While typing furiously at a late hour on a cold fall night, amidst an internal debate I was currently having over particularly slippery memory about a pack of rabid dachshunds, I heard a distinct sound emanating from below, in the parking lot outside of my apartment. It was a conversation which seemed, on first listen, to be your average, garden-variety sort of boyfriend/girlfriend brand of verbal exchange. Upon closer eavesdrop, however, I discovered it was more of the final straw, here’s your favorite t-shirt sort. Here is what I heard:

“No, no, no! You turned that around so fast. You started justifying everything!” This was the female talking, definitely college or post-college, well-educated, and obviously onto something.

“Hold on, hold on. Hold on. What I’m saying is that the situation yester–” This stumbling, backpedaling voice belonged to a male of similar age and much softer-tone. Unfortunately for him, he was also clearly less-educated and, doubly-bad for him, less tenacious. She ran him over. Delivery truck vs. tricycle.

“Please. Don’t start with all that shit. I don’t want to hear that shit. No. That shit is over with.” It should be said that my assumptions about her level of education dipped a bit after such a trailer-park outburst. ((Any conversation that – based on the verbal interplay – might have been had between B. Spears and J. Timberlake should, if experienced in one’s own life, be immediately ended and re-approached after all Red Bull/vodka buzzes have worn off and everyone’s clothes are back on.)) But, soon after I barfed up that bit of arrogance, a burning sensation of damning hypocrisy grew exponentially in my chest and snuffed out my impending judgement. The truth was, she was tough, and tired of Josh’s apparent shenanigans.

The imperiled boyfriend mumbled something unintelligible, as imperiled boyfriends are wont to do. From my perch, three floors up, I leaned as close to the window as possible, cupping my hands over my ear and squinting my eyes. If you must know, it helps me hear better. My window was wide open and my blinds were down, allowing me to hear almost everything they were saying while maintaining the proper amount of stealth. Caveat: Beware the conversations you may have near a window with closed blinds – the sneaky devil that lives behind that window could be taking notes, or worse, penning a memoir.

“Josh – I do forgive you. I really do. But what you did doesn’t make me feel any better about you – do you get that? Do you understand how that would make it hard for me to trust you?” I’m not sure Josh got that. “I mean, God! I’m just saying.” She was hammering him with a one-two combination of facts and passion and – amazingly – still managing to throw him a lifeline. I made a mental note, right then and there, to remember that women, even amidst a few inevitable flights of fancy, can be gloriously forgiving.

Josh’s sins, although unknown to me, were being analyzed in the R&D department of my mind, with new and outrageous hypotheses arriving at a furious pace. Question: What had Josh done? Had he purchased drugs using cash he’d found while rifling through her panty drawer? Had he cheated on her with that raccoon-eyed bartender (the one with the tramp stamp and the new boobs) she’d caught him smiling at last Saturday night? Had she walked in the house, home a bit early from work one Friday, finding Josh wearing only her socks, watching an old episode of Baywatch that she’d taped four years ago as research for a lifeguard test?

Oh, Josh.

- excerpt from Diary of an American Boy