|
March
19 / Austin, Texas
Holding
your beer cup above your head, you slide into the crowd at
Liberty Lunch. It has been one year since you met him. You
do not understand how this can be possible, but as you are
here again, back in Texas, at South by Southwest, a year must
have passed. The pain is gone and if you close your eyes and
give in to the low, sexy throb of the music, you cannot remember
the odd shape of his chin.
You
are proud you came back here, to the place you met. There
is no more healing due; Texas was the last thing to prove.
Your girlfriend finds you, hands you a cigarette and you take
it, light it, nursing your beer. Twenty-eight is not that
old. You are in no hurry. There is still time.
February
20 / Lost & Found
Driving
toward 38th Avenue at sunset, cruising up and down
the gentle hills of San Francisco in your new Honda Civic,
you are assaulted by the sudden, pained beauty of the sun
on the ocean. You pull over. Marveling, wondrous, you do not
know you are weeping until you taste salt. The setting sun
warms your face and you begin to laugh, not because you are
crazy, but because you are happy. Your hard work has paid
off: somewhere in the middle of all that pain, you found yourself
again. You take a deep breath and are relieved to find it
does not hurt. You exhale, and think you might be ready to
start again, to allow yourself to have ideas about things,
to dream. And while you are not quite ready to have good memories
of the past, you think it might be okay to make plans for
the future; you are certain there will be one.
You
drive on toward your friend’s house, where there will be a
barbecue and many new faces. People will laugh, and you will
laugh with them. You smile. You are not afraid.
February
14 / Silence
You
have not spoken with him for weeks. On television, in the
movies, you hear people say things like: it’s been two
months, three weeks and twelve days since he left me.
You try to fill in the gaps, the lost spaces between memories,
and give an accurate count of the time that has passed, but
you cannot. For so long, you knew the exact minute, the very
second. Now all you can do is shrug and say: I guess it’s
been about five months, but I don’t really know offhand.
January
30 / Sex
An
old friend visits from out of town. He was divorced last year
and has not recovered. His depression, running so deep he
can no longer see it, both attracts and repels you. You sit
with him in your kitchen and chase tequila with Tecate, taking
turns reciting the stories of your respective losses. By now,
you know yours by heart. The cadence here, a pause there,
a dangling ellipse… His story is not special enough to be
interesting.
Hours
go by. You find yourself hypnotized by his dehydrating self-pity:
his ex-wife, his badly managed affair, the pain
and the pain and the pain. You do not take up
his shyly offered allusions to failed suicide attempts, but
you do take another drink, and another, and you stop listening
to what he says and instead watch his large, soft lips form
words his dead eyes don’t echo, and wonder if he is still
as good of a lover as he was in high school.
Later
that night you fuck him, then fall asleep, unfulfilled and
angry. The next morning, he has trouble looking at you. You
make stilted conversation until it is time to go to the airport
and wonder if you will ever talk to him again.
January
22 / The Crack in the Landscape
One
day, you receive another envelope and remember, as you take
it from the mailbox, that this will be the last check he sends
you. After today, his debt will be paid.
You
manage to wait until you are upstairs, inside your apartment,
coat hung and minor chores taken care of, before you open
the envelope. Inside, behind that last check, is a picture
clipped from a magazine.
A
man without a face and a woman with brown hair stand in an
empty gallery, ten feet apart, in front of a slide projected
on the blank wall of a barren landscape marred by an enormous
crack in the earth. The man, hands in his pockets, regards
the woman, who—hands clasped before her—stares at another,
emptier wall.
You
move closer to the light to read his spiky writing: I hope
this picture isn’t annoying—it just seems inappropriate to
send a mere check for my final payment. I won’t forget you,
and what we had. Take care.
You
don’t know it yet, but this will be the last contact you have
with him.
December
25 / Christmas
The
empty space next to you doesn’t hurt nearly as much as you
had supposed it would.
December
23 / Going Home
You
make the long drive to LA in a trance, listening to music
that transports you back to who you used to be: the soundtrack
to Les Miserables that you listened to in high school
until you knew every word, every intonation; the Janis Ian
tape you used cry to while you drank Boone’s Farm alone in
your Camaro; the Suzanne Vega album you and your best friend
sang to while you drove through the canyons in the sunlight.
You remember what it was like to be you, ten years ago, it
this other place. It was not as bad as you thought it was.
You were happy, although you don’t remember ever feeling that
way at the time.
When
you arrive, you are surprised to find you haven’t thought
about him once, in seven hours of driving, and you are pleased.
December
20 / His Birthday
Even
though he has left you, it is still his birthday. At least
it is a Saturday: you will not have to pretend to be happy
today.
You
wake up and make a hearty breakfast: eggs and toast and bacon.
You sit in front of the television with your eyes glazed over,
the uneaten food on a tray by your feet, a half-smoked cigarette
dangling from your bottom lip, and watch Fast Times at Ridgemont
High. Every time the movie goes to commercial, you quickly
flip to The Golden Girls on Lifetime. You can’t afford any
empty spaces.
At
one o’clock you give in and call him. Happy birthday, you
say, and intend for that to be the end of it. Instead, you
tell him how much the cats miss him, and that you’re going
home for a week at Christmas. That you finally killed that
plant that was doing so badly. You tell him you are not doing
well, that you dream about him, that you cannot stop crying.
You tell him that sometimes, when you aren’t paying attention,
you wonder what to make him for dinner. There have been a
number of times, on the bus, when you’ve caught yourself planning
your weekends together, the museum you’d been planning to
go to, the play you’d wanted to attend, the logistics of that
weekend in Mendocino.
The
words slip out of your mouth like sharp, betraying knives,
and you hate yourself for being so weak and stupid. But you
do not have the power to stop yourself. Like Pandora, you
are unable to recall what you have let loose.
You
wait for him to say something that will make it better, something
to ease the pain. But all he offers is silence, which has
long ceased to be enough. You say goodbye then, and hang up
the phone.
You
sit for a long time and stare at the television, and then
you pick up your breakfast tray and take it into the kitchen
and wash the dishes and put them into the dryer rack. You
look around the kitchen and notice that it is dirty, and you
realize you haven’t cleaned your apartment in almost two months.
You turn on the radio and put on a pair of rubber gloves.
Humming along to some Alanis Morissette song, you sprinkle
Comet into the kitchen sink and begin to scrub.
December
14 / When Grief Was a Country
On
the ride home from work, you read the following passage in
your book:
Grief
was a country, a place you entered hesitantly, or were thrown
into without warning. But once you were there, amidst the
roiling, formless blackness and stench of despair, you could
not leave. Even if you wanted to: you could only walk and
walk and walk, traveling on through the black reaches with
the sound of screaming in your ears, and hope that someday
you might glimpse far off another country, another place where
you might someday rest.
You
think to yourself that you just might be done walking through
that particular patch of land. Almost, but not quite.
December
10 / Mobility
If
you have to live one more minute of your life alone in this
apartment, you will explode. You lived here alone for four
miserable years before he came into your life, and you cannot
bear to go back to that time, to the dirty dishes needing
to be washed every day, to hauling the laundry down the stairs
and five blocks to the Laundromat, to the dust piling up on
the windowsills and the bookcases, to the dirt in the bathroom,
and the trash cans filled with used tissues and empty cartons
of cigarettes. To the food that needs purchasing every week,
every day. And the plants that need to be watered, and the
cats that need to be fed, and the litter box, and the hairballs,
and the annual trips to the dentist. To the Friday nights
alone, in front of the television, too tired to do anything
else, too tired to make conversation with strangers. To the
suffocating entropy of this life you have created for yourself:
empty, then shared, then empty again.
In
the end, you buy a car you cannot afford. It is liberating:
you are mobile. You can leave the apartment or you can bring
the party to you. But there is no party, only you alone, disconsolate,
pathetic. You buy a steering wheel cozy to make yourself feel
better.
December
7 / Email
Your
workday, spent somewhere between open weeping and veiled hostility
toward your blameless co-workers, is regularly interrupted
by emails from him. Each time the dialogue box appears—you
have new mail—you click “OK” with apprehension and sigh
loudly to your co-workers: can’t he leave me alone?
Your co-workers, who have already heard enough on this subject,
nod sympathetically and look away.
You
open the new mail: I was hired permanently—they offered
me a non-negotiable $27,500 and I took it, can you blame me?
or the school says they haven’t received my application—should
I be worried? or, pitifully, do you have the number
for the DMV?
At
first you cherish these emails, wait hungrily for each one
and, when it arrives, devour it, bending and twisting it in
search of meaning that is not there, for further evidence
that he can’t live without you. But as the emails increase
in number, arriving at those awkward moments when you’ve put
him out of your mind long enough to get some work done, you
realize this will not do. Your boss, who has been understanding
thus far, is starting to become annoyed by your constant outbursts
of tears, and you suspect that your co-workers are getting
tired of hearing you sigh.
You
send him an email telling him to call you that night, and
when he does, you pour yourself a big glass of wine and level
with him. Look, you say, I can’t keep doing this.
Doing what? he asks, and you tell him. You left
me, you say, staring at the quarter-sized ink stain he
made on your green velvet sofa cushion, remembering how you
wanted to hit him across the face when he said he assumed
it would wash out. You left me and you’re still treating
me like your girlfriend. You aren’t allowed to ask me for
advice anymore. The mistakes you make from here on out are
yours alone: I don’t want any part of them. You had your chance,
and you threw it away…And, finally, after an hour of alternating
between strength and self-pity, you find the courage to tell
him to stop emailing you. He agrees, and you imagine what
life will be like now, with your daily contact with him removed.
And then you hang up the phone and you cry yourself to sleep.
December
3 / After November
You
wake one day and find it is December 3rd. You cannot
recall the month of November. Thanksgiving has come and gone
and people are buying trees. You remember Thanksgiving, and
you remember Halloween, but you don’t remember November. Although
you have successfully avoided the emotion thus far, you begin
to become bitter. After all he has taken from you, it is not
fair: you want November back.
November
30 / Angel
You
take a shower. The hot water feels good, but changes nothing.
Midway through, while you are rinsing the shampoo from your
hair, Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” comes on the radio, the song
he used to sing to you after you made love, while he held
you in his arms and stroked your breasts. You’re in the
arms of the angels / may you find some comfort there.
You begin to cry so hard that you lose your balance. Your
feet slide out from under you and you fall to the floor of
the tub, bruising your knees, choking on a mixture of water
and tears.
November
25 / Thanksgiving
It
is Thanksgiving weekend. It has been one month since he left.
You were supposed to have felt better by now, but you do not.
But you are a good daughter, so even though you feel like
lying in bed and staring at the ceiling for four days, you
fly to Southern California to eat turkey with your parents.
On
your way to the airport, you sit in the back of the airless
shuttle and fail to try not to think about what was supposed
to have happened this weekend. You both had tickets to go
see his parents in Portland. It would have been the first
time you met them, the entrance into the life you were going
to share together. You imagine his mother, short, with curling
brown hair and librarian glasses, a schoolteacher. His father,
enormously tall, balding in the back, wearing a homemade flannel
shirt. Your in-laws. Their welcoming smiles, the boxes in
the attic of his old school art projects, the stack of poems
he wrote in high school, the shelves filled with his favorite
books.
After
checking in at the gate, you try to lie to yourself, but it
doesn’t work. You would give a lot to not have been the one
who bought the tickets, because now you have this information
in your head—his destination and departure time, the knowledge
that he is here, in the airport, very near by, waiting to
get on that plane to Portland. Because you are a fix-it, a
problem-solver, you know that all you have to do is look at
the Departures screen for a quick map to where he is sitting.
You stare at the screen. Gate 68. It couldn’t be easier, just
ten feet to the right. It would be best to turn your back,
to walk away with your head high, a bullet dodged. But of
course you do not do this. There was never any chance that
you would. You walk the ten feet and stand outside the glassed-in
gate, and see him immediately.
He
looks sick. This is the first thing you notice. Then you see
he is wearing the jeans you bought him at Old Navy. Somehow
it seems wrong that he should still have them, and you think
about the day you bought them together, and the sex you had
in the dressing room. His rucksack is propped against his
knees. He stares forward, at nothing, at the wall, his shock
of blond hair tousled, his skin angry and red and white. He
looks much younger than you remember, like a student going
home for the holidays. And then you realize that is what he
is. You place your right hand over your mouth, which has fallen
open, and stand, alone, tears sliding into your fingers. People
pass you, hundreds of them, but they do not see you. You wonder
if he will feel something, if some force will compel him to
look up, and, seeing you for the first time in a month, realize
that he made a terrible mistake, one he can correct right
here and now. You wait for him to look up at you. You wait
for him to see you.
After
ten minutes of this, you feel something inside you break.
You pick up your bag and head for the smoking room, where
you sit until your flight is called, crying, smoking and writing
in your journal. You stare at Gate 87, the gate from which
he disembarked the first time he came to see you. You remember
how thin he was then, in his blue polyester thrift store shirt,
how gangly and eager and sweet. You remember the way he tried
to kiss you, and how awkward you felt, pushing him back and
telling him to wait until you felt more comfortable, until
it was right, and you regret being so fucking stupid and nearsighted.
If you could travel in back in time, if you could reverse
everything. you would take that offered kiss and never let
it go, never take your mouth from his again. The broken thing
inside you cracks again, and you feel your mind cease to function;
all of your thoughts freeze and when you close your eyes,
you see only blackness. Your cigarette burns to the filter
between your numb fingers as the room becomes oppressively
smoky, but you continue to sit and stare at the gate, blind
to anything but your own pain.
November
18 / The First Check
On
a rainy November day just like any other, you are surprised
by the mail: it contains the first in a series of checks from
him, payments against the two thousand dollars he owes you.
Standing
outside in the rain, you tear open the envelope and begin
to weep when you see the contents. The handwriting is the
same, but this check is so different from all the others,
from the rent checks on which he wrote “for love” in the memo
field, the utilities checks decorated with silly little pictures.
The memo field on this check is blank. The envelope, addressed
with his familiar writing, bears a return address different
from your own.
You
look at the piece of paper in your hand and want to burn it,
or to frame it; it means so little and is worth so much. You
notice he has not changed the address on his checks, and you
think of him, crossing out the words and numbers each time
he pays for something, writing in his new address. You want
to call him, to scream at him: change the address on your
checks, you asshole, you don’t live here anymore. You
wonder if he’s remembered to notify his creditors of his new
address, if he’s called all of his friends and family and
redirected his mail. You wonder if one day, something else
will come in the mail for him, a bill, a letter, a package,
and you wonder what you will do with it, if you will rip it
up, or forward it, conscientiously, in an adult manner.
You
look inside the envelope. It contains a note: I’m sorry
for all the pain I’ve caused you. I hope that by repaying
you quickly, I can somehow make up for it. You read the
words, and read them again, and again, searching for further
meaning, for something to hold on to. When you do not find
it, you stand on the stoop and rip the note into tiny little
pieces, your bags tenuously grasped under your arm, sheaves
of junk mail falling to the ground before you, while your
umbrella, dripping, jabs you in the side.
November
13 / Victim
At
night you talk to him on the phone for hours, trying to understand
what has happened. He tells you he is a trauma survivor. I
have to take care of myself, he says, I’ve been through
too much, experienced loss after loss my entire life. I need
time to heal. I’ve accepted the fact that I am a victim and
need to treat myself accordingly. It does not occur to
you to be callous. Does this mean you’re going to try therapy
after all? you ask. No, he says, I think I’m
fine on my own.
November
12 / Your Horoscope (II)
Your
horoscope in the weekly rag:
You
have just completed this level. Your score is 413,000. This
does not exactly qualify you for the Retrograde Saturn Opposition
Hall of Fame, but you may be eligible for a few bonus points.
You may also want to hit pause for a couple of days to make
sure you’re well rested before you take on the next level.
November
11 / First Contact
You
are hit on while sipping a large coffee, extra room, at your
favorite café. It is improbable—he is a swarthy young busboy
at the restaurant where you buy your lunchtime burritos—yet
you are incredibly grateful: you are not a sexless hag. You
talk for a few minutes about public transportation, about
rain and baseball and city life, and come to the swift understanding
that you are not ready. When he asks for your number, you
blindly shove your business card at him and stumble away.
He does not call.
November
10 / Hatch Marks
You
tape a sheet of notebook paper to the wall. On it are two
columns, one labeled “Moments of Self Control,” the other
“Late Night Calls to Forgiving Friends.” By the end of the
month, you have placed one hatch mark in the first column.
The second column looks like this: |||| |||| ||||
|||| ||.
November
8 / Your Horoscope (I)
Your
horoscope in the weekly rag:
I’m
sorry, but you have reached a future that has been temporarily
shut down. Owing to a high volume of activity, all of our
circuits are busy and your week contains many delays. Please
put your life on hold and try again later.
You
feel bad for the other Libras. They should not have to go
through this too.
November
6 / Damage Control
You
email everyone you know and give them some facts: we have
broken up. He moved out a few days ago. And then you lie:
I’m fine and we’re still friends. If you tell everyone—your
friends, your co-workers, your neighbors, the man at the corner
store who kept teasing the two of you about getting married—then
there will be nothing left to surprise you, no casual questions
weeks later, after you stop crying. Nothing to send you back
to this place of grief and pain when you least expect it.
November
5 / Self-pity
At
night, alone and wakeful, you lie in your empty bed and trace
a pattern on your inner arm. It won’t be so bad, you think.
They say if you cut vertically, it’s over so quickly you don’t
even feel it. You think of the bottle of muscle relaxants
in the medicine cabinet and the bottle of wine in the kitchen.
You think of the bathtub, of the warm water, and the numbing,
soothing, calming sense of nothingness you long for, the water,
lugubrious, thick like saline, lapping at your wrists. The
slow seepage of your life, into the bathtub, the water, into
your veins. You wonder, do the fluids run in both directions?
When
you were a teenager you were mildly suicidal, but you know
now that you were just looking for attention. This is the
real thing. You have never known misery this complete, pain
this deep. Every moment of awareness is agonizing: you wish
you could return to the numbness you’ve been feeling for the
past week, but since you can’t, you seriously consider ending
everything else. It just hurts too much. Besides, you’re already
dead inside—why not finish the job?
November
4 / Tallies
You
have lost thirteen pounds in seven days, consuming nothing
but twenty-one packs of cigarettes, fourteen pots of coffee,
two bagels and a piece of toast. You have vomited eleven times.
You cannot keep water down. If you were sane, you would feel
sexy and thin. But you are not sane and you feel nothing.
When you can, you think about these numbers and their consequences,
but can come to no conclusions. It seemed like a good idea
at the time, you want to say, but that is not true. You
have had no ideas, good or bad.
November
3 / The Bottom
You
lie on the couch with your mouth open and your eyes glazed
over. There is something on the television, but you don’t
know what it is. You have been here for two days. You smell
like sweat and smoke. Your hair is greasy and lank and snarled.
Your pajamas are stained with coffee and vomit. The ashtray
is filled with cigarette butts. The floor in front of you
is piled with crumpled Kleenex and half-filled coffee cups.
The television fills the room with a comforting light and
warm noises. All you want to do is sleep, the one thing denied
you, so you lie, hour after hour, watching the colored lights
move, sucking the tears off of your cheeks, and getting up
every now and then to piss.
November
1 / Packing
He
arrives with the rental truck at nine. You have not slept.
You spent a few hours in bed, staring at the ceiling, but
you gave up when it began to get light. Now, at nine o’clock,
you have spent almost three hours in your green chair, immobile,
staring out the window at the intersection, unsure if he will
be driving a U-Haul or a Ryder truck. Because you don’t know
if you should be looking for a yellow or an orange truck,
you find yourself concentrating harder than you probably need
to. You are on your second pot of coffee.
It
turns out to be a white Enterprise mini pickup. You were wrong
on all counts.
You
show him to the living room closet, where you have stacked
all of his belongings. You don’t think it will take very long;
you’ve pretty much packed for him. You look at the speakers
and amps and boxes of books, at the bags of clothes and the
rack of hanging shirts. This is all he has. You think of him
in his new flat, without a bed, or a table, or even a lamp.
You wonder if he has thought about a clock radio or an answering
machine. He asks if he can take the hangers, and you say,
Yes, of course, and try to think what else you can
give him.
It
takes him two hours to pack his things and move them to the
truck below. Two hours. You sit on your bed with the door
closed and listen to him thud up and down the stairs, and
you think of the days and weeks it took to ship these same
things here from Albuquerque, the time spent arguing with
the UPS man, the claims filed and the damages unpaid. It took
so much longer to arrive.
He
carries the last load down. You watch him from your bedroom
window, see him bracing himself with his hands on the truck
bed, shoulders hunched, back shaking. It’s not too late,
you want to shout, you can bring it all back up.
He
comes up the stairs one last time. I’m all done, he
says, standing in the kitchen in the late morning sun. I
guess I’ll be going now. He opens his arms for a goodbye
hug, and you fall forward, into his embrace, feeling the hard
warmth of his back and shoulders for the last time. The strength
and solidity of him. The slow curve of his shoulder blades
into the firm, flat plane of his lower back. His low, round
ass. His strong, wide arms. The soft scent of him, intoxicating.
The incredible sweetness of his skin, shampoo and soap. God,
you think, I cannot do this. I cannot let this man
go.
Somewhere
you find the strength to speak to him, knowing that later
you will be glad you did. I’m so sorry, you say, muffled,
into his stomach, so sorry it didn’t work out. I love you
so much and I’ll always be here for you whenever you need
me. You are such a good person, you say, so strong
and wonderful—don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
Your
weeping fills the room. No, he says, I’m not a good
person at all, and you understand that he is weeping too,
his body shaking, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes
red and his mouth trembling. I love you, he says. You
have never seen him cry.
October
31 / Halloween
Dazed,
numb, hysterical, you sit on the floor and remove his CD’s
from the shelves. You make two piles: the stack he brought
with him and the stack you bought together since he moved
in. The first stack is easy; you shove it in a box and don’t
look at it again. The second stack is harder.
You
keep the CDs you truly love: Simon & Garfunkel, Sarah
McLachlan, the Sea & Cake. But the others—the Tindersticks,
Craig Armstrong, Lucinda Williams, the soundtrack to “Hair”—those
you cannot possibly keep. How can you ever bear to listen
to any of them again? You try to imaging listening to the
Tindersticks without thinking of how he used to carry you
to the bed and light the candles while you laid there panting.
Or the Craig Armstrong CD—the first song, perfect for kissing,
and the second song, which lasted exactly as long as it took
him to make you come with his tongue. You can’t even look
at them without crying and feeling that deep, unreal longing
in your chest, the feeling you have come to associate as your
heart, breaking.
Below
you, in the streets, you hear children screaming, but no one
rings your buzzer. You have no candy, regardless.
October
30 / Dogs at Sunrise
Your
girl friend picks you up at sunrise. You have been waiting,
limply swallowing cup after cup of coffee, staring out at
the dawn, thoughtless, a void. You move stiffly into the front
seat of her car, next to her two enormous dogs, and ride along
a twisting road, staring out at the fog. You don’t know where
you are or where you are going. Your friend is mostly silent.
She parks, and the dogs clamber out, barking, joyous. You
follow them up over the sand dune and walk along the edge
of the ocean. The air is bitterly cold. The sun, bright and
cheerless in the sky, does not give off heat. The chill works
through your jacket and sweater, through your shirt and shoes
and socks, permeates your bones and is still and quiet.
Perched
on an outcrop of rocks, high above the sea, you sit in the
empty sunlight, listening to your friend talk about her break-up,
what she did to recover. You try to explain that your life
is over, that he has destroyed every thought you ever had.
That no one could ever love you as much as he did, and if
he left you, who could you expect would stay? You are useless,
without worth, a failure. It took you twenty-eight years to
find someone, him, the first person to love you. And he left
you. He left.
Your
girl friend doesn’t say much after this, and when you ask
her if you can go home now, she nods and climbs down the rock.
The
dogs sleep on the ride home and you stare numbly out the window.
The ocean was beautiful. You should feel a sense of healing.
But you are not healed.
October
29 / Good Logic
On
the phone:
No,
I don’ really miss you. I mean, I do in a way, but I’m really
ready to live my life alone.
And
then he tells you how he lied to you:
No,
none of it was true. I mean, I had some acid, yeah, but I
was here the whole time, cleaning out my files and trying
to decide what to do. Yeah, I heard the phone ring. All those
times. But I didn’t answer it. And finally, I went for a walk
so I wouldn’t hear it anymore.
And
then he tries to explain his behavior:
I
thought, he says, that if I didn’t answer the phone
the whole weekend you were gone, didn’t return your messages,
if I made you mad enough, you’d break up with me. Tell me
to leave. But then I talked to my brother and he told me it
was a stupid idea. He said that if I did that, I wouldn’t
have anywhere to stay all week until my apartment was ready.
So I told you what I did, hoping you’d forgive me. It wasn’t
that hard. You wanted to believe me.
And
then he talks about what he wants:
I
want to be free, he says, I’ve been in relationships
for the past five years of my life, and I want to be free.
I want to have casual sex.
Casual
sex.
10/28
Vomit and Coffee
After
he finally leaves, you stay on the phone until your support
system arrives. You don’t know how to be alone; you are out
of practice. First you call your mother, then your girlfriends
in LA and Nebraska. None of them can believe it. But the
two of you were so happy, they say, how could it be
over? You do not have an answer to that question. You
don’t know. And is it really over? I never saw it coming,
you tell them, that’s the hardest part. If only I’d
had some warning, some idea something was wrong. At least
I could have tried to fix it. As you talk, you drink wine.
One bottle, then two. You are not drunk. Alcohol cannot penetrate.
Your
friends arrive and extract the wine bottle from your hand.
They take the phone away from you and say goodbye to whomever
is on the other line. They sit you down at the kitchen table
and put a cup of coffee in your hand and set a box of Kleenex
next to you. They sit down at the table next to you, in a
row, and faced with calm, pitying sympathy, you realize you
are about to be sick.
You
run to the bathroom and vomit, choking out the wine and coffee,
heaving until nothing more comes, beyond that, heaving dry
nothingness into the toilet, your body unable to stop rejecting
itself. You have never felt this much pain. You have been
decapitated, dismembered. You do not exist. You fall over
and scream into the bathtub: long, inchoate vowels, no,
no, echoing off the shower walls like eerie music. Arms
wrap around you and you slide back into someone’s warm body.
You pitch forward again and hammer your head on the porcelain
wall of the bathtub, driving it all away, idiot, idiot
and you feel cool hands pulling you away, smoothing back the
damp hair from your forehead. Ssh, a voice says, it’s
okay. You finally relax into the crooning and rocking,
and curl into a ball sobing dry tears, eyes screwed shut.
Make it go away.
One
friend spends the night to make sure you do not kill yourself.
October
28 / Motel 6
You
don’t want him to go. You sit in the kitchen, drinking glass
after glass of wine, listening to him pack work clothes into
his rucksack. When he goes, you will call people and tell
him what he has done. They will hate him, which is good. Someone
must, and you cannot.
October
28 / Boring, Stupid and Shallow
These
are the reasons he gives you for leaving, the reasons why
he has stopped loving you. You are boring, stupid and shallow.
To
his credit, that is not precisely what he says. He says: you
are too conservative and I don’t feel intellectually
challenged by you and you are too materialistic.
You
don’t understand, so he explains it for you:
You
aren’t tolerant of other cultures, he says. And: you
didn’t open all of the doors of me. And: when we were
planning our dream house, I talked about what I wanted to
do there, and you talked about what you wanted to put in it.
That’s
not true, you tell him, I wanted things that would
save time, automate everything, so I could spend every waking
moment writing and making love to you. Nothing else is important.
But
you sound like you are whining, even to yourself. Even you
don’t believe yourself. He has redefined you, found the most
secret fears in you, the things you are terrified of becoming.
For years, you have fought against your conservative upbringing,
yet you are practical and traditional, afraid of strange new
things, and now you have become boring. You have always found
it easier to hide your fierce, difficult intelligence so you
could communicate better with others, all the while fearing
you were killing the best part of your brain, which you were.
You have worked hard to have nice things that will make your
life easier, more comfortable, and were deathly afraid you
were becoming a yuppie. But you weren’t; you were just becoming
shallow.
Your
rational mind knows you are none of these things; your friends,
your family, people who know and love you, swear that these
things are not true. But your rational mind goes on vacation
for the next few months, and while you can listen to other
people, you cannot hear what they are saying. You begin to
hate yourself, and understand why you are worthless.
October
28 / Take Off Your Boots
You
greet him with a kiss, throwing your arms around him, standing
on tiptoe, hoping to be lifted into his arms. Come in,
he says, gently leading you into the kitchen, take off
your boots. He gently pushes you into a kitchen chair.
I bought us a bottle of wine, he says. Candles are
lit and you can smell incense. You wonder if he finally got
hired permanently. Or maybe he found out about his raise.
We have to talk, he says. About what? you say,
setting your bag on the floor. You wonder if he has made you
dinner. I’m moving out this weekend, he says. You stare
at him, confused. Why would you do that? you say, and
he says, because we are getting ready to spend the rest
of our lives together and I don't want to. I don’t want this.
I don’t love you. You are not what I want. My life is different.
I am different. I don’t want this. If I stay with you I will
lose myself. I have to leave.
You
do not understand what he has just said. It is a dream…you
are still on the bus, riding home to see him after a long
day, planning dinner, fantasizing about that night’s lovemaking.
This is not happening. You are still on the bus.
But
where will you go?
I
found a place and I’m moving in this weekend.
You
found a place?
Yes.
When
in God’s name did you start looking?
Two
weeks ago.
Two
weeks?
Yes.
For
two weeks you made love to me, pretended nothing was wrong,
acted completely normal, and looked for an apartment?
Yes.
How
can you justify this?
It
was something I had to do.
Where
did you get the money?
I
borrowed it.
But
you owe me almost two thousand dollars!
I
know. I’ll pay you back.
Why
did you do it like this?
I
didn’t think you’d let me stay here if I told you I wanted
to move out.
But
I didn’t even know there was anything wrong. You never discussed
anything with me. You never told me you were unhappy. I thought
you were happy!
I’m
sorry, he says, but I wasn’t.
You
sit at the kitchen table and stare at the wall. You neglected
to take off your boots.
October
27 / And You Didn’t Even Know
You
attack him the second you walk in the apartment, and keep
him in bed for over an hour. You come up for air to do the
laundry. He’s out of socks, he explains, it can’t wait another
night.
10/26
Black Lace
You
play hooky from work and spend all day cleaning the house.
Your conversation last night was unsettling, but everything
seems to be fine. It was good to talk about that stuff, get
it all out. You’ve been encouraging him to communicate more,
to open up. It’s working. It feels wonderful to be getting
the cobwebs out. You scrub the bathroom walls with vigor.
At
four, you finish cleaning the house and start cleaning yourself.
You take an hour-long bath, scrape and scrub and shave your
body. You slather yourself with lotion and perfume. Slide
into your black lace slip. Meet him at the door with a wet
kiss. Lead him into the bedroom and fuck him hard, fancy,
for hours.
October
25 / He Explains Everything
You
are so frantic, you take a taxi home from the airport. He
is there when you arrive. Where were you, you ask.
I called you over and over again. He is pink and scrubbed
clean, wears a calm expression you cannot quite define. He
leads you to the kitchen table and sits down next to you,
taking your hands in his. He looks directly into your eyes
and he lies to you.
He
had gone on a binge after work. Someone had some acid and
he took too much. He freaked out. Yes, he heard you call,
but he couldn’t deal with the phone. Wasn’t even home that
much. Didn’t call you at your parent’s house because he was
afraid they’d answer the phone. He was so sorry. He didn’t
mean to scare you.
You
do not know you are being lied to, so you let yourself be
placated. He tells you he loves you, over and over, stroking
your hand. Holding your face. Tender kisses. Gentle cuddling
in the night. You relax into his body, grateful. There is
nothing to worry about. You are safe.
October
23 / Phone Calls
When
you arrive at your parent’s house, you call him to tell him
you’ve arrived safely. He does not answer. You aren’t surprised;
he’d said he was going out with his work friends that evening.
You call him again before you go to bed. He’s not home. You
wake from a nightmare and call him in the middle of the night.
He does not answer. Fine. He drank too much and crashed on
someone’s couch. You wake from another nightmare at six AM.
You call him. He does not answer. At ten, noon, two o’clock,
he does not answer. Four. Four-thirty. Six. Eight. Ten. You
lose track of the number of calls you make. Midnight. Six
AM. Ten. Ten-thirty. Eleven. Eleven forty-two. One. Two. Four
o’clock.
October
15 / Separate Vacations
You
know, you say, you don’t have to go with me this time
if you don’t want to. He has gone with you twice to visit
your parents, both wonderful trips. But as you fly home every
six weeks or so, you cannot expect him to go every time. He
might like a bachelor weekend, time spent drinking and watching
basketball, lazing around unbathed. You can stand to be separated
from him for two days. It has been five months. You must be
realistic.
That
might be good, he says. I could use a weekend alone.
September
30 / Your Birthday
It
leaves you a little unsettled.
At
six-thirty, he wakes you by playing “Happy Birthday” on his
guitar. He leaves a note for you on the kitchen table, wishing
you a happy birthday, wishing he could spend the whole day
with you. He sends you flowers at work, a dozen red and purple
roses, two sunflowers. He emails you birthday wishes all day
long. When you get home, you find he has lit all of the candles,
burned incense in every room. The house smells delicious.
He has picked up another dozen roses, pink buds, and has a
bottle of Mumm on ice, which you take up to the roof. He gives
you a sack full of presents: a green glass necklace, a blue
Baccarat vase, two books, two CD’s, a lavender candle in a
beaten metal box, lip balm, a box of expensive chocolates.
He takes you to dinner at Woodward Gardens, where you stare
into each other’s eyes over Chilean sea bass and South Australian
Chardonnay.
You
don’t understand why he thought all of this was necessary.
He must have spent five hundred bucks, money he doesn’t have.
Did he really think you needed this? That you wanted this?
The necklace, champagne and chocolates would have been plenty.
Dinner at an inexpensive café. Hell, he could have made you
dinner. The roof was nice, and the candles. The homemade card.
But the Baccarat scared you. You know how much crystal costs.
But
it’s your birthday, and you aren’t about to berate him for
showering you with gifts. That would be rather tacky. You’ll
have a quiet word with him in a few days. For now, you don’t
think you have ever been happier. He must really love you.
September
13 / The Magic
You
realize that—for no real reason—you didn’t have sex yesterday,
for the first time since he moved in, almost three months
ago. Although your instinctive response is intense fear, you
make a joke of it. The magic is gone, you say, you
don’t love me anymore.
September
4 / Dream House
Your
Sunday night ritual: sitting on the roof, smoking a joint,
splitting a bottle of champagne, watching the sunset. You
talk about your dream house. On the edge of a high cliff,
he says. Somewhere on the Central Coast, you say.
The sea below.
I’d
want it to be huge, you say, more rooms than we could
ever possibly use. I’d have a studio, he says, and
I’d lock myself in and make music all day long. We’d have
servants, you say, a sweet married couple who would
live on the premises and do everything so we don’t have to.
I’d sit and look at the ocean, he says, at night when
it’s wildest. I’d read in a hammock under a huge oak tree,
you say, I’d have walls and walls of books. I would sleep
until noon every day, he says. We’d have every appliance
known to man, you say, cooking would be so easy. I’d
play guitar all the time, he says. I’d write all day,
you say. And then at night, you say, he
says, at night we would make love. In a bed filled with
pillows, you say, and silk sheets. He looks beyond
you then, out at the fading sunset, and doesn’t say anything
more.
August
30 / How We Met
When
people ask you how you met, you let him tell the story:
I
was in a bar in Austin, working at South by Southwest. She
walked in, and I saw her right away. She was the most beautiful
thing I’d ever seen. I fell in love with her at first sight.
I watched her for awhile, then went over and started talking
to her. We had an immediate connection. One thing led to another,
and I moved out here from Albuquerque. We live together now,
and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
Fade
to blackout. Curtain drops.
August
22 / Cambria
Only
one moment is really important. On the second night of your
stay, after dining on steak and lobster, sipping champagne
and holding hands in front of the hotel fireplace, he takes
you back to the hotel suite, gently removes your clothes,
carries you out to the private balcony, where the warm summer
breeze brushes softly over your body, and tells you, looking
deep into your eyes, that he doesn’t think it’s possible for
him to love you any more than he does this minute.
August
10 / Drawbacks
Although
he is very intelligent, he has no common sense. You are a
problem-solver. You have all kinds of common sense, and the
lack thereof drives you insane. You had to teach him how to
use the ATM, for the love of Christ. And you were appalled
to learn he’d paid for a two-year motorcycle insurance policy
before leaving Albuquerque and hadn’t even seen about getting
a refund because he didn’t know New Mexico insurance wasn’t
any good in San Francisco. But it isn’t really a problem.
If nothing else, he has taught you how to be patient, a trait
you have long wanted to acquire.
But
he never has any money, and while you don’t want to be mercenary,
you are already tired of paying for everything.
August
1 / Belly Fat
He
loves your belly, plays with the soft roll of fat, kneading
it, kissing it, smoothing it with his fingers. Every time
he touches it, you melt, remembering your previous lovers,
who touched it gingerly, as if by acknowledging it, they would
be telling you they thought you were fat.
July
16 / Your First Fight
You
are in the supermarket, explaining to him that it’s fine,
you have money, he can get whatever he wants. Yet he still
refuses to put anything in the basket. Finally tired of asking
him what he wants, you shout at him, tell him he’d better
make a fucking decision about something or go hungry.
He
doesn’t speak to you until you are outside, walking back to
your apartment. You don’t understand, he says, I’ve
always been poor. My father used to take us to dumpsters,
all ten of us, to scavenge damaged supermarket food...unlabeled
cans. Whenever I’ve gone to the store, I’ve had about seventeen
dollars and thirty-eight cents, and I’ve had to figure everything
out to the last penny, even the tax. I don’t know how to live
like this.
This
is so far out of the realm of your own experience, you do
not know what to say. You have certainly never been rich,
but you’ve also never gone hungry. You are ashamed at your
behavior, and apologize, wondering how and when this issue
will resurface.
July
4 / Meet & Greet
Fourth
of July has always been a big deal in your family, a chance
for hedonism and barbecue. Fireworks, outlawed years ago,
are missed, but your Dad always seems to scrape up a few for
illicit consumption.
Their
meeting is flawless. He shakes hands with your father, serious,
careful. You look at the two of them in profile: your Dad,
huge and familiar, soft and strong; and your boyfriend, tall
and gentle, yet so beautiful and strong and filled with laughter.
Your
parents love him. But then, they would love anyone who loved
you—as he so obviously does. You expect them to be embarrassed
by his devotion, but they make jokes: are you two ever
going to stop kissing? and how was your “nap?” and
I think you two must be attached at the face. Cute
jokes. Parental jokes. You are happy.
Late
in the day, you go for a bike ride, your Dad on the Harley,
he on the Honda. You ride behind him, the wind lifting your
hair, the summer sun beating on your shoulders. You ride out
to the canyon, the ride you and your Dad have been taking
since you were a little girl. Your Dad rides next to you,
beaming, grinning so hard you think his face will split. This
is his dream too, to see you so happy. To ride alongside his
daughter and the man who loves her.
June
30 / The Short List
You
are so happy, you can hardly breathe. Things seem to be working
out. You compile a list in your journal, a few of your favorite
things:
-
Sex on the puzzle. You both love to do puzzles, and often
spend an entire weekend listening to Tom Waits, piecing
together puzzle after puzzle. When the mood strikes him,
he lifts you up onto the table and takes you right there,
on top of the puzzle. It takes awhile to sort out the pieces
when you’re done, but it’s worth it.
-
Chair time. You can spend hours at the kitchen table, him
sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs, you straddling
him, facing him, devouring each other. You call it “chair
time,” and when you want it, you pout and stamp your foot
like a child, until he laughs, pushes back the chair, pulls
you over, onto his lap and kisses you.
- The
lift. You’ve never been with a man who so enjoys picking
you up and carrying you around. You feel small, dainty,
feminine. Protected.
- Oral
sex. He loves giving it, you love receiving it and he never
wants you to reciprocate. Your girlfriends are jealous and
you are smug.
-
His attentiveness. He is the most devoted, affectionate
person you’ve ever been with. He holds your hand, gives
you massages, opens the door for you, gives you anything
and everything you’ve ever wanted from a relationship. You’ve
always wanted this kind of intimacy. Now that you have it,
you will never let it go.
The
best part is, you are also completely safe. After all this
man has done for you, after everything he has undergone to
be with you, there is no way in hell he will ever leave you.
There is a small chance that you won’t marry him, that you
won’t, after all, spend the rest of your life with him, but
the only way that would happen is if you were to end it first.
And you have no plans for doing so.
6/10
A Big Problem
You
hate his music; he hates your writing.
You
try to listen to his CD, the one he burned before leaving
Albuquerque, but you hate it. The first time you listen to
it, you sit on the bed, in his arms, and try to let it fill
you, try to understand it through osmosis. It sounds weak,
derivative, utterly devoid of talent. You cannot imagine a
more painful series of noises. You ask him pertinent questions—what
was he trying to accomplish? Who were his influences? But
you honestly do not care about the answers. You only want
this noise removed from your CD player. You crave the sweet
solace of Ella Fitzgerald.
He
reads your published story and is noncommittal. You know it
is good; if it weren’t, it wouldn’t have been published. You
would not have received all that money, would not have attracted
the attention of agents and publishers in New York. Yet he
does not care for it, says it does not touch him. He feels
the same about your poetry.
You
both pretend everything is fine, sweep the dirt under the
rug, place the Band-Aid over the wound and act as if all is
healed. But you are resentful and angry. Why doesn’t he see
you talent? And while he doesn’t mention your reaction to
hearing his CD, you know he is hurt. Perhaps it’s better,
after all, to just leave it alone.
June
6 / Road Trip
You
determine that the only way he’s actually going to get here
is to drive his motorcycle cross country. It’s a long trip—two
days—but it will save him the cost of a rental truck and get
him to you all that much faster. You tell him to stuff his
rucksack full and send the rest of his stuff via UPS. He doesn’t
have much, anyway.
On
June 6th, he rides up to your door. He has been
on the road for two days and is covered with dead bugs. You
jump up when you hear his motorcycle, race downstairs, throw
yourself at him as he is dismounting, and kiss him through
the faceplate of his helmet. He picks you up in his arms and
carries you through the door, up two flights of stairs, into
your apartment. You can smell him through his coveralls, dirty,
greasy, dank. But you don’t care. You have waited so long
for this moment, to feel him in your arms, to start your life
together, that you can’t wait even a moment more. It’s time
to begin.
May
23 / The Second Weekend
Is
much the same as the first. You make love around the clock,
stopping only to order delivery and to shower. You break routine
on Sunday and go out into the world. You take him to your
favorite place, the stone wall at the Sutro Baths, and sit
in the sun for hours, making out. The Japanese tourists are
shocked, but you do not care. It is a beautiful day, and you
are in love.
The
next morning, you take him to the airport and cry as you place
him on the plane. True, he will be back in less than a month,
back forever, but you already miss him. Natalie Merchant plays
on the radio as you drive to work.
May
22 / In the Closet
Naked,
you stand in the closet looking for something to wear. He
is behind you on the bed, sorting through your CD’s. What
will your friends say, you ask, when you tell them
you live here now? They’ll think it’s strange,
he says, rising from the bed to put his arms around you, but
they’ve always been supportive of the decisions I’ve made.
He kisses you. But, you say, won’t they think it’s
a bad idea for you to have another girlfriend so quickly?
He stares at you, blankly, then: I guess you are my
girlfriend, aren’t you? Yes, you say, we’re going to
be living together. What did you think you’d call me?
May
19 / His Response
He
takes a quick trip up the coast to Portland to visit his best
friend. He calls you from a bar at 2:00 AM. Can I move
in with you? he asks, over the din. Oh, baby, you
say, I’m so happy. You’ve made me so happy.
May
17 / Your Offer
Before
he leaves for Portland, you ask him to move in with you. He
is startled, but he takes it in stride. You tell him not to
answer now, whatever the answer might be, but to think about
it while he is in Portland, to tell you when he gets back.
May
15 / Everything and More
You
sit at the kitchen table, sipping wine in the candlelight,
and talk about books, poetry, music. Despite the initial awkwardness,
your embarrassment and insecurity, you are drawing toward
him. The two months of phone calls have paid off. You know
this man, after all, you feel comfortable with him, safe.
You want him.
But
frightened by your initial, cold reception, he makes no move
toward you, despite your hints. Finally, you ask him if he
is ever planning on kissing you. He smiles, pulls you to him,
places you on his lap and begins to slowly, thoroughly kiss
you. Eventually, he carries you to the bedroom.
When
you are done, you lie next to him, limp, satiated, and ask
him if it is too soon to tell him you love him. Not at
all, he says, I’ve been telling you that for months,
remember? He pulls you on top of him and you laugh, deep,
from the belly.
May
15 / Cat Facts
His
flight is due at 7:30 p.m., so you arrive at the airport at
7:00. You practice standing, something you normally do without
effort. You check your hair, your lipstick, your scent. You
position your bag over your shoulder so it won’t fall to the
ground when he embraces you, gives you the kiss you’ve been
promised these long weeks. You shift weight, noting the beauty
of the setting sun over the tarmac.
The
plane lands and people stream out. You wait, rehearsing the
moment one last time. The stream thins, stops, and he is not
there. You panic: did he miss his flight? You call your voice
mail; there is no message. You pace, think, what could have
happened? You consider having him paged; perhaps you missed
each other, perhaps that other blond man was him and you didn’t,
after all, recognize him. The thought that he just didn’t
come occurs to you, but you quash it. He loves you. Of course
he came. You look at one of the “Arrivals/Departures” monitors
and realize you have transposed the numbers; you are at the
wrong gate.
Panting,
you run down the hallway to the next terminal. You have never
done anything this stupid. That, and the fact you are woefully
out of shape, gives you a piercing pain in your side. You
try not to sweat, and wonder if you will have time to check
your lipstick before his flight arrives.
You
do not. Approaching Gate 87, you see his flight deplaning.
You slow to a casual stroll and try to catch your breath,
smoothing back your hair and running your tongue over your
front teeth.
You
see him immediately. You wait for your heart to drop. You
wait for disgust to fill you. You stare at him, at the tall
awkward blondness of him, wearing the new shirt he bought
just to impress you, and you note the fresh haircut, his pressed
vintage slacks. You think, my god, what have I done?
and know you are not attracted to him, know that while he
is what you remembered, he is not what you expected; there
is no rush of chemistry, you do not love him.
He
turns, sees you, and smiles, takes three steps—all his long
legs require to bring him to you—and stops, bends down gingerly
to kiss you. You receive the kiss, but when he moves closer,
places his arms around you, nudges his head deeper into you,
you pull back, say whoa, there, take it easy. He pulls
away from you, unshaken, and tells you about his flight. I
had the best seat, he says, in the front row of the
plane. I know, you say, I wanted to make sure
you had enough room to stretch your legs.
It
is then, as he shifts the books he is carrying to his right
hand so he can take your hand in his left, that you notice
he is carrying a copy of “Cat Facts,” a $.99 throwaway book
you saw last week at the grocery store check-stand. You remember
wondering who in the hell would buy such a thing and are embarrassed
for him. Nice book, you say, as you start walking toward
the baggage claim. Is it any good? Yes, he says, exuberant,
I read the whole thing on the flight over. I learned so
much about cats! Did you know that tri-colored cats are always
female? Only 99% of the time, you say, and when they
are male they are sterile.
April
28 / Hasty Thinking
You
plan a trip for the middle of May, which will be two months
after you met him. He’ll be done with school then, and can
fly out and stay awhile. And if things work out, you’ll ask
him to move in with you. He’s said he wouldn’t mind living
in San Francisco—why not with you?
You
have been cautioned by those you love, those who would not
see you hurt, that this is a bad idea. It’s too soon, they
say, you’ve never lived with anyone before. But their
protests are relatively quiet; it’s as if they, too, know
that this was meant to happen. That this, the strangest, best
thing to ever happen to you, must be experienced.
April
19 / Three AM
You
talk every night until three AM. He calls late, close to midnight,
and you lie in bed together, you in San Francisco, him in
Albuquerque, twelve hundred miles away. He courts you, woos
you, asks about all your secrets, explores your mind, remotely.
Every day you fall deeper and deeper in love with this disembodied
voice, this inappropriate man. He reaches a deep part of you
that no one else has seen before, all of those other men who
only wanted sex and comfort and ease. This man wants you,
the deepest and most secret part of you. You don’t know if
it’s real—but it seems that way. Can you trust it? You don’t
know, but you want to. God, do you want to.
March
28 / Buffalo Daughter
You
have spent all day cleaning the house, removing the debris,
getting a fresh start. Texas has left you confused, hungry,
and you have no outlet. You change into your going-out clothes
and mix yourself a Cosmopolitan. Your girl friend will be
there in an hour, with the boyfriend she decided to keep after
all, and the three of you will go to the Justice League to
see Buffalo Daughter, the excellent electronic band from Japan
you saw last week in Austin.
You
turn on the television and start watching “The Summer Place,”
with Sandra Dee and Troy Donohue, a silly movie about sexual
taboos and the moral corruptness of infidelity. Sipping your
Cosmo, you feel elegant. The house glistens around you, smells
sweet and clean. The movie is entertaining, and you are about
to do something fun. You feel a certain freedom you don’t
think you’ve ever felt before.
The
phone rings. It is him. Finally. He’s left several messages,
but no phone number, and you haven’t talked to him since you
left him in Austin, next to his motorcycle, a week ago.
You
talk for two hours; your friend having called to say she will
be late. You talk about his life, why it is changing. How
it’s good his band is breaking up, because he’s been wanting
to do solo work for a long time. He’s planning on moving to
the West Coast soon, probably to live with his best friend
in Portland. He wants to get a job, go to school, get his
degree.
You
talk about your life, why it is due for a change. How you’ve
lived in the same apartment for four years, and while it’s
beautiful and very inexpensive, you are so bored you can’t
stand it much longer. You talk about the job you hate, the
daily tedium of life, the chores, the bad relationships you’ve
endured, your immense capacity for love.
By
the time you hear your friend’s horn below, a weird thing
has happened. You have fallen in love with him. You promise
to call him back when you get home, and you go out, into the
night.
March
22 / Chateaubriand
On
the flight home, you are served Chateaubriand and champagne
in First Class. You feel surreal, are not certain the events
of the past two days have really taken place. As your girlfriend
thumbs through the issue of Bikini she’s bought for the flight
home, you stare out the window at the bands of silver and
gold filling the sky. You are limp, dispossessed. She looks
up at you and says, he’s really young, isn’t he? Yes,
you say, he is. And geographically undesirable. Keep
an open mind, she says, it could work out. You never
know. I have a feeling. She smiles and turns back
to her magazine.
March
22 / The First Kiss
It’s
time to leave: you for your flight and he for the long, cross-country
drive back to Albuquerque. You walk him to his motorcycle,
a beat-up, well-tended Yamaha. His pride and joy, he’s said.
You
stand there, in the long shadows of late afternoon, staring
at each other, unsure of what comes next. I’ll call you,
he says. As soon as I get home. Ok, you say. And you
stare at each other. Can I have a hug? he finally asks,
and you smile at the sweetness, at the innocence of it. Of
course, you say, and move forward, into him. His arms,
enormous, cover you, swallow you. You can hear his heart thumping
beneath your ear. You move back slightly, tilt your head up
|
