Fear of Falling

his fair share of women. It was pretty damn surprising. Either they had to have extremely low self-esteem, the IQ of a fruit fly or they had to be deaf and blind. I needed to tell myself that to maintain just an inkling of faith in the opposite sex.
    “So I pull up to one of my job sites at some strip mall and there she is, Wendy Tig-o-Bitties Braxton, looking as hot as ever. And I swear her tits got even bigger! Of course, I wanted to hit that, but before I could even grace her with the famous Jacobs charm, she was asking about you.” He downed the remains of his beer and shook his head. “I swear, this whole broken-hearted-puppy-dog shit gets you more pussy than ever. Pisses me off.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh at his analogy, as I filled an order for a nearby customer. The regulars had grown used to CJ and his mouth. And if they hadn’t, they soon would. He was a permanent fixture at Dive and even filled in on occasion, though he sucked at making drinks.
    “Don’t blame me, CJ. Blame these clueless chicks you keep running behind. I don’t ask for their sympathy or their charity.”
    “Yeah, but you sure don’t hesitate to take it,” he snorted, just as I placed an ice-cold beer in front of him. “Admit it, the whole Lonely Boy shit is all an act to get easy ass. It is, isn’t it?”
    “Lonely Boy?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
    “Oh yeah,” CJ replied, embarrassed. “The girl I’ve been banging has some obsession with Gossip Girl. She makes me watch that shit with her to get her in the mood. Fucking irritating at first but it’s a pretty cool show. The chicks are hot as hell, and Chuck Bass is one cool motherfucker. I might start wearing bowties.”
    I couldn’t do more than shake my head. Yeah, Craig was family but he had about as much sense as a houseplant.
    “The things we do to get laid.”
    “The power of the pussy,” he nodded in agreement. I couldn’t argue with him there.

My earliest memory was at the age of two. Experts may argue that it’s impossible to have memories at that tender age. But some things you just can’t forget, no matter how bad you want to rip them from your memory. And I remember…everything.
    I remembered the tiny apartment with the sand colored rug and the bare, off-white walls, barren of any mementos of family vacations or milestones. And I remembered my father shoving my mother’s head through one of those off-white walls, leaving a large, gaping hole.
    I was sitting on the floor, looking up at the two of them as he tried his hardest to beat her until she was unrecognizable. I don’t remember crying though. I never remembered crying. I should have cried for my mother. I think any normal child would have at the sight of their mother’s agony. She cried all the time. It seemed like that’s all I remember her doing when I was younger.
    That memory was revealed in kindergarten, when I was about six years old. Most girls drew pictures of flowers and hearts. I drew pictures of terrifying monsters that preyed on women. There were no flowers and hearts in my world. I didn’t even know they existed. And I told stories...elaborate tales of bloodthirsty beasts that brutalized my mother and me every night. About how we would cower in my room, trying to stay as quiet as possible, in hopes that he wouldn’t find us.
    But he always did. My stories never had happy endings.
    My teachers called me a liar. They would place me in timeout and revoke playtime privileges. I didn’t cry then either. I just sat in the miniature red plastic chair and tried to savor every second away from home. Even though the kids picked on me and called me weird and poor, and my teachers had deemed me a problem child, I was safe. No one wanted to hurt me there. I wasn’t afraid. My mother wasn’t crying in the corner, shielding my body with hers. There were no monsters there.

    252
    I counted the tiny paper stars in the glass jar every night. I had been doing it for years. I had to. I had to count them all. 252. A star for every fear. Most of them were repeats but I wrote them down anyway. Just acknowledging my neurosis was enough for the time being. It was enough to get by.
    I took out a skinny strip of pastel colored paper and scribbled a single word on it before my fingers worked it into a tiny star no larger than a button. Then I slipped it into the jar.
    253. This one wasn’t a repeat.
    “What are you doing?” Dom asked, suddenly in my doorway, startling me. I really wished