Read I'm Sorry You Feel That Way for Free Online

later we went to a Legends of Rock concert outside Cleveland where Vincent Petrone got snookered. He took off his Twenty Ways to Say I Love You T-shirt and waved it like a flag over his head. He snorted some cocaine, he smoked some dope, he swilled some bourbon. He swayed as Blue Öyster Cult played “Burnin’ for You,” and he pumped his fist and shouted yeah yeah yeah as Molly Hatchet played “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” He introduced me to a girl named Sheila and said we were going to have a threesome in the car, he introduced me to a girl named Janice and said we were going to have a foursome in the parking lot, he introduced me to a leather-clad biker chick named Willa and said he and she had fucked behind the port-a-potties. Oh, Vincent! I said each time. Oh, Vincent!
    On the way home, he wove all over the highway, onto the shoulder, then across the white lines, and I don’t suppose his ability to concentrate on keeping the car on the road was helped by my shrieking. Vincent! Oh, Vincent! I had it in my head that I could do a better job keeping us on the road, a better job keeping us out of jail should a cop pull us over. To demonstrate my steady hand and excellent judgment, I tried to squeeze myself between Vincent and the steering wheel. I tried to grab control of the steering wheel, but he tried to jerk it away from me. We swerved in front of a semi that honked its horn and flashed its lights at a rhythm that matched my pounding heart. That did not help me stop shrieking, I could not seem to stop.
    Then he raised his hand to me, and that’s when all the things I liked about him turned into all the things I hated about myself. As soon as he raised his hand to me, I knew exactly how much I could stand.
    I bit Vincent Petrone.
    I bit him on the arm, like I was a dog or a toddler or a near-sighted vampire. I broke skin, I drew blood, I left marks. It caught us both off guard. I stopped shrieking. Vincent pulled over to the side of the highway. It was the middle of the night, a beautiful warm starry night in late August. We were somewhere in Ohio. He said get out; I got out.
     
     
     
     
     
    A few days later, Vincent’s grandma came to see me. She brought me a present, a shoe box containing many pairs of long dangly earrings, earrings like chandeliers, like jellyfish and fishing lures. She said she’d been buying them up with the intention of giving them to me for Christmas. She said her grandson was quite a handful and always had been. She wanted me to understand that Vincent had a hard life, a sad life, full of disappointment and sorrow. It’s why he acted up sometimes. She said she hoped I could help him. We’ll do it together, she said, you and me, we’ll help him straighten out. She wanted me to call Vincent, to tell him I was sorry. I think the two of you are so good for each other, she said. Promise me you’ll call him.
    I promised I would.
    I was lying.
    I never saw Vincent Petrone again, I never spoke to him, I never heard from him.
    Instead, he became a story I’d tell over strawberry margaritas, the same story any number of women can tell, the one that’s sometimes called What Was I Thinking? or Back When I Was in My Ick Phase. I found he was a lot more fun to talk about than he’d ever been to live with; I discovered a lot of women had Vincents of their own.
    But every once in a while, without my permission and against my will, this man shows up in my dreams, wearing his Poocher shirt, driving his purple demolition-derby car, my name glinting gold in the sun. He says he has something to say to me. He wants to know who do I think I am. He wants to know did I really love him or did I just hate myself. He wants to remind me of the girl I used to be.

What’s (Not) Simple
    D ogs love Karl Bennett. When dogs see him, they quiver and flail, they wiggle and whine. They throw themselves at his feet, showing him their soft bellies, stretching out their necks.
    My dog especially loves Karl Bennett. A