"Well-Behaved Monsters" - catching up with our heroes
This scene from my brand new novel, Well-Behaved Monsters, finds our main characters Dylan, Joe, and Sid gathered at their favorite watering hole, Triads Lounge, for a state of the union type chat. Dylan and Joe both have serious girlfriends at this point, while Sid, as is pretty much always the case, remains unconvinced that tying oneself down makes for a wise strategy in this supremely action packed climate. And in fact Dylan is ambivalent about whether to stick with his lady, Miranda, or cut his losses and move on. A serious academic debate ensues:
“So what’s the deal with this Miranda situation, anyway?” Joe questions.
“Eh, you know,” Dylan says, chuckling through his exhale as he shakes his head, “it’s going alright, I guess.” Having smoothed over even that unannounced roadtrip to Kentucky, more or less, he’s back to spending every night at her place again, although conceding, “now she’s on this kick though where she’s trying to talk me into the whole dominatrix routine or whatever, with all the leather and shit…”
Pausing mid beer swing, Joe’s eyebrows shoot up as he replies, “what!? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, she’s been going on about this, the whole deal with her wanting to tie me up and beat me with the whips and everything else. I’m like, man, I really don’t know about this, I don’t fuckin think so. What the hell did I get myself into, here? Whips and chains…cocaine…I feel like I’m in the middle of a goddamn ZZ Top song…”
“Ah hell na,” Joe declares.
“Yeah,” I concur, “that doesn’t really sound like my cup of tea, either.”
“You know what you need to do instead, dude: lay a rape scene on her,” Joe declares.
“A rape scene?”
“Yes! Totally,” I agree with a toothy grin, suddenly lit by the warm glow of nostalgia as I’ve somehow not really pondered this topic in quite some time. For clarification’s sake, though, I turn to Joe and ask, “you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, right? A rape fantasy, or a fake rape, or whatever you wanna call it? They say they don’t wanna fuck but you go right on ahead with it anyway?”
“Yeah man,” Joe says, proudly defending his suggestion.
“Aw, man, I don’t know about that, now…,” Dylan says, “are you guys saying I should rape Miranda? Like rape rape her?”
“No seriously. They love it,” I insist.
“Fuck yeah. Girls eat that shit up, dude,” Joe seconds.
“Jesuuuus Chriiiiist…,” Dylan hisses through his teeth, shakes his head once more, “as fun as that sounds, why do I feel like this is really not a good idea? Are you guys telling me you’ve tried this?”
“Oh yeah. I did it multiple times with Helena and Jenna both.”
“Yup. I’ve done it with all my serious girlfriends. Well, not with Shoniqua yet, but it’s coming dude. It’s coming.”
Dylan’s face now forms into a mischievous smile, as he composes himself enough to joke, “who’s coming, though, heh heh? She’s coming?”
“Exactly dude. Exactly,” Joe nods, as matter of fact as a homicide detective.
“No but seriously,” I interject, when this conversation threatens to devolve into empty drunken bro-isms, “you just keep after them on some night where you’re horny as hell but they’re telling you they’re really not feeling like sex. They keep swatting you away but then the next thing you know you’re chasing them around the house and they’re laughing as they try to avoid you. Until you pin them down somewhere.”
“Totally,” Joe nods, “that’s it right there. My favorite is, I like pulling that move as soon as I get home from work sometimes.”
The caveat here, it goes without saying, is that you should only try this in a long-term, serious relationship with somebody you know extremely well, having already slept with on countless occasions. And it’s probably a good idea that phrases such as monogamous and definitely the dreaded L word are included in the mix somewhere too. Common sense dictates you want to keep the vibe more edgy and fun, but not exactly scary or dangerous. Otherwise, without all these elements in place, you are on some extremely shaky ground where you can probably drop the second word in the “rape fantasy” bit, as far as how this will be interpreted, both by the victim and the law.
Then again, are we seriously saying Debbie wouldn’t be into this? Or Lily too for that matter? I’ve never been serious about Lily, and I haven’t known Debbie very long at all. Half the time I even wonder if this isn’t what Alice was secretly banking on from me, attempting to goad me into, during some of these nights with her. Particularly that final one, where she ultimately seemed stunned I wasn’t just barreling through her cocktease protests with brute force. Though of course not anywhere in the same galaxy of attempting anything resembling that stunt with her. Are Dylan and Joe at that spot with their respective long-term girlfriends, though? Yes, I believe they are, or very near it.
“I have to admit I’m kind of surprised you haven’t done this with any of your girlfriends,” I tell Dylan.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Huh. I’ll be damned. I’m definitely gonna have to think about that one a little more…,” he marvels, with only a checked, half shake of the head now, as though both stumped and impressed by our novel suggestion here.
If such dry, highbrow philosophizing speaks to you like it does us, then you might just want to pick up a copy of Well-Behaved Monsters. And of course nuanced scholarly analysis is always welcome in the comments section. Today’s the last day of the 99 cent Kindle ebook sale, which you can obtain here:
And here are a few options if you want the print version. I always recommend my own website because it’s the exact same book you’d get from Amazon, but costs less by going around them. One other cool site I’m fond of promoting is Bookshop.org - it allows you to choose an actual brick n’ mortar bookstore that gets credit for the sale.
Thanks and have a marvelous day!
Hi Jason, could you please send me a list of all your books? I want to ensure I have the complete collection and would like to create a checklist as I buy them. Thank you! 😊🌿