"Right right. Jackie. Christ. You were a fucking wreck."

Chad smiled, giving James the raised eyebrow. "And now look at you."

Abashed, James asked, "So how did you get over her?"

Chad looked at James honestly. Between men, there are very few authentic moments. Interpersonal relationships between men lie in a fuzzy realm of half-truths, exaggerations, and false bravado. On rare occasions, usually brought on by severe external stressors, two men will reveal their actual selves to each other, and will converse as two adult human beings. Until things regress back to dick jokes and homophobia. "James, I never really did get over her. I still miss her. Despite all her flaws and all her fucked up insecurities. I still miss her."

There was a pause, and James let it go.

"But what I do now is look for someone to replace her. Someone I'll love as completely as I did Jackie, or even more so."

"So. Kundera's lyrical womanizer."

"That's what I thought. But it's not anymore. I've become the epic womanizer. The blonde girls simply because they're blonde. The Model simply because she was a model. I'd forgotten what the point of this all was."

"Right."

They sat silent for a moment, collecting their thoughts, thinking about what had been said, what would be said, and the impossibility of love. There really is something to be said about beer, men and misery. It's just so bittersweet. The beer, that is. Men saddened by the injustice of failed love is just sad.

"I'm sorry about Julia, by the way."

"I suppose I am too."

"You can do better, though."

"I don't think I can."

"Really." The two of them thought about their memories of Julia. For Chad, she was suburban and domestic, a girl whose dream and sole aspiration was to be a wife with children, supported by a loving, doting husband. Just so pathetically Middle American to the core. Really. Julia, the light of whose life?