Conversations

Written 55-H06 [2024-02-07], Edited 55-H06 [2024-02-07]

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“And from that day onwards, I swore I would never again eat at KFC unless the Double Down was available,” I said. “And since the Double Down isn’t a regular menu item, that means it will be years until I try their awful, awful fries again.”

My teeth crunched on the lettuce of a Caesar salad while my tongue searched desperately for one of the tiny bacon bits. Something in me craved one of the fries I’d admonished twenty seconds ago. But I always regretted eating them and besides, the Caesar salad wasn’t even that nutritious by salad standards.

Taylor laughed and said, “so Jed, does that include the combination Taco Bell/KFCs?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “If I enter such an establishment, I would avoid any KFC menu item.”

“Isn’t Pepsi a KFC menu item?” asked Taylor. She raised her eyebrows and grinned after swallowing some spaghetti bolognaise.

“If I ever enter a combination Taco Bell/KFC, I shall exclusively drink the Baja Blast.” I said.

Taylor laughed. It wasn’t even that funny but she laughed anyway. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what I’ve become. I keep some things light and some other things to myself, and that’s served me well in many places.

“You know, Jedediah, I really feel like I could tell you anything,” said Taylor.

I shrugged and said, “Call me Golbeki Tepe, because I got twelve thousand ears.”

I smiled at my own shitty pun but felt a vague sense of dread. My mind was turning away from bacon bits and towards more worrying material. Why was Taylor talking like this? And in that last comment why did she call me ‘Jedediah’ instead of just ‘Jed’?

“Have you ever been raped?” Asked Taylor.

I blinked.

What?

The smile on my face got wiped off.

Had I ever been-

What?

That was totally out of nowhere!

Taylor looked at me and between us there was silence. Oh, there was noise in the restaurant, but I couldn’t hear any of it. I could only hear the gears of my own mind grinding to a halt, trying desperately to lighten a mood that didn’t want to be lightened.

“No,” I replied.

There was an obvious follow up question, wasn’t there? Four little words: Why do you ask? In that moment, it was the question that I really wanted answered. It mattered infinitely more than Baja Blasts and bacon bits, no, that comparison was frankly offensive. It was the most important question in the universe, or at least in my universe.

Why do you ask? I wondered.

Why would you ask me that Taylor? What brought you to the question? Did something happen? Is everything okay? Is there something I should do? I wondered.

But wondering is where it would end. There were some doors I wasn’t going to open. There were some conversations I wasn’t going to have. Did I want to be nosy when the scent of blood was all around me?

No, I thought not. Better to bury the topic in silence. Better to leave mysteries as mysteries. Better to go back to talking about whatever trivia we were talking about.

You can’t do that, I thought. That’s cold. That’s insensitive.

But I could do that, and I did. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut. And it was probably nothing, right? It was just idle curiosity, probably. Nothing to unpack, maybe. Nothing to pull me out of my privileged, comfortable bubble, hopefully.

After a minute of silence, Taylor asked about a video game or ice cream or whatever else we normally talked about and we had a normal day. But normalcy between us had never been that normal. There was, and always would be, a gap filled by cowardice.

Feedback from The Joy of Writing group

• (I opened by saying I regretted writing this)
• add thousand words of their 25 previous years of life
• powerful change of topic
• “I feel like I could tell you anything” :(
• could be good for the contest