Free Love and Chaos by Gemma Burgess

clean shave, but a dude nonetheless. “I was wondering if you’ve seen the headcheese? One of my Twitter followers said it was going to be here, but we can’t find it.”
    “Headcheese?” I repeat. “That sounds…”
    “Fucking disgusting,” finishes Julia. “What is it?”
    “It’s kind of like meatloaf made from the parts of a pig no one else wants to eat. The face, the feet. Sometimes the heart.”
    We all gaze at him in total horror.
    “I think I might be sick,” I whisper to Julia.
    “I hope I will be,” she whispers back. “That shrimp is really repeating on me.”
    Coco is fascinated. “Wow! Are you a chef?”
    “No, I run a food blog called the Hungry Geeksters! You gotta meet my cobloggers, hang on—”
    We all turn around as two guys—one tall and flabby, one short and squat—come over. They’re not bad-looking, and they seem friendly. For a second, it looks like Meet a Dude Day might actually work out.
    Then they start to talk.
    Normally, I kind of like geeks. I hung out with them a lot at boarding school. They’re easy to make blush, they’re smart, they let you sit with them at breakfast. But these geeks are a different breed. Big-city geeks. Boring know-it-alls with superiority complexes who aren’t making eye contact and just talking to one another around us, if that makes sense. Maybe they have a touch of Asperger’s—hey, it’s not unlikely, let’s be honest—or maybe they just never hung out with people with real live breasts before. Whatever. It’s boring me.
    “… and remember that time you ate jellied eel, Gary?”
    “That was great! It tasted like river trout cooked in Vaseline.”
    “You’re such a gourmand! That was still our most successful post ever.”
    After a minute or two Coco is the only one still smiling at them hopefully. Madeleine surreptitiously started texting someone. Pia muttered something about making notes and wandered away. Julia is giving me “get me the fuck out of here” eyes. (You know the look: a stare, into a sort of eye-widening glare, back into a stare.)
    Time to take charge. I clap my hands together, hoping it makes me look authoritative. “Well, boys, it’s been great, but it’s time for us to get home before we turn into pumpkins.”
    “It’s two-thirty in the afternoon,” says the chubby geek.
    “And I believe that it was Cinderella’s coach that turned into a pumpkin, not Cinderella herself,” says the spectacled geek.
    “Right on.” I put a cigarette between my lips and walk away. The other girls follow me. “Why do I always have to play the bitch?” I mutter.
    “Well, it just seems to come naturally to you,” says Julia, and we both start laughing again.
    I think Coco and Madeleine have that slightly dejected feeling you get when you were hoping something would be the highlight of your weekend and it turns out to be totally not. But as we walk home through the frosty afternoon, Jules and I are actually having a good time.
    “You have such a cool walk, you know that? You sort of swagger like a cowboy,” says Julia.
    I arch an eyebrow. “Like I have a dick?”
    She cracks up. “No! You just … look like you own the world.”
    “Ha.” Yet another thing about my outside that doesn’t match my inside. “I’m sorry Meet a Dude Day didn’t work out, Jules.”
    She shrugs. “I haven’t met any guys in forever. You know what we need? Some platonic male friends who can introduce us to a continuous flow of new single men,” says Julia thoughtfully. “Only dudes know dudes.”
    “Like a dude dealer?” I say.
    “Yes! Exactly like a dude dealer. Or a pimp.”
    I flinch. Fuck. Stef is a pimp, I guess. A casual rich-kid high-end pimp with a “he needs a girl, you need money” mentality, and hopefully without a switchblade and a sideline dealing meth, but essentially a pimp nonetheless. All day, I’ve been trying not to think about how I was on the boat this time yesterday, or what was happening to