Part 9, The Men

By Anna

[email protected]

Monica’s last words to him before she left the kitchen had kept Chandler on

cloud nine for two days. To him it was a sign that she still saw him as her

boyfriend. His illusion was shattered that weekend.

A neighbour to Phoebe’s mother was throwing his daughter a birthday party,

and all the people in the neighbourhood had been invited. Phoebe had

accepted the invitation for all of them, hoping that a night out would do

them all good.

She and the guys left early, brining over the bouquet of yellow tulips that

they were going to give to the birthday girl. The guys were dressed casual,

and so was Phoebe. It had seemed to be a good choice, most of the guests

were dressed casually as well.

Rachel arrived about an hour after the others, holding Don by the arm, and

apparently not planning on letting him go. Rachel was pleased with having a

reason to dress up, so she’d almost gone over the top, dressing up as if for

a big party. Don was more casual.

"Hey Rach, hey Don…" Chandler greeted them when they came up to him, by the

table with food and drinks.

"Hi…" Rachel greeted him back.

"So, is Mon with you?" Chandler asked, hoping that she’d get there soon. He

was planning on getting the first dance with her.

"I don’t know, I haven’t seen her" Rachel said, grabbing a glass of punch

and leaving the table, dragging Don along.

Chandler looked around the room, searching for Monica. He didn’t find her

for over five minutes, and when he did he saw that the first dance was

already taken. Monica was dancing with some blond, tanned guy.

Despite the fact that she was enjoying herself with another man, Chandler

couldn’t help but smile when he saw her. For the first time since the

accident she had put her hair up, even if it was only in a pony tail. And

she wore a new dress that went well with her new tan. Chandler wondered how

long it would take before Rachel would take the dress to her own closet.

They were dancing to a song that Chandler recognized, and he knew it was

drawing towards it’s end so he started making his way towards Monica, to ask

her for the next dance. When he was halfway there, she got offered the same

thing from another man, and she happily accepted.

Chandler stopped in his tracks, not knowing what to make of that. He

swallowed hard, and tried to tell himself that it was great that she was

enjoying herself. The past year hadn’t been very fun for her, and he wanted

her to have this night as sort of a remedy.

But when he constantly saw her dancing with different men, he started to

wonder. And he started to feel less considerate. This wasn’t like her at

all, dancing each dance with a different man. But he still felt thankful

that she hadn’t stuck to one guy throughout the night. As long as she

changed partners after every dance, he could still tell himself that she was

only out to have a good time, and to dance and socialise.

He took a closer look at her when she started dancing with yet another man.

The dress she was wearing was not something the old Monica would have worn,

at least not the Monica before he started going out with her. The dress

didn’t even reach her knees, and it had never been Monica’s style to show

allot of skin. She used to say that she would feel like she was on display.

Chandler shrugged off the thought that had entered his mind for a second,

the thought that maybe she was dressed the way she was to attract men. He

took yet another close look at it, and thought that even if it was armless

she still had a minimal v-neck. He watched her leave her current dance

partner to go get a drink.

"Hey hon, are you having a good time?" he asked, pretending to just be

running in to her at the table, trying to sound casual and not as if he’d

been watching her every move for a couple of hours.

"So, so" she answered, seeming almost a bit bored.

"Not better?" Chandler asked. "Well do you want a dance?"

He smiled at her and extended his left hand to her. She looked at him for a

second, trying to think of a way to let him down easily.

"No, thanks, I’m okay" she finally said, unable to think of anything better.

She had a dozen nasty replies on her lips, but they died there. Somehow she

didn’t feel like being rude to him, something deep down inside of her told

her that it was not his fault that she had no interest in him.

"Oh… okay…" Chandler said, shrugging his shoulders, as if it was no big

deal.

Monica gave him a quick smile and hurried off to find the guy she’d danced

with last. She wanted to leave, to get away from his gaze. She found the guy

and took him with her outside.

She returned in the morning.

Chandler was waiting for her in the living room, having gone up early to see

if she’d come home yet. She hadn’t when he fell asleep at three, but he

hoped she had come back soon after that. But it wasn’t until nine that she

showed up, and the others were all outside, swimming.

He watched her enter the house, her light apricot dress wrinkly. He tried to

shut out the idea of what she had been up to all night.

"Hi" he said, trying to sound casual again.

"Hey" she said, barely bothering to look at him.

"So… When did you take off last night?" he asked, even though he knew

exactly when she’d taken off.

"Don’t know" Monica lied, shrugging her shoulders. "Look, this cat-and-mouse

game is not for me, if you have anything to say to me than just say it.

Otherwise I’ll be upstairs, I need a shower."

Chandler didn’t say a thing, he just watched her go up the stairs. He felt

heartbroken, and wondered if he was a fool to cling so desperately on to

something that was so clearly slipping away from him.

The same scenario happened three times that week. And just as many times the

next. Chandler had no idea what Monica did on her nights out, but he heard

several rumours that she spent them with men.

Joey sat down with him one night while she was away again, trying to talk

some sense into him.

"Chandler. Talk to Monica" he said. "You can’t just let it be like this.

TALK to her! She’s confused right now, and this new path she’s taken is not

healthy."

"Just tell me what to do, Joe" Chandler said. "Tell me what to say, tell me

how to act, tell me what I need to do to fix this… anything at all, and I

will do it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do, nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice.

Not if I could get my old girlfriend back."

"You’re sacrificing your own sanity" Joey said. "You’re, you’re hanging on

to something that’s doomed unless you do something more productive about

it."

"I’ve tried everything, nothing works" Chandler said, disagreeing with Joey.

"Oh yeah?" Joey decided that he needed to be straightforward with Chandler,

even if the truth would hurt him. And Joey had no doubt that it would.

"Listen to me, Chandler… Monica is NOT like she was, we all know it, so why

do you keep going on pretending that she is? You can’t, you just can’t allow

yourself to react to what she does as if she would have done it before the

accident, because we all know that there’s a different back story now." Joey

paused for a second, letting his words sink in before he came to the hard

part. "Chandler you are my friend, and so is Monica. And because I love you

guys I feel that it’s up to me to tell you the truth, Chandler. And the

truth is that Monica is taking advantage of you. She can treat you any damn

way she wants to, and she knows it, and she does it. She knows she can get

away with it as well as I do, because you’re so madly in love with her that

you forgive every single thing she does! Do yourself a favour and let her

go, push her away. I know you can’t help her that way, but push her away as

your girlfriend, try to look at her as simply a friend. That’s all you can

do for her, man! How many of these men that she’s been with do you think

she’s followed home, just to hurt you, huh?"

"STOP IT!" Chandler yelled, flying to his feet. "Stop it, just shut up,

that’s a LIE!"

He stormed off, hating Joey at that moment. Joey’s words had hit bull’s-eye,

and Chandler knew it painfully well. That’s why he couldn’t bare to hear

what else Joey had in stall for him.

But Chandler wasn’t the only one who’d heard Joey talk. Monica had thought

the better of spending the night out, and returned just in time to hear Joey

say that she took advantage of Chandler. Now she stormed inside, furious.

"JOEY!" she yelled, throwing her denim jacket on the couch. "How DARE you?

How can you throw out stuff like that, badmouthing me?"

"Monica, what--" Joey began, but Monica had no intention of letting him take

part in the conversation.

"The next time you decide to tell the world what a horrible human being I

am, remember that the front door is open!" she yelled, extremely mad at her

so called friend. "I thought you were my friend, you’re nothing but a

backstabbing, lying idiot!"

She didn’t wait for an answer, storming up the stairs. As far as she was

concerned, Joey Tribbiani was no longer a friend.

She slammed the door to her room shut, and threw herself on the bed, crying

bitterly. She had thought of Joey as a friend, but he was nothing but a

phoney, who ganged up on her, just like everyone else.

She remembered to go and lock her door, before she fell back on her bed,

continuing to cry. She felt so bitterly disappointed, Joey had thrown away

all of her trust and all of her faith without a second thought. As far as

she was concerned, he might as well be dead. He didn’t exist in her world

anymore.

When she thought about Chandler, and his reaction, she just got more upset

instead of feeling better. He had defended her with his words and his

actions, but she had clearly seen that he agreed with Joey. He was just too

scared to admit it, and in Monica’s eyes that made him into a major

hypocrite. She wondered how the woman she was before the accident had ever

been stupid enough to go out with him.

Monica sat up in bed two days later, slowly, not to wake up the man that was

with her. She had met him the night before, down at the beach, and had ended

up spending the night in his company. She didn’t feel like staying one more

minute.

She got out of bed, slowly. She wanted to leave before he woke up, she

didn’t want to feel obligated to spend some time with him this morning.

She got dressed, quietly. She also wanted to get home early, to avoid her so

called friends. They probably saw her as a slut, but the truth was that she

rarely slept with the men she spent her nights with. Mostly she sat up with

them all night, listening to boring monologues about their lives. To avoid

revealing that she had no memory of her own, she always pretended that she

didn’t like to talk about herself. And that was usually fine with the men,

they had no problems talking on and on about themselves.

This time though, she had gotten into bed with the man she had followed

home. She had not been looking for a long conversation, not even for sex.

All she had been looking for was to get away from her brother and the other

people who stayed at that beach house. She felt hostile around them, having

avoided both Joey and Chandler since the incident when she overheard them

talking. At least Joey knew why, poor Chandler didn’t have a clue.

Monica took one last look on the man in the bed, and wondered if the night

had been good. She hadn’t cared, she had just been looking for a chance to

get away. And the man, she didn’t know his name, had shown full respect for

her two demands. No alcohol or drugs, and always a condom. She had a vague

memory about something with HIV, although the fear that she had it herself

was gone by now. If that were true, the doctors would have said something by

now. But the distant memory was enough to make her very careful with all the

men she met, and she never touched a drink that she hadn’t had full control

over. She didn’t want to end up drugged.

She snuck out, managing to keep her male company of the night asleep, and

decided to walk home, even though it was a chilly morning. It was only six

o’clock, but she wanted to clear her head a bit.

She had known that some things that Joey had said had been true. She was not

the same Monica that the others had known, she was not Chandler’s girlfriend

anymore. But there was one thing that Joey had been mistaking about. She

hadn’t done a thing to just hurt Chandler.

Part of her hated him. She felt like he was something that was forced upon

her. But she respected him, respected him for standing up for her. And she

would never sink so low as to sleeping with other men just to hurt him. She

was neither a slut nor vengeful. And she despised all of them for thinking

that all of her actions had something to do with them. She did what she

wanted to do, and there was nothing else to it. She couldn’t care less what

they thought of her, she couldn’t care less what they did.

It took her over an hour to get back, but nobody was up yet when she came

back home. She was thankful for that. Instead of taking a shower and risking

to wake someone up, she grabbed a towel and went to take a swim in the

ocean. When she came back they were all still asleep.

She lay down on her bed, with a towel on the pillow to keep her hair from

wetting it. She felt like she wanted to cry, she was surrounded by people

who judged her and demanded things from her, things she couldn’t give them.

‘How could I ever have hung out with these people?’ she asked herself,

staring on the wall. The situation got her thinking of a line from a song

that she had probably once loved.

One of us is crying.

One of us is lying.

In a lonely bed.

Staring at the ceiling.

Wishing she was somewhere else instead.

She remembered the rest of the chorus as well, but she shut it out. It was a

love song and she didn’t know how to deal with that. Love was an emotion she

just couldn’t understand. Who was she supposed to love?

Ross, her brother? Her brother who apparently saw her as a labile wreck, saw

her as a person who couldn’t be trusted.

Phoebe? The friend who didn’t ask much, but couldn’t seem to understand that

she wasn’t the same Monica that they all remembered.

Joey? The person who she’d seen as her friend, but had turned out to think

just as low thoughts about her as the rest of them.

Rachel? Her so-called best friend, who was more interested in her boyfriend

than in her old friend’s recovery, the person who didn’t have any patience

with her.

Or Chandler? Her so-called boyfriend, who in a way was the worst one. He

didn’t demand anything straight out, and he kept helping her out with things

left and right, but she could see in his eyes that he was disappointed in

her. And every day he wanted to know if she remembered something else. And

she couldn’t even be spiteful towards him, there was just something about

him that kept her from acting the way she wanted to. Part of her wondered if

it was the desire to keep something of the person she had once been, that

kept her from talking bad to Chandler. She felt like she owed the person she

had been, the person she had very little memory of, to be nice to Chandler.

No, Monica sure didn’t know who to love.

The group of five friends seated around the table, eating breakfast, looked

up in confusion when the sixth member of the group came down the stairs.

Monica ignored their stares. Joey asked her when she’d gotten back, she

ignored that too. She just took a glass of juice and sat down at the table,

looking through the morning paper as if the others didn’t exist.

"Uh, Mon?" Rachel finally said. "Is everything okay?"

Monica nodded and continued to read.

Chandler looked from Ross to Phoebe, asking them with his eyes to ask her

all of the questions that he wanted answers to, but didn’t dare to ask her

himself.

"So, uhm…" Ross said, harking. "Late night last night, sis?"

"No, I was asleep at one" Monica answered, not looking up and not giving any

further information.

"So, what were you up to?" Phoebe asked.

"Just a little NC-17 stuff" Monica told her, nearly causing Chandler to

choke on his sandwich. Monica looked up.

"Oh, and by the way…" she said, and rose with the paper in her hand. "It’s

pretty obvious what you’re up to, and I think Chandler is a big enough boy

to ask me himself." She stared at Chandler. "So what did you want to know?"

Chandler had had enough. He ignored her, rose and went upstairs, leaving the

rest to ask Monica whatever they wanted to know.

"Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…" Chandler whispered to

himself.

It was Friday night, and Monica had gone out for a walk. This time, when she

met a guy she’d brought him back to the house.

"Are you insane?" Phoebe has whispered to her, annoyed. "What are you doing

brining a guy here?"

"What are YOU doing questioning it?" Monica calmly replied. Then she’d told

the guy to go up to her room and wait there. As soon as he’d gone she’d

turned to her friends, angry once again.

"What, I’m not allowed to bring people here?" she asked, keeping her voice

down even though she wanted to yell.

"Look Mon, it’s not that, I just don’t think--" Phoebe had tried to defend

herself.

"Oh, sure it’s not that!" Monica had hissed back. "But when Rachel wants to

let her boyfriend stay over for the weekends nobody objects! Nobody has got

any sort of problem with it! When Joey brought home that girl two nights ago

nobody had a problem with it. It’s not until I bring somebody home that it’s

a problem!"

The others had nothing to say. They knew what she said was true, but there

was no way they could explain it to her without hurting her and making her

even more upset.

"If it were up to you guys, all I’d ever do with my life would be to sit in

my room, trying to remember things! Am I not allowed to have any fun? What

kind of friends are you?" Monica went on, nearly getting tears in her eyes.

"You all say you’re my friends, and that you want what’s best for me, but

I’m not enough of a friend for you to be happy for me when I find something

I want to do!"

"Something you want to do?" Chandler echoed. "Jumping from bed to bed is

something you want to do?"

He knew the words were a mistake the second he said them. But judging by the

look on Monica’s face it was a much bigger mistake than he’d thought.

"How DARE you accuse me of something like that?" she said, feeling

devastated. The only one who had been on her side was also now against her.

"Look, I’m sorry, I--"

"I don’t want to hear it, Chandler!" Monica said, cutting him off, feeling

hurt all the way through her soul. "Who the hell said I spend all my nights

sleeping around? Let me tell you something, I have had three guys… well,

like that… since I woke up from the coma. Three. Do you have such little

faith in the person you say you used to love more than anything, that you

immediately think she’s out sleeping with someone when she’s out all night?"

Tears were now falling down her face. "You know what _I_ think?" she said

through the tears. "I think you’re just jealous that I don’t spend any of my

nights with YOU, that you choose to see me as a tramp, rather than to look

at yourself and see if it might be because of YOU that I don’t share my

nights with you!"

After those words she stormed up the stairs, stopping right outside her

room. She decided to take a shower, that way Jim, the guy she’d brought

home, wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been crying. Though what she really

wanted was to send him home. She had lost all interest in spending the night

with someone, thanks to her friends. She hadn’t even planned on sleeping

with the guy, she just wanted some company for the evening, some company

from a person who didn’t demand anything from her.

She stepped out of the shower ten minutes later, and wondered what she

should do with the mess her life seemed to have turned into.

Two hours later Monica had apparently decided not to send Jim away. Chandler

was painfully aware of it, he could hear them if he listened for it. And he

did listen.

He sat on his bed, rocking back and fourth and biting his bottom lip again.

He just wished that he could stop listening for it, but he couldn’t. He

pressed his hands against his ears, but after a while he felt like it was

even worse that way.

Finally he couldn’t hear anything else, and he laid back in bed, sighing

deeply. This was not the worst night of his life, but it sure ranked on the

top ten. He’d never known he could hurt that way. Compared to this, all the

things he had been through with Kathy and Janice were nothing.

After about an hour he could hear sounds again, still very low, but loud

enough for him to hear. He closed his eyes in pain and felt he couldn’t

stand staying there for one more minute.

He jumped out of bed and grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt, and after

getting dressed he hurried downstairs and then outside.

It was raining outside, not very much, but enough to soothe Chandler a bit.

He couldn’t stand being inside any longer, he wasn’t totally sure what

Monica and the guy she’d brought with her were doing, but the images he saw

before him nearly drove him crazy.

He sat down on the wet sand and realized how much his own night reminded him

of a chapter from "The Mammoth Hunters". But the hurt between the couple in

that book had been because of a series of misunderstandings, and Jondalar

and Ayla had ended up back together again in the end. His own life wasn’t

nearly that simple.

But now that he was outside and away from Monica and her ‘friend’, another

thought tormented him. He kept thinking of her angry words to them earlier

that night, and he wondered if she was right. He had judged her in a split

second, because it was easier to think that she slept around than to realize

that there was something wrong with him that made her keep her distance. And

he felt ashamed over himself for actually seeing the thought of her sleeping

around as something of a relief. If she went out with tons of men he

wouldn’t have to feel replaced. But she had just told them that they had

gotten the situation wrong, and now she might never want to speak to him

again.

Chandler looked back on his life 13 months ago, and realized how simple it

had been. He’d loved Monica, she’d loved him. There had been nothing more to

it. Now his life was a big mess.

He sat outside for over an hour, didn’t go back inside until he feared he

would catch an ammonia if he stayed out any longer. He wondered if he would

be able to sit at the same table as Monica and the guy the next morning.

He didn’t have to worry, Monica didn’t come down for breakfast. She snuck

out with Jim as soon as she saw that the others had eaten. She followed Jim

a but on his way home, to get some distance from her friends. And as soon as

she returned home she went straight to her room, not even bothering to look

at the others.

"What have we done?" Chandler asked the others. "What have we done? How

could we do this to her?"

"Us? To her?" Rachel said, fed up with Monica and the whole situation. "I

think the question should be what SHE’S done to US."

"It’s not really fare, she’s--" Ross began.

"Oh, please, I am SICK of hearing that it’s not her fault!" Rachel yelled,

not caring weather or not Monica could hear her upstairs. "You can’t let her

get away with everything just because she was in an accident a YEAR ago!

>From this moment on, I am not going to have any sort of sympathy for that,

everything she does I will judge her for as if she did it before the

accident! She can’t hide all of her bad qualities behind that accident any

longer!"

Rachel had gotten to her feet during her monologue. Chandler now also rose,

and stared at her.

"You go right ahead and do that Rach, but just know that _I_ will judge YOU

for everything that you say about her. You want things to be fare? Then

fine, we’ll let them be fare. I’ll judge every single one of your comments

about the woman that I love as if you said it before the accident, when she

was her old self. THAT is fare."

Rachel stared at him, hated him at that moment. She couldn’t understand his

loyalty towards a woman who didn’t even care about him. But there was

nothing she could say or do that could make him change his mind.

A week had pasted since the night Monica brought Jim home. A week, and she

hadn’t spoken to either one of her friends during all that time. Neither had

she spent the night out, not wanting her friends to get anymore ammunition

than they already had against her.

Chandler was the one she had avoided the most, and that made him cherish the

few moments every day when he saw her. He knew it was pathetic, but he

couldn’t help it. After all that had happened, he still loved her. And he

realized for the first time, that he knew what the song "Mamma Mia", by

ABBA, was about. He had loved it when he was younger, but never really

gotten it. The past couple of days he had started to listen to it again,

understanding the lyrics better.

I’ve been cheated by you since I don’t know when.

So I made up my mind it must come to an end.

Look at me now, will I ever learn?

I don’t know how, but I suddenly loose control.

There’s a fire within my soul.

Just one look and I can hear a bell ring.

One more look and I forget everything.

Oh-oh.

Mamma Mia, here I go again.

My my, how can I resist you?

Mamma Mia, does it show again?

My my, just how much I missed you.

Yeah, it’s got me broken hearted.

Blue since the day we parted.

Why why did I ever let you go?

Mamma Mia, now I really know.

My my, I could never let you go.

I’ve been angry and sad about things that you do.

I can’t count all the times that I told you we’re through.

But when you go, when you slam the door.

I think you know, that you won’t be away too long.

You know that I’m not that strong.