This story starts off
in a broken home, but not the kind you’d think: the mother a professor at
a medical school and the father a well-to-do lawyer.
It ends with a broken man, but not the kind who understands what's wrong in his life.
Lucius’ mother walked out on him and his dad when he was
seven or eight years old. She had custody for just under two years until she
called the police on him for pushing her down the stairs repeatedly. Lucius was
immediately sent to a juvenile detainment facility, and his mother was finally
completely independent again.
The father was a quite competent attorney and within 72
hours he was not only able to secure sole custody of Lucius but also a
restraining order against the mother. Despite the fact that Lucius’ mother had
single-handedly destroyed a family, he was still upset and relatively uncertain
which direction to lead his life. He was certain, however, that he wanted his
primary role to be that of a father to his darling boy.
Lucius’ father spent the next ten years trying to show his
son that despite his mother’s influence, there was indeed a great amount of
good to be found in women, and that they should be revered. Lucius ended up
being very well-raised: strongly disciplined with impeccable table manners,
eloquence, and an awareness for how he presented himself around others. He shined
his shoes and shaved every day; he was soft-spoken and always made eye contact,
and he even learned to play the piano. The day Lucius left for college (a
little late, at the age of 20), it seemed like he had overcome his rough
takeoff in life and that he had lucked out: Lucius was a bit on the short side,
but overall, he had smooth, dark blond hair, a chiseled jaw, grey eyes, and had
an appropriately-toned torso; Lucius was bursting with vitality but more
importantly, modesty as well. Dad had done the best he could and he had done
well.
When Lucius set out for college, he decided on moving out of
Los Angeles and to try his luck in Anaheim, which was not too far away. He had
a great first year: with a generally positive outlook and hard work, he ended up
with straight-As his first two semesters, as well as quite a few female
admirers. Lucius’ male classmates didn’t dislike Lucius by any means, but just
found him somewhat unapproachable because of his mildly old-school way of
carrying himself. For the exact same reason, however, Lucius caught the eye of
nearly every single female in Anaheim.
As his father had raised him, Lucius saw admirable traits in
all of the girls that pursued him, which, consequently, caused him to fall for
almost every girl he met. He was careful though, and having never had a serious
girlfriend in high school, Lucius wasn’t very comfortable jumping on the
bandwagon and taking his pick of the litter, so to speak; Lucius found a steady
girlfriend named Claire for several months, but they sadly broke up during the
summer after their first year at college.
At the beginning of his second year, Lucius felt like he
needed some more male influence in his social life, so he made a concerted effort to branch out to some of his other classmates, notably Paul. Paul was a well-dressed sophomore who carried himself with an air of confidence that made Lucius feel at ease. He told Lucius about the fraternities on campus, one of which in particular he himself had just joined. Lucius followed suit and immediately, his life fell into place: he chose to major
in physics, his new frat brothers became a tight-knit community, he discovered
the harmless pleasures of casual pot (and a pill or two every so often on the
weekends): if he had been a girl, you could say that he had let his hair down.
Speaking of girls, Lucius also found himself more and more able to relax around
women. They still admired him because he sincerely respected each and every one
of them, and he found that casual sex was not only enjoyable on many levels,
but also that it was a great way to meet people, in his eyes. In fact, there
was not a female on campus with whom he did not have a good rapport, presuming
he had met them, of course. Frankly, he had by this time slept with quite a few
of them, and had managed– to his frat brothers’ amazement– to stay friends
afterwards.
By his third year in college, Lucius had everything down to
a science: he was excelling in his classwork, however, that was kept separate
from his social life. As far as that was concerned, his frat brothers were like
his family and he had (without exaggeration) about a dozen and a half women on
speed-dial who he would call up from time to time for an evening of mutual
entertainment. Casual sex was as acceptable in college as midnight snacks.
Later that year, his priorities began to shift. Lucius
relaxed a bit with regards to his academics, and began to enjoy more and more
everything his fraternity had to offer. It wasn’t uncommon these days for
Lucius to sleep with two girls a night on the weekends. Early on in his second
semester, he got excited at the prospect of his best friend moving in to become
his roommate, and he developed a reputation among his frat brothers for being
something of a love guru.
While the world was revolving around him– thick and thin–
Lucius had found his niche. Unfortunately, he began to neglect some of his
other responsibilities: he began missing formal meetings here and there as well
as meet-ups with his friends, he frequently bailed on fraternity events so that
he could get to know some new freshman girl, and his grades began to slip (but
never below a B-average). There was one specific night, however, that would
always stand out in Lucius’ mind: it was around nine forty-five on a Friday,
and Lucius had put his phone on silent while partaking in a particularly
fruitful evening of his usual hedonism. Later that night, he had seen that he’d
missed multiple calls from his soon-to-be new roommate. He tried calling back,
but there was no answer. Lucius smiled to himself, thinking that his friend,
Greg, must have gone home with someone. Later, he would learn that his best
friend had in fact suffered from a drug overdose, and that those two phone
calls were the last contact he had tried to make with anyone.
It went from bad to worse. Towards the end of the second
semester in his third year, Lucius found out that he had accidentally
impregnated a sophomore. Being from California, Lucius assumed that she would
take the liberal approach and abort the fetus, but to his dismay, this
particular girl did not share the same values. Lucius did the only thing he
could think of; later, it would occur to him that his actions must run innately in his genes, because, just like
his mother had done so many years ago, he fled. He cut off all ties with the
girl and transferred to a school back in Los Angeles to finish his last three
semesters of college. He convinced his father that UCLA was a more logical
choice to finish his degree because of post-graduate employment rates, and he
was even crafty enough to leave a trail that he had in fact transferred to an
out-of state school.
Within the following years, Lucius tried his best to tame
his hound dog-like nature, and he even started dating girls seriously. Down the
road a bit, Lucius had proudly dated a model long-term, and when that didn’t
work out, he got together for some time with a quick-on-her-feet California
transplant who spoke with a lovely, yet subtle southern accent.
Today, Lucius is twenty-six years old and on the rare occasion that he spends a night alone, he thinks about Greg and wonders how things could have been
different.
Once in a while, he even contemplates that like mother, like child, Lucius had walked out on his son. They will never meet.
