We were just sitting around lounging on a saturday afternoon, me and betty. no makeup on and she was still a lovely creature. i adored her, and it scared me a little bit because i had not felt this way about anyone else in a long while. she had always been hesitant, because of my past and i didn't really blame her much.

i was on the computer shooting out emails when me friend janine IMed me about my friend Chris whom she had met a few weeks prior. i introduced them at a party and they kinda just hit it off, me being the middle man and all.

i met chris in a figure painting class about a year ago. he had a six month vegetation growing on his face and didn't smell fantastic. he loved bukowski, hemingway, and thompson so we were soon close friends.

i met janine at a meeting about a magazine she was trying to start up. she was cute and rambunctious, challenging at every phrase. a rare wit in a sea of dead fish and we soon became good friends.

i should have really figured that the two of them would hit it off because they're so very much alike; dramatics, lovelorn fools just looking for trouble in all the wrong places.

the thing is though that janine has/had this boyfriend, but sometimes love and lust get complicated and things get so sticky and gelatinous that it's all kind of same block of shit in the end.

while i'm sitting there with betty, with the nice summer breeze and lazy afternoon ennui, i tell her how i feel a little bad about what has transpired since i had introduced chris and janine.

"I feel bad that she is cheating on her boyfriend. I feel like it's kind of my fault by letting them meet each other."

"You are a whore."

it wasn't quite the answer i was looking for but it was what she said. it confused me and i felt even worse. like i had done something wrong by having a conscience. i felt bad for janine's boyfriend. i felt bad for chris. i felt bad for janine. and i felt like i had done something horribly wrong on the karma scale.