Threeplay.

The boy had known other girls.

One night, a girl came over. She was numbed by tequila and convenience store wine. The boy tried to find equal footing with some Irish whiskey. After some necking and some heavy petting, he suggested they move to another room. She said that sounded like a good idea. They laughed and necked some more. Then the girl commented on how many clothes she was wearing and fixed the situation the only way she knew how. She was excited and responsive and eventually she was reduced to monosyllabic utterances. The utterances grew in volume and frequency until she asked the boy for a moment to compose herself.

When the moment was over, the girl fell asleep. The boy, still clothed, laid there looking at what he had done. Eventually he got up and went to the balcony. He lit a cigarette and smoked.

The boy had known other girls, and this had happened before.

On the balcony, the boy looked to the stars and shook his fist.

A hundred and forty-three of a gross.

Occasionally, the boy would wander. He had a penchant for getting lost and this was something he liked to take advantage of, at times.

On this particular day, the boy loaded some clothes in a duffel bag and got in his car. He drove. And then he drove some more. Then he stopped and rested by the side of the road. When he woke up, he drove some more. He made a right and continued driving. Eventually, he found himself in a large city. There he parked his car in a garage and walked to the closest bus stop.

It was at the bus stop that he met a girl.

"What city is this?" he asked.

"Philadelphia," she replied.

"Ah," he said. "The Garden State."

She laughed and he liked her laugh. When the bus came they got on and sat together. They talked for a long time and then the bus stopped for the night and they got off and talked some more. They walked and talked. Eventually, they made it back to the girl's place and she asked the boy if he wanted to come up. He told her no, that he had to find his way back.

"No," he said. "I have to find my way back."

Walking back to the parking garage, he tripped and fell to the stars.

One of a kind, when you need a pair.

So, then they told the boy he thought too much. They told him to put his feelings aside. They told him to err on the side of happy. So the boy reached into the back of his head, took out the problematic component, and reset himself. Then the boy who had lived with the stars replaced the component with a redundant memory chip, one that would take the things he'd think about and dump them before they could cause problems.

They boy could feel it working right away. Suddenly, he was happier, more carefree. A whimsy filled his days, and his nights were brighter just on the influence of his own bright outlook. Insults and left-handed compliments rolled off his back like something that rolls off of something else with a lot of ease.

Then, slowly, things began to change. Not him; nay, he had already changed.

The thoughts he had thunk were forcing themselves out into the world. By getting lost in them and turning his thoughts over and over, the boy had been doing the world a service by creating a large reservoir of thoughts no one wanted to think. With this reservoir removed, the universe had to accommodate the slack. The people the boy knew found themselves overburdened by dark thoughts, deep thoughts, thoughts that shouldn't be thought. And as these people dropped away, one by one like bugs from a zapper, the boy found himself lonelier then ever. But he didn't care this time. He couldn't care. He moved along, collecting other people to fill the vacuum of those others, people who would come to fill the vacuum his thoughtless mind created.

He calls these people "friends."

Long ago...

...there was a boy who tripped and fell to the stars. As he fell, he called each star by name. Hello, Sirius. Hello, Cassiopeia. Hello, Ursas Minor and Major. Eventually he came to call the sky home. He waxed and waned; he orbited. And then the stars turned on him and kicked him back to the planet that had bred him. Before they did, they crossed him each once.

Now the boy lives out his days, dreaming of the time he had his place in the sky. His curse is to fall just short of the power and the glory, forever and whatever, amen.

These are his adventures.

Michael J. Gatton, A Quarter Short for the Dryer.