There he waits,
the Nice Guy,
looking academic
and out of reach
in his tweed.
There's something
feminine in the way
he crosses his legs,
draping right over left in the fainting chair.
There you are, across from
him, at this party your
roommate dragged you to.
And you ask how he is.
He ushers you to his chair.
Sit down, sit down. I insist.
You know, he says. Most people
would tell you they're good or just fine.
The Nice Guy reassures you he is
not most people. He's a Nice Guy;
he's down with feminism, waves
One through Three.
He has a dog named Atticus.
They frequent open-air bars
in the summer.
He's a Nice Guy, an old soul,
someone who should have been
a young man in the 60s.
God, he has so many female friends
he tells you, leaning on the banister,
sipping on Glenfiddich.
You wonder how he is. This was your question.
He has so many female friends. Notice
how I'm stressing the word friends, he says.
I do, you say.
He's a Nice Guy and all these female friends
they're all the same. They love the bad boys,
the rich snobs, the ******* jocks.
I don't, you say.
Oh, sure you do, he Nice Guy-splains to you.
And there's a golden light coming from the chandelier
behind him, and he looks so holy and pure as he tells
you how one day Tara, Sam, Whitney, and Amber
will wake the **** up and realize just what they're missing.
But by then, this Nice Guy will have rambled on. He'll become
someone's second husband. A Good Woman will see how precious, how rare this Nice Guy truly is.
Okay, you say.
Prove me wrong, the Nice Guy says. He leans in closer.
You can smell the scotch. Prove me wrong.