Part 1 –Lying Down 

Jane was a sweet girl once you got past the fact that she was a bitch. 

  Although her bitchiness was well-known in most circles—and by most circles, I mean any galaxies neighbouring the Milky Way—it somehow seemed to escape Jay (until their next breakup). 

  In my opinion, my best friend Jay remained with Jane, a girl we’d had no choice but to dub ‘Calamity Jane’ (CJ for short), because he was afraid of the public scorn he’d receive for breaking up with her while she was suffering from her latest bout of bitchy-itis. Though in full transparency, they never truly broke up: just last week, Jay took her to a doctor’s appointment, and when he brought her home it somehow turned into a quickie in the car. 

  In a sense, Jay, I, and her closest friends, were all simply servants in Jane’s bitchdom, for none among us could escape her grasp. For Jay especially, it must have been like trying to escape life in the Mafia: you try to get away, but they always pull you back. According to Jay, her bitchiness notwithstanding, no other woman in his life (past, present, or the perceived future) had her intriguing talent of simultaneously arousing and dousing an erection. 

  The arousing, I got. CJ was ridiculous, off-the-chart hot. But why he liked the dousing eluded me. Apparently, she’d instantly go from inspiring this throbbing frothing rocket ship in his trousers, to spewing a string of hateful words, leaving him with little more than a boosterless projectile with no propulsion left. Such dual processing sounded like a perplexing downer to me, but for Jay this ambivalence was a key ingredient for a lifelong relationship. 

Calamity Jane appears in Resistance, Revolution and Other Short Stories.