As I breeze my way into the expansive inner courtyard, I can feel the eyes of the peasants burning holes into every part of my body; the ladies shooting daggers from envy-green eyes and the men peeling away my clothes ferociously in their minds to get the sweet prize held inside (not that they have much to peel away). All eyes are on me, the fairest in the land, just like I like it.


Okay. So maybe I'm not a Lady of the Court sashaying out into the castle courtyard. Maybe everyone isn't looking at me because I'm "oh-so beautiful". Maybe it's because in late October I'm only wearing a pair jean shorts that are high enough for you to see my butt cheeks, a bright-red fish-net top over a nearly see-through black lace push-up bra and teetering around on 7-inch high-heel lace-up sandals my "best" friend bought last year for me as joke. Maybe I'm only walking out of Carson Pirie Scott and into the "Greater Mall" for my Grand Entrance but at this point I'll take what I can get. After you find out your boyfriend of eight months who, by the way, you popped the "L" word to and who in turn popped your cherry has been bumping uglies with your aforementioned "best" friend for five of those eight months, you'd be in an outlandish mood too...after you cried your eyes out for two days and burned all his stuff, of course.What I needed was to be the center of attention. I needed to feel wanted and desired (or lusted for; lust works too). I figured, what better way to get that feeling than to go to the mall in the middle of the day on a Saturday dressed like a hooker?


Every time a group of guys walks past, I give them the best seductive, "come-hither" face I can muster and smile at the lewd whispers and snickers that erupt when they think I'm out of ear-shot. I get chills from the perverted sense of pride and satisfaction I feel but it all also serves a greater purpose toward my Grand Master Sl**ty Day Plan: Find a random guy, leave with him, hopefully get drunk with him, definitely hook up with him, and drown my sorrows in cheap liquor and sloppy coitus. Oh, and before you even get started I know what you're going to say: "Listen girl. Being a sl** for a day and putting yourself in danger and lowering, if not completely throwing your standards out the window is hardly a constructive way to get over a break-up." And to that I say.....SHUT UP!!!


As I'm combing the mall for prospects, I spot my hot "kinda" friend (in high school you accumulate a lot of "kinda" friends), Tony, walking with his substantially less-hot friend, Whatever-Don't-Care. He's wearing a fitted T-shirt that says "Hollister Lifeguard", and I think "he can guard my life, or any other part of me he wants, anytime." The look on his face at the sight of my outfit is priceless: somewhere between a kid in a candy store and an "Big Smile" emoticon. I think he just might be the One until I feel a big meaty presence behind me. I turn to find Brock Eckridge, football quarterback and professional meathead, presented before me like a colossal mountain of Dude. Maybe it's the way he's looking at me like a dog in heat. Maybe it's the faint smell of cigarettes and weed barely hidden under a smog layer of AXE deodorant. Maybe it's the giant "D****BAG" he's got stamped on his forehead. But whatever it is, I know that he's the One. I walk away with him and almost don't think about the broken look on Tony's face...almost.


As we walk, talk (or what a brain-dead idiot like Brock passes off as talking) and flirt, I know my plan is gonna work. I know I'll leave with him. I know I'll get drunk and probably even high with him. I know he'll take me back to his place and fondle me on the way there while I wiggle and giggle sl**tishly in the passenger seat. What I don't know is just how drunk he'll get. What I don't know is that he'll drive 70 miles an hour down a winding road in the middle of the night. I don't know that he'll lose control, that we'll go careening off the road. I don't know that when all is said and done, when the eyes are no longer looking, when the boyfriends stop cheating, when the metal stops shredding and the glass and hearts and bones stop breaking, the passenger side will take the most damage.