The Phase, con't.  
   

Rosa said, “If you date three people with the same profession, it’s called a trifecta.”

Rosa felt nervous around her last boyfriend so she drank a lot at a party. She slipped backwards and fell. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Rosa got drunk and when her boyfriend walked her home she would growl at passersby on the street because “that is how animals say hello to each other.” She also lifted up her skirt and flashed her underwear to everyone having dinner at Delfina.

Rosa’s boyfriend told her it wasn’t funny. She said no, it was funny. He said no it really wasn’t funny. They broke up.

Rosa got so drunk one night she booty called three separate men to come over and fell asleep before anyone arrived. There were a lot of nasty messages on her answering machine the next day, one of which was from a very cute boy who stuttered.

Rosa kept a detailed spreadsheet on her computer about her conquests. The fields were: love, age, how they met, their profession, flowers, and dinner. There was also an empty space for “miscellaneous.”

Rosa met a man in LA who said he had won the lottery. She went back to his place and he showed her his financial records.

On Rosa’s thirtieth birthday, she tried to have a ménage à trois with an Australian and an Englishman. But it just ended up sounding like a bad bar joke.

Rosa occasionally stole people’s hats, glasses and knickknacks. She stole a black bondage bracelet with spikes from a party in Los Angeles.

After she gave notice at her job, her co-worker said, “Now we can have that affair we’ve always been hinting at.” Rosa replied, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Rosa got so drunk one night she booty called three separate men to come over
and fell asleep before anyone arrived.

Rosa dated six men in a row that were all impotent. Her friend told her she wished she had that power over men.

Rosa tried to steal a pair of glasses off of a man dressed as a gynecologist on Halloween. He kept saying, “They are prescription, not part of the costume.” This pissed her off worse so she kicked him in the shins. Later she said he got what he deserved dressing up as a gynecologist. When friends questioned why she acted this way, she said, “He should of given me what I wanted the first time I asked.”

Rosa went to the famous writer’s third wedding and his German publisher said, “ I am going to ask an unpopular question. Why didn’t he marry you?” Rosa shrugged her shoulders in her evening gown.

Time passed and now she refers to this as “The Phase.” And when she thinks about her life it seems foreign, like someone else met all of those people. None of them are in her life anymore – instead they are like characters in a novel. When they fall from Rosa’s imagination, they return to simple paper and words.
  Erin Jourdan is a writer based in San Francisco. Her short stories, poetry and cultural criticism have been widely published in such magazines as Kitchen Sink, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rhino and Copper Nickel. She has started a blog of musings at eriniajourdanski.blogspot.com.
   
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