.3 Karat Monkey

A while back a dear friend of mine, who will even remain initial-less, revealed a heart breaking story of lost love.
The fact that he lost his love to her own cousin--no. fucking shit.--adds an unsavory and wholly unbelievable element to this story.

Her own fucking cousin!

Here I thought that losing, say, one's wife to a lesbian would be damaging to the ego; losing out to someone's own cousin is pretty much the most outrageously shitty thing that could happen.

Believe it.

So here he is, for TWO YEARS walking around with the rejected engagement ring in his backpack. Usually the monkey on your back is just a metaphorical monkey--not a bona fide burden!

Oh--and the cousin had triumphantly announced to his beloved that "It's perfectly legal for us--I checked."

Moving on. . . so I find out about this who crummy life event, and he produces this engagement ring from his everyday knapsack, and my first reaction was:

B- "Pawn that! Get that THING out of your knapsack and pawn it!"

He hummed and hawed.

I begged him to at least stop carrying the God damned thing around. He did so.

Three days later I return home, set my own knapsack (well, I think it was a man purse at the time, actually--it was Toronto, and I did live downtown) and turn to see, on the floor before our teevee, an xbox. Brand new.

And a note.

The note read something to the effect that:

"Hey Guys, I did what you said and pawned the ring and bought an xbox. Enjoy!"

Like a treasure map to recovery, xbox marks the spot.

For the first time, and maybe the last, I thought about what a full fucking dude he was, and smiled.

I also thought, There's no way that shitty ring raised enough scratch to buy an xbox!, but that's beside the point.