"What do you mean by 'pretend'?"

The demonstration lacks confidence but not agility. "Oh," I say.

"Keep going?"

"I don't. Well. OK, yeah. Fuck."

"Don't tell anyone about that," I tell her, after.

"About what?" she says. "Hey, feel this."

Yesterday, my girlfriend's sister brought a date to the bar, even though she has a live-in boyfriend. The guy was a real dumbass, and was staring at my girlfriend's boobs, rather than his date's, and when we walked home, I asked my girlfriend about it, and she just laughed and said, "That's my sister."

She's also, on separate occasions, told me her sister is her idol and her hero. One of the times she said this, her sister was drawing all over some passed-out lady's face with a permanent marker. Then she started markering her own face, blacking out her own front teeth. "She's the best," my girlfriend said. "You just don't even know how great."

I like her sister. But I don't always agree that one should pour pitchers of beer on people who hog the foosball table.

My girlfriend thinks she will be a stand up comedian if she just gets through a series of classes that you take at a humor training school on the north side. She has three levels left. Then she will be as funny as is trainable and have her own show, which will be just like Sarah Silverman's show, except without Sarah Silverman.

Whenever she gets too drunk, she tells the same story about how she stood up to her abusive stepdad. No one else stood up to him, and she got beaten into the ground. I don't believe it happened this way. The way she tells it reminds me of the way I tell stories when I'm lying and the way people talk when they pretend to be allergic to cats or have been big stoners in high school. Everyone was a big stoner in high school. Everyone stood up to her abusive stepdad and got the shit kicked out of her and it made her the strong heroic person she is today. Shut up, I want to tell her. You didn't stand up to that asshole and you're embarrassing me in front of my friends. Once, during the story, I put a donut into her mouth.

I'll never hit her or tie her up. She'll get introduced to that, but later, not by me. I like the sex we have. She has a really sexy voice and she usually just repeats over and over how she loves when I fuck her until she can't talk about me fucking her any longer and is just breathing. This is the only time I feel like we're being honest.

I get a round of applause when I go out to get her a drink of water. "You two are unbelievably annoying," her roommates say. "Is there any furniture left in there?" "I'm going to puke." I hand off her robe or shirt or whatever I'm wearing, along with the water. When she walks to the bathroom, there's a second round of applause. "I can't believe you can still walk." "Do you want some Advil? Vicodin?" The peanut gallery makes me self-conscious, but someday soon, I'll miss the applause. I like it when people feel obligated to pretend to care about what I'm doing. I'd pay for it, if it was an available service.

Sometimes when she tells the story, it's her sister who stands up first and then she does. Her sister stands up for her and for all the other kids, and her sister gets the crap beaten out of her. The story has few specific details, but if we're standing outside smoking, it happens on the front stairs, and if we're in the car, so is it. Sometimes I think her whole imagination must be filled with different versions of The Story but then I can't account for her photographic memory and ability to spit out a hilarious one-liner when she's so stoned she can't walk. Sometimes I can't count change or remember my own name, and I'm not even stoned. Someday, I worry, I will struggle to remember her name. It will be a floating empty shape in my floating empty brain.

Someday, she will be a stand-up comedian or something better. I can see her, looking beautiful onstage in some huge old theater, the kind with an organ and a velvet curtain. I'm creaking around on a cheap balcony seat, and she's up there and she's so small and she's telling it. But this time, I like it.


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