He’d kept tabs.

Time for life, of course. Time for waking, stretching, showering or not showering, trudging to the back of the house to examine the mailboxes for the checks that never seemed to arrive or at least not on any useful timeline, time to get drunk every night and rub testosterone on his shoulders in the mornings before the shower, time to wake up with a shiner mistaken for a scratch until the mirror, time to wake up on New Year’s Day 2005 covered in His own shit. In His own bed. Time to try AA meetings, feeling all those meeting minutes, trapped in a falling elevator. Time to go mad and slice His own throat, leg, and arm, time to be strapped down in several emergency rooms and upstairs at Harborview. Time to let go.

But for all that, He’d kept tabs.

The Man he’d kept tabs on wooed Robin the blind girl at the Neptune theater in 1985—well, not wooed, hung out with her rather in a manner made to make apparent that all wooing lay in the past. The Man always had that way with women. With Mary, a good friend to Him, and they all went to ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ together and His father grounded him and interrogated Him for days, it seemed, on where he’d been. Mary, and Robin, and, oh, He lost track after awhile.

The Man parked in the college’s computer room and posted voluminously on the college’s electronic bulletin board system (He’d lead The Man to that, something he quickly had cause to regret) and picked his nose (He flattered Himself to think he kept his own nose-pickery private) and stamped out his trademark phrase: ‘Keep your no’s out of other people’s business.’ This seemed to translate as, sit and pay keen attention as I tell of romping in women’s underwear, with and without the women in the underwear; and of reading off Purity Tests with someone thrusting her hips on top of me.

The Man threw knives at communal dartboards, cut his thumb on can lids and groused about it for decades, suffered ‘testicle injuries’ that kept him from participating in his study groups in anything like an accommodating manner, and throughout maintained, ‘I am a quiet, non-smoking vegetarian, and I am easy to get along with.’

The Man got himself appointed a writing tutor for one class he took. After the first two weeks, his students stopped showing up at the tutorials. The tutorials were required to pass the class. But they sailed like ships deserting a sinking rat.

The Man got himself accepted into the Clarion Workshop. At this time His work was getting regularly rejected by local editors who found it ‘too hard to understand.’ He never forgot this.

The Man moved into an apartment above a pet store. Years later it was torn down. Not just the pet store, the whole building. Drinking at the bar, working on beer three, beer four, He met the couple who managed the vanished building. They said The Man had started a ‘Domination-Centered Escort Service.’ With himself as the talent.

He chuckled along with the couple. But He kept keeping tabs.

Girlfriends chucked Him with what you could call regularity if the relationships themselves occurred with any regularity. A woman swore up and down that she would never date His best friend. Then she dumped him and went out with His best friend. Then she married His best friend.

He spent a lot of time looking in mirrors for the hunchback covered in bleeding warts, dripping green slime from between slanted fangs, that he was sure women saw in him.

And not for the first time, He thought about jumping off a bridge.

Then, He found the picture. Keeping tabs, expecting nothing new, he clicked on a link and beheld.

The Man lay on a bed. No other humans with him in the picture. But The Man was certainly not alone.

And He understood in the proverbial flash, the reasons for His failures and the Man’s success.

He told the tattoo artist he wanted ‘pomo Yakuza.’ The tattoo artist made a funny little moue with his tattoo artist lips, but took His money. And brought out a towel.

It hurt.

It hurt a little at first, then a little more, then a bit more, then not so much, then a lot, then a little.

Sort of like taking the knife to His throat.

But longer-lasting.

It was finished. He would carry The Man and the Man’s triumph with him to the grave.

And when women screamed, dissembled, and went running for His best friends, He’d finally have some firm idea why.