Why I Hate Guests

I have out-of-town company, and I am vaguely inhospitable and uncooperative with everything. I attribute this to my Hot Little Brother (HLB). Whenever girls meet my brother, they are different afterwards.

I told Boss today that I hate when HLB is nice to nice girls. “Let them figure it out!” Boss said, “If this chick is twenty five years old and hasn’t figured out when a man is playing with her, she’s an idiot.” I disagreed with that, because they – HLB and Boss – have for years used this as their general excuse to destroy all sorts of good, trusting hearts.

They always think that it is the girl’s responsibility to recognize and be impervious to their games, but don’t they realize that it would never work if everyone was as stalwart as they should be around the bad boys?

HLB is a good man; he’s an excellent man. He’s godly and wise, and good with children, and charming, and funny. But he never stays around for anyone; he’s a relationship gypsy, who drifts here and there breaking hearts and not quite meaning to exploit people. These guests of mine are the sweetest ladies, and they have no idea that they don’t stand a chance.

Maybe many girls know this going into it; and I think that’s why I never really mind when he plays around in his own league, with girls who have as much to lose as he does. But I typically become very defensive when he meets my friends, because although about ninety percent of HLB’s victims are plenty deserving, there is a nice girl here and there who thinks she is going to be the one person to tame him, and thinks moreover that his skills for making girls love him are expended on her only.

Boss knew I was in a bad mood today so he rushed back to my office, blowing in around one o’clock with all sorts of excitement and saying that he was going to go take me to see “some skinhead get arrested…..don’t bring your stupid phone, you’ll probably record something accidentally again and you can’t record this!” I accidentally recorded one conversation, once, and have never been able to live it down.

We went out there in a whirlwind, which was a trap for him to give his big speech about HLB. “It’s all about the chase; the kill means nothing,” he told me, “They’ll be okay, just like you are always okay. Let them have a nice time and go back to their own state to remember their week of being flattered and treated like a queen. If they’re really stupid enough to think that your brother has a genuine interest in them, then they’re stupid enough to believe it forever. They’ll probably always look back on this week with butterflies.”

I wished that I could explain that the hardest part is that I am so very susceptible to those things. I am the girl in the world who knows the most about flattery and its ease and deception; and yet, I can be a victim as swiftly as any other girl, and as wholly.

I can lose my head IN A MOMENT,

even knowing

full well

that a piece of flattery is completely made up

and that they are willing to use one line that works

on every girl.

For the smallest, of compliments, I am suddenly ready to give my heart. I wished I could explain that I hate being thus vulnerable, and thus exploited, when from whence my poor heart is, everything means something big and permanent and deliberate. But we work well together, that Boss and I, when I am quiet and let him be right, so instead I asked questions about the skinhead, and said thank you for taking me out here, it is perfect—because that’s what he always does: he finds the best drama and brings it to me, like a cat brings a mouse to the front porch, when I have been a good secretary that week. It’s all that he knows how to do, and I know enough to be grateful for that.