anna29

Part 9, the Men
By Anna

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.
Just one look and I can hear a bell ring.
One more look and I forget everything.
Oh-oh.

Listening to it again, Chandler started to wonder. Could it be that Monica
would one day come around and come back to him, like he hoped she would? The
person in the song got his or her loved one back, but would Chandler be as
lucky? And if he wasn't, would he be able to let her go?