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Looking back, I didn't think she was much to begin with, just an average face in the crowd in the busy hallways of college. Sure, she was attractive, she was tall and lean and she had long blonde hair and those big blue eyes. But she just started off as some girl.
People talked about her a lot, and once I could put a face to the name I started to listen. Oh, she had a reputation for sure, it wasn't so bad, people were mainly intrigued, but she sure did have her share of haters. Then again, who doesn't?
Nobody ever called her a 'slut', it wasn't the right word and she certainly wasn't easy. No, far from it, she was difficult to the very end, but she was experimental.
"She's a bad girl."
Apparently she'd broken some hearts, and I could understand why, she was entirely disillusioned by monogamy, probably by love itself. Love them and leave them, that kind of type. She didn't connect, she didn't stay, she just kept moving.
Initially, we were casual acquaintances, the kind for coffee here and there and the promise of standard essay deadline discussions. I never pried into her life, no matter how much I wanted to, and only once did she let on she knew how much I wanted to ask.
"I'm not about to judge you, if you don't judge me."
Needless to say, she was intelligent, the type of girl who was calculating and smart. Perceptive and watchful to a fault and her eyes were piercing blue, always focussed, always waiting. Bluntly honest, too.
"I don't play mind games, at least not anymore. Nobody wins."
I knew it was a bad idea from the start, but I wanted to know more, I wanted to understand. I wanted to be part of what she was supplying. I wanted to slip into her world, feel what she felt. Maybe that was impossible, all I know is I never achieved it. I just got pulled in, with no sense of direction.
"I've never 'made love' to anybody, buddy, but I sure know how to fuck."
Contrary to popular cynicism, there's a direct difference between making love and fucking, and if you were ever so blessed, or cursed, to have spent a night with her – you'd know the very definition of fuck. It was rough, unpredictable and sometimes insane, maybe the best I'll ever have, but it was isolating.
She said once that I was the only person she'd slept with more than once. Maybe that was because we were friends first, maybe not. I liked to think sometimes that maybe it was because I was special But I wasn't.
"I can't promise you I'll be good to you, in fact, I know I won't be."
Admittedly, I fell hard and I never quite got back up. I begged her to stay, to keep coming back, even though she warned me I'd be hurt. I didn't care. I preferred the disappearing, the forgotten phone calls and the nights of loneliness, over not having her at all.
I could have loved her, I might have, but I never admitted it to anyone, certainly not myself. I never kissed her, I never put my arms around her, I never offered her coffee in the morning and I never gave her my t-shirt to sleep in. No, you don't make connections with Helga G. Pataki.
Because she's never there to stay.
A/N: Random? Just popped into my head listening to the song "Bad" by Wale and Tiara Thomas.
Overall, just a view of Helga as a college student had things with Arnold come to nothing. Maybe, for example, if he left for the Jungle during their teen years and never returned.
Narrator is just some random college guy, not a Hey Arnold character.