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OCD Man: a love story


by Lillian Ann Slugocki


1)

The mouth is peculiar and so are the shoes. He drinks bourbon straight up during the dog days. Everyone else at the bar drinks gin and tonic, cold beer.  They play the juke box. They play pool.  Getting ready to sing karaoke. Everybody knows everybody. But OCD man sits, alone, white lace up sneakers, scrolling through his hand held. The sweat on his neck pools around his gold chains.  He's trying to talk to a woman sitting next to him, but it's her birthday, and he isn't having much luck.  He has to come up with a different plan.

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(2)

She wasn't expecting much when he kissed her outside the bar, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. She knew her friends were watching because he's OCD man.  He washes his hands every fifteen minutes.  He performs like a wind-up toy.  Knows the square root of any number.  All the stats on the Yankees and the Mets. Makes money as a realtor but plays in a rock and roll band. So when he leaned over and said--

Time for your birthday kiss

--She was just drunk enough to say yes.  And follow him out the door. Expected nothing, but a laugh. Maybe a story to tell the next day. But he really knew how to move his peculiar mouth and his peculiar tongue.  She felt it in the roots of her hair, in her nipples, his hands wrapped around her waist, then her neck. Jesus Christ OCD man knows how to kiss a woman. And she kissed him back.

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