Turkish Delight (standard:Flash, 567 words)
Author: Mirrorshades	Added: Mar 03 2008	Views/Reads: 3011/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
a night of thinking

Turkish Delight 

The name of the place escapes me now, more than six months later, but it
was a stylishly dark restaurant in downtown D.C. where I found myself 
sitting with a longtime friend recently returned from his second tour 
of military service in Iraq. The place was a small, warm break in an 
otherwise chaotic street, a Turkish den filled with exotic gold foils 
stamped with reds and greens. A giant antique hookah filled the room 
with the smells of spiced tobamel tobacco as we sat in silence, 
studying the menus and enjoying the quiet company of the other. It had 
been nearly three years since we'd seen each other face to face. 

“You were right by the way,” I said casually, closing my menu and waving
to a distant waiter who showed no indication of concern. 

“About what?” 

“The fucking. That first year was great, but over the last three we've
fucked probably like a dozen times or less. We hardly kiss anymore.” 

He laughed caustically, then sympathetically. It was one of the many
complex reasons for which he'd recently been divorced. He'd cautioned 
me against it before, years ago, and I'd given him the same 
transformational laugh he'd just given me, though now I could see and 
even admit he had been right. Of course, in his case it wasn't merely 
the lack of fucking that had broken him down, it was just the plain and 
simple fact that he had been left out of all the fucking that his 
ex-wife was enjoying on a nightly basis. 

I waved at the waiter again, but the cocksucker found another table to
fuss over instead. 

“Well, do you love her?” He asked. 

“Of course I love her. It's just,” I had to struggle to find the right
words, “we're more like good friends now than anything else. You don't 
go around fucking your best friend unless you mean to make more out of 
it, and it feels like we're working in reverse. I don't even think I 
want to fuck her anymore. We're roommates, we help each other pay the 
bills and not look like losers eating alone in restaurants. It seems 
like that's all we've got left.” 

We switched the conversation to politics for a few minutes, and then
talked college sports for a while. 

“What would she say if she caught you cheating on her?” 

“I don't know. That's the truth.” I looked for the waiter again, but he
was nowhere to be found. 

“ Well, we're in D.C. and there are tons of women at this conference.
Get some action and don't worry about it.” My friend, the jaded 
therapist. 

“Yeah, you're probably right.” I looked through a large window in the
front of the place, beyond which were a crowded sidewalk running 
alongside a crowded street. Hundreds of faces beyond that glass, all of 
them strangers, covered in neon light and pulsating energy. Just a few 
years ago, the two men currently sitting at our table would have been 
strangers. 

“Come on, let's go out,” I said, getting up from the table. 

“Not hungry?” He asked. 

“Nah.” 

A waiter suddenly appeared at our side and demanded that we sit and
order. I told him that he'd just lost two customers because of his 
shitty service and that he could go fuck himself. The night was young, 
and we were done taking people's bullshit. 


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