Started off as any other day. The kind of day with the alarm buzzing and shoes not returned to the place you could have sworn that either one or both had been the day before. Greg had returned from a trip to Ohio where he had visited to find a home that he would be moving to, in the next few weeks. Ending his trip in Ohio he had flown home to Washington D.C., where a woman he once dated had shown up the day before he had left for Ohio. It was soon to be apparent that she had squatted at his place while he had spent time away.
Joanna was impulsive, irrational, an addictive personality with a narcissistic borderline sociopathic inclination. She also had a part in her that had always needed the attention of a man. Greg could be this man. She had left the front stoop to his porch, littered by her Parliament cigarettes. The cigarette butts lined a path to inside his doorway where her underwear seemed to scream at him. Strewn and stuffed under a futon, rug and laundry basket her sex-life undergarments spread out in disarray and struck him as the clearest of signs.
She was definitely around his apartment and living in a fit of crazy. The girl couldn’t sit still, she vomited words and meals out of her mouth, had constant diarrhea and flailed into clothing form fitting and clingy. If she had anything going for her – it was that she was always going. Her confidence in self and insecurities had made Greg’s life shortly. He had woken up and realized her jealously and constant ranting probably wouldn’t be worth it for him to stick it out and keep on living for her and for her that means being supporting.
Joanna had planned the trip back to D.C. for a detox. However, during this stint she would pillage the bars, embark in a fury of frantic sexcapades, and manage to piss annoyance into the blood-boiling lines of friends.She had been binging on booze, smoking a ton of weed and dipping into amphetamines (since the age of 13). However, now at the age of 25 – it was time for a brief sobriety check.
Having devised the said “mother approved” detox plan, Joanna had driven from the beaches of Wilmington, NC with dog, Lucy in tote, back to Virginia to stay with her mother as a front to a different reality – the reality being, her squeeze back into Greg’s life and more specifically his apartment. At Greg’s neighborhood CVS, she had purchased green-tea supplements for any drink. Hot drinks freaked her out and this way she could gain the benefits and not have to wait for the tea to brew, cool down in the fridge and chill by ice cubes. Included in the purchase of green-tea drink supplements, Joanna bought eye shadow and bronzer. The bronzer purchase earned Joanna a coupon so she immediately returned it and bought it again at a discount.
Greg, a recent graduate of Georgetown Law had landed an early start to his career. He had been offered a position with a law firm in Cincinnati and he had accepted. All of this news he had from time to time shared with Joanna. Not thinking she would be back to see him off, when she phoned him to inform him that she would be arriving Friday, Greg didn’t feel settled. How would he know what she wanted? What should it be that he should expect? Could he expect anything?
He knew he probably couldn’t. In fact, deep down Greg knew he didn’t want her to visit. Who would? She wasn’t reliable. Never made her mind up and had to be sprinting around aggressively raging at people who in her mind created problems and scenarios justified by her actions.
Greg saw her pulling up out in front of his apartment as he zipped up a sock into the zipper of his suitcase. “Dammit,” was all he muttered in a slow whisper. He slid his heel back into his shoe. Dragging his feet he shuffled to the doorway and awaited her approach to the steps of his basement apartment - greened by a tree and landscaped with bushes and small white petal flowers.
Still driving a silver SUV, Joanna popped out of the car in a more or less, jump from one lily pad to the other lily pad type of swagger. Flicking off a car that she considered to drive too fast, she stubbed her toe ever so gracefully on the curb still managing to throw her arms around Greg’s neck. As she weighed down, pinched his arms and in squish-squash thumb pressing skin to match position of pointer finger, Greg’s neck bent down-ward like a sunflower heavy with seeds sulking in a shady corner, dry and not watered, drooping and craving a loving touch.
It was certain when Joanna arrived. She did crave him. Not like when they had been dating and she was always sleeping, on her period, bleeding, stomach cramping, sore ankle, bad knee, not in the mood – you name it – she was never having it. She wanted him to want her. And she was back for just that – the love and the romance of him wanting her back. Maybe to break his heart again but mostly just to feel used or I guess in a more healthy understanding of relationships - needed. Greg would be leaving the next day so when Joanna had showed up the timing couldn’t be described as more perfect – possibly for Greg and definitely for Joanna. This way she would have the apartment all to herself and she could screw her best friend from college, a man with a newly grown pony-tail, dangling crooked penis, and a hefty few extra pounds suffered from his chronic drinking. She would take advantage of Greg’s bed and his absence, get what she needed – sex, and forget if it happened the next day.
