Free I Love My Side of the Story by Sabrina Lacey Page B

and slide my hand into his.
    “Amber.”

 
 

JOSH

My Side, Dammit.

 
 
    The first time I saw Amber… she was at a
bar in SoHo with her girlfriends. The three of them looked like Fort Knox,
where the money was – only you couldn’t get at it. That’s what it’s like
when you’re a guy and you see women locked in a conversation you probably
wouldn’t be interested in… and there’s no way they’d let you in it, anyway.
Which of course changes your mind completely. Now you want to be involved. Heavily. The hunter in us, the Lion, wonders
how we can get up the tree to get the Monkey.
    No. Bad analogy. Women are not monkeys.
They’re more like Gazelles (Although some of them are like Monkeys; the spazzy
kind. We’ve all seen ‘em). Most though, are Gazelles… or will be Gazelles when
they grow up.
    So we the Lions wonder how we can get
the Gazelle away from the group while still remaining the Lion and not
deteriorating into a laughingstock Hyena. No man wants to look like a Hyena.
Some men naturally are Hyenas, just
like some girls are Monkeys, but when
a Lion gets turned into a Hyena
because the pack of Gazelles is too much for him, it ain’t pretty. You think,
oh man, stop. Back away. Regroup. Leave your balls with them. Game over.
    See this is my theory: we men are wild
animals, tamed to varying degrees. The secret? How much we get tamed is up to
us. Completely up to us. It’s more complicated than that, though. We’re not all
Lions or Hyenas. There are other types, too, of course. Some examples are these:
    ·       The hipsters are Meerkats; cute, skinny, harmless.
    ·       The thicker football players or men who could be football
players, judged on size alone – are Gorillas; powerful, primitive, calm
when you feed them.
    ·       Then there’s the bad boy types, they are Panthers; sleek,
aloof, sneaky, sexy.
    ·       Business, corporate-type men range from Water Buffalo to
Sharks (not a mammal, but you know who I’m talking about).
    ·       Pukes you shouldn’t meet alone in a dark alley are Hyenas;
cowardly but dangerous, ugly on the inside.
    ·       Men who can provide for their women are Lions; courageous,
protective, leaders.
    There’s a whole jungle and of course, I’m only scratching the
surface.
    I’m a Lion. And seeing Amber for the
first time, I felt very much that I wanted her in my Den, to turn her from a Gazelle
into my Lioness. She had to be by my side. For good. And I knew it the moment I
saw her.
    I was on the bar patio with a couple of
friends, Gary and Matt, from my acting class at Stella Adler. We were
attempting to drink away the reaming we’d gotten in class that night for shitty
scene work. I was really down on myself about it, having just heard that one of
our old classmates, Jake Lombardi, won an award at Sundance for an independent
film he’d starred in. Since acting is my purpose in life – I will be a
working actor one day and soon, I promise this – I couldn’t help but feel
jealous of Jake. He’s such an ass. A Panther of the worst variety.
    Matt, a conspiracy-theory-believing
pessimist, said after our second round, “Makes a guy want to quit.” Hearing him
of all people say that… well, it cleared my head. I’d been thinking the same
thing, but because he’d said it
– the guy who always sees the worst – I could hear how dumb it
sounded. Two negatives make a positive.
    I shook my head. “No, see that’s the thing!
There can be no quitting!”
    Gary frowned. He’s the quiet type who
when he speaks, it means something.
    Matt’s face scrunched up. “Why?”
    “Look man, we have to be like athletes.
They practice every day for hours and hours and hours – to be the best of
the best. And when they lose a game, they get back up and work harder to win
the next one. They don’t quit. If you want something, you have to give it your
all.”
    Gary nodded. “Josh is right.”
    Matt, surprised by the rare sound