The Good Guy

He was already in a bad mood when she got home from work. She walked in and found him brooding on the couch, laptop open on the coffee table. All the lights were off. Not a good sign.

She flipped the kitchen light on. They greeted each other.

“I tried writing today,” he said. “I didn’t get anything done. This chick put out a status on Twitter talking about how she was insecure because she didn’t get enough followers. She had over ten thousand. I retweeted it and literally nothing happened. I’m fucking invisible and it’s killing me.”

She took her coat off and tried changing the subject.

“How was work?”

“Fine. How was the bar?”

“Fine. The Mexicans were talking about me when I came in. Ramon was all, ‘You didn’t say hi to me yesterday,’ and I was like, ‘Yes, I did,’ and he was like, ‘No, you didn’t,’ and Silvano and Antonio are all chuckling and I was like, ‘Yes, I did, cabron!’ and they thought that was hilarious.”

He grunted, hunched over like a monk at an altar.

She sat down on the couch next to him. He had a document open. It was blank. Also not a good sign.

“I have a shit-ton in my draft folder right now but it’s all coming out constipated,” said Roy. “I’m fucking losing it.”

She knew better than to argue with him.

“Maybe take a break.”

“Yeah.”

“You want something to eat?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

She made herself a salad and sat in the chair. She turned on The Office, which they both liked. She really wanted to watch Miss Maisel but she knew he didn’t care for Miss Maisel so she compromised.

“I will never trust a writer the New Yorker does a cover piece on,” Roy said after another few minutes.

Oh, no.

He was looking up potential rivals. He got unbearable when he was looking up potential rivals. It was like he was torturing himself.

“Their latest feature is on Sally Rooney,” he said, as if she’d asked. “This twenty-seven year old Irish girl the literati is calling the first great Millennial novelist. I’d never heard of her prior to this article.”

“I’ve never heard of her, either,” she said, quickly selecting an Office episode he liked and hitting play.

“The article really, really pissed me off,” he said. “Women get everything handed to them. The industry is like eighty percent female. Where’s the fucking feminism on that? Does that sound balanced?”

“This is such a great episode,” she said, stuffing lettuce and carrot slices in her mouth, eyes lasered in on their flatscreen.

“Listen to this pretentious, high-minded shit,” he said, reading from the New Yorker piece. “‘There is a part of me that will never be happy knowing that I am just writing entertainment, making decorative aesthetic objects at a time of historical crisis’. Jesus Christ Almighty, get over yourself.”

She didn’t say anything, turned up the volume. The pleasant piano chords and accordion of The Office theme filled the room.

“She says that like she doesn’t expect anyone to understand what she’s saying,” he yelled over the music.

“Mmm.”

She stuffed more greens and hard boiled egg pieces in her mouth, focusing in on the TV as though she was trying to get hypnotized.

He would get bored with this soon. He always did.

He was a good guy. Really. Every person had their shit side and this was his. He was insanely jealous of anyone more successful than him at his chosen passion — writing. It burned his balls to see anyone getting their break, especially someone younger than him.

“People like her are why people like me have to live with decisions made by people like Trump,” he continued, still hunched over with an unhappy scowl on his face. “She needs us men and yet she’s probably never even thought about where her shit goes when she flushes a toilet. I’ll tell you where it goes. It goes to a sewage plant where the men she looks down on make sure she never has to walk through it on the street. You’re welcome.”

“I doubt this author looks down on men,” she said quietly, knowing the Office intro was drowning her out.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She picked at a stubborn piece of lettuce with her fork. It was slathered in vineggrete, succulent, but the fork wouldn’t pick it up, the prongs not sticking through, the leaf was too thin. She jabbed at it.

He kept talking, quite upset.

“She gives off that air of a person who would look at a guy like me and be repulsed and yet still consider me an oppressor. She doesn’t even know what it’s like to not have health care.”

K, that was it.

She gave up on the lettuce, hit pause just as the intro song ended and gave him a ‘Fucking really? Really?’ look. She’d tried being patient, tried ignoring him. It was time to engage.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, seeing her expression. “I’m bitter, I’m jealous, so fucking what.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m trying to watch The Office. It’s the Willy Wonka episode. You love this episode.”

“These people are fucking phony and no one cares,” he whined, face illuminated with silver-blue laptop light. “They just turn it around — you’re jealous, you’re bitter, oh shut up, no one cares what you think anyway. Maybe I am. I’m still right.”

“You’re being totally unreasonable. I just got home from work, too. Can we please just watch The Office?”

More silence as he read some more.

“She got her Master’s degree in literature,” he snorted.

“Oh, my fucking God.”

“She was groomed for this, debating people in fucking Serbia. And she’ll be the one the history books will remember, while millions of more qualified souls die with dirt beneath their fingernails.”

She put her empty salad bowl down. It clattered on the end table and the fork toppled out of the bowl and to the floor.

“Great art doesn’t look down at you and smirk because it knows something you don’t,” he declared loudly. “Great art gets down on your level and plays the game with you, shows you it cares about your lot in life.”

“K, I’m watching Miss Maisel now,” she announced, exiting Netflix in record time and opening Amazon Prime.

“And gender doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he said, not hearing her. “I can name several women in my little corner of Medium alone who produce work that’s vastly superior and more weighted than anything this self-absorbed mick twat has written.”

“How do you even know that?” she shrieked. “You’ve never read her! You literally just found out she existed like ten minutes ago!”

Miss Maisel’s menu screen came up. She waited to hit play, but she wanted him finished ranting before she started watching it. If he interrupted Miss Maisel she’d really lose it.

“There’s just something really annoying about people who talk like this,” he mumbled. She could see the little flick of his finger on the track pad out the corner of her eye, him scrolling. “There’s an ‘On the Basis of Sex’ advertisement next to the article.”

He snorted.

“They know their audience.”

“I want to see that movie,” she said. “You’re taking me to see that and you’re going to learn something.”

“That movie looks terrible. It’s for women who think they’re oppressed and who absolutely despise men who have the exact same fucking disposition — victimhood.”

“What does that even mean? I’m not a victim. I want to see it because it looks interesting.”

“They are blind. I hate them.”

“You’re being a complete baby right now.”

“They hate me, too, but will never admit it. Fuck them for that.”

“Can I watch Miss Maisel? I want you done ranting before I hit play.”

“Her face is going to sag off her skull as she gets older,” he mumbled. “You can already see it happening…”

He must’ve been looking at a picture of the young Irish author right then. She wondered if the author was pretty.

He was at his happiest when he’d just finished something. A new story or poem or piece of the novel he’d been working on. She loved that about him.

He was a good guy. A good boyfriend. They’d been together nearly six years. Six good, relatively drama-free years.

He paid most of the bills working a job he didn’t like and didn’t complain about too much. He had attainable goals and pursued them in attainable ways. He worked out three times a week and kept his body in reasonable shape. He cooked every now and then. He did the chores when she asked, and sometimes when she didn’t.

He’d always ask about her — how she was doing, was she all right, did she want a shoulder or foot massage? He insisted on taking her out; even when she was being a brat and told him she didn’t want to, he was smart enough to see through her bitchiness to what she really wanted. He was a decent mind-reader, able to detect when she wanted attention and when she wanted space. He didn’t ogle other women. He put up with her own temper tantrums and PMSing and daddy issues. He kept his spaces of the apartment clean. He bought her thoughtful gifts at her birthdays and Christmas instead of just tossing gift cards her way. He fucked her good and regular, always making sure she finished before he did. He had no qualms about sucking her clit and yet didn’t always expect blowjobs in return. He shaved. He could pick her up against her will and carry her into the bedroom and toss her on the bed, which was so arousing it made her dizzy.

In her opinion, all this was more than worth putting up with his jealous rants.

He had these irritating little pockets of mood where he needed to vent on his misfortune of being ignored by the publishing industry. He was never super loud, never violent, never unhinged — just bitchy ranting, not even directed at her, just directed at his laptop screen. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like if he ever got published and successful. What would he complain about then?

He was prolific. He wrote every day. Writing was his goal. He wasn’t lofty or shiftless about it. He knew about small victories and making little progress every day. He did his homework. He read. He knew about querying agents and submitting to publications and maintaining a social media presence. Every week night, unless they had something planned, they’d sit in front of the TV and he’d work on a story or the novel while she watched Netflix or knitted a scarf or read or something else. He let her read his finished stuff and a good bit of it was fairly impressive, though nothing she would spend money on — not that she’d tell him that.

“Is any of this bothering you? I know I’m being a dick but I’m fucking losing it right now.”

“No, I think you have a point,” she said quietly.

She’d already decided she was going to look up this Sally author. She wanted to see if the girl was pretty, and to read some of her prose, which was probably good which was why he was so irritated.

He looked at her hard, knowing she was bullshitting him.

“Ok, yeah, I think you’re being a baby,” she said sharply. “But I can see why you’d be upset. You work really hard and get nothing and it seems like she just lucked out and now a really prestigious magazine is all about her.”

“Her and that airheaded Ocasio-Cortez cunt. Fucking sheer luck and everyone loves them. God, I fucking hate that.”

“You don't need to call them that. Don’t use that word. It hurts my feelings.”

He moped.

“Sorry,” he grumbled. “I’m just frustrated.”

She could tell the steam was out of him. She heard him click the track pad — exiting the window with the offending interview. She breathed a sigh of relief to herself.

He closed the laptop, looked up at the TV.

“Did Midge start dating Dr. Ettenberg yet?”

“No, but it’s obvious she will.”

“I guess I’ll watch it. It’s not great but if you like it that’s good enough.”

She got up from the chair, sat down next to him, scooched against him. Their fingers entwined.

“Sorry I’m such a baby,” he murmured.

“You’re not a baby,” she said, leaning her head against her shoulder. “You’re just a big, dumb man.”

He kissed her on the forehead.

Sometimes you have to let people get their ugly out, she thought as she hit play.