I think this is the saddest thing I've ever written. ._.
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Celebrity Passion
Mindy didn’t particularly like Paul. He wasn’t polite or kindhearted, passionate, or even handsome. In fact, he was quite boorish, selfish, and nasty – downright decrepit with his sagging rolls of fat and skin, his sunken eyes, his rampaging uni-brow, his bulbous nose, and his sallow complexion. He spent all day lazing about the house, lounging on his beloved couch, a tatty and faded floral affair with broken springs and cushions smothered into submission.
Now, Mindy knew she wasn’t any particular beauty herself – she could admit that her hair was brittle and coarse, not at all the silky smooth sheen the women all had in shampoo commercials. She could also admit that she was slightly more than overweight, and that she really should stop her constant snacking. She could even admit that her face was quite plain with its pinched and narrow lips always seeming to frown, the too-wide forehead, the protruding mountain of a nose, and heavy-lidded eyes that darted suspiciously everywhere. No, she was no real beauty, but she liked to think that she was a very reasonable human being with a wonderful personality, if only people would get to know her.
Unfortunately, the only person who had ever bothered getting to know her was that good-for-nothing Paul, and, even then, Mindy wasn’t sure her husband knew her all that well. How else could he always be so inconsiderate of her? Really, if she hadn’t been as reasonable and good-natured a woman as she was, Mindy swore that she would have thrown the man and his harlot couch out of the house a long time ago.
As she munched on another spoonful of granola, her thirty-second if her count was right, Mindy wondered why she wasn’t kicking him out right now. He was a nuisance, a waste of space. He never did any work around the house, he ran up the cable bill, and he didn’t even have a paycheck most months because he’d gotten fired or laid off or quit for whatever stupid reason. He never had a kind word for her, never the slightest bit of consideration for her feelings. He took her for granted, and Mindy bet herself that without her, her good-for-nothing husband would probably die of starvation. About the only redeeming quality Paul had was that he never, ever hit her – and that he was always happy to talk with her about celebrities.
It was how they’d met, actually. She’d overheard him talking to some guy friends about Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and John Travolta – or trying to talk, that is. The other guys had kept brushing him off. “You sound just like my girl,” one had joked, but Paul had just kept on going about how the key to identifying Johnny Depp was his eyes until one of the other guys had glared at him and said, “Just shut the hell up, fag,” then left. The other guys had followed, leaving Paul at the table all by himself.
Mindy knew what that felt like. She knew it all too well. Everyone was always telling her:
“Mindy, grow up already!”
“Mindy, you’re obsessed.”
“Mindy, just shut up.”
So she did, and after that, she never could gather up her shattered courage to talk to them again.
Seeing someone else in the same situation had filled Mindy with the terrible hope that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t alone in the world, and before she could even think about it, Mindy had seated herself across from Paul and asked, “So how do you know it’s Johnny Depp just by looking at his eyes?” She knew the answer already, but that didn’t matter; for the first time in too long a time, Mindy could talk to someone about celebrities to her heart’s content.
And talk they did. They talked and talked and talked about celebrities until a security guard came and told them that the mall was closed, had been for at least an hour. Mindy and Paul both marveled at how fast the time had flown; normally the day dragged on for the both of them, time taking sick pleasure in drawing the day out in a torturous crawl. Before they went their separate ways, they exchanged names and phone numbers, hastily scribbled on a pair of loose napkins, and set up a time for Paul to call Mindy.
That night, Paul called an hour earlier than planned, but Mindy had been camped by the phone from the moment she had gotten home and quite happily resumed their earlier conversation about whether or not Dudley Moore was really a drunk. They talked into the wee hours of the morning about anything and everything, celebrity fact and celebrity fiction, until there was nothing new to talk about, no topic yet untouched, until they started talking about everything from the very beginning all over again.
It was just the first of many such phone calls and meetings at the mall.
She remembered the day he had proposed. They had just finished arguing about how many surgeries Michael Jackson had really had when, completely out of the blue, Paul had said her name in the most solemn and serious voice she had ever heard.
“Yeah, Paul?” she had asked, looking at him sidelong, ready to bolt if he suddenly went psycho on her.
“I’ve been thinking... Will you marry me?”
Just like that. Completely out of the blue. He didn’t even have a ring. Mindy couldn’t help but smile as she remembered how flattered and flabbergasted she’d been at that moment. She’d said yes, of course, once she’d picked her jaw off the ground, and for once in her life, she’d been happy – really, truly, tickled-pink-to-the-tips-of-your-toes happy. She’d felt wanted and appreciated, she’d felt loved, and she’d fallen in love for the first time in her life.
Thinking back on it, the wedding was terrible; they couldn’t afford anything more than a simple ceremony in the local church, and they’d barely had enough to rent the tuxedo and wedding gown. They’d honeymooned in a cheap motel off the interstate in a room so dilapidated that the ceiling had a pronounced sag over the bed, and the sole, naked bulb in the room was burnt out. They hadn’t cared then, and in the dim light, it was easy for Mindy to pretend that Paul was Harrison Ford or Clint Eastwood, and that she was Jane Fonda or Meryl Streep or Bo Derek or Cher or even Madonna.
It wasn’t so easy to pretend anymore.
Mindy looked at Paul from where she stood in the kitchen. All she could see of him over the back of the ragged couch was his bloated upper arm. It rose and fell like a giant whale with his every snore. It annoyed her. He annoyed her. Still...
Still, he was the only person who’d bothered getting to know her, and he was the only person she could talk to about celebrities. Besides, they’d been married for more than twenty years. It’d be silly to kick him out just because his snoring irritated her, and Mindy was most definitely not silly; she was a very reasonable human being, and, being reasonable, she’d persuade her husband to go out and get a job and generally stop being a useless piece of nuisance. Yes, that was exactly what she’d do.
But before that, she had to work off all the granola she’d eaten (fifty-two whole baby spoonfuls) and read her tabloids.
Then she would talk to Paul.
The thing you might have to worry about here is that Paul seems rather demonised. From a first person point of view, that's easily excusable, because narrators are biased, but here it comes off rather strange.