit that.” He glared at me quietly, so I continued. “Does Taylor have a violent streak?”

The beautiful man across the bed from me squinted his eyes and pursed his lips. “I mean, I guess he does.” I gave him an unmistakable look, prompting him to fill in the gap. “When he first moved here, it was from Brooklyn.” Bingo, I thought. Brooklyners are born fighting. “He had done some modeling in New York, got mixed up with drugs and was shipped off back home.”

“So he moved down here and then what? Starts knocking people out?” I asked. I didn’t get why someone so dangerous was part of the inner sanctum.

“Not exactly,” Eric replied. “Look, I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

“Because I’m gonna get real far real fast if I don’t like what I hear.”

“It’s not that, it’s… okay, only a few people know this story and know that this happened.”

I suddenly got really worried. It sounded like Eric was about to go on Taylor’s side for whatever reason. I couldn’t make it out, but something in Eric’s tone made me uneasy.

“When I was outed in the 9th grade by my former best friend, Michael, it was a big deal. I had to do the 9th grade again because I missed so much school,” he said. I had heard this part. “Which put me in Tori’s class and Taylor had just moved down here from New York. A year after that, I was about 16, I guess, some guys in town decided to pick on me for being the Summit Hill Cock Sucker and I lost it. Only I was all by myself, there were three of them and they pretty much had their way with me. Kicked me to a pulp, it was bad. My parents told everyone I had gone to see my dying grandpa when I was really at home for two weeks trying to recover. I don’t know how Taylor knew, but I guess he smelled the other gay at Summit on me, asked my sister what really happened and she caved and told him.”

Just as I thought. I was about to listen to my boyfriend describe how the guy who had beat me up 12 hours prior was his knight in color coordinating armor.

“He tracked the guys down, one by one and got Brooklyn on their asses for me,” Eric said. “He and Tori have been good friends ever since. I’ve always liked the kid, and I’m grateful for what he did.”

I wanted to scream at Eric. It killed me that he couldn’t see what had happened. Of course Tori knew that Taylor was a loose and violent cannon. Of course she knew that he wouldn’t take too kindly being replaced by someone who hadn’t earned their stripes. The Perses were indebted to him, and I was the collection. I was convinced more than ever that Tori had set this up. I was also convinced that Eric would never see it that way.

Even to him, I was the outsider and I likely would always be. We could have been in his bed for the 100th time, and he would have believed his sister over me. I was my own army of skanks, I thought.

I shook my head as I came to this realization, and Eric asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing, it’s just…” I thought carefully about my next sentence. “It’s impossible for me to hate the guy that fixed you even if he is the guy that broke me.”

“Look, I’ll be the first to say that what he did was shitty and I don’t understand it for a second. But he’s not all bad,” Eric said. He shrugged his shoulders. In his attempt to make a neutral statement, he’d succeeded in making a slanted one loud and clear.

It was weird that when I brought up his sister in a negative light, Eric wouldn’t even give me an inch when there I was in his bed, ready to give him seven. I wanted to like Eric, a lot, but it wouldn’t work with me being mortal enemies with his sister and him constantly defending her position.

I listened to him ramble on a little longer, and then I got up, got dressed and asked him to drive me to my car so that I could go home.

       **

I spent too much time the rest of the day thinking about what to do and too little time working on my calculus homework. I had no clue what sin, cosine or tangent were going into the 8th hour of the day, but I finally had a plan.

Eric was a putz. But a very cute putz, and an overall likeable guy at Summit Hill. Dating him gave me clout and wasn’t totally unbearable. I’d get over him jumping on Taylor’s back over this fight sequence eventually, especially after consulting with Taylor.

I looked him up on the online directory, found his address, and contrary to my medication’s warning label, I drove my Rover to his house and knocked on his door.

“Are you fucking lost?” Taylor asked when he saw me. He looked ready to spit.

“Hold on, hold on. I know I’m the last person you want to see,” I said. I don’t know what made me think he wouldn’t try to finish the job the world’s largest men wouldn’t let him finish the night before, but I was confident I could reason with the bull. Given enough time, I could let him see how we’d both been played, and that was my only hope at getting Tori back.

“So I’m baffled as to why you’re here.”

“I just wanna talk to you about yesterday,” I said tentatively. “And apologize for dissing you over the phone.”

Yeah, I just said dissing in one of Home & Garden’s Five-Star neighborhoods. Hit me again, I thought.

“And I just thought I should maybe explain.”

He stepped out of the door and closed it behind him. In a peaceful move, he crossed his arms over his chest as opposed to bracing himself to hit me with them.

“The phone call yesterday was a big misunderstanding. Tori, which I’m sure you’re not going to believe this, but Tori told me to tell you there was only room for three. She said you’d understand; that you always do.”

“I’ve never been bumped,” he said quickly. “She’s bumped a million people for a million reasons, but never me.”

“That’s what she said. ‘He’ll understand, he’s a great guy and he’ll want you to experience downtown for yourself,’” I embellished. “Believe me, I was apprehensive but she insisted I come instead of you.”

“I don’t know why, she fucking hates you,” he said. “The bribe, the attitude. She thinks you’re full of yourself and she wants to bring you down a peg.”

Now if only I were in a buddy cop film, my wire would have caught the whole confession on tape. But I wasn’t, so junior level psychology would have to do.

“I don’t get it either,” I said. “But she’s obviously playing us for some reason. And whatever reason she’s out to get me, she doesn’t mind throwing you under the bus.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my dad is a pretty successful attorney and Tori knows that. She knew he could have you charged with aggravated assault in a second,” I said casually. “Not that I would ever have him do that. God no. He thinks I ran into a door last night. But she doesn’t know that. And with your drug charge at the age of 15, well, if I had gone forward with legal action… you’d be screwed. Really screwed. So she was willing to flush you to get to me.”

I could see the wheels in his head turning slowly. He understood the complexity of it all. Tori’s little plan to rough me up had come at the expense of her friend. I was telling the truth about the charges, and my recon work landed me the drug charge intel. I had him nipping at the bait. It was time for the hook.

“Look, I came here to apologize, and I’ve done that. I didn’t mean to make you question your really good friend at the word of a practical stranger.”

I summoned my best charming glare, waited a second and a half, turned around and walked away.

One step.

Two steps.

“Wait up,” he said, approaching my car. “You really think she would have let me get charged with assault.”

Jackpot.

“There’s nothing she could have done to stop it. She knew being bumped would piss you off enough to attack me. She knew my dad was a lawyer and that you have a rap sheet. All she wanted, though, was to see you rough me up, and she didn’t care what happened after that.”

The look in his eye slayed me. It was like I had just told him that Santa didn’t exist and that the guy that dressed up as him at the mall was sleeping with an elf. It was like the shiny veneer he held in front of Tori was wearing down like enamel on a smoker’s teeth. It was like he was finally seeing things clearly.

“I think you should go,” he said abruptly.

“Look, I don’t want you to worry,” I told him. “My dad isn’t going to file any charges.”

“Color me thrilled,” he said tartly. He gave me a curt glance, shrugged his shoulder and walked back inside. I knew he had tasted my lemonade. I just needed him to let it digest. He’d find me, I thought. He’d find me.

I stayed up super late pressing a cold cloth on my eye and writing my calc answers in barely legible handwriting. My head pulsed something awful and I pondered my predicament in great detail.

I knew the next day at school would be God awful to say the least. Tori would be there, pretending to like me for whatever else she had planned. Maybe she knew some black market organ salesmen she planned on sicking on me next.

Then there was Eric whom I couldn’t look at with respect because of the way he blindly followed his sister even though the evidence was stacked against her. He was the Robert Kardashian to her OJ, and just like OJ, Tori Simpson was about to walk, bloody glove and all.

My meeting with Taylor had gone well, but it ended too abruptly for my liking. I would have liked a verbal agreement. An indication that he knew he’d been played. Instead, he bit the tip of the bait but barely even tasted the rest. I wasn’t sure what I expected out of that, but my waltzing in and trying to change a two or three year loyalty seemed pretty futile.

And so I was left alone, hopelessly. And that’s how I felt when I went to bed that night. Hopelessly alone.

       **

“See you at lunch,” Tori winked at me in the hall as I walked to fourth period, clutching my books in front of me. World Geo was stacked with sophomores, but it was a class I hadn’t taken at South Houston, and it was required for any of the upper level AP socio-sciences. I sat at the very back, avoiding spitballs and saliva off the couple making out to my right. It was a jungle in there, and the barely evolved freshman made it hard to think.

Eric was waiting at my parking spot when I wheeled into school that morning. He complimented my hack concealer job that Lucy had helped me put together with her stage makeup kit. I didn’t look like I had a black eye, just that half my face hadn’t slept in a week.

“Look, I wanted to talk about yesterday,” he said.

“No need,” I replied. “I was out of line. I know your sister means a lot to you, and I shouldn’t have accused her without any proof.”

He looked at me with a cocked face of surprise, like it was the first reasonable thing I’d said in a long time. I wanted to punch him so that we could have black eyes together.

“I talked to her last night, and she assured me that she had no clue Taylor would fly off the handle like that,” he said with a shrug.

“Well that’s that, then,” I said, pulling my back pack over my shoulder and strutting to class. I barely said anything in English, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Instead, I told him I was behind on my Pip notes and I really wanted to find out what the deal was with that Havisham lady.

I avoided running into Taylor like he was a strain of herpes on the wrestling team. I knew that I usually saw him between second and third period, so I booked it to my locker and then straight to the boy’s room. I waited it out in there for long enough and sucked up the tardy to calc. It was like I was the top student. I’m sure the “Professor” already had me on his delinquent watch.

And then Tori’s bomb dropped.

If I was still invited to lunch, where did that leave Taylor? Was it a condition of her heart-to-heart with big brother the night before? Was it her proof that things were good between us?

Of course I didn’t try to have Logan beaten to death by my best friend. He’s still coming to lunch with me on Monday?

Most of me didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t think of a subtle excuse not to. My internal reason was solid, the lady was Delilah incarnate. My public reason just made me look like a paranoid psycho who was determined to bite the hand that had just fed me a six hundred dollar designer steak.

I walked to center quad with heavy Steve Maddens. Each step was heavier than the one before. I could feel my own inner dignity waning as I gave it up to cavort with the cool kids for another day. I needed a plan, and I needed one fast. I didn’t think I had very many of these lunches in me, knowing what I knew.

And then I saw Taylor. He zoomed past me and plopped down on the grass next to the bench. That left the bench seat open for…

“Logan,” Tori said. “You look a million times better than you did yesterday.” Her smile was wide and beautiful. Her eyes, as per usual, concealed all levels of evil behind the tint of her Armani shades.

“And he stopped puking,” Whit said almost under her breath, but loud enough for all of us to hear. I wondered if she thought her inner monologue was in fact inner.

I had no idea how to respond. I just looked around, my mouth slightly open.

“I um….”

“Have a seat,” Taylor said to me quietly. “I was just telling Tori how you came over last night and extended an olive branch. Not a fan of martinis, but I appreciated the gesture.”

“I knew this whole thing was just a big misunderstanding, and I’m glad the two of you cleared the air,” Tori said, her voice more affected than usual. I looked around for Eric and noticed that most of the lacrosse boys were missing from the quadrangle. They must have had a team meeting or something. There was no way out.

“Yep,” I replied, trying to eliminate all traces of sarcasm. “Me and Taylor here buried the old hatchet.”

Because I told him you’re a shady ass cunt, I thought. And he may be your butt buddy, but he’s not a total moron. He knows when he’s being played like a fiddle in a four man honky tonk band, sister.

I mumbled through lunch, nodding along as they debated which movie made Bradley Cooper’s butt look the best. They settled on Hangover II, but I had my money on Wedding Crashers. There was something about his post-Zellweger butt that didn’t sit well with me.

As I walked slowly to my sixth period class, I wondered if my situation could get any worse. I was indoctrinated into this world of shallow teen bitchery against my will. I had decided to play along, not really understanding what the stakes were, and now I was swimming. I had to continue playing along or else I’d be at the bottom of the barrel, and for some reason, that idea seemed worse than where I was now. How hard was it to smile along at vapid conversations? How difficult was shopping and laying out and drinking copious amounts of liquor at exclusive clubs? If my worst problem was having bitches for friends, I didn’t have too many problems.

But that wasn’t the only problem. The problem was by choosing to play their game, I was letting them win. I wasn’t ready to feel this low and insignificant for the next two years. The bottom rung, where I could at least be myself with an ounce of integrity, was starting to look mighty fine in comparison.

       **

I felt his hand on my shoulder as I walked to my last class of the day. I’d convinced myself that I was going to throw in the towel. If getting beat down was the price to pay, I didn’t have enough currency. I’d made my decision, and I just needed to come up with an exit strategy.

“I know how you can get back at Tori,” he whispered in my ear. I opened my mouth to respond, but he kept going. “Your boyfriend will never turn his back on her, and I can have no part in this. There’s a girl that knows her well. Go to this address, tell Jill I sent you and she’ll give you what you need. I’ve been saving this for the day I needed one on her, and now it’s yours. Don’t screw this up.”

A second later, Taylor disappeared like Jason Bourne out of a third world country.

       **

The building was gray and square. One wall, the one facing the road, was painted white years ago, and had since rusted along the bottom from the rain. I had no clue what to expect, but knowing Taylor, I could have been walking straight into the Argentinian mafia’s lair, ready for slaughter.

I didn’t know why I trusted him, but I did. He trusted me. Apparently he was aware he’d need one over on Tori at some point, and he trusted me with his only weapon. To me, that meant he saw me as a legitimate threat.

It was pretty obvious he wouldn’t take a public stand against her, but just aiding me like this was pretty huge. He’d drawn a line in the sand and his heart had crossed it even if his modelesque legs hadn’t quite yet. I had an ally. I could do this.

I walked into the building, pulled my shades off and took a look around. The place resembled a clinic of some sort, but definitely not your free clinics of South Houston, and certainly not your marble lined spa-hospitals of Northwest Houston. According to my GPS, I was somewhere in the middle. No man’s land.

“Hi; welcome to Central Day Women’s Center,” a svelte woman in her fifties said from behind a glass case. “How can I help you?”

“I um, I’m looking for Jill… Taylor… something sent me,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. In truth, I had no clue what to expect.

The front desk clerk told me to follow her and she led me straight passed the waiting women and right into an office in the back.

Jill swiveled around in her leather straight back chair. She was a gorgeous older woman, wearing all black and reading glasses with a sterling chain on them. She smiled at me warmly as I had a seat, noticing the pictures of another attractive but plump woman on her wall. My immediate reaction was that this one in front of me had won the genetic arm wrestle against her sister, taking metabolism as her prize.

“How can I help you today?”

“Taylor sent me,” I said. It was the only piece of information I knew. Jill’s eyes narrowed considerably, she took her glasses off and she glared at me.

“Taylor?” she asked. I nodded and smiled hoping that would do the trick. Did the two of them have some sort of secret word I didn’t know about? Was I supposed to bring proof that I was on his mission? Who the fuck was Jill?

“I haven’t seen Taylor in quite some time,” she said, putting a pen to her lips.

“He sends his greetings,” I said with another wide smile.

“Hardly,” she replied. “For him to reach out to me in this manner means things are truly taking a turn.” She reached into her left hand desk drawer and pulled out a legal envelope, bound by string at the top. What could possibly be in there that it turned this lady’s face completely white.

“Take this,” she said, handing me what felt like Pandora’s box. “And tell Taylor our agreement is complete and his welcome at this clinic is over.”

Several things raced through my mind. I didn’t even know where to begin. How did Taylor have influence over this place? Better yet, what was this place? A woman’s center? Of what kind? And how many HIPAA violations were contained in this 8x10 envelope I felt dirty even holding?

I made it to the car, the possibilities racing through my head like Seabiscuit on a bad day. I had no clue what to think, and how this information would be detrimental to Tori. And then I had the thought. Abortion. That had to be it. That’s how I could get her back. That slut had had a secret abortion. It made sense.

Until I opened the envelope. Inside weren’t abortion documents, not that I’d have any clue what those looked like.

Somehow, Taylor had tracked down Tori’s biggest secret, and it was big. Very, very big.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a glossy picture of an obese girl. We’re talking large. Extra large pizza large. With extra sauce. And cheese. Astrodome large. Everything is bigger in Texas, Ford F150, Rosanne Barr circa 1994 large.

The girl had a pretty smile and blue glistening eyes. Had it not been for one telltale accessory, I never would have known who it was.

The hair.

The girl grinning back at me through layers of adolescent obesity was none other than the big haired bitch herself.