Light travels faster than sound,
So I stare at the darkness.
I wait, patiently, for the first,
For the most energetic photons to pass the corner.
I know they will come first
Because I read it.
They will be wild and untamed,
Eager to show off and impress.
These dots, a trillion times smaller than
A laser, a pin prick, a hairline fracture,
have traveled unchecked for a thousand million years.
Each one has survived long enough to
Light the tunnels and bring men from
Perdition.
Each pin prick is the absence of
Absence. It is being in the most
Excited way. It is what each cell in
Us craves. Each bit of light is
Collected and held, remembered in its
Uniqueness until we pass and become
Light bending the corner to...
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Never Have I Ever
It’s near midnight and the room is dark enough, we think. No kitchen light, no overhead light, even the movie on the DVD player is done and all that’s left is a glow of milky black from the TV. We like it dark, it’s better if it's darker, but this works. We sit in a rough circle and pretend to look at each other.
It’s a game of truth-telling, at least that’s what we tell ourselves. Really, it’s a competition to see who is the wildest, the most dangerous. A girl to the right of the TV pulls her legs up under her and rests her chin on her palm. She’s trying to think of how to start. In the light one of us would start with an innocuous challenge: “Never have I ever gone skydiving,” but that’s not enough for the dark. The dark is like a new friend and we all want to impress it. It reaches only the right side of the girl by the TV, caressing her arm lightly but moving more towards the two boys to her right, only barely kept from fully embracing them by the last lingering glow of the TV screen. Only the woman in the center of our group—tall, athletic with a delicate tan that shifts from berry brown to light bronze—is graced with the full embrace of the darkness. It envelops her like a long-gone lover returned home.
Finally the girl to the right of the TV speaks, “Never have I ever been the reason someone committed suicide.” She looks at us daringly and then starts giggling to hide the threat of her question. I look at everyone else, relieved to know I'm in the company of "good" people .
Slowly, the girl in the dark raises her hand and tips the beer bottle to her lips. The girl who asked the question abruptly straightens; she watches the tan woman and silently tries to coax a story out of her. We all try to will the story from her, our decorum gone in favor of a luscious, gritty story. The tan woman looks her dead in the eye, no hint of amusement on her features. I watch as the darkness seems to peel back a bit and we all get closer. The tension seeps into all of us, transforming from awkward curiosity to apprehension and anxiety somewhere in the air.
The silence is heavy then, but not like the pregnant, waiting silence before the question. No longer are we comfortable in the imitation anonymity afforded by the dark; we’re all sitting straight, thinking clear. We’ve gone from hip, bohemian college students to wary square-johns caught in a police raid their first time at a strip club. We’re all wondering why the tan woman doesn’t laugh or smile so we can retreat back to the dark and go back to showing off how little we care about what others think of us. I’m entranced by her, wanting her to take me in deeper to something so painful, or ludicrous that she won’t share it with us. There’s a hint of grim mischief in her eyes and I think that maybe if we let go we can go with her where she’s leading us. I think, Maybe she’ll take me into the dark with her and I’ll tell her all my secrets and she’ll tell me all hers and we can be wounded together.
She smiles then and winks at one of the boys and I can’t help but feel like she was playing with us, tugging on some invisible rope to pull us together. In this game someone’s got to be the sacrifice, and maybe she was it. Speared on the tip of our wildest fears, our stomachs clenched tight in anxiety as we witness honesty. I can imagine her throwing herself on a grenade just to say she did it. I watch her as we try to get back on track, to ignore the presence of something patently destructive in our midst.
We all let out a deep breath, everyone’s heart slows and we settle back into our act. The boys are embraced by the dark again, but not as fully or delicately as the tan woman is. On the other side of her I sink back into the low light of the armchair while the last two in our group—a couple invited only because we thought it would be fun to make them put themselves out on the line—fall into each other.
The next dozen questions are simple, superficial and boring. We’re all clinging to our comfort and the dark. It is better that way, they think. Everyone sits easy knowing that we were very close to playing the game right. We didn’t though, so we’re safe. I think there was too much light, but really, there always is.
It’s a game of truth-telling, at least that’s what we tell ourselves. Really, it’s a competition to see who is the wildest, the most dangerous. A girl to the right of the TV pulls her legs up under her and rests her chin on her palm. She’s trying to think of how to start. In the light one of us would start with an innocuous challenge: “Never have I ever gone skydiving,” but that’s not enough for the dark. The dark is like a new friend and we all want to impress it. It reaches only the right side of the girl by the TV, caressing her arm lightly but moving more towards the two boys to her right, only barely kept from fully embracing them by the last lingering glow of the TV screen. Only the woman in the center of our group—tall, athletic with a delicate tan that shifts from berry brown to light bronze—is graced with the full embrace of the darkness. It envelops her like a long-gone lover returned home.
Finally the girl to the right of the TV speaks, “Never have I ever been the reason someone committed suicide.” She looks at us daringly and then starts giggling to hide the threat of her question. I look at everyone else, relieved to know I'm in the company of "good" people .
Slowly, the girl in the dark raises her hand and tips the beer bottle to her lips. The girl who asked the question abruptly straightens; she watches the tan woman and silently tries to coax a story out of her. We all try to will the story from her, our decorum gone in favor of a luscious, gritty story. The tan woman looks her dead in the eye, no hint of amusement on her features. I watch as the darkness seems to peel back a bit and we all get closer. The tension seeps into all of us, transforming from awkward curiosity to apprehension and anxiety somewhere in the air.
The silence is heavy then, but not like the pregnant, waiting silence before the question. No longer are we comfortable in the imitation anonymity afforded by the dark; we’re all sitting straight, thinking clear. We’ve gone from hip, bohemian college students to wary square-johns caught in a police raid their first time at a strip club. We’re all wondering why the tan woman doesn’t laugh or smile so we can retreat back to the dark and go back to showing off how little we care about what others think of us. I’m entranced by her, wanting her to take me in deeper to something so painful, or ludicrous that she won’t share it with us. There’s a hint of grim mischief in her eyes and I think that maybe if we let go we can go with her where she’s leading us. I think, Maybe she’ll take me into the dark with her and I’ll tell her all my secrets and she’ll tell me all hers and we can be wounded together.
She smiles then and winks at one of the boys and I can’t help but feel like she was playing with us, tugging on some invisible rope to pull us together. In this game someone’s got to be the sacrifice, and maybe she was it. Speared on the tip of our wildest fears, our stomachs clenched tight in anxiety as we witness honesty. I can imagine her throwing herself on a grenade just to say she did it. I watch her as we try to get back on track, to ignore the presence of something patently destructive in our midst.
We all let out a deep breath, everyone’s heart slows and we settle back into our act. The boys are embraced by the dark again, but not as fully or delicately as the tan woman is. On the other side of her I sink back into the low light of the armchair while the last two in our group—a couple invited only because we thought it would be fun to make them put themselves out on the line—fall into each other.
The next dozen questions are simple, superficial and boring. We’re all clinging to our comfort and the dark. It is better that way, they think. Everyone sits easy knowing that we were very close to playing the game right. We didn’t though, so we’re safe. I think there was too much light, but really, there always is.
Untitled
So, I’m at this house and we’re playing truth or dare, right. And, you know, someone asks the big question, right: When was the first time you were in love? So I’m standing there, sipping on a beer and thinking; I’m thinking real hard, ‘cause I trust these folk, they're my people. I can’t bullshit these people.
And, finally I know it; I think back real hard and it’s this montage scene like a movie. I tell them everything in and out of sequence, cause the movie’s out of range of my memory. I tell them that I still remember sitting next to her in a high school movie theater, my hand creeping closer, but not touching her. And, I mean, I’m thinking like, this can’t be real. I can’t be sitting next to this riot grrrl angel with a self shaved head and a stick and poke tattoo. I can’t be imagining her bright blue eyes searching mine for some big metaphysical answer. I remember getting her email address, buying calling cards to talk to her in my dorm until lights out. I remember her scratchy, Lori Petty voice. I tell them about how she was a vegan and made me lavender bath stuff and made me a card with a picture of me in sepia and a Sufi love poem typed and pasted on. I remember creeping a hand over her thigh under the blanket while we and her little sister watched some lesbian love-story.
I tell them about how I’d just stopped shaving my legs and she had never shaved hers and we laughed about how girly my legs were. I tell them about the night that started it all when I swung 30 feet in the air and made her promise to kiss me else I’d drop to my death. I tell them about how she had to kiss me first cause I was too afraid. I tell them about spring break and the Cloisters, staring at the Hudson from Fort Tryon Park. I tell them about my mom joking about my neck after the first night. I still remember sitting down the way from your fashion school and drinking coffee and reading a book waiting. I remember feeling giddy and wanted and happy when we would kiss in the corner by the window. We thought it was changing the world, two little homos making out in Manhattan. I grin then, tasting her lips on mine and our naïve walks through the City. And then I get quiet, cause somewhere in the background, real low is that mix-tape she played in her room for me and I don’t want to talk over it.
Finally, after a long pause, I finish my beer and tell them, I knew I loved her when I told her I couldn’t be the one to save her. When I felt my heart settle somewhere below my stomach but above my feet. I tell them I knew it when I still smelled her on my sheets at the end of the year.
I smile at them then, and the credits roll and it fades to black. And they look at me and start laughing. They know it’s just a story and so for consequence I kiss a friend’s ass. And all the time I’m grinning cause I don’t know if it’s just a story myself.
And, finally I know it; I think back real hard and it’s this montage scene like a movie. I tell them everything in and out of sequence, cause the movie’s out of range of my memory. I tell them that I still remember sitting next to her in a high school movie theater, my hand creeping closer, but not touching her. And, I mean, I’m thinking like, this can’t be real. I can’t be sitting next to this riot grrrl angel with a self shaved head and a stick and poke tattoo. I can’t be imagining her bright blue eyes searching mine for some big metaphysical answer. I remember getting her email address, buying calling cards to talk to her in my dorm until lights out. I remember her scratchy, Lori Petty voice. I tell them about how she was a vegan and made me lavender bath stuff and made me a card with a picture of me in sepia and a Sufi love poem typed and pasted on. I remember creeping a hand over her thigh under the blanket while we and her little sister watched some lesbian love-story.
I tell them about how I’d just stopped shaving my legs and she had never shaved hers and we laughed about how girly my legs were. I tell them about the night that started it all when I swung 30 feet in the air and made her promise to kiss me else I’d drop to my death. I tell them about how she had to kiss me first cause I was too afraid. I tell them about spring break and the Cloisters, staring at the Hudson from Fort Tryon Park. I tell them about my mom joking about my neck after the first night. I still remember sitting down the way from your fashion school and drinking coffee and reading a book waiting. I remember feeling giddy and wanted and happy when we would kiss in the corner by the window. We thought it was changing the world, two little homos making out in Manhattan. I grin then, tasting her lips on mine and our naïve walks through the City. And then I get quiet, cause somewhere in the background, real low is that mix-tape she played in her room for me and I don’t want to talk over it.
Finally, after a long pause, I finish my beer and tell them, I knew I loved her when I told her I couldn’t be the one to save her. When I felt my heart settle somewhere below my stomach but above my feet. I tell them I knew it when I still smelled her on my sheets at the end of the year.
I smile at them then, and the credits roll and it fades to black. And they look at me and start laughing. They know it’s just a story and so for consequence I kiss a friend’s ass. And all the time I’m grinning cause I don’t know if it’s just a story myself.
"Monologue"
I can’t stop moving, so I slip from under her arm and go to the porch to pace. My hands are shaking, and I keep smoking, thinking of all the excuses that sounded so good 14-hours ago. The stars are high in the sky, ready for dawn and I should be in bed with her.
But I’m not.
I think about two years with her and I think about this song that we bonded over at a concert.
But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feels like my first hit.
(And it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(Yeah, it hurts like hell)
I want to tell her so many lies, but the truth keeps coming up and that drunk that felt so good, that kept us close is burning away. It’s slipping away and so is my resolve. I want to think that I’m no coward, but I am and I’m set to run. They say you have to fight for love, that happiness doesn’t come easy, but in the back of my head I hear a girl screaming for hope, for a future and it sounds just like this song I once knew…
How’d it go...
When we can't begin
Unless it's with an argument
We’re losing out on
Love for the sake of it
And I want to tell her that I can’t fight anymore. I know I’ve been out here too long ‘cause I can hear her shuffling behind the door.
How many rounds can I go?
And how can I soften the blows?
She used to fit so nice into the crook of my arm and I fit real good against the curve of her body at crowded shows. I remember dreaming of her and fighting to hide the smile that crept across my lips when I saw her lying next to me. She didn’t have to open her eyes for me to know they were the most beautiful brown I’d ever seen, glowing like a forest set ablaze.
Oh baby, when you close your eyes
You’re so terrified, so terrified
So am I.
I’m scared of her, of me, of us. It seems so obvious, but it’s more. I suppose. It’s starting to get foggy and I’m happy to hide in it, to smoke another cigarette and hope that it hides the fear in my eyes. I know she wants to come out, to know that I’m not pacing and thinking of her, or here.
Instead I think about the club, about her, about the way I saw her through a crowd and knew she had to go home with me. Two month later I was holding her hand in public, smiling at the jealousy of the boys who walked past us. Three months later we were living together, first until I found my own place, then because it didn’t make sense for us to live apart as so much of our lives were already tangled up in each other. And it was so easy, so easy to be lost in that, to be lost in her.
You’re brilliant, but…
You’re amazing, what…
But still I wonder if I want to be here with her. But then I look at my hands, see them shaking and wonder if it’s the cold in the air or its me. I turn around and the light behind the door’s off, and I know she’s in bed, pretending to be asleep. She’s waiting for me to come back, to fit back in with her, to let her find her shape against mine. And I think about that last song at the show we met at:
Lay down all those instruments of navigation
Cause we’re already lost,
And maybe we
Will fall apart at the seams
Am I through with you?
Have you had enough of me?
But I can’t shake her, if I could I would’ve, I know it. For better or worse this girl is mine and I’m hers and I can’t get past that. So I flick my cigarette and I go back into the bed and she moves to put her arm across me. I smile ‘cause I know I can do this. I can’t not. I kiss the top of her head and close my eyes, and in my head a girl is singing,
It's like a bottle to the head.
I'm seeing stars, I'm seeing red.
I'd taste your mouth in anyone's kiss.
Where do you end and I begin?
It's like a bottle to the head.
Peg the needle in the red!
I'd taste your mouth in any kiss.
Where do you end and I begin?
*All italicized sections are quotes from Rainer Maria or Garrison Starr
But I’m not.
I think about two years with her and I think about this song that we bonded over at a concert.
But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feels like my first hit.
(And it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(Yeah, it hurts like hell)
I want to tell her so many lies, but the truth keeps coming up and that drunk that felt so good, that kept us close is burning away. It’s slipping away and so is my resolve. I want to think that I’m no coward, but I am and I’m set to run. They say you have to fight for love, that happiness doesn’t come easy, but in the back of my head I hear a girl screaming for hope, for a future and it sounds just like this song I once knew…
How’d it go...
When we can't begin
Unless it's with an argument
We’re losing out on
Love for the sake of it
And I want to tell her that I can’t fight anymore. I know I’ve been out here too long ‘cause I can hear her shuffling behind the door.
How many rounds can I go?
And how can I soften the blows?
She used to fit so nice into the crook of my arm and I fit real good against the curve of her body at crowded shows. I remember dreaming of her and fighting to hide the smile that crept across my lips when I saw her lying next to me. She didn’t have to open her eyes for me to know they were the most beautiful brown I’d ever seen, glowing like a forest set ablaze.
Oh baby, when you close your eyes
You’re so terrified, so terrified
So am I.
I’m scared of her, of me, of us. It seems so obvious, but it’s more. I suppose. It’s starting to get foggy and I’m happy to hide in it, to smoke another cigarette and hope that it hides the fear in my eyes. I know she wants to come out, to know that I’m not pacing and thinking of her, or here.
Instead I think about the club, about her, about the way I saw her through a crowd and knew she had to go home with me. Two month later I was holding her hand in public, smiling at the jealousy of the boys who walked past us. Three months later we were living together, first until I found my own place, then because it didn’t make sense for us to live apart as so much of our lives were already tangled up in each other. And it was so easy, so easy to be lost in that, to be lost in her.
You’re brilliant, but…
You’re amazing, what…
But still I wonder if I want to be here with her. But then I look at my hands, see them shaking and wonder if it’s the cold in the air or its me. I turn around and the light behind the door’s off, and I know she’s in bed, pretending to be asleep. She’s waiting for me to come back, to fit back in with her, to let her find her shape against mine. And I think about that last song at the show we met at:
Lay down all those instruments of navigation
Cause we’re already lost,
And maybe we
Will fall apart at the seams
Am I through with you?
Have you had enough of me?
But I can’t shake her, if I could I would’ve, I know it. For better or worse this girl is mine and I’m hers and I can’t get past that. So I flick my cigarette and I go back into the bed and she moves to put her arm across me. I smile ‘cause I know I can do this. I can’t not. I kiss the top of her head and close my eyes, and in my head a girl is singing,
It's like a bottle to the head.
I'm seeing stars, I'm seeing red.
I'd taste your mouth in anyone's kiss.
Where do you end and I begin?
It's like a bottle to the head.
Peg the needle in the red!
I'd taste your mouth in any kiss.
Where do you end and I begin?
*All italicized sections are quotes from Rainer Maria or Garrison Starr
Midnight Catechism in 2 Parts
Hail mary, full of grace, the LORD is with thee;
blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy wil be done,
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who
trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
1)
I fight like I love and
I've been sucker punched too many times.
I know to dig down and charge.
My shoulder goes first and my arms wrap,
tight like gossamer wings drying.
And every time hurts like the first.
I'm supposed to be seasoned, weathered and
beaten.
Forgive my lapse,
I forget I'm not in a movie.
The next line is not at hand.
She's waiting for me to let go
and I forget.
I don't remember how.
And she has to fight
for
each
breath.
So, I feel the gossamer--delicate and beautiful--
only when it's not
there she goes.
And when I fall, I wrap up to protect
everything vital. To survive
I protect head, heart, gut.
But yeah,
it hurts like the first time.
***there's an image that goes with this that I'll work on uploading soon.
2)My hands feel like open sores. They're cut and stinging from the ice I punched. It feels sharp and angry, so fierce and wile and real quick my heart learns to beat in time to my hands.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the LORD is with thee; blessed art thou... and a vicarious catechism washes over me.
We learn Mary was a patient sufferer. She was Freud's ideal. Sitting mute and loving. Giving what an absent deity and a confused carpenter never could.
What do you suppose she was like?
I imagine her as young and warm, but distinctly removed. I believe she knew and that ever lactating Madonna is weeping not for ecstasy but sorrow.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy will be done. Whispered sad Joseph. To Whom could he seek refuge? Not poor Mary who knew her only child's fate. Not t his peers who call him cuckold if they do not believe or heretic if they do. Not to those men who call Mary whore. So he meets the Magdalene.
And sad Joseph loses her to his wife's son. But Joseph knows. He know that his lonely son deserves a bit of joy.
And when the rooster cries the third time so does Joseph. So does Mary.
****This also has a bunch of pictures that go with it.
blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy wil be done,
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who
trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
1)
I fight like I love and
I've been sucker punched too many times.
I know to dig down and charge.
My shoulder goes first and my arms wrap,
tight like gossamer wings drying.
And every time hurts like the first.
I'm supposed to be seasoned, weathered and
beaten.
Forgive my lapse,
I forget I'm not in a movie.
The next line is not at hand.
She's waiting for me to let go
and I forget.
I don't remember how.
And she has to fight
for
each
breath.
So, I feel the gossamer--delicate and beautiful--
only when it's not
there she goes.
And when I fall, I wrap up to protect
everything vital. To survive
I protect head, heart, gut.
But yeah,
it hurts like the first time.
***there's an image that goes with this that I'll work on uploading soon.
2)My hands feel like open sores. They're cut and stinging from the ice I punched. It feels sharp and angry, so fierce and wile and real quick my heart learns to beat in time to my hands.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the LORD is with thee; blessed art thou... and a vicarious catechism washes over me.
We learn Mary was a patient sufferer. She was Freud's ideal. Sitting mute and loving. Giving what an absent deity and a confused carpenter never could.
What do you suppose she was like?
I imagine her as young and warm, but distinctly removed. I believe she knew and that ever lactating Madonna is weeping not for ecstasy but sorrow.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy will be done. Whispered sad Joseph. To Whom could he seek refuge? Not poor Mary who knew her only child's fate. Not t his peers who call him cuckold if they do not believe or heretic if they do. Not to those men who call Mary whore. So he meets the Magdalene.
And sad Joseph loses her to his wife's son. But Joseph knows. He know that his lonely son deserves a bit of joy.
And when the rooster cries the third time so does Joseph. So does Mary.
****This also has a bunch of pictures that go with it.
untitled
I feel her heart on mine,
beside mine
and I open my eyes.
She moves and her breath is warm, lazy
my neck prickles
and I look at her face
I know it's only been the night,
but Im in love
and I can't look away.
It's her fault she told me to stay
no way out cause her hands on mine
and I closed my eyes.
beside mine
and I open my eyes.
She moves and her breath is warm, lazy
my neck prickles
and I look at her face
I know it's only been the night,
but Im in love
and I can't look away.
It's her fault she told me to stay
no way out cause her hands on mine
and I closed my eyes.
A Family Legacy (edited from Untitled Feb 23)
In my family Lonesomeness is as much a family trait as my mother’s ears or my father’s temper. Lonesomeness is something I imagine other families growing up with and growing out of. There are things that come vividly out of childhood and things that seem as distant to me now as the stars and planets I obsessed over as a child.
In my heart I know that there was never any lack of love in our house. There was something missing, though; and we lived knee-deep inside of it. My mom was young, twenty-six, when she had me and my father had already had three children. I remember cajoling my mother and begging her for a sibling of my own, not content with the ephemeral half-siblings who skated around the edges of my memory. With my babysitter’s family there were all those siblings and cousins, the family that I thought everyone grew up with.
Before memory begins, Spanish with a perfect Puerto Rican accent and dancing a child’s cha-cha every Friday night were my heart and soul. In that time my heritage is not my parents’ and some part of me feels guilty. Unlike most babysitters mine was not an over-taxed teenager who was looking for a paycheck. They were the loving family of the Super’; they took me in as one would take a stray dog. If they ever held any judgments against my father and mother no part of me recalls it. I can only say the single time I ever let myself feel the deep well of loneliness that eventually bubbled to the surface was with them.
Even in the days of my memory that are fogged over with the distortion of time and space allowed to childhood there are foggy visions of flying to Puerto Rico wearing only my pajamas. There are dawns that glitter as we get up early to pile into the old Cadillac—me at the feet of the passenger or cramped in the middle—and catch the earliest flight off the mainland. I’m not sure which trip it happened on, because the routines were so similar. At the time I was barely old enough to recognize that each day was different from the last. I couldn’t have been more than six when my first and only moment of homesickness came to me.
When I recall it now I get the images from other visits caught up in that same trip; the problem is I can’t tease them apart. Like a Gordian knot I see the threads and where they fit together, where time has worn them into a single strand and there are places where I cannot even look without the pressure of my racing heart crumbling it to dust. If I had the strength I would offer the Alexandrian Solution, my force of will slicing the knot in two and reveal the secrets it hides. I am, however, not Alexander, so I will pluck it apart gently, taking my time to find the strand that leads me where I want to go.
The moment is surreal, little bits of it have floated away, lost to youth and the darker parts of my mind. But it comes alone, with no attachments, so I wonder if it happened early on in the trip. But the when of it is not important so much as how the moments played out. Amidst balmy summer days and afternoon rains that drenched the modest, but beautiful house we lived in at the time, is the memory of my small hands clutching the phone. In my mind it’s bright white, the same color as the cold marble that served as our only Air Conditioner. I’m yelling into the phone, the specifics are long-gone, but I know that I was in need of home, my home.
It was then that I tasted my family’s Lonesomeness. The taste still lingers on my tongue, just a ghost telling that home was a place where I could feel far away even in the same room as the people I loved most in the world. My body was shaking and the tears, something I rarely shed, came pouring down. Emotion was not something that I gave up freely—something that my taciturn grandfather, who felt child should be seen and not heard, felt compelled to remark upon—and here I was desperate to feel the embrace of my family.
All this lies in a foggy world that occupied our Moving Age. In a span of three years or so we went from my parents’ first home together in Riverdale to my ancestral home of Queens and, finally, back to Riverdale. In this time I came to know that places might not always be the same when I got back as when I left. This time I was miles away and a small ocean separated us. Suddenly I was not with people who took me to Long Island. I was not with people who taught me their life in the hopes that I would be one of them. I was not with a people whose family I knew as well, if not better, than my own. This was not the only family of which I had met every member. They were a place that was far from home and home might change at any moment.
On the other end of the phone my mother must’ve been half puzzled and half frightened. After all this was her handsome, cosmopolitan baby. This was a child who had gone to Germany, to Amsterdam, Florida and Puerto Rico. This was a child who regularly migrated south in the summer to live with a stoic grandfather and bear-hugging grandmother. This was a child who felt most comfortable on a road trip. And there I was bawling my fear and Lonesomeness. She could not feel for me, or, maybe, she felt too strongly the ache of distance between she and her father when he traveled a world away on Business. She did not know how to resolve our distance because her Lonesomeness had taken its cut of her. My father, too, knew the distance too keenly, having grown worlds apart from his mother and physically bereft of his father.
Eventually it was the fear of Lonesomeness that put me on the next flight home. No memory exists of how the flight went or if I even realized I was going home after I got off the phone. I cannot recall if my parents awaited me in the airport.
It was not long after I began to feel my father’s sickness pull him away. In a matter of years he had aged decades. Like the man who drinks of the wrong grail when searching for that Holy One he went from vital to frail. Like a slowly fading picture I lost memory of him as healthy and active. I only know it because when I found a picture of him I thought he was so healthy.
I whispered, “He looks great.”
“He’s so sick,” my mother said, more certain than I. When she says it I see that his cheeks are hollow and his eyes are slightly glazed. I see that he is starting to grow farther from us, that the Lonesomeness will be our most powerful connection. I try to hold on to the glimpse of him healthier. I pull it from the clouds of fading Polaroids.
Even now I feel the Lonesomeness when my mom tells me about their courting days. And it tugs deep in me, stirring a sad paranoia that I will never have someone to speak of like that or be spoken of by. So I hold that memory close and hope that I will be remembered as young and happy.
In my heart I know that there was never any lack of love in our house. There was something missing, though; and we lived knee-deep inside of it. My mom was young, twenty-six, when she had me and my father had already had three children. I remember cajoling my mother and begging her for a sibling of my own, not content with the ephemeral half-siblings who skated around the edges of my memory. With my babysitter’s family there were all those siblings and cousins, the family that I thought everyone grew up with.
Before memory begins, Spanish with a perfect Puerto Rican accent and dancing a child’s cha-cha every Friday night were my heart and soul. In that time my heritage is not my parents’ and some part of me feels guilty. Unlike most babysitters mine was not an over-taxed teenager who was looking for a paycheck. They were the loving family of the Super’; they took me in as one would take a stray dog. If they ever held any judgments against my father and mother no part of me recalls it. I can only say the single time I ever let myself feel the deep well of loneliness that eventually bubbled to the surface was with them.
Even in the days of my memory that are fogged over with the distortion of time and space allowed to childhood there are foggy visions of flying to Puerto Rico wearing only my pajamas. There are dawns that glitter as we get up early to pile into the old Cadillac—me at the feet of the passenger or cramped in the middle—and catch the earliest flight off the mainland. I’m not sure which trip it happened on, because the routines were so similar. At the time I was barely old enough to recognize that each day was different from the last. I couldn’t have been more than six when my first and only moment of homesickness came to me.
When I recall it now I get the images from other visits caught up in that same trip; the problem is I can’t tease them apart. Like a Gordian knot I see the threads and where they fit together, where time has worn them into a single strand and there are places where I cannot even look without the pressure of my racing heart crumbling it to dust. If I had the strength I would offer the Alexandrian Solution, my force of will slicing the knot in two and reveal the secrets it hides. I am, however, not Alexander, so I will pluck it apart gently, taking my time to find the strand that leads me where I want to go.
The moment is surreal, little bits of it have floated away, lost to youth and the darker parts of my mind. But it comes alone, with no attachments, so I wonder if it happened early on in the trip. But the when of it is not important so much as how the moments played out. Amidst balmy summer days and afternoon rains that drenched the modest, but beautiful house we lived in at the time, is the memory of my small hands clutching the phone. In my mind it’s bright white, the same color as the cold marble that served as our only Air Conditioner. I’m yelling into the phone, the specifics are long-gone, but I know that I was in need of home, my home.
It was then that I tasted my family’s Lonesomeness. The taste still lingers on my tongue, just a ghost telling that home was a place where I could feel far away even in the same room as the people I loved most in the world. My body was shaking and the tears, something I rarely shed, came pouring down. Emotion was not something that I gave up freely—something that my taciturn grandfather, who felt child should be seen and not heard, felt compelled to remark upon—and here I was desperate to feel the embrace of my family.
All this lies in a foggy world that occupied our Moving Age. In a span of three years or so we went from my parents’ first home together in Riverdale to my ancestral home of Queens and, finally, back to Riverdale. In this time I came to know that places might not always be the same when I got back as when I left. This time I was miles away and a small ocean separated us. Suddenly I was not with people who took me to Long Island. I was not with people who taught me their life in the hopes that I would be one of them. I was not with a people whose family I knew as well, if not better, than my own. This was not the only family of which I had met every member. They were a place that was far from home and home might change at any moment.
On the other end of the phone my mother must’ve been half puzzled and half frightened. After all this was her handsome, cosmopolitan baby. This was a child who had gone to Germany, to Amsterdam, Florida and Puerto Rico. This was a child who regularly migrated south in the summer to live with a stoic grandfather and bear-hugging grandmother. This was a child who felt most comfortable on a road trip. And there I was bawling my fear and Lonesomeness. She could not feel for me, or, maybe, she felt too strongly the ache of distance between she and her father when he traveled a world away on Business. She did not know how to resolve our distance because her Lonesomeness had taken its cut of her. My father, too, knew the distance too keenly, having grown worlds apart from his mother and physically bereft of his father.
Eventually it was the fear of Lonesomeness that put me on the next flight home. No memory exists of how the flight went or if I even realized I was going home after I got off the phone. I cannot recall if my parents awaited me in the airport.
It was not long after I began to feel my father’s sickness pull him away. In a matter of years he had aged decades. Like the man who drinks of the wrong grail when searching for that Holy One he went from vital to frail. Like a slowly fading picture I lost memory of him as healthy and active. I only know it because when I found a picture of him I thought he was so healthy.
I whispered, “He looks great.”
“He’s so sick,” my mother said, more certain than I. When she says it I see that his cheeks are hollow and his eyes are slightly glazed. I see that he is starting to grow farther from us, that the Lonesomeness will be our most powerful connection. I try to hold on to the glimpse of him healthier. I pull it from the clouds of fading Polaroids.
Even now I feel the Lonesomeness when my mom tells me about their courting days. And it tugs deep in me, stirring a sad paranoia that I will never have someone to speak of like that or be spoken of by. So I hold that memory close and hope that I will be remembered as young and happy.
Final Version of Untitled (?)
I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to meet Rory here. She's the type of person you go to and, stupidly, think she'll make things better. There's something about her that you can't pull away from; she's what you might call magnetic.
I'm sitting in a crappy diner listening to her tell me all about how I've fucked up.
This is her idea of flirting.
"You used to be..." I stop listening after that; I know where this is going, because it happens every time we talk. Four little words and everything changes; it's not just about what's happening now, it's about how I've changed. I don't really care how I used to be. I don't know if I care about how I will be either. Maybe Rory just wants to help me out, she's known me longer than anyone else and maybe she's actually trying to point something out.
It doesn't really matter.
She's talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I've heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants. I think about how they know how to tell each other what they need, who they want and it doesn't go wrong for them. I wonder how they learned; who taught all these people how to ask?
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then. He would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved. There was never anything in the middle ground for him.
Once he was playing with the others, in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big, boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me all the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I don't want to listen to that voice; that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with her for the rest of my life.
Rory loves that voice.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the big, vulnerable eyes she drew creases in my brow. I'm trying to figure out what the word is for how I look.
Stern; I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still wanted to be good, to be good to someone, but didn't really know how. The owners said that it acted out, but when they were with it it was the gentlest thing.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." Nodding, I see myself in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight, like in the drawing. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough. That's why I think I always come back to her, before I even know that I'm going to ask a question she's answered it. She's safe, but not like Linza.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." I look up at her and she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I hiss, she won't back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're that kinda girl. You're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Two years."
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
Fuck.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest, moving lower, and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets, Linza's mouth on me, I should see her in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. The girl was sweet enough: rangy and wild-looking like Rory, but there was something much gentler to her. I could tell when Rory hadn't known about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and she took my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed.
I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had.
I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory, she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life. I want to be there, to be with her, but I'm not used to this. I don't know where I fit into Linza's dream.
I'm the complication.
I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's, scratchy and high like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her lips to mine.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be here, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and my heart sinks a little.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a small building. Maybe it's a dorm or something. The dog is hiding in a heap of papers. It all looks too familiar, in that foggy way that things are in dreams. It looks just dissimilar enough to be surreal. I go through the heap of papers looking for the dog and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Each one is like a faded memory; they're pictures I've lost over the years, but never wanted to lose.
Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he attacks me and he won't let go of the picture.
When I wake up my stomach feels like a bomb went off in it. I roll onto her side of the bed and take in the smell of her on the sheets. Her things smell soft and sweet, not like Rory. Rory's things smell like sweat and paint and things like that.
I've been at work for a few hours and I'm bored. It's the usual list of problems:
"My dog won't take a dump..."
"Fifi's been irritable all week, she's usually a good cat..."
"Rex needs her shots..."
"He's been feverish..." I love the animals, but I hate people. They get in the way. Most of the time the animal's just nervous, or needs a change of diet; the people make them sick, or want them to have something wrong. They can't deal with the fact that most pets don't need us as much as we need them. A little after noon I decide I can't deal with anymore intake and switch off to work in the back. Someone brings in this big dog. He's got a drooling problem and has been lethargic; all new symptoms the owners assure me.
He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," Hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not actually working, are you? You're in the back room with one of those cute nurses." Her voice is a hungry purr in my ear and I should be watching Winnie 'cause I can feel him getting antsy.
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it comes the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table. I study it for a long moment before getting the phone.
"...you there, Liam?" Rory's voice comes sharp and anxious through the phone.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy, enough. My eyes meet Rory's. Shortly after, our lips meet.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs."
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and leads me away.
The walk back to my apartment is long and the wind is cold and wet against my face. I hunch down into my jacket, as much to hide from the wind as from anyone who might see me. I think about Rory's apartment with the same sheets since we were just out of college. Her mom had sent them as a housewarming present. Her sheets are not as nice as Linza's; they're thin and have that sweet smell of too much patchouli. I used to wrap them around my waist on lazy summer days. We wouldn't leave the apartment those days until the cool night took over and we got drunk with strangers. I think about those long lost days as she kisses every part of me.
I left while she was still asleep; if she had woken up I don't know if I could've left. The entire time she was gentle, as if I were a child, or something that had just been repaired and the glue was still wet. Part of me wonders if she wanted it to last, with the way she acted. Time was she didn't care where we fucked as long as she got off. I held her as she fell asleep and her body, so lean and unlike Linza's, felt like something I'd lost. I was starting to fall asleep when I felt her heart against mine. The slow, steady thud reminded me too much of Linza so I left when I knew she was asleep.
When I come into the apartment Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. As I watch her my heart feels heavy in my chest.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Her delicate hold makes me I wince. I fight the urge to pull my hand back from her. She holds it and kisses my palm lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's aloof, blue eyes not Linza's bright, brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; her taste is still on the back of my throat. My chest gets tight and I force my eyes to stay closed. It feels like I'm going to throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears have already marked my face. I turn to kiss her slow and steady. Catching my breath I steal it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. Easily she opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out of place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling artists like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections.
I met her at Rory's ex's show two-and-a-half years ago. She was doing the same thing then and mistook me for one of the other artists who was at the show; at least that's what she told me. I remember her dress, with its flowers that spread up to cup her full breasts from the bottom right of it. I imagine I must have seemed different; less scared, somehow. Linza's hair was short then and the color of tumble weeds in old Westerns. Even then I wanted her, but I don't know if I thought it would last past a night. I was too caught up in me and Rory; I didn't really have it in me to think about someone new. I suppose that's why she took my number.
Suddenly my hand starts aching and brings me back to the present. It's throbbing in time with the blood pulsing in my ears. I force it aside and reach for another drink from the bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory." She seems so excited to reconnect us and I want to be excited with her and I want to be excited to be seeing Rory for the first time in ages. But, already everything's moving the same as it did two years ago. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does. It's sort of a cross between knowing and challenging. I want nothing else than to avoid eye contact with her.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I lift my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand to Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't bleeding this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the skin is ripped away and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are mangled, there's nothing permanent really, except maybe I'll have some scars. It looks a lot worse than it is, but that doesn't stop it from hurting.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home," Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about our afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." Linza straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. That's when it hits me, Rory was wrong. I touch Linza's face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are tired and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder but my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what I'm doing I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. I don't remember the last time she said hello to me when we talked.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today--it can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't, but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy.
I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here. With you."
I'm sitting in a crappy diner listening to her tell me all about how I've fucked up.
This is her idea of flirting.
"You used to be..." I stop listening after that; I know where this is going, because it happens every time we talk. Four little words and everything changes; it's not just about what's happening now, it's about how I've changed. I don't really care how I used to be. I don't know if I care about how I will be either. Maybe Rory just wants to help me out, she's known me longer than anyone else and maybe she's actually trying to point something out.
It doesn't really matter.
She's talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I've heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants. I think about how they know how to tell each other what they need, who they want and it doesn't go wrong for them. I wonder how they learned; who taught all these people how to ask?
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then. He would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved. There was never anything in the middle ground for him.
Once he was playing with the others, in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big, boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me all the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I don't want to listen to that voice; that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with her for the rest of my life.
Rory loves that voice.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the big, vulnerable eyes she drew creases in my brow. I'm trying to figure out what the word is for how I look.
Stern; I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still wanted to be good, to be good to someone, but didn't really know how. The owners said that it acted out, but when they were with it it was the gentlest thing.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." Nodding, I see myself in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight, like in the drawing. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough. That's why I think I always come back to her, before I even know that I'm going to ask a question she's answered it. She's safe, but not like Linza.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." I look up at her and she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I hiss, she won't back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're that kinda girl. You're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Two years."
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
Fuck.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest, moving lower, and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets, Linza's mouth on me, I should see her in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. The girl was sweet enough: rangy and wild-looking like Rory, but there was something much gentler to her. I could tell when Rory hadn't known about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and she took my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed.
I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had.
I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory, she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life. I want to be there, to be with her, but I'm not used to this. I don't know where I fit into Linza's dream.
I'm the complication.
I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's, scratchy and high like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her lips to mine.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be here, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and my heart sinks a little.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a small building. Maybe it's a dorm or something. The dog is hiding in a heap of papers. It all looks too familiar, in that foggy way that things are in dreams. It looks just dissimilar enough to be surreal. I go through the heap of papers looking for the dog and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Each one is like a faded memory; they're pictures I've lost over the years, but never wanted to lose.
Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he attacks me and he won't let go of the picture.
When I wake up my stomach feels like a bomb went off in it. I roll onto her side of the bed and take in the smell of her on the sheets. Her things smell soft and sweet, not like Rory. Rory's things smell like sweat and paint and things like that.
I've been at work for a few hours and I'm bored. It's the usual list of problems:
"My dog won't take a dump..."
"Fifi's been irritable all week, she's usually a good cat..."
"Rex needs her shots..."
"He's been feverish..." I love the animals, but I hate people. They get in the way. Most of the time the animal's just nervous, or needs a change of diet; the people make them sick, or want them to have something wrong. They can't deal with the fact that most pets don't need us as much as we need them. A little after noon I decide I can't deal with anymore intake and switch off to work in the back. Someone brings in this big dog. He's got a drooling problem and has been lethargic; all new symptoms the owners assure me.
He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," Hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not actually working, are you? You're in the back room with one of those cute nurses." Her voice is a hungry purr in my ear and I should be watching Winnie 'cause I can feel him getting antsy.
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it comes the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table. I study it for a long moment before getting the phone.
"...you there, Liam?" Rory's voice comes sharp and anxious through the phone.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy, enough. My eyes meet Rory's. Shortly after, our lips meet.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs."
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and leads me away.
The walk back to my apartment is long and the wind is cold and wet against my face. I hunch down into my jacket, as much to hide from the wind as from anyone who might see me. I think about Rory's apartment with the same sheets since we were just out of college. Her mom had sent them as a housewarming present. Her sheets are not as nice as Linza's; they're thin and have that sweet smell of too much patchouli. I used to wrap them around my waist on lazy summer days. We wouldn't leave the apartment those days until the cool night took over and we got drunk with strangers. I think about those long lost days as she kisses every part of me.
I left while she was still asleep; if she had woken up I don't know if I could've left. The entire time she was gentle, as if I were a child, or something that had just been repaired and the glue was still wet. Part of me wonders if she wanted it to last, with the way she acted. Time was she didn't care where we fucked as long as she got off. I held her as she fell asleep and her body, so lean and unlike Linza's, felt like something I'd lost. I was starting to fall asleep when I felt her heart against mine. The slow, steady thud reminded me too much of Linza so I left when I knew she was asleep.
When I come into the apartment Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. As I watch her my heart feels heavy in my chest.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Her delicate hold makes me I wince. I fight the urge to pull my hand back from her. She holds it and kisses my palm lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's aloof, blue eyes not Linza's bright, brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; her taste is still on the back of my throat. My chest gets tight and I force my eyes to stay closed. It feels like I'm going to throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears have already marked my face. I turn to kiss her slow and steady. Catching my breath I steal it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. Easily she opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out of place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling artists like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections.
I met her at Rory's ex's show two-and-a-half years ago. She was doing the same thing then and mistook me for one of the other artists who was at the show; at least that's what she told me. I remember her dress, with its flowers that spread up to cup her full breasts from the bottom right of it. I imagine I must have seemed different; less scared, somehow. Linza's hair was short then and the color of tumble weeds in old Westerns. Even then I wanted her, but I don't know if I thought it would last past a night. I was too caught up in me and Rory; I didn't really have it in me to think about someone new. I suppose that's why she took my number.
Suddenly my hand starts aching and brings me back to the present. It's throbbing in time with the blood pulsing in my ears. I force it aside and reach for another drink from the bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory." She seems so excited to reconnect us and I want to be excited with her and I want to be excited to be seeing Rory for the first time in ages. But, already everything's moving the same as it did two years ago. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does. It's sort of a cross between knowing and challenging. I want nothing else than to avoid eye contact with her.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I lift my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand to Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't bleeding this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the skin is ripped away and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are mangled, there's nothing permanent really, except maybe I'll have some scars. It looks a lot worse than it is, but that doesn't stop it from hurting.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home," Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about our afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." Linza straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. That's when it hits me, Rory was wrong. I touch Linza's face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are tired and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder but my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what I'm doing I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. I don't remember the last time she said hello to me when we talked.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today--it can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't, but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy.
I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here. With you."
Snowflakes in Babylon
My vision is blurry,
but it's not astigmatism.
It's your smell, your look;
It's you.
I'm up high, a snowflake.
Waiting to glide down and
be lost.
I stand out clear, bright and
melting on your sleeve
with its delicate ink
stabbed into your skin.
The words carved in,
indelibly.
Just like summer camp with
names etched on underwear.
The word is written,
and it is Anomia;
chaos, law without order.
A deep dysfunction,
a gulf between us and
no, Luke didn't dream
of hips and lips
of a bed split.
I am Babylon and you
Judea.
You are the righteous sword,
The Chosen.
I am a savage in the wild.
Say the word!
I am yours, taken
a willing hostage.
No.
I am a snowflake
and I am melted.
Barely a memory.
but it's not astigmatism.
It's your smell, your look;
It's you.
I'm up high, a snowflake.
Waiting to glide down and
be lost.
I stand out clear, bright and
melting on your sleeve
with its delicate ink
stabbed into your skin.
The words carved in,
indelibly.
Just like summer camp with
names etched on underwear.
The word is written,
and it is Anomia;
chaos, law without order.
A deep dysfunction,
a gulf between us and
no, Luke didn't dream
of hips and lips
of a bed split.
I am Babylon and you
Judea.
You are the righteous sword,
The Chosen.
I am a savage in the wild.
Say the word!
I am yours, taken
a willing hostage.
No.
I am a snowflake
and I am melted.
Barely a memory.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
editedx1
"You used to be..." I stopped listening after that. Four little words and everything changes. I don't really care how I used to be. I don't know if I care about how I will be either. Maybe Rory just wants to help me out, she's known me longer than anyone else and maybe she's actually trying to point something out.
It doesn't really matter.
She talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I'd heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants.
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then, and he would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved.
I remember once he was playing with the others and in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. He started to walk alone when they would play. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I'd think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me al the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I can't listen to that voice, that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with Rory for the rest of my life.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the open eyes she drew creases in my brow. I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still believed people were good even though they'd hurt it bad.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." I nod my head and in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." With a look she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I'm not letting her back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
"Two years." I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest moving lower and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets with her mouth on me I should see Linza in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. I could tell when Rory hadn't known about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and gave her my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed. I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had and I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory, she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life.
I'm the complication.
I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's scratchy and high, like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her head.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be there, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and I bite my tongue.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a school. Maybe it's an office building or something, but the dog is hiding in a heap of papers. I go through them and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he comes at me.
When I wake up my stomach feels like a bomb went off in it. I roll onto her side of the bed and take in the smell of her on the sheets. Her things smell soft and sweet, not like Rory. Rory's things smell like sweat and paint and things like that.
I've been at work for a few hours and I'm bored. It's the usual list of problems:
"My dog won't take a dump..."
"Fifi's been irritable all week, she's usually a good cat..."
"Rex needs her shots..."
"He's been feverish..." I love the animals, but I hate people. They get in the way. Most of the time the animal's just nervous, or needs a change of diet; the people make them sick, or want them to have something wrong. They can't deal with the fact that most pets don't need us as much as we need them. A little after noon I decide I can't deal with anymore intake and switch off to work in the back. Someone brings in this big dog. He's got a drooling problem and has been lethargic; all new symptoms the owners assure me.
He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," I'll be honest, hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half-way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not actually working, are you, you hound?" Her voice is a hungry purr in my ear and I should be watching Winnie 'cause I can feel him getting antsy.
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it comes the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table.
"...you still here?" Rory's voice was sharp and I could tell she was worried.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy enough. I look up at Rory and kiss her softly.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs," I offer as I move to the door.
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and I know where we're going.
The walk back to my apartment is long and the wind is cold and wet against my face. I hunch down into my jacket, half to hide from the wind and half to hide from anyone who might see me. I think about Rory's apartment with the same sheets since we were just out of college. Her mom had sent them as a housewarming present. I left while she was still asleep; if she had woken up I don't know if I could've left. The entire time she was gentle, as if I were a child, or something that had just been repaired and the glue was still wet.
I held her as she fell asleep and her body, so lean and unlike Linza's felt like something I'd lost. I was starting to fall asleep when I felt her heart against mine. The slow, steady thud reminded me too much of Linza so I stayed a bit and left when I knew she was asleep.
When I come into the apartment Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. I watch her and my heart feels heavy.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Even with all the delicacy she has for me I wince. I fight the urge to pull my hand back from her. She holds it and kisses my palm lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's aloof, blue eyes not Linza's bright, brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; I can taste her on the back of my throat. My chest gets tight and I force my eyes closed. It feels like I'm going to throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears have already marked my face. I turn to kiss her slow and steady. I need to catch my breath and I take it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. She opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out-of-place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling people like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections.
I had met her at Rory's ex's show two-and-a-half years ago. She was doing the same thing when she saw me and mistook me for one of the other artists who was at the show; at least that's what she told me. I remember her dress, with it's flowers that spread from the bottom right of it up to cup her full breasts. I imagine I must have seemed different, less timid. Linza's hair was short then and the color of tumble weeds in old westerns. Even then I wanted her, but I don't know if I thought it would last past a night. I was too caught up in me and Rory; I didn't really have it in me to thnk about someone new. I suppose that's why she gave me her number instead of asking for mine.
Suddenly I remember my hand. It's throbbing, so I reach for another drink from the bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory!" She's so excited and I want to be excited with her but already everything's moving the same as it did before. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I grab my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand and up at Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand completely cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the skin is ripped away from the muscle and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are ruined, even if I go to a hospital now the fingers are fucked.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home." Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about the afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." She straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. Rory was right, though. I 'm no good at settling and this girl wants that, she wants it with anyone. I touch her face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are tired and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder and my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what's going on I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. There's never any hello or anything.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today--t can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't, but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy.
I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here, with you."
It doesn't really matter.
She talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I'd heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants.
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then, and he would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved.
I remember once he was playing with the others and in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. He started to walk alone when they would play. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I'd think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me al the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I can't listen to that voice, that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with Rory for the rest of my life.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the open eyes she drew creases in my brow. I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still believed people were good even though they'd hurt it bad.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." I nod my head and in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." With a look she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I'm not letting her back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
"Two years." I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest moving lower and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets with her mouth on me I should see Linza in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. I could tell when Rory hadn't known about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and gave her my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed. I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had and I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory, she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life.
I'm the complication.
I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's scratchy and high, like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her head.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be there, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and I bite my tongue.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a school. Maybe it's an office building or something, but the dog is hiding in a heap of papers. I go through them and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he comes at me.
When I wake up my stomach feels like a bomb went off in it. I roll onto her side of the bed and take in the smell of her on the sheets. Her things smell soft and sweet, not like Rory. Rory's things smell like sweat and paint and things like that.
I've been at work for a few hours and I'm bored. It's the usual list of problems:
"My dog won't take a dump..."
"Fifi's been irritable all week, she's usually a good cat..."
"Rex needs her shots..."
"He's been feverish..." I love the animals, but I hate people. They get in the way. Most of the time the animal's just nervous, or needs a change of diet; the people make them sick, or want them to have something wrong. They can't deal with the fact that most pets don't need us as much as we need them. A little after noon I decide I can't deal with anymore intake and switch off to work in the back. Someone brings in this big dog. He's got a drooling problem and has been lethargic; all new symptoms the owners assure me.
He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," I'll be honest, hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half-way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not actually working, are you, you hound?" Her voice is a hungry purr in my ear and I should be watching Winnie 'cause I can feel him getting antsy.
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it comes the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table.
"...you still here?" Rory's voice was sharp and I could tell she was worried.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy enough. I look up at Rory and kiss her softly.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs," I offer as I move to the door.
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and I know where we're going.
The walk back to my apartment is long and the wind is cold and wet against my face. I hunch down into my jacket, half to hide from the wind and half to hide from anyone who might see me. I think about Rory's apartment with the same sheets since we were just out of college. Her mom had sent them as a housewarming present. I left while she was still asleep; if she had woken up I don't know if I could've left. The entire time she was gentle, as if I were a child, or something that had just been repaired and the glue was still wet.
I held her as she fell asleep and her body, so lean and unlike Linza's felt like something I'd lost. I was starting to fall asleep when I felt her heart against mine. The slow, steady thud reminded me too much of Linza so I stayed a bit and left when I knew she was asleep.
When I come into the apartment Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. I watch her and my heart feels heavy.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Even with all the delicacy she has for me I wince. I fight the urge to pull my hand back from her. She holds it and kisses my palm lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's aloof, blue eyes not Linza's bright, brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; I can taste her on the back of my throat. My chest gets tight and I force my eyes closed. It feels like I'm going to throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears have already marked my face. I turn to kiss her slow and steady. I need to catch my breath and I take it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. She opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out-of-place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling people like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections.
I had met her at Rory's ex's show two-and-a-half years ago. She was doing the same thing when she saw me and mistook me for one of the other artists who was at the show; at least that's what she told me. I remember her dress, with it's flowers that spread from the bottom right of it up to cup her full breasts. I imagine I must have seemed different, less timid. Linza's hair was short then and the color of tumble weeds in old westerns. Even then I wanted her, but I don't know if I thought it would last past a night. I was too caught up in me and Rory; I didn't really have it in me to thnk about someone new. I suppose that's why she gave me her number instead of asking for mine.
Suddenly I remember my hand. It's throbbing, so I reach for another drink from the bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory!" She's so excited and I want to be excited with her but already everything's moving the same as it did before. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I grab my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand and up at Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand completely cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the skin is ripped away from the muscle and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are ruined, even if I go to a hospital now the fingers are fucked.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home." Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about the afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." She straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. Rory was right, though. I 'm no good at settling and this girl wants that, she wants it with anyone. I touch her face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are tired and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder and my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what's going on I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. There's never any hello or anything.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today--t can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't, but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy.
I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here, with you."
untitled
In my family Lonesomeness is as much a family trait as my mother’s ears or my father’s temper. Lonesomeness is something I imagine other families growing up with and growing out of. There are things I remember very vividly from childhood and things that seem as distant to me now as the stars and planets I obsessed over as a child.
In my heart I know that there was never any lack of love in our house. In my heart there is, too, a knowledge that growing up there was a great lack in our house. My mom was young, twenty-six, when she had me and my father had already had three children. I remember cajoling my mother and begging her for a sibling of my own, not content with the ephemeral half-siblings who skated around the edges of my memory. I remember being happiest, in a certain measure, with my babysitters and their family. Before I could remember it I was speaking Spanish with a perfect Puerto Rican accent and dancing a child’s cha-cha every Friday night. Unlike most babysitters mine was not some over-taxed teenager who was looking only for the paycheck. They were the loving family of the Superintendent who took me in as one would take a stray dog. I cannot say if they ever held any judgments against my father and mother. I can only say that the only time I ever felt a deep well of fear and sadness was with them.
Even in the days of my memory that are fogged over with the distortion of time and space allowed to childhood I remember flying to Puerto Rico wearing only my pajamas. I remember getting up early so we could pile into the old Cadillac (me at the feet of the passenger or cramped in the middle, I can’t remember) and catch the earliest flight off the mainland. I’m not sure which trip it happened on, because the routines were so similar and I was only barely old enough to recognize that each day was different from the last, but I couldn’t have been more than six when my first and only moment of homesickness came to me.
The thing of it is, when I recall it now I get the images from other visits caught up in that same trip. The problem is, I can’t tease them apart; like the Gordian knot I see the threads and where they fit together, where time has worn them into a single strand and places where I cannot even look without the pressure of my racing heart crumbling it to dust. If I had the strength I would offer the Alexandrian Solution, my force of will slicing the knot in two and reveal the secrets it hides; I am, however, not Alexander, so I will pluck it apart gently, taking my time to find the strand that leads me where I want to go.
In my memory the moment is almost surreal, little bits of it have floated away, lost to youth and the darker parts of my mind. I remember it alone, with no attachments, so I wonder if it happened early on in the trip, but the when of it is not important so much as how the moments played out. Amidst balmy summer days and afternoon rains that drenched the modest, but beautiful house we lived in at the time, is the memory of my small hands clutching the phone. I can see it in my mind as bright white, the same color as the cold marble that served as our only Air Conditioner. I remember yelling into the phone, the specifics are long-gone, but I know that I was in need of home, my home.
It was then that I tasted my family’s Lonesomeness. I can still taste it on my tongue, the realization that home was a place where I could feel far away even in the same room as the people I loved most in the world. My body was shaking and the tears, something I rarely shed, came pouring down. Emotion was not something that I gave up freely—something that my taciturn grandfather felt compelled to remark upon; this man came from the people who believed children should only be seen—and here I was desperate to feel the embrace of my family. This was somewhere in foggy world that occupied our moving age. In a span of three years or so we went from my parents’ first home together in Riverdale to my ancestral home of Queens and, finally, back to Riverdale. In this time I was realizing that places might not always be the same when I got back as when I left. This time I was miles away and a small ocean separated us. I was suddenly not with people who took me to Long Island. I was not with people who taught me their life in the hopes that I would be one of them. I was not with a people whose family I knew as well, if not better, than my own. This was not the only family of which I had met every member. They were a place that was far from home and home might change at any moment.
On the other end of the phone my mother must’ve been half puzzled and half frightened. After all this was her handsome, cosmopolitan baby. This was a child who had gone to Germany, to Amsterdam, Florida and Puerto Rico. This was a child who regularly migrated south in the summer to live with a taciturn grandfather and bear-hugging grandmother. This was a child who felt most comfortable on a road trip. And there I was bawling my fear and Lonesomeness. She could not feel for me, or maybe she felt too strongly, the distance that she felt when her father traveled a world away on Business. She did not know how to resolve the distance because her Lonesomeness had taken its cut of her. My father, too, knew the distance too keenly, having grown up wildly apart from his mother and physically bereft of his father. He knew his child needed him, but, like his dumbfounded mother, he did not know how to bridge the gap.
Eventually it was the fear of Lonesomeness that put me on the next flight home. I don’t know how the flight went, I don’t know if I even realized I was going home after I got off the phone. I cannot recall if my parents awaited me in the airport.
I only remember that it was not long after I began to feel my father’s sickness pull him away and in a matter of years he had aged decades. Like the man who drinks of the wrong grail when searching for that Holy One he went from vital to frail. Like a slowly fading picture I lost memory of him as healthy and active. I only know it because when I found a picture of him I thought he was so healthy.
I whispered, “He looks great.”
“He’s so sick,” my mother said, more certain than I. When she says it I see that his cheeks are hollow and his eyes are slightly glazed. I see that he is starting to grow farther from us, that the Lonesomeness will be our most powerful connection. I try to hold on to the glimpse of him healthier. I pull it from the clouds of fading Polaroids.
Even now I feel the Lonesomeness when my mom tells me about their courting days. And I feel it tug deep in me, stirring a sad paranoia that I will never have someone to speak of like that or be spoken of by. So I hold that memory close and hope that I will be remembered as young and happy.
In my heart I know that there was never any lack of love in our house. In my heart there is, too, a knowledge that growing up there was a great lack in our house. My mom was young, twenty-six, when she had me and my father had already had three children. I remember cajoling my mother and begging her for a sibling of my own, not content with the ephemeral half-siblings who skated around the edges of my memory. I remember being happiest, in a certain measure, with my babysitters and their family. Before I could remember it I was speaking Spanish with a perfect Puerto Rican accent and dancing a child’s cha-cha every Friday night. Unlike most babysitters mine was not some over-taxed teenager who was looking only for the paycheck. They were the loving family of the Superintendent who took me in as one would take a stray dog. I cannot say if they ever held any judgments against my father and mother. I can only say that the only time I ever felt a deep well of fear and sadness was with them.
Even in the days of my memory that are fogged over with the distortion of time and space allowed to childhood I remember flying to Puerto Rico wearing only my pajamas. I remember getting up early so we could pile into the old Cadillac (me at the feet of the passenger or cramped in the middle, I can’t remember) and catch the earliest flight off the mainland. I’m not sure which trip it happened on, because the routines were so similar and I was only barely old enough to recognize that each day was different from the last, but I couldn’t have been more than six when my first and only moment of homesickness came to me.
The thing of it is, when I recall it now I get the images from other visits caught up in that same trip. The problem is, I can’t tease them apart; like the Gordian knot I see the threads and where they fit together, where time has worn them into a single strand and places where I cannot even look without the pressure of my racing heart crumbling it to dust. If I had the strength I would offer the Alexandrian Solution, my force of will slicing the knot in two and reveal the secrets it hides; I am, however, not Alexander, so I will pluck it apart gently, taking my time to find the strand that leads me where I want to go.
In my memory the moment is almost surreal, little bits of it have floated away, lost to youth and the darker parts of my mind. I remember it alone, with no attachments, so I wonder if it happened early on in the trip, but the when of it is not important so much as how the moments played out. Amidst balmy summer days and afternoon rains that drenched the modest, but beautiful house we lived in at the time, is the memory of my small hands clutching the phone. I can see it in my mind as bright white, the same color as the cold marble that served as our only Air Conditioner. I remember yelling into the phone, the specifics are long-gone, but I know that I was in need of home, my home.
It was then that I tasted my family’s Lonesomeness. I can still taste it on my tongue, the realization that home was a place where I could feel far away even in the same room as the people I loved most in the world. My body was shaking and the tears, something I rarely shed, came pouring down. Emotion was not something that I gave up freely—something that my taciturn grandfather felt compelled to remark upon; this man came from the people who believed children should only be seen—and here I was desperate to feel the embrace of my family. This was somewhere in foggy world that occupied our moving age. In a span of three years or so we went from my parents’ first home together in Riverdale to my ancestral home of Queens and, finally, back to Riverdale. In this time I was realizing that places might not always be the same when I got back as when I left. This time I was miles away and a small ocean separated us. I was suddenly not with people who took me to Long Island. I was not with people who taught me their life in the hopes that I would be one of them. I was not with a people whose family I knew as well, if not better, than my own. This was not the only family of which I had met every member. They were a place that was far from home and home might change at any moment.
On the other end of the phone my mother must’ve been half puzzled and half frightened. After all this was her handsome, cosmopolitan baby. This was a child who had gone to Germany, to Amsterdam, Florida and Puerto Rico. This was a child who regularly migrated south in the summer to live with a taciturn grandfather and bear-hugging grandmother. This was a child who felt most comfortable on a road trip. And there I was bawling my fear and Lonesomeness. She could not feel for me, or maybe she felt too strongly, the distance that she felt when her father traveled a world away on Business. She did not know how to resolve the distance because her Lonesomeness had taken its cut of her. My father, too, knew the distance too keenly, having grown up wildly apart from his mother and physically bereft of his father. He knew his child needed him, but, like his dumbfounded mother, he did not know how to bridge the gap.
Eventually it was the fear of Lonesomeness that put me on the next flight home. I don’t know how the flight went, I don’t know if I even realized I was going home after I got off the phone. I cannot recall if my parents awaited me in the airport.
I only remember that it was not long after I began to feel my father’s sickness pull him away and in a matter of years he had aged decades. Like the man who drinks of the wrong grail when searching for that Holy One he went from vital to frail. Like a slowly fading picture I lost memory of him as healthy and active. I only know it because when I found a picture of him I thought he was so healthy.
I whispered, “He looks great.”
“He’s so sick,” my mother said, more certain than I. When she says it I see that his cheeks are hollow and his eyes are slightly glazed. I see that he is starting to grow farther from us, that the Lonesomeness will be our most powerful connection. I try to hold on to the glimpse of him healthier. I pull it from the clouds of fading Polaroids.
Even now I feel the Lonesomeness when my mom tells me about their courting days. And I feel it tug deep in me, stirring a sad paranoia that I will never have someone to speak of like that or be spoken of by. So I hold that memory close and hope that I will be remembered as young and happy.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
2nd half
When I wake up my stomach feels like a bomb went off in it. I roll onto her side of the bed and take in the smell of her on the sheets. Her things smell soft and sweet, not like Rory. Rory's things smell like sweat and paint and things like that.
At the clinic there's a big dog with a drooling problem. He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," I'll be honest, hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half-way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not at work, you hound."
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it came the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table.
"...you still here?" Rory's voice was sharp and I could tell she was worried.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy. I look up at Rory and kiss her softly.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs," I offer as I move to the door.
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and I know where we're going.
When I come home Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. I watch her and my heart feels heavy.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Even with all the delicacy she had for me I winced. I had to fight pulling my hand back from her. She held my hand and kissed it lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's dull, blue eyes not Linza's bright brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her and try to hide from her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; I can taste her on the back of my throat. My throat gets tight and force my eyes closed. It feels like I'm gonna throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears already marking my face. I turn to her and kiss her slow and steady. I need to catch my breath and I take it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. She opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out-of-place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling people like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections. My hand is throbbing and I reach for another drink from the open bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory!" She's so excited and I want to be excited with her but already everything's moving the same as it did before. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and I the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I grab my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand and up at Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand completely cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the muscle is ripped and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are ruined, even if I go to a hospital now the fingers are fucked.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home." Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about the afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." She straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. Rory was right, though. I 'm no good at settling and this girl wants that, she wants it with anyone. I touch her face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are sleepy and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder and my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what's going on I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. There's never any hello or anything.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today, it can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy. I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here, with you."
At the clinic there's a big dog with a drooling problem. He's a bruiser with long fluffy hair and bright brown eyes. They call him "Winnie," it's short for Winston. He's wheezing and I can tell something is in his throat. I'm in the middle of trussing him up when Jonah tells me I have a call. I take the wireless from him as I slip the holder around Winnie's neck. He's pretty passive, but with how big his teeth are I don't want to take any chances.
"Dr. Dunbar."
"Ooooh, using the Doctor now?"
"Goddamnit, Rory, you know you're not supposed to call me at work."
"Oh, you love it. Come on, let's go to lunch."
"I'm in the middle of something," I'll be honest, hearing Rory's voice was distracting. With my hand half-way down Winnie's throat I should've been a lot more focused on the big dog's teeth around my fingers. "C'mon, Winnie. give it up."
"You're not at work, you hound."
"Actually, I've got my fingers half wa--Shit! Goddamned dog." I pull my hand back and with it came the marble stuck in Winnie's throat. I look at it and put the phone down. I pick it up and put it on the edge of a table.
"...you still here?" Rory's voice was sharp and I could tell she was worried.
"Still wanna go to lunch?"
Rory's waiting for me when I come to my apartment. She stands up and I see that her shirt is way too short for her, exposing the sharply cut muscles of her stomach. She has a tattoo that snakes over her hip and up her side that I've always been able to trace, even with my eyes closed. She brings my hand up and looks at it.
"Bitch got ya good, eh?" I look down at it and I hear the voices in my head start fighting again. One side promises me that if I let go and give into her it'll be over and done with Linza. The other voice tells me that Linza wants to settle, that she'd make me happy. I look up at Rory and kiss her softly.
"Not as good as I got him."
She smiles at me and kisses my fingers one at a time.
"Lets go upstairs," I offer as I move to the door.
"No, not this time." She takes my wrist and I know where we're going.
When I come home Linza's waiting for me and she's wearing a nice dress. I watch her and my heart feels heavy.
"Shit, I forgot. I'll get dressed quick, OK?" I'm walking past her to the bedroom when she catches my hand. Even with all the delicacy she had for me I winced. I had to fight pulling my hand back from her. She held my hand and kissed it lightly.
"It's all right. Take your time, baby." When I look at her I see Rory's dull, blue eyes not Linza's bright brown eyes. I want to tell her I can't do this, I don't want to hurt her worse than I know I have. I want to try something new; I want to be honest.
"No, I'll be quick." I smile at her and try to hide from her.
I look in the mirror as I finish dressing and I feel Rory against me. I close my eyes and my heart starts racing; I can taste her on the back of my throat. My throat gets tight and force my eyes closed. It feels like I'm gonna throw up, my head is spinning and then I feel hands on me, arms around my waist.
"Liam..." She's quiet, as if she is afraid to surprise me.
"Yeah?" My voice is low, choked as I try to collect myself.
"You were crying." I open my eyes and I see tears already marking my face. I turn to her and kiss her slow and steady. I need to catch my breath and I take it from her. My hand moves to her face and I let it ease down her neck. She opens to me and I have to pull away.
"Let's go."
When we get there I feel out-of-place. This is her world, art dealers and curators, people pimping and selling people like Rory. Linza loves it, the attention, the power. I watch her migrate through the crowd, making friends and connections. My hand is throbbing and I reach for another drink from the open bar. Linza comes over to me and kisses me on the cheek.
"Come over here, I ran into Rory!" She's so excited and I want to be excited with her but already everything's moving the same as it did before. I see Rory and my heart feels like its going to explode.
"Sure, let's go over," I manage. Rory's eyes catch mine and she smiles the way she always does.
"Hey, long time no see." My stomach clenches when she speaks and I the throbbing in my hand spreads up through my arm and into my chest. I look down at my hand and see that it's started bleeding again.
"Shit. Shit, shit shit, shit." I grab my arm and run to the bathroom.
Rory and Linza are both with me, Rory holding my arm up while Linza cleans it.
"You need to go to the hospital. Why didn't you go when it happened?" I look from Linza working on my hand and up at Rory. She stares at me and I shake my head.
"I dunno, it wasn't this bad before." It's the first time I've seen my hand completely cleaned up since this afternoon. I can see clearly where the muscle is ripped and it doesn't feel good. My two forefingers on the left hand are ruined, even if I go to a hospital now the fingers are fucked.
"Let's go home. I can take care of it there." I watch Rory the entire time and she doesn't react.
"Yeah, you should probably go home." Rory purrs the words and I know that she would want nothing more than to let something slip about the afternoon.
"We should go to the hospital, babe." She straightens and comes towards me. She leans her head on my chest and I kiss the top of her head. Rory's still holding my arm and I pull it away to wrap it around Linza.
"OK. But if it takes too long we're going home." She nods into my chest and I watch Rory.
At the hospital Linza does everything right. She keeps a hand on my lap and kisses me every now and then. I want her to say something, anything that will let me talk about Rory. I want her to know, to care, to fight for us. Rory was right, though. I 'm no good at settling and this girl wants that, she wants it with anyone. I touch her face and smile.
"Let's go home, please." I kiss her and she nods slowly. Her eyes are sleepy and she falls asleep in the cab. Her head is on my shoulder and my eyes are focused on the streets.
I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the living room. Before I even know what's going on I hear Rory's voice on the phone.
"Get stitches?" She's always in the middle of a conversation when we're on the phone. There's never any hello or anything.
"No. We came back home."
"You're whispering. Is she asleep?"
"Yeah. Tonight, today, it can't happen again."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her thinking, she wants to make a play, but I won't let her.
"I'm hanging up now. Linza's asleep and I don't want her to wake up to this."
"You wouldn't."
"You're right. I wouldn't but I will. Goodnight, Rory."
I stand over Linza as she sleeps and she's frowning in her sleep. I slip in beside her and kiss the back of her neck. She takes my hand and gingerly laces her fingers with mine. She kisses my hand and I kiss the back of her head.
"Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"I had a dream," she whispers. She's trying to pretend like she's still asleep, but I can hear that she's awake. "You left me and I woke up and the house was empty."
My throat gets tight and my stomach gets heavy. I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm here, with you."
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Unfinished
"You used to be..." I stopped listening after that. Four little words and everything changes. I don't really care how I used to be. I don't know if I care about how I will be either. Maybe Rory just wants to help me out, she's known me longer than anyone else and maybe she's actually trying to point something out.
It doesn't really matter.
She talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I'd heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants.
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then, and he would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved.
I remember once he was playing with the others and in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. He started to walk alone when they would play. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I'd think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me al the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I can't listen to that voice, that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with Rory for the rest of my life.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the open eyes she drew creases in my brow. I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still believed people were good even though they'd hurt it bad.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." I nod my head and in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." With a look she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I'm not letting her back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
"Two years." I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest moving lower and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets with her mouth on me I should see Linza in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. I could tell when Rory hadn't know about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and gave her my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed. I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had and I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life. I'm the complication. I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's scratchy and high, like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her head.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be there, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and I bite my tongue.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile, as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a school. Maybe it's an office building or something, but the dog is hiding in a heap of papers. I go through them and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he comes at me.
It doesn't really matter.
She talking, her eyes on the ketchup drawing she's doing on her placemat, and she won't stop saying "Linza this, Linza that." As if all my problems had to do with a girl. I wonder how many times I'd heard someone say the same thing about Rory and me before.
I watch the others in the diner and see couples, friends, all with their different needs, wants.
I think back to this pack of wild dogs that lived where I grew up. I remember this one dog, probably a puppy then, and he would watch the others when they played. He always held back. It was only in biology when I got into animal behavior that I remembered that he held his tail low, but not very low. He must've been a low ranking dog, but there were others with lower tails who played in the pack. He was the sort of dog who would try to play but got too carried away or would be too reserved.
I remember once he was playing with the others and in the fray he got too close to this one girl dog and the others were on him before he knew what had happened. He started to walk alone when they would play. Sometimes I caught him watching the others with his big boxy head on his fat paws. I imagine that at some point I wanted to be friends with that dog, but I was too afraid.
It's the same now, I'd think. There's a starved side of me that needs Linza, but there's another part that tells me I should stay away from her. That part I don't listen to much, it tells me al the things I don't want to hear, that I can't know. Rory knows I can't listen to that voice, that the voice that says those things would see me alone, focused on my shitty vet job and sitting in diners like this one with Rory for the rest of my life.
"Do you even hear me, Liam?" Rory looks up at me from her drawing and I see it's me. I wonder when she's gotten to look at me because I thought she was so wrapped up in that drawing.
"When did you look up from the picture?" I pull it across the table and look at the thing. She's drawn my eyes big and open, like there's something to look at. My mouth is a straight line and even with the open eyes she drew creases in my brow. I look stern, as stern as you can look when you're drawn in ketchup on the back of a placemat.
"I didn't." I see her big, brown eyes looking at me and I decide that she reminds me of this adopted dog I gave shots to last week. The dog was a mutt with some chow, a little german shepherd and some other stuff. When it looked at me I saw something vulnerable and trusting, it was the type of dog that still believed people were good even though they'd hurt it bad.
"Mmm. It's good."
"Two years."
"What?"
"That's how long its been." I nod my head and in the napkin box I can see that my lips are tight. She's right though, it's been two years, a little more actually, but close enough.
"Why do you chase her around, Liam? She doesn't..." With a look she stops where she's begun. She draws her lip in and I see her calculating how to move away from the slip. My hands knit on the able and I lean forward.
"She doesn't what?" I'm not letting her back out of this. When we dated we always spoke in half sentences, too afraid that we already both knew too much. We barely had to start what we were saying before we understood each other.
"I don't have to say it; you know it already. We wouldn't be doing this if you didn't" And there it is. I know what she means. It's easy for us to go to bed at a party or after drinking with friends. We don't even go through telling anyone what happened anymore because they're tired of it.
"What if she doesn't? She stays, she listens and we fuck great together."
"One step away from being the perfect dog."
"Shut up, Rory."
"It's true. You like the obedience. She says the same things about you."
"Bullshit, who says?"
"I mean, I'm sure she would. She's that kinda girl."
"Fuck you, you're just jealous."
"Of what? You and your little puppy?"
"Don't call her that. Besides, I want her."
"You're settling."
"And if I am?" Rory leans back in her chair and her eyes lock on mine. I can't avoid them. That's as good as letting her win.
"You couldn't settle. You just can't."
"People change."
"Not you. Not about settling."
"How do you know I can't change?"
"Two years." I look at the drawing again and close my eyes. I try to trace the figure in my mind and it won't come up. I look at it again and wonder if I always looked so stern.
"Couldn't you at least draw something flattering?"
"It wouldn't be true." Her eyes are dull and her arms lie across her stomach as she leans back.
I'm at the apartment and Linza is kissing my chest moving lower and I can't stop thinking about the picture at the diner. Two years and Rory can still draw me from memory. Lying on 400-thread count sheets with her mouth on me I should see Linza in my mind but I can only think of Rory. The last time this happened Rory was trying to leave this painter who'd fallen in love with her.
She called me and we started spending time together again. The girlfriend was never suspicious and even invited me to a few of her shows. I could tell when Rory hadn't know about it because she would take the girl aside and come back with her face red.
It was at the last show that I met Linza and gave her my number. It was also at the last show that Rory came up to me at the reception and whispered wine-soaked promises to me. I could see from how she looked over my shoulder while we talked that she wanted the girlfriend to see us. I was thinking of Linza then and when the eventual happened I was imagining Linza's body under mine as we screwed. I hadn't seen her for more than a few moments that night, but I could recall the curves that her dress promised and the sound of her laughter even as I kissed Rory with all the passion we'd once had and I was desperate to feel something again.
Now, lying in our bed, I keep thinking of Rory's picture. When Linza's lips meet mine and I feel her atop me I touch her face. She's nothing like Rory she wants to settle and get on with the rest of her life. I'm the complication. I'm always the complication.
"...you here, Liam." Her voice is low, husky, like some old-time actress and I barely recognize it. I want her voice to be Rory's scratchy and high, like a young boy's.
I open my eyes and see her body moving slow above mine, her hair cascading around us when she lowers her head.
"I need you here. Be with me." I want to. I really want to be there, I want her strong body to be enough, I want her pure, unscarred skin to be everything I need, but it's not. I keep seeing scars from Rory's body on her and I want to kiss them, to nurse each one as if reverence can undo the damage.
"I am. I'll always be here, Linza." The words catch heavy in my throat and for a moment I think I'm going to lose it. I think I might fuck it up and slip. I close my eyes and Linza moves my hands over her body.
I'm a liar and I know it. The problem is I can't let go.
When we finally fall asleep I hold her close, each heartbeat mimicking one I shared with Rory and a dozen other people. I hear her whisper something about how I must have been tired from work because I barely said anything. I can tell her now, I want to tell her now, but when I turn to face her I see she's already asleep. I brush the hair from her face and if I look only at her face I can almost see Rory's. She moves a little more into me and I bite my tongue.
In the morning Linza's already getting dressed and I see her look at me. I almost wish she knew what was going to happen. Then we could skip everything and I could start over. I smile, as much as I can without showing her anything. She kisses the top of my head and I go back to sleep.
In the dream the dog is smaller than I remember. He walks with me, but always a little bit away. I try to get him to come near, and he does, but as soon as I offer him anything he runs away. As if I could see through his eyes I know he's looking at me from hiding. When I look for him the same thing happens.
At some point I chase him into a school. Maybe it's an office building or something, but the dog is hiding in a heap of papers. I go through them and I see lots of pictures. I don't recognize any of them, but I know that they're real. Finally I find the dog and he's ripping apart the picture from Rory. When I go to take it he comes at me.
Monday, July 30, 2007
With an Ex
Petey wasn't keen on going to the rooftop party in Williamsburg with Jon and Liz. They had cornered him and forced him out. The wily pair tricked him into the event without informing him that his ex, the girl he'd meant to live with the rest of his life, was going to be there. Moira had been perfect, she was an illustrator, a talented artist who he'd fallen for in college and had spent the past four years with.
He'd first noticed the way she would brush her hair behind her ear everytime he came by, her brown eyes fluttering up from whatever she was working on to catch his as he walked by. She made a stone rise in his gut and he couldn't help but blush everytime he saw her. Cut to four years later when she was walking out on him, telling him that he wasn't the boy she'd fallen in love with. She complained that he spent all of his time working on his writing and never any time with her. He couldn't deny her claims, so he just let her walk out the door and sank into a months long depression.
Petey had only just come out of his funk and had barely consented to what sounded like a mildly disguised meatmarket party when he found out Moira was going to be at the party.
On the train ride out all he could do was beat his head into the window, cursing Jon and Liz. "Why, why, why....I mean, guys, why couldn't you just tell me that and let me make an informed decision?"
Jon feebly tried to cover, "I didn't know she was coming until today, seriously, dude. I wouldn't have set you up."
Finally they got to the party; Petey disappeared and went to grab a beer from the fridge and another to slip into his pocket.
"Still double fisting, I see." He knew the voice and even now, months later it made the skin at the back of his neck go tingly and his cock stiffen. Moira was a veteran New Englander and she had the Massachusetts Bay accent to prove it. He loved the way her voice made her sound superior, but not in a condescending way, just as if it confirmed that fact for anyone around. He turned to see her and almost cried. She was just as beautiful as ever, with her hair up in a loose bun, long tendrils of sandy hair trailing down her neck and directing his eyes to the tattoos that decorated her shoulders and upper arms. He forced a smile and tried to move away from her.
Petey cast his eyes down and went to the railing of the porch and decided to plant himself there to watch the water and lights for the rest of the night. He'd never been a match for Moira, but now, a few months out of their relationship he had a pudgy stomach and barely shaved his beard, except for the rare publishers meeting that demanded a clean-cut look. His hair had grown out long and curly so he looked like some Slash knock off. His tan skin was now lighter, more cream colored than burnt brown of old and his brown eyes were constantly sad. It was that sadness that made Moira come for him on the porch.
"Hey, you kinda just ran out, back there. What's up, baby?" Petey looked at her, anger and frustration mingling with lust and love as he tried to figure out a response.
"I...I didn't know you were going to be here." He looked back at the water and frowned. He was in no mood for playing games and he hoped that Moira would give him at least that much.
"Oh. Should I go?"
"No. We can be in the same place."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. It's fine. I'm just tired is all." He smiled and nodded. She went off, called away by her friends and he thought that might be the end of it. If he could stay out on the porch then it would all be okay.
Sometime later he found his way into the thick of the party, to where people were dancing, bodies moving against each other and sweat mingling with desire. He found himself lusting after anyone that put their body to his. He didn't know how long he stood dancing with different people when Moira fell against him, her hips tight to his, an arm around his waist and the other smoothing over his chest as they danced. He struggled to keep his composure, to fight the sensation that this was six months ago and Moira was still his. He tried to pull away from her and back inside when he felt her hand take his, and lace fingers with his. He turned, his heart breaking with need and all love and all those dumb things he'd meant to say to her when they were still together.
"What're you doing?" He questioned, his brows knit in confusion as she moved closer to him. He felt her cheek against his chest and his hand immediately went to brush through her hair. Petey couldn't help what happened next, he leaned forward and took her lips in his and hey were just as sweet as he'd remembered. He pulled her in deeper, his tongue finding hers and tasting her sweetness even as a voice in his head told him to back away. Finaly the voice won out and he walked away from her, but she followed.
"Moira, what the hell is wrong--" She was on him, she forced his back against the wall and pressed her breasts into his chest. With a skilled hand she undid the fly of his jeans and stroked his cock which, unlike him, had no reservations.
He was breathing heavily and even with the music coming from above she could hear his heart racing wildly. Petey closed his eyes and tried to fight off a sinking feeling in his gut. She kissed his throat and down his chest as her hand stroked his cock. Petey moved to pin her against the wall, his hand moving down to rip away her panties and hike up her dress as she worked his pants down. He grabbed her face and made her look at him and as he entered her she could see the anger he held, the frustation that had built up over the six months of their separation. Underneath it all, she could see the single question Why? that had plagued him.
She wanted to console him to admit she'd made a mistake and wanted nothing other than to be back with him, but the vicious, heartbroken pace that he fucked her with, his cock driving into her. She let out soft sound of supplication with each thrust. She broke away from the hold he had on her face and buried her neck in his shoulder. As they fcuked in the stairwell she could feel the cool tile slap her ass with each drive of his hips. Her arms wrapped around him and as she neared her climax she felt her cunt tighten around his cock. She came with a shudder and thought that would be the end of it. He didn't let go of her, instead he withdrew and forced her against the wall pressing her chest and face flat to it as he entered her from behind. His hand crept between her body and the wall to stroke her clit tenderly.
In the moments between her climax and his re-entering of her something had changed. Petey was no longer fucking her with the raw brutality of a heartbroken lover, but with the tenderness of a boy still in love. She started to cry, angry that she hadn't given him a better chance and, even as she dwelt on what she wished she'd done she felt him working her up to another splendid climax. He knew how to touch her, the right way to stroke her clit, to tease her and bring her to a mind-numbing peak. As he did she let out a low sound, something Petey swore was her repeating the word "sorry" over an over. He came with a shudder and withdrew from her. He put his pants back on and watched her as she straightened her dress.
Moira came towards him and touched his face lightly. "Petey...I fucked up. I should have--"
"Not now. Just...we're not going to talk about it." Even as he smiled, an attempt at reassurance she couldn't help but feel that the morning coming would test both of them.
He'd first noticed the way she would brush her hair behind her ear everytime he came by, her brown eyes fluttering up from whatever she was working on to catch his as he walked by. She made a stone rise in his gut and he couldn't help but blush everytime he saw her. Cut to four years later when she was walking out on him, telling him that he wasn't the boy she'd fallen in love with. She complained that he spent all of his time working on his writing and never any time with her. He couldn't deny her claims, so he just let her walk out the door and sank into a months long depression.
Petey had only just come out of his funk and had barely consented to what sounded like a mildly disguised meatmarket party when he found out Moira was going to be at the party.
On the train ride out all he could do was beat his head into the window, cursing Jon and Liz. "Why, why, why....I mean, guys, why couldn't you just tell me that and let me make an informed decision?"
Jon feebly tried to cover, "I didn't know she was coming until today, seriously, dude. I wouldn't have set you up."
Finally they got to the party; Petey disappeared and went to grab a beer from the fridge and another to slip into his pocket.
"Still double fisting, I see." He knew the voice and even now, months later it made the skin at the back of his neck go tingly and his cock stiffen. Moira was a veteran New Englander and she had the Massachusetts Bay accent to prove it. He loved the way her voice made her sound superior, but not in a condescending way, just as if it confirmed that fact for anyone around. He turned to see her and almost cried. She was just as beautiful as ever, with her hair up in a loose bun, long tendrils of sandy hair trailing down her neck and directing his eyes to the tattoos that decorated her shoulders and upper arms. He forced a smile and tried to move away from her.
Petey cast his eyes down and went to the railing of the porch and decided to plant himself there to watch the water and lights for the rest of the night. He'd never been a match for Moira, but now, a few months out of their relationship he had a pudgy stomach and barely shaved his beard, except for the rare publishers meeting that demanded a clean-cut look. His hair had grown out long and curly so he looked like some Slash knock off. His tan skin was now lighter, more cream colored than burnt brown of old and his brown eyes were constantly sad. It was that sadness that made Moira come for him on the porch.
"Hey, you kinda just ran out, back there. What's up, baby?" Petey looked at her, anger and frustration mingling with lust and love as he tried to figure out a response.
"I...I didn't know you were going to be here." He looked back at the water and frowned. He was in no mood for playing games and he hoped that Moira would give him at least that much.
"Oh. Should I go?"
"No. We can be in the same place."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. It's fine. I'm just tired is all." He smiled and nodded. She went off, called away by her friends and he thought that might be the end of it. If he could stay out on the porch then it would all be okay.
Sometime later he found his way into the thick of the party, to where people were dancing, bodies moving against each other and sweat mingling with desire. He found himself lusting after anyone that put their body to his. He didn't know how long he stood dancing with different people when Moira fell against him, her hips tight to his, an arm around his waist and the other smoothing over his chest as they danced. He struggled to keep his composure, to fight the sensation that this was six months ago and Moira was still his. He tried to pull away from her and back inside when he felt her hand take his, and lace fingers with his. He turned, his heart breaking with need and all love and all those dumb things he'd meant to say to her when they were still together.
"What're you doing?" He questioned, his brows knit in confusion as she moved closer to him. He felt her cheek against his chest and his hand immediately went to brush through her hair. Petey couldn't help what happened next, he leaned forward and took her lips in his and hey were just as sweet as he'd remembered. He pulled her in deeper, his tongue finding hers and tasting her sweetness even as a voice in his head told him to back away. Finaly the voice won out and he walked away from her, but she followed.
"Moira, what the hell is wrong--" She was on him, she forced his back against the wall and pressed her breasts into his chest. With a skilled hand she undid the fly of his jeans and stroked his cock which, unlike him, had no reservations.
He was breathing heavily and even with the music coming from above she could hear his heart racing wildly. Petey closed his eyes and tried to fight off a sinking feeling in his gut. She kissed his throat and down his chest as her hand stroked his cock. Petey moved to pin her against the wall, his hand moving down to rip away her panties and hike up her dress as she worked his pants down. He grabbed her face and made her look at him and as he entered her she could see the anger he held, the frustation that had built up over the six months of their separation. Underneath it all, she could see the single question Why? that had plagued him.
She wanted to console him to admit she'd made a mistake and wanted nothing other than to be back with him, but the vicious, heartbroken pace that he fucked her with, his cock driving into her. She let out soft sound of supplication with each thrust. She broke away from the hold he had on her face and buried her neck in his shoulder. As they fcuked in the stairwell she could feel the cool tile slap her ass with each drive of his hips. Her arms wrapped around him and as she neared her climax she felt her cunt tighten around his cock. She came with a shudder and thought that would be the end of it. He didn't let go of her, instead he withdrew and forced her against the wall pressing her chest and face flat to it as he entered her from behind. His hand crept between her body and the wall to stroke her clit tenderly.
In the moments between her climax and his re-entering of her something had changed. Petey was no longer fucking her with the raw brutality of a heartbroken lover, but with the tenderness of a boy still in love. She started to cry, angry that she hadn't given him a better chance and, even as she dwelt on what she wished she'd done she felt him working her up to another splendid climax. He knew how to touch her, the right way to stroke her clit, to tease her and bring her to a mind-numbing peak. As he did she let out a low sound, something Petey swore was her repeating the word "sorry" over an over. He came with a shudder and withdrew from her. He put his pants back on and watched her as she straightened her dress.
Moira came towards him and touched his face lightly. "Petey...I fucked up. I should have--"
"Not now. Just...we're not going to talk about it." Even as he smiled, an attempt at reassurance she couldn't help but feel that the morning coming would test both of them.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Its Porn. Get Over It.
Luca had been growing his beard for the past month. He was gifted with ample facial hair, his ability barely hampered by being a regrettably late bloomer. Joanie loved his beard, better yet, she loved the boy underneath. When he had first started growing the beard she thought it was handsome, a rugged shadow that made him look older. Though twenty-six Luca resembled a teenage football player. He was stocky, barely of average height and usually kept his hair shaggy, the curls poking out from under a baseball cap. Joanie, on the other hand, had looked twenty-five from the time her body started taking it's adult shape early in puberty.
It had been Luca's boyish appearance and quiet playfulness that had attracted her to him. When they had first met Luca's features were smooth and his eyes often flashed a mischievous glint before he hatched some wild scheme. At first he ad come off as awkward and quiet, just another frat-boy wannabe who was chasing after a girl in a skirt. Joanie stayed cold to him, but a mutual friend left them alone together at a party and the two bonded. It wasn't long before they were inseparable. Joanie's seriousness peeled away around him and she let herself go.
In the bedroom Luca's playful demeanor fell away to reveal a devilishly kinky side. He would tease and toy with Joanie until she begged him to fuck her. He was never short on energy and he was smart enough to ask her whenever he was unclear as to what she wanted.
That had been in the first year of their relationship. Just before Luca had started growing his beard Joanie asked if they would ever work on being intimate without the armor of his clothes.
"Luca, I just--it's not just about seeing you naked, I want you to be able to trust me." She begged.
"I don't know," his eyes darted around their room, afraid to meet hers. He moved away and looked up at the ceiling. His hands went behind his head and he tried to figure out a way to ignore the question that lingered between them. Of course he trusted her, there was no question about it. He just couldn't let go of his insecurities. She moved her hand to his belly and slipped her hand under his shirt. He started to jerk away but realized she wasn't pushing the subject. She dropped her head to his chest and closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry, baby. I--"
"I know," he sighed. "I know."
Now, four weeks later he had a thick beard and it made his face scratchy. Things had been drawn and tense and he knew that Joanie was ready to leave, uninterested in dealing with his temper. Everything was volatile and neither of them wanted to make the first move.
"Joanie?" Luca called from the bathroom. His voice was low, more hesitant than Joanie ever remembered. She frowned and shook her head. She resolved to start to talk things out with him. He was looking in the mirror and touching his beard.
"I need a little help shaving this, will you..." his voice trailed off and he raised a pair of scissors to her. She came close to him and ran her fingers over his face. She wrapped them in the curls of his beard. Though not very long it was certainly thicker than she expected. He smiled faintly as she touched him and she could feel his heart thudding, making his whole body shake. Her hand trailed down his neck, to his chest and finally it found his hand hanging limply at his side. She sat him down in the bathtub and smiled at him.
"I'm sorry, Luca, about this past month. We need to figure out some things and I'm sorry if I'm pushing you in directions you're not sure of." As she spoke she got a razor from the cabinet, an electric trimmer to bring his beard down to a place where the razor would work and the scissors in her hand. She laid out the tools and studied them before damping a cloth in hot water. She placed the cloth on his face and watched as Luca lay back, his eyes closing and his body going from tense to wary and finally to relaxed.
"I know, Jo. I didn't want to be like this with you. I've made my choice." His words were low and even from under the towel. His chest was rising and falling evenly, though his heart raced, beating a rhythm into his ribs. He thought he might have said the wrong thing when Joanie didn't reply. His gut tightened at the worry that he might have said the final things to push her away. He pulled the towel away and opened his eyes. Joe was kneeling by the tub, her jeans pulled taut across her legs.
"You took off the cloth before I said to." She poked his ribs and grinned at him. She had the scissors and started to snip his beard down so that the trimmer would be able to do it's job. When she started to see his cheeks under his beard she reached for the trimmer. She paused and leaned forward and kissed his still fuzzy cheek, down his throat and across the cloth that hid his chest. She came to his lips, finally and took her time with the kiss letting her lips linger on his and drawing him closer with her free hand. She felt his hand going to her side, pulling her shirt up as his hand searched for her skin.
Luca followed after her as she pulled away, finally sinking back again with a small groan. Joanie touched his face and bit her lip. She reached forward and touched his belly. She started inching his shirt up, her fingers teasing the trail of hair that started just under his waist band and crept up his torso. She eased it up to his chest and paused. His dark eyes focused on hers and they were questioning.
"This needs to come off, unless you want hair all over it." Joanie warned.
"Of course not." Luca took off his shirt and slipped out of his binder. Joanie paused, surprised but not unhappy. She leaned forward and kissed his chest and up to his throat.
Joanie flicked on the trimmer and brought it to his face. Her motions were quick and steady, bringing what was left of his beard down to stubble that she was tempted to leave on him. She thought it matched his personality, but she was determined.
Luca felt the swell of anxiety in his chest, then just as suddenly it was gone. Joanie was kissing him, treating him the way he had always wanted to and he felt it deep in his gut. His heartbeat moved lower and lower until he could feel it between his legs. He wondered if she noticed how aroused he was with how intently she was focused. He watched the curve of her breast under her shirt as she leaned forward and trimmed his beard down a little more. He could feel the vibration of the trimmer in his cock and it started to ache. He wanted to pull her into his lap and fuck her right there, but he was held in place by some unspoken agreement. He tried to stay still, to ignore the aching in his cock, but his mind was racing onto all the things he wanted to do to her. She turned around and he watched the beautiful swell of her ass pull her jeans tight. His hand strayed between his legs and he tried to stroke himself without her noticing.
When Joanie turned back to him her hands were occupied with a straight razor in one and foam in another. She smoothed the foam onto Luca's face for the final pass. She kept her eyes on his and he took the opportunity to resume stroking himself. His throat was bobbing and Joanie recognized it's rhythm, even though he thought she didn't. She brought a hand down to rest atop his and stroked with him for a moment, adding just a little pressure. His hips rolled to meet the touch and he let out a small sound.
"Hold still a little longer." Luca nodded at her direction and tried to keep still. He closed his eyes, and almost came when Joanie's careful, practiced hand swept off a swathe of stubble from his face. Luca had to take deep breaths, his whole body producing a steady tremble, save for his face.
"You're doin' good, baby, just a little more." She finished off his beard and he was the fresh-faced boy she had fallen in love with. The only thing she had kept was a small patch of fuzz on his chin. She touched his face and pulled him into a long kiss. Luca was hungry, his cock was aching and he wanted to be inside of her. He could only imagine what it was like for her.
Joanie could feel the burning in her cunt for the first time since they started their chore. The entire time she had been so intent on his beard that she didn't notice the aching, the mounting tension in her cunt. She pulled him up standing as she did and pushed him back against the wall of the shower. She kissed his face and down his chest. He was trembling as she kissed down to his waist and as she teased his thighs he unzipped his pants. He slipped them down and she could see his cock straining against the fabric of his boxers. She grinned and wondered at how she had missed it before. She slipped his cock from his boxers and kissed the head of it and worked down to the base of it and then swiped her tongue over the vein along the underside of his cock. He growled and grabbed handfuls of her hair as she started to tease him. Joanie drew his cock into her mouth and slowly worked her tongue around the length of it, her hands gripping his ass as she pumped his cock with her mouth.
Luca could barely breathe when he finally pulled her up into a deep, hungry kiss. He yanked off her top and lapped his tongue over her nipples, biting them gently and moving to kiss the full swell of her breasts. He kissed her everywhere but her nipples for a long time, finally he returned and toyed with them as his wild, uncontrollable hands undid her jeans. He slipped them down and sat on the edge of the tub. He pulled her close and thrust his face between her legs. She was without underwear and the curls of dark hair around her cunt glistened with her arousal. He wrapped his arm around her waist and thrust his fingers into her cunt. She let out a primal sound, something both sweet and obscene that made him thrust his fingers harder. He forced deeper, adding another finger and feeling her start to tremble. When he felt her trembling all over he stood and pulled her onto his hips. He balanced her between himself and the wall, his cock finding it's home deep inside her. She cried out, her words nonsense as she clutched and scratched at him. She moved with him, her cunt tightening around his cock as he thrust harder and faster. When he came he let out a low growl, his whole body giving a shudder and his hips jerking into hers. She came as he rode out his climax, still thrusting into her. She stroked his smooth face and kissed him tenderly.
They sank down into the bathtub and she let her fingers play on his chest as he rested.
"If I'd known shaving you would result in this I would've done it weeks ago," she kidded. Luca feigned sleep, but she saw the small smile that danced across his lips.
It had been Luca's boyish appearance and quiet playfulness that had attracted her to him. When they had first met Luca's features were smooth and his eyes often flashed a mischievous glint before he hatched some wild scheme. At first he ad come off as awkward and quiet, just another frat-boy wannabe who was chasing after a girl in a skirt. Joanie stayed cold to him, but a mutual friend left them alone together at a party and the two bonded. It wasn't long before they were inseparable. Joanie's seriousness peeled away around him and she let herself go.
In the bedroom Luca's playful demeanor fell away to reveal a devilishly kinky side. He would tease and toy with Joanie until she begged him to fuck her. He was never short on energy and he was smart enough to ask her whenever he was unclear as to what she wanted.
That had been in the first year of their relationship. Just before Luca had started growing his beard Joanie asked if they would ever work on being intimate without the armor of his clothes.
"Luca, I just--it's not just about seeing you naked, I want you to be able to trust me." She begged.
"I don't know," his eyes darted around their room, afraid to meet hers. He moved away and looked up at the ceiling. His hands went behind his head and he tried to figure out a way to ignore the question that lingered between them. Of course he trusted her, there was no question about it. He just couldn't let go of his insecurities. She moved her hand to his belly and slipped her hand under his shirt. He started to jerk away but realized she wasn't pushing the subject. She dropped her head to his chest and closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry, baby. I--"
"I know," he sighed. "I know."
Now, four weeks later he had a thick beard and it made his face scratchy. Things had been drawn and tense and he knew that Joanie was ready to leave, uninterested in dealing with his temper. Everything was volatile and neither of them wanted to make the first move.
"Joanie?" Luca called from the bathroom. His voice was low, more hesitant than Joanie ever remembered. She frowned and shook her head. She resolved to start to talk things out with him. He was looking in the mirror and touching his beard.
"I need a little help shaving this, will you..." his voice trailed off and he raised a pair of scissors to her. She came close to him and ran her fingers over his face. She wrapped them in the curls of his beard. Though not very long it was certainly thicker than she expected. He smiled faintly as she touched him and she could feel his heart thudding, making his whole body shake. Her hand trailed down his neck, to his chest and finally it found his hand hanging limply at his side. She sat him down in the bathtub and smiled at him.
"I'm sorry, Luca, about this past month. We need to figure out some things and I'm sorry if I'm pushing you in directions you're not sure of." As she spoke she got a razor from the cabinet, an electric trimmer to bring his beard down to a place where the razor would work and the scissors in her hand. She laid out the tools and studied them before damping a cloth in hot water. She placed the cloth on his face and watched as Luca lay back, his eyes closing and his body going from tense to wary and finally to relaxed.
"I know, Jo. I didn't want to be like this with you. I've made my choice." His words were low and even from under the towel. His chest was rising and falling evenly, though his heart raced, beating a rhythm into his ribs. He thought he might have said the wrong thing when Joanie didn't reply. His gut tightened at the worry that he might have said the final things to push her away. He pulled the towel away and opened his eyes. Joe was kneeling by the tub, her jeans pulled taut across her legs.
"You took off the cloth before I said to." She poked his ribs and grinned at him. She had the scissors and started to snip his beard down so that the trimmer would be able to do it's job. When she started to see his cheeks under his beard she reached for the trimmer. She paused and leaned forward and kissed his still fuzzy cheek, down his throat and across the cloth that hid his chest. She came to his lips, finally and took her time with the kiss letting her lips linger on his and drawing him closer with her free hand. She felt his hand going to her side, pulling her shirt up as his hand searched for her skin.
Luca followed after her as she pulled away, finally sinking back again with a small groan. Joanie touched his face and bit her lip. She reached forward and touched his belly. She started inching his shirt up, her fingers teasing the trail of hair that started just under his waist band and crept up his torso. She eased it up to his chest and paused. His dark eyes focused on hers and they were questioning.
"This needs to come off, unless you want hair all over it." Joanie warned.
"Of course not." Luca took off his shirt and slipped out of his binder. Joanie paused, surprised but not unhappy. She leaned forward and kissed his chest and up to his throat.
Joanie flicked on the trimmer and brought it to his face. Her motions were quick and steady, bringing what was left of his beard down to stubble that she was tempted to leave on him. She thought it matched his personality, but she was determined.
Luca felt the swell of anxiety in his chest, then just as suddenly it was gone. Joanie was kissing him, treating him the way he had always wanted to and he felt it deep in his gut. His heartbeat moved lower and lower until he could feel it between his legs. He wondered if she noticed how aroused he was with how intently she was focused. He watched the curve of her breast under her shirt as she leaned forward and trimmed his beard down a little more. He could feel the vibration of the trimmer in his cock and it started to ache. He wanted to pull her into his lap and fuck her right there, but he was held in place by some unspoken agreement. He tried to stay still, to ignore the aching in his cock, but his mind was racing onto all the things he wanted to do to her. She turned around and he watched the beautiful swell of her ass pull her jeans tight. His hand strayed between his legs and he tried to stroke himself without her noticing.
When Joanie turned back to him her hands were occupied with a straight razor in one and foam in another. She smoothed the foam onto Luca's face for the final pass. She kept her eyes on his and he took the opportunity to resume stroking himself. His throat was bobbing and Joanie recognized it's rhythm, even though he thought she didn't. She brought a hand down to rest atop his and stroked with him for a moment, adding just a little pressure. His hips rolled to meet the touch and he let out a small sound.
"Hold still a little longer." Luca nodded at her direction and tried to keep still. He closed his eyes, and almost came when Joanie's careful, practiced hand swept off a swathe of stubble from his face. Luca had to take deep breaths, his whole body producing a steady tremble, save for his face.
"You're doin' good, baby, just a little more." She finished off his beard and he was the fresh-faced boy she had fallen in love with. The only thing she had kept was a small patch of fuzz on his chin. She touched his face and pulled him into a long kiss. Luca was hungry, his cock was aching and he wanted to be inside of her. He could only imagine what it was like for her.
Joanie could feel the burning in her cunt for the first time since they started their chore. The entire time she had been so intent on his beard that she didn't notice the aching, the mounting tension in her cunt. She pulled him up standing as she did and pushed him back against the wall of the shower. She kissed his face and down his chest. He was trembling as she kissed down to his waist and as she teased his thighs he unzipped his pants. He slipped them down and she could see his cock straining against the fabric of his boxers. She grinned and wondered at how she had missed it before. She slipped his cock from his boxers and kissed the head of it and worked down to the base of it and then swiped her tongue over the vein along the underside of his cock. He growled and grabbed handfuls of her hair as she started to tease him. Joanie drew his cock into her mouth and slowly worked her tongue around the length of it, her hands gripping his ass as she pumped his cock with her mouth.
Luca could barely breathe when he finally pulled her up into a deep, hungry kiss. He yanked off her top and lapped his tongue over her nipples, biting them gently and moving to kiss the full swell of her breasts. He kissed her everywhere but her nipples for a long time, finally he returned and toyed with them as his wild, uncontrollable hands undid her jeans. He slipped them down and sat on the edge of the tub. He pulled her close and thrust his face between her legs. She was without underwear and the curls of dark hair around her cunt glistened with her arousal. He wrapped his arm around her waist and thrust his fingers into her cunt. She let out a primal sound, something both sweet and obscene that made him thrust his fingers harder. He forced deeper, adding another finger and feeling her start to tremble. When he felt her trembling all over he stood and pulled her onto his hips. He balanced her between himself and the wall, his cock finding it's home deep inside her. She cried out, her words nonsense as she clutched and scratched at him. She moved with him, her cunt tightening around his cock as he thrust harder and faster. When he came he let out a low growl, his whole body giving a shudder and his hips jerking into hers. She came as he rode out his climax, still thrusting into her. She stroked his smooth face and kissed him tenderly.
They sank down into the bathtub and she let her fingers play on his chest as he rested.
"If I'd known shaving you would result in this I would've done it weeks ago," she kidded. Luca feigned sleep, but she saw the small smile that danced across his lips.
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