4/7 (Lucius)

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.