ex-wives

“One last thing folks, real quick. I want to you to complete a simple exercise with me here. I want everyone to close their eyes, go ahead, close them. Now I want you to visualize yourself five years from today. Where are you working? Where are you living? Who else do you see in your life? What do you do in your free time? Are you happy, are you successful? Open your eyes.” The face looked up at us like he had something monumental to share.

“Now go get it.”

The face beamed at us from the front of the lecture hall. Silence. Then a smattering of half-hearted applause echoed more forced than enthusiastic.

“Alright ladies and gentleman, that’s all I’ve got for you, you’ve all been a terrific audience, good luck with finals.” Anything more that he may have said was lost as eight hundred college students and a handful of professors got up to exit the auditorium. It was Friday afternoon, after all, and people had places to be. A couple of business school overachievers rushed to the front, eager to shake hands and make connections. Pricks.

What a fucking tool. Standing up there with his immaculate suit, his shit eating grin. I hated him before he even opened his mouth. Lecturing us about responsibility and drive. I wonder how much the school shelled out for this waste of time. I almost laughed out loud when he asked us to close our eyes and visualize our future, but then I realized that most of my fellow students were actually participating. Was I missing something?

Well, at least with most of my fellow scholars buying into this guy’s rubbish, I got the chance to fully appreciate that brunette one row back. Short dark hair, edgy, definitely the artist type. I bet she had dark eyes to match too, hot. I think she was in my dorm freshman year, but as with most of freshman year, that memory was a little fuzzy. I wonder what she’s into. If there was ever a time in my life when I needed to meet someone new, this was it.

“aye, Lonnie, what’s up man?” I turned towards the voice coming from the back of the auditorium.
“ah Kristian, not much mate, how you doing?”
“much better now that we’re done with that schmoo, and I’ll be better still when you buy me that that pint I won last night.” He said, grinning from ear to ear.
“fuck you, you Aussie fuck, let’s get drunk.”

Kristian. Orignially from Melbourne, Australia; he’d come to the university on some sort of crew scholarship. Kristian had lived in the freshman dorms, one floor above me with the rest of the athletes. This Aussie transplant was ambitious enough to get kicked off the crew team a month into his first semester of college for drug possession. Caught with marijuana three times in one month; weed he bought from me. Since then we’d been pretty solid friends the last four years or so, having our share of fun, usually staying a half-step ahead of trouble. While he’d lost his scholarship, he’d managed to avoid being kicked out of school, they figured the loss of athletics punishment enough. Kristian came from a rich family, generations of Australian sheep farmers or some such rubbish, and his parents were more than happy to pay for him to stay and get an American education. Kristian saw it as a chance to sleep with every American college girl he could meet, and with his boyish good looks, and that damn accent, he succeeded a lot more than he failed.

The pint he was referring to had been won last night at the bar, when he’d made the wild accusation that our server absolutely had to be wearing black panties. Kristian makes wild accusations like this sometimes, and I called him on it. Proceeding to chat up our server all night, he disappeared into the bathroom with her just before bar close. This was the first I’d seen of him since. Fucking Australian accents.

“safe to say you had a decent night?” I asked, knowing full well the answer I get as we left Wiley Hall and crossed the street towards Grandma's bar.
“fuck me mate,” he fairly moaned, “I think I met my future ex-wife,” Kristian was always meeting his future ex-wives. “speaking of though, you talk to Tasha?”
“naw man, I’m too mad. Anything I say now would come out a lot worse than it should.”

That bitch.

“dude, she cheated on you. You walked in on her and the other dude getting dressed, I would have cut his fucking head off. I’m not sure she deserves your understanding on this one.”

He had a point.

"fuck it man, maybe you should buy the first round."