I suspect he had been getting laid, which is all I think he needed.

One of the things I used to do in between classes during my first two years was meet some friends in the smoking lounge in-between (and often during) one of my classes and play the card game Magic: The Gathering.

It was a much needed source of stress relief. We all took it fairly lightly. We owned a few decks and some extra cards, we had fun with it, we enjoying beating the hell out of each other. We had lives. Two of us were happily married. Two of us were veterans. A third was in a committed relationship with a totally hot but completely psycho woman, so the sex compensated for it. In other words, unlike a lot of the geeks that lived and breathed that game, we were normal. Except for Kyle.

Kyle, although he was basically a nice guy, was a high school geek who never grew up past the tenth grade. He was very overweight, his personal hygiene was lacking, his acne made him look like a Kurdish victim of Saddam’s gas attacks in 1991, and his teeth were both yellow and black, rotten to the gum from all the candy he ate, and the 2-liter of Mountain Dew that was permanently attached to his hand.

He had no social graces at all, and he owned about ten billion Magic cards. Magic was his life. He was failing all of his classes, and every day he brought a luggage stroller loaded down with six inch thick card binders. He probably brought 5,000 cards to school on any given day, but he almost never brought his books with him. The rest of us would occasionally lose track of time and miss some or all of a class, but I think Kyle honestly thought the campus was erected to give him a place to play Magic.

When talk turned to girls or sex, Kyle always got real quiet and shy, and almost never said a word. Although he never confirmed it, I had him pegged for a virgin. Our female friends that hung around always attempted to include him in our conversations about any topic, but he seemed incapable of speaking to a woman.

All that changed one day. I noticed throughout our game that he had this stupid grin on his face. I asked him what was up. He got all flushed and said “I have a girlfriend!”

“Great! Good for you!” I replied. After some probing questions, we got all the details. I was genuinely happy for him. Having been through one horrible marriage and now having been married to my second wife for a while, (the best I could ask for) I knew that behind every good man was a good woman. I was honestly thinking that this alien concept of female companionship might help Kyle grow up.

And it did. He began to dress a bit nicer. His clothes were actually washed and dried. He got a haircut and started combing his hair. His complexion cleared up some. He had some dental work done. And he wasn’t quite so immature anymore. And again, although he never confirmed it, I suspect he had been getting laid, which is all I think he needed. (Hell, that is the solution for 99% of the assholes out there. People who get laid on a regular basis are generally happy people.)

A month or two later, his girlfriend came by campus, and I got to meet her. I had to repress a shudder and a scream when I met her, as she was horribly ugly. I won’t go into details, but I will say this: Ugly people need lovin’ too, and Kyle wasn’t going to do much better than a rabid wildebeest anyway. (But DAMN - I don't care how drunk I was - no way could I go to bed with that girl!) She seemed nice enough though, and she did seem to care about him.

Several months later we sat down to play a hand of cards, and Kyle was quite obviously depressed. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me (and the rest of us at the table) that his girlfriend dumped him.

I asked what happened. “She left me for someone else”, he replied morosely.

“Another dude? Damn man, that sucks. Keep your chin up – you’ll find someone else.” I wasn’t sure how, but I figured if he found one girlfriend, he could find another.

That’s when Kyle dropped the bomb. “No man, she didn’t leave me for another man, she left me for another woman.”

I lost it.

I began laughing so hard that I strained a muscle in my chest and damn near wet myself. I actually began crying and fell out of my chair. The rest of our friends were laughing and giggling as well, but I think only because I started it.

I told him “Damn man! Have some pride! How bad were you that she left you for a woman? You turned her off on men for all time! Don’t ever tell anyone else that!” Then I laughed some more.

In retrospect, I feel badly. After all, it was his first real girlfriend (as far as we knew) and he did have tears in his eyes when I started in on him. He got fat and slovenly again, and he started hitting the Mountain Dew pretty hard again. (Jeez, have a beer already!) He dropped out of school shortly after that to play Magic full time a couple months later.

He had some crazy dream about becoming one of the top five players in the world and somehow getting paid to play cards. I always wondered if he ever picked up another fat and ugly girlfriend or not.