I don’t like to sleep alone. Simple as that. I need to feel someone by my side when I’m asleep; otherwise I get sad and lonely. How lame does that sound? Too damn lame for my liking, but it’s the truth. It’s the god-damn truth.

Girls like Kathy don’t succeed on Broadway. They’ve got great tone support and clarity, and they really give their all, but that’s never enough. Mel doesn’t care about girls giving their all.

What he cares about are girls with all of that, and a pretty face. I tell him that we can’t afford to be picky, but he tells me to shut up. I’m just an assistant director, what do I know, really? Just enough to put me through Art School, thank you very much, Mr. Mel Jones.

Kathy sings so beautifully, so powerfully, that I am lost in her. I am captivated by the way she expresses the song; by the way she looks at me… She’s pleading. She knows I have heart. Even after only know her for twelve minutes; she knows I have a heart.

Yes, dear, go ahead and fool yourself into thinking that. Go ahead and guess that I’ve already got a girlfriend. I haven’t. She dumped me. Erin (she) slammed the door on my face while I was trying to reason with her, and she hasn’t come back for her stuff, which makes me think she doesn’t want it anymore anyway.

And so what? I don’t want her anymore either. She’s like her clothes: useless, just taking up space in someone’s perfectly ordered and fulfilling life.

That’s a lie.

That’s a damn lie.

I want her so badly that I look for her in every girl I see. I’m looking for her in Kathy right now. Kathy has nothing of Erin. Erin was beautiful in every way. Kathy can sing, Kathy can act, Kathy can dance and Kathy can probably cook, but that doesn’t excuse the ugly gangly way she carries herself, or how her ribs are horrifically visible when she raises her arms in the dances.

Erin was amazing. She couldn’t cook or dance or sing or act, but she could make me happy. We didn’t even have to be saying anything to each other, and I was perfectly content.

But apparently women like this thing called conversation, and they come in sets, and if you don’t have enough conversation (multiple: conversations) then they get bored of you, and cheat on you with the guy who lives two stories below you in the same damn apartment building.

Really classy, Erin, love. Just go and have a screaming orgasm with the guy. (His name is Arthur Dinwighty, by the way. Arthur Dinwighty. How sad is that? I got dumped for a computer engineer named Arthur Dinwighty.) See if I care about your sex life!

Oh, but I do. Of course I do. Who wouldn’t? I lived with the woman Arthur Dinwighty is ‘fornicating’ with for four years. Four years! That’s a damn long time to have a real relationship with someone.

“That’s nice, dear. Alright, that’s all the time we have for today…” Mel is telling all of the nervous people who came to audition that they can go home, and we’ll call them back.

Again, that is a lie. We rarely, if ever, call anyone back.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” I hastily inform Mel as I stand up and rush out with the would-be actors.

“What? Hey! Don’t you wanna review with me?” He yells at me roughly.

“I’ll come in tomorrow morning,” I call as I run away faster. I don’t really want to be told why every single person just ‘doesn’t make the cut’. Hell, I don’t make the cut most of the time. I can see Kathy walking miserably alone as I leave the theater. “Kathy!”

She turns around in surprise, “Oh! Mr. Lawrence!”

“Please, just call me Will.”

“Will Lawrence…” She says my name with a cute little influx at the end, like she’s singing it. She sings so much… God I must be desperate. “Did I do alright at the audition?”

“You did fine,” I assure her, “I loved it. I thought you were seriously amazing. So come on, let’s get a drink, okay?”

She looks at me curiously, “Alright.”

“Wait… You are twenty-one, right?”

“Twenty-two,” she says with a shrug and a smile. She’s a cute girl, with long, curly brown hair. She would be perfect for the role.

We sit in the bar together for a while, and I get her whole back-story. Hers is pretty typical. She always wanted to be a film star, but she wasn’t pretty enough, and she had a fair voice, so her second best shot was theater.

I’m pretty typical, too. We’re a prefect couple. It’s about nine at night when we stagger back to my apartment. We’re laughing and joking and right as we get off the elevator, we run into Erin.

Thank you, oh lord, for being a prick. Would it have been too simple to make my life average like any other guy? Sure, I have crappy luck, but I didn’t know it was bad enough to force me to run into my ex, with all of her clothes, while I’m about to have sex with a girl that I’ve promised to get a spot in the choir.

Great, great, thanks.

I guess I’m spared, though. Erin just smiles, “Hi, Mr. Lawrence. Nice to see you again. The vending machine in the basement, you know, the one they installed a couple of years back, wasn’t taking dollars, so I did my laundry and now I’m asking people for change. Got any?”

That’s the dumbest story I’ve heard in my life. She knows it, too. But Kathy just nods frantically, “Yeah, yeah. Just a minute…” She pulls out a quarter from her pocket and smiles very brightly, because she is completely wasted. “Here you go!”

“Thanks.” The way that Erin looks at me as we pass makes me sick to my stomach. She hates me. She hates me so much that it’s killing me. I just want to be loved by her.

I guess that taking home a girl three days after I get dumped doesn’t exactly scream “I’m filled with angst because we broke up and I have no idea what to do with myself please god help me”. I think it screams “F you ‘cause I didn’t need you anyway and watch me be a chauvinist.”

But I’m not a chauvinist. I swear, I’m not. Just because I have sex with Kathy and promise her a place in the chorus, if nothing else (which I realized is the most clichéd thing I could have done, and it only enforces the idea that sleeping with important people will get you important things), does not mean that I am a chauvinist.

I don’t treat girls like objects. I don’t think of them as possessions or things to toss around and then discard after they’ve served their usefulness.

If only Erin could read my mind, it might sound better. I love her. The only reason is that I’m sleeping with Kathy is so that I can pretend she’s Erin.

I don’t treat girls like objects.

It’s just that… I have this rule, you know?

I never sleep alone.