Free Gray by Pete Wentz, James Montgomery

loved so much has done something so cruel. Then, having found no answer, she starts to weep, and deep, seismic shudders seize Her body. She begins retching, making sickly, guttural noises that are broken up by panicked gasps for breath. She keeps muttering, Why?— but I don’t answer Her because I don’t know how to. I’ve broken us now. I know it. I am the feeling in Dorothy’s house right before the tornado picked it up and dropped it on the witch. I am the buzzing and humming. The dog barking. The lady screaming.
    I get up out of bed, pull on my clothes, and grab thesheet off Her body, scattering the pieces of her phone everywhere. She looks up at me, almost in wonderment, Her eyes positively drunk on sorrow, and I laugh at Her vacant gaze. All we had left was fucking and fighting. And I didn’t care enough about the former to keep doing the latter. So I did this instead. She wraps Her arms around Her naked body as I lean down, grab Her face with my hands, and whisper:
    “Why? Why don’t you call your boyfriend and ask why?”
    I walk out of Her bedroom for the last time. I look back and see Her balled up on the floor, pulling the sheet over Her body. She looks like a victim. As I shut the door, she begins to wail, “Drop dead! Drop dead! Drop dead, you motherfucker,” and for the first time in ages, I think we’re pretty much on the same page. I don’t slow down until I’m out of Her apartment and down on the street below. Businessmen and bike messengers pass me on the sidewalk, unaware of what just transpired above their heads. Cars idle at a nearby traffic light. I look up at Her window and realize that I’ve never done something so cruel in all of my life.
     
    •   •   •
     
    A few weeks later, the guys and I go to a house party on Kedzie. The second I walk in the door, I’m greeted by a hundred angry stares . . . obviously, word of my fireworks display has gotten out. I’m not welcome here, but I enter anyway. I haven’t even shed my coat when I hear Her voice coming from the living room. She’s drunk andshouting about something intellectual—“Aleister Crowley fucking hated women, ” I think it was. I walk into the room and stand by the doorway, watch as she throws Her hands wildly in the air, spilling wine everywhere as she shouts about Crowley’s “avowed anti-Semitism.” She’s seated on the arm of a sofa, Her feet resting in the lap of some barroom philosopher, who’s stroking Her back and laughing at Her brilliance. It only hurts a little when I see Her like this, but mostly I just feel sorry for Her. She’s drunk and embarrassing Herself. She looks ridiculous.
    She doesn’t even notice me standing by the door, but the philosopher does, looking up from his bottled import, his eyes locking on mine. His buddies on the sofa see me too, and they puff their chests accordingly, a gang of wannabe rockabilly Dharma Bums with black-rimmed glasses and neck tattoos and cuffed jeans. I just smile and wink at them all. They look fucking ridiculous too.
    A few minutes later, I’m down on Kedzie, bumming a cigarette from a girl (I smoke now too, by the way), when I get a forearm shoved into my back. My heart starts thumping and my face hurts before I can even turn around. I know what’s coming next. In Chicago, if you hit somebody in the winter, you really mean it. I whirl around, cigarette dangling out of my mouth, and I’m greeted by my friend the philosopher. He says hello with his fists.
    The first punch to my stomach turns my guts inside out. I fall onto the curb and hear my keys clink down the street. I spit up blood, steaming in the winter air, then, in a move of pure showmanship, I lick it off my hand andslap the philosopher in the face, then walk off to find my keys. He spins me around before he hits me again, I laugh ’cause my spit and blood on his face look like war paint. His rockabilly pals are down on the street now, inching closer to the fray but not willing to actually