Guy Jacobs

As soon as the hour struck Eleven, Manny became certain about altering his original intentions. Now that all drink specials were no longer available and most of those bottles of imported beer were artificially inflated back to $4.75, there was nothing to do but reassess the situation. He looked around at the women who gathered around that long wooden bar, they appeared as beautiful as a garden of impossibility. One of them in particular had his attention, Leslie Spearman from his Introduction to Meteorology class.

Leslie was nothing like those who surrounded her. She did not seem to have that idiotic way about her. While her friends crowded around those boisterous fraternity boys like grass-chewing sheep, she looked around the rooms with a wondrous eye.

Manny thought about approaching. He was never one to back away from a fight. As he came closer he overhead Leslie's best friend Heather verbalize the following words: "So I went over there and she was like, O my God, and I was like whatever…" Grass chewing sheep should do better than that, Manny thought to him self. Or at least he was hopeful that such was the case.

So now that beers were out of budget and love was out of the realm of possibilities, there was no choice for Manny but to become a thief. Yes, a thief I said, the kind that stole money away from unsuspecting victims, the kind that went home with the funds of those unsuspecting kinds. But then again, that was not exactly true. Manny was not any common form of a thief but rather a Robin Hood type. He only stole from those who deserved to be taken advantage of. He only stole from those who brought harm to the world. He only stole from women. Not all women but only those women who ruined the English language on a daily basis.

For every Heather and Stacey and Brittney and Brianna who mouthed off such words as "and I was like", "and I said like whatever" and "and I was like so embarrassed that I was like no way", there was a hard earned dollar to be stolen, revenge to be taken in the name of the largely under-funded English Department.

Manny loved the works of Hemingway and William Faulkner. He adored those inspired novels that were written by Tolstoy and the likes of Celine. When he bothered to share this fondness for books with his victims, they would display an listless eye.

Luckily Jack came around with another round. Jack was always generous in that way. Cheap American beer, but hey, Manny was no snob. Armed with his selected weapons of war, he stumbled upon the dance floor ready to engage any willing woman whose loneliness gave away to the lure of alcohol and of a late Saturday night.

Not a minute later, he held on to a stranger's outer thigh. Her name was Jane. She was a simple Jane, of that he had no doubt. She rubbed across his body absent-minded of his rising cock. Her hand across his shoulders, he reached into her back pocket and withdrew a few paper bills from that deep crevice of her soft textile. Manny did not care how much was taken as long as it was taken.

After he laid a soft kiss upon her narrow lip, Manny took Plain Jane by the hand and offered to buy her a drink. Luckily he stole enough to cover its cost.

The next morning, with a headache, Manny woke up in a stranger's bed. It was always hard to be a man in America. With so many sheep chewing grass and walking around shopping malls, there was not much more to look forward to. Or at least that was what Manny thought to himself a few months before he met Amanda.