Chapter 1: Archetypes

I FELL ON MY ASS when the weed finally came loose from the rock-hard ground I call a garden. Dirt scattered everywhere, including on me. I don’t know why I can’t grow anything safe for human consumption, or even pleasing to the eye.

Rita drove in next door as I stood swearing at weeds, rose thorns, and the dirt in my eye. I waved as she got out of her car. I’d known Rita since she was little. Now in her mid-twenties, she was the very picture of loveliness, even dressed in a track suit boasting the name of a color across her ass.

She was a beautiful girl who had often been at my house during the summer months years ago—along with her little sister and all the rest of the neighborhood kids. They seemed to migrate from house to house, eating indiscriminately from everyone’s pantry. She’d never been more to me than the neighbor kid until my sudden awakening her senior year in high school. She was a cheerleader and one day the squad went door-to-door selling candy bars to raise money for new pompoms or some such. She showed up at my front door in a pair of hot pants that showed her butt ledge and a tube top about as wide as an elastic bandage with her headlights on high beam.

“Want to support our cheer squad by buying some candy?” she asked. I hadn’t realized what a sexy and provocative young woman she’d become. I nearly told her I’d like two handfuls, but I settled for buying a candy bar and then went inside for a waking wet dream. What a fresh bit of candy was living next door.

In spite of that little episode, I managed to rein in my libido and maintained a pleasant and platonic relationship with my neighbors. Rita left for college, graduated, and got a good job as a research assistant in a science lab of some sort. She’d moved back home with her grandmother this summer to plan her fall wedding.

I called cheerfully to her as she got out of the car and she smiled and waved back.

“How’s the job going?” I asked.

“Fine,” she answered.

“And the wedding plans?”

I was not prepared for the sudden outburst and rush at me.

“It’s been postponed ... indefinitely,” she said as she burst into tears.

She fell on my shoulder crying, tears soaking through my gardening shirt. She had a softness about her I couldn’t help but notice as she pressed into me—a girl in sweats and, if I had to guess, nothing else. I gently led her into the house, grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes as she sank into the living room sofa.

“Let’s get you a cup of tea and you can tell old Doc all about it,” I said. I went to the kitchen to set water on the stove to boil.

“It’s awful, Doc,” she whimpered behind me. “It’s like I don’t even know him. He’s being so mean.”

I’m not really a doctor, by the way—or old. Dimitri Rafael Petrovich according to my birth certificate, but I changed the last name to Peters as soon as I turned 16. I went by my initials, D.R., and kids had been calling me Doc since grade school. Like the famous Dr. Science, I’m not a real doctor. I have a master’s degree ... in art. That’s why I make a living selling real estate.

I set the freshly brewed tea on the breakfast bar where she’d moved as soon as I went into the kitchen. Apparently, she didn’t want to be alone, even in the next room. She took a sip of the tea and I waited without prompting her. Her lower lip quivered and she spoke to the teacup and not to me.

“He said I couldn’t suck water from a firehose,” she whimpered. “He said I just don’t turn him on.”

No matter what my fantasies, I certainly never expected to be privy to this kind of information. Instead of speaking, I just reached over and patted her hand. This wasn’t a subject that would benefit from me prying into what she didn’t want to say. It turned out, she wanted to say a lot.

“I don’t know what he’s complaining about. He can’t say I don’t turn him on. He’s hard every time he walks into the room. He shoves it in my mouth and then wants to fuck. He finishes and goes to sleep, or jerks off until he’s ready to fuck again. How can he say things like that? Aren’t I pretty enough?”

She was steaming. Now it was time to reach in with the reassurance.

“Rita,” I said gently. “You are beautiful and sexy. The guy must be an idiot.”

“But why would he say I don’t turn him on? I do anything he wants me to.”

“Hmm. Well, let’s get some things straight,” I said. “It’s not your problem. It’s his. I hate to say it, but he’s a typical mid-twenties asshole. He’s got an income, a beautiful girlfriend, and he can’t figure out why he’s not happy. All he thinks with is his dick.” I’d only met the guy once at a backyard barbecue and had an instant dislike for him. Rita was better off without him.

“He’s not always like that,” she said becoming defensive.

“Of course not,” I said, backing off from my disgust. “No one is ever all one thing or another. But there is a development cycle for young men that gets in the way of knowing what they are looking for. Their lower animal functions rule over all the higher level reasoning.”

“What do you mean?”

I opened the refrigerator and took out two grapefruits. I set them on the counter.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“I see two grapefruits,” Rita responded.

“Exactly. Now if we brought Alex in here, what do you think he would see?”

“He’d have to see two grapefruits, wouldn’t he?”

“He would,” I answered. “He’d see two grapefruits and he’d get a hard-on.” She laughed. It was good to see a break in the teary demeanor.