The two of us did what we usually did. We walked out to the Palisade’s Bluff’s where we discussed our hopes and dreams. We then went to the Palisades town center to have dinner. This time we chose to eat at Panda Express. While we were eating, some high school kids walked in. James saw them first, and right when he saw them he said the words “We’re fricked”. James knew I would have trouble with them. They were popular boys who had a flock of pretty girls with them. One of them sat down with two of the girls, putting his leg up on another chair with a cocky smirk on his face. I was livid with rage, and I wanted to pour my drink all over his head. James knew exactly what I was planning to do; we had been through similar incidents before. He made a lot of effort to try to dissuade me from acting on my anger, pointing out that there was a security guard nearby. I did the only other thing I could do; I packed up my dinner and left the restaurant, fleeing in defeat and shame. James soon followed, and we decided to finish our meal at his house.

A dark and ominous aura clouded over our friendship that day. When the two of us got back to James’s house, I was still seething with rage. I didn’t understand why James wasn’t angry like me. The sight that we just witnessed was horrible to watch. To see another male be successful with females is torture for males like us who have no success with females. I was so angry that I told James of all of the acts of revenge I wanted to exact on those popular boys. I told him my desire to flay them alive, to strip the skins off their flesh and make them scream in agony as punishment for living a better life than me. James became deeply disturbed by my anger. I wished that he wasn’t disturbed. I wished he could be a friend that felt the same way about the world that I did. But he wasn’t that kind of person. He was a weakling.

Snapshots:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)