AFTERMATHI arrive late to our date and savor the chance to watch him without him watching me, just for a moment. I see only the back of his head, but it is him. I know the wide shoulders, the shaved head. He’s stooped over a book--has he been waiting long? And then, OK this is it--I weave around rows of tables, cappuccino-sipping Brooklynites, nondescript chatter. I tap his shoulder, as if running into an inconsequential acquaintance, say, “Nice to see you,” as if I saw him last week, no big deal. *** Three Years Earlier We met late summer at a hipster bar with petrified wood tables and hundreds of lagers written in chalk on the walls. When I walked in, he was already seated at the bar and greeted me with a small, jerky wave. His head was totally shaven so as to downplay bald spots, but I paid little attention to his bad hair because his face had the symmetrical perfection of a generic model. We remarked on the humid weather and ordered cold beers that sweat in our hands. He had a sheepish smile, and his voice was barely more than a hush--not the frat boy type I was expecting from his online pictures.
I noticed that his left bicep was adorned with an anchor tattoo, which I would have found corny on anyone else, but it suited him somehow. “Is that a friendship tattoo? Does your best friend have a matching one?” I asked, my finger close to, but not touching, his arm. “Get it? Friend-ship? Ships? Anchors?” I always punned when on edge. He smiled, a bit crookedly, a dimple creasing his left cheek. “You’re very unique, aren’t you.” It was only 7:30, too early to be at a bar, and the place was empty aside from us and the bartender. I wished he’d find something to do, but he paced near our seats, amused by what was clearly a first date. The more beer I drank, though, the less I cared about the bartender, and the more I zeroed in on Jack. We talked for hours--and only when he got up to use the bathroom did I notice the place had filled with customers. When he returned, we continued to exist wholly inside our conversation. We had so much to say, and we couldn’t get our words out fast enough. He stared at me when I spoke, deeply, his sea green eyes inside me. “You’re incredible,” he said at least five times. I told him about my writing, my insecurities, my worries that nothing I wrote mattered. He told me I was brilliant and beautiful, that he wanted to read everything I wrote. He was getting his PhD in feminist theory and teaching summer classes. “I know,” he mumbled with a self-conscious smile, “a white guy studying feminist theory; I’m such an imposter.” He’d probably said that many times in the past, to show off his white male privilege awareness. We ordered gin and tonics and talked about how disconcerting it is that we never reach our peak; whenever we think something we’ve written is great, we read it years later and laugh. This happens over and over again--it will probably continue for the rest of our lives, we agreed. “Might as well live in the moment,” he said, “and not look back at how silly we once were. Let’s just focus on how amazing we are right now.” I blushed, unsure if he meant that we were amazing together right then, or that we should focus on how amazing we are in every present moment. When we’d had our fill of beer, we went bowling at a place down the street--ironically, of course. Neon orange and pink strobe lights flooded the room. “You are My Fire” blasted. We giggled at each other in our clownish rental shoes. An intellectual like him probably hadn’t set foot in a bowling alley in at least a decade. We nearly tied, but I beat him by several points. When we high-fived, I realized it was the first time we’d ever touched, and I longed to hold on. I wondered if this was what falling in love felt like and then quickly pushed away the thought--how naive to think such a thing after knowing someone for just a few hours! I was only 22 and had already “fallen in love” with four guys: one for two days, one for a couple of weeks, and two for several months. No, but Jack could be the one--why not? Someone had to be the one, right? Why not him? Don’t think this way, I told myself. Just be in the moment and enjoy him, regardless of the outcome. We tied in round two and then walked to our cars, the part of dates I hated most: when everything that’s built up throughout the night comes to a screeching halt, and with a quick, awkward hug, you part ways. “See you soon!” he said, hopped into his car, revved the engine, and was gone. Would he really see me soon? What if I’d never see him again? Maybe he had tons of great dates all the time, and he’d forget this one by morning. Stop the thoughts, I told myself. Just drive home and go to bed. The second I pulled up to my parents’ house, my phone buzzed--it was him. “I’m ready for date number two. What about you?” “Yeah, let’s find a day soon!” “How about now?” “Really? Now? It’s already midnight. Where are you?” “I pulled into a gas station and am prepared to turn around and see you again. Tell me where, and I’ll meet you there.” Without hesitation, I suggested he come swim in the pool at my parents’ house--they were out of town. I gave him directions to the neighborhood in DC suburbia where my parents resided and then paced back and forth in the driveway, my heart in my eardrums, waiting for the sound of wheels on gravel. When he pulled into the driveway, motion-detecting lights over the garage flickered on. They cast a dramatic glow on him as he got out of his car. “Long time no see!” he said, briskly walking toward me. I could tell he was trying to downplay his giddiness. We gave each other another loose hug. He smelled of artificial, sweet muskiness, which I didn’t remember from before--I wondered if he’d reapplied cologne at his gas station stop. “I know,” I said, quickly pulling away, “It’s been ages. So, yeah...this is where I grew up. Um, you can follow me to the door.” I shuddered at how awkward I sounded. Aside from the illuminated walkway, everything was pitch-black. I fumbled through my purse for my keys. The pulse in my ears muffled the crickets’ midnight chirps. I found my keys, opened the door, turned on the lights. There we were, in my childhood home, with family photos and my middle school art on the walls. Overripe bananas sat in a bowl on the kitchen counter, next to a to-do list in my mom’s handwriting. This is too much, I thought, what is he doing here already? I barely know him! I prayed he wouldn’t notice the portrait of my thirteen-year-old, braces-toothed self. Next to the sink, knives hung from a magnetic board on the wall. He was a foot taller than me, and nothing would stop him if he wanted to swipe a knife and stab me to death. “So, I guess I’ll grab a bathing-suit from upstairs,” I said in a cheery tone. “Why don’t you just wait here a moment, and then we can go outside and swim!” It was oddly business-like, this whole situation: sending him directions to the house, meeting in the driveway, having him wait in the kitchen while I put on my bathing-suit. I missed our effortless conversation at the bar and bowling alley. Once in my bathing-suit, a coral-colored bikini, I wasn’t sure if I should put my clothes back on over it. No, that would seem silly. Maybe just cover myself with a towel? I proceeded downstairs with a white bath towel wrapped tightly around me. I handed him another white bath towel. “Oh, thanks.” “Yeah, no problem. Well, the pool’s this way.” He followed me out the back door and down the hill to the pool. He on one side of the pool, me on the other, we peeled back the plastic cover, revealing a shimmery rectangle of water. Lamps at each corner made golden zigzags across the surface. We stood there, staring for a moment at the pool. I started feeling dizzy as thoughts pounded in my head: This is not businesslike--this is romantic--this is not forced--this is sweet--I don’t know him--yet I know him. I sat down, dangled my feet in, gingerly unwrapped my towel, and slipped into the chilly water. Jack removed everything but his boxers and splashed in after me. I swam to the deep end; he followed, a foot behind. I started to swim back; he caught me, brought me close, held me. Ripples around us smoothed to nothing, and the water grew still. He kept holding me. The night was silent; the crickets had stopped chirping. All I heard was his quick breath. Then his lips touched my neck, ears, cheeks, lips. Our kisses were watery and chlorinated. I don’t remember leaving the pool. We were instantly in the house, instantly in my childhood room. I tossed my stuffed animals off my twin bed--soon enough, our swimsuits were on the floor, and we were bouncing on squeaky springs. His hands were everywhere, clawing into me, as if he wanted to open me up and know everything inside me: my veins, bones, soul. Hours later, he was still there with me in crumpled, sweaty sheets. I told him about my family, my loneliness as an only child, my cousin who died in a car-crash, my ensuing anxiety about driving, my knack for baking muffins, my love of pranks. He told me about his conservative parents, his need to distance himself from them, his desire to worry less about the future and focus on the moment, his pet iguana. We lay forehead-to-forehead, his breath lightly moving the hairs on my upper lip, his thumb making circles on my lower back. How strange that just a few hours before, I’d imagined him stabbing me with a knife. The bed was too small--he kept nearly falling off. Seeing him in it, in my polka-dotted children’s sheets, was comical. Eventually, I got up to turn off the light because I wanted to sleep with him curled around me. But before I turned it off, he stood up, apologizing, saying he needed to leave because he had a class to teach early in the morning. We stood at the foot of the bed, both completely naked. I shifted my gaze downwards, not ready to see him in a vertical position. After all, vertical nakedness exposes much more than horizontal nakedness, and I’d only just met him earlier that evening. “But I want to continue all of this,” he said. “It was unbelievable.” I glanced up at him, a naked stranger over six feet tall, taking up space in my small bedroom. I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear and looked back down at my feet, not wanting to know if he was watching me. Suddenly, I was quite ready for him to leave. “Are you free tomorrow afternoon?” he continued, “Because, as you know, I’ll be moving to LA the day after tomorrow, so it would be great to see you more before then.” My throat tightened before I’d consciously processed what he’d said. “Wait, you’re moving across the country in two days? Did I know that?” (No, I didn’t know--I definitely would have remembered a fact like that if he’d told me.) “Yeah, I’m pretty certain I mentioned it in our messages. But let’s make tomorrow count--live in the moment, as we were talking about. I have a 45-minute lunch break at 1:00. Come to the college--I’ll show you my dorm room. We can make out, or, you know, do what we were just doing now.” I suddenly felt cold. I looked around for clothes but saw only my bathing suit, which was in a puddle of water on the floor. I crossed my arms over my chest and said nothing. As if to silence my silence, he wrapped his arms around me, and before I knew it, we were back in bed. He was there with me for another hour. Then he really had to go. “Wow, I really have to go,” he said. It was already 4:30, and he had to teach at 9. “So, tomorrow?” “Yeah, sure. It’s your lunch break, right? Let’s grab some food!” If I didn’t give him exactly what he was looking for, he’d keep wanting me. I still wanted him to want me, even though he’d essentially lied to my face. He shrugged, sighed, bent over to pick up his clothes. “Alright, we can do that. If that’s what you’d prefer.” He got dressed. Still naked, I walked him to the front door. He gave me one last tongue-filled kiss and then was gone. Back in my room, I took my plush rhino from the pile of stuffed animals on the floor, plopped it onto my bed, smoothed the sheets, crawled under, and fell asleep, hugging the creature to my chest. Day two with Jack wasn’t quite like the first. We only had 45 minutes. I spent eight minutes trying to locate him on campus, and it took us another five or so to choose a restaurant. We got burritos to go and ate them on a nearby bench. He ate quickly and silently, as if eating were a menial task he was obligated to complete. “Maybe we could walk around a bit?” he suggested before I was done. I gulped down the remnants of pinto beans, lettuce, and slimy tortilla, feeling everything sit heavily in my upper chest. We meandered around the grassy campus, stone benches, saplings. He walked with his head to the ground. I wondered, wistfully, if he was upset about leaving me the next day. As if reading my thoughts, he said, “Sorry for being quiet--a lot’s going on at work right now. There’ve been reports of a professor behaving inappropriately towards students. It’s a lot to deal with.” “Oh, sorry to hear that. I don’t mind talking things through with you if--” “We don’t need to talk about it.” “Yeah, of course,” I said, kicking an ant off my sandaled foot. On our left was the university library. Two prepubescent girls sat on the steps, holding rainbow popsicles that dripped blue and purple down their arms. The girls were lost in laughter at some unimaginably hilarious joke. One girl’s popsicle dropped right out of her hand and onto the grass as she convulsed with laughter. Jack and I walked silently past them. He suddenly said, “We could hold hands, you know.” His voice sounded strained, almost forceful. With a polite laugh, I offered him my hand, which he grasped a little too tightly. Maybe the tightness was out of desire for me, or maybe it was from his anxiety about the work situation; I wasn’t sure. Regardless, his lunch break was soon up, and we returned to my car, where he pressed me against the driver-side door, burrowed his face into my neck, and let his hands creep up my sides and over my chest. It was as if he needed to get one last dose of my body before he might never see me again. A moment later, he had to go, so he pecked me on the lips and said, “It’s been real!” before jogging away. And the next day, he’s across the country. We stay in touch by text only, never a phone call or visit. We won’t text for months at a time. Then he’ll resurface, telling me how much he thinks of me and our night together. My whole body will pulsate. I’ll imagine him endlessly, sweaty in my twin-size bed, until it’s as if he’s really with me. We’ll stay up all night texting, telling each other what we want to do when we’re together next. Several days later, I’ll check in with him, ask how his day’s going--no response. Months will pass, and then he’ll text me, starting everything over again, telling me he’s thinking of me, that he can’t get me off his mind. I’ll wonder if he’s in love with me--immediate, intense love, like Jack and Rose or Romeo and Juliet. Then, a few days later, I’ll say something to which he won’t respond. He was just bored and wanted someone to flirt with, I’ll realize. He barely knows me and doesn’t care about me at all. Or maybe he’s just really busy. Or maybe he’s playing hard-to-get. This cycle continues, but more and more sporadically. I almost start to forget him. I immerse myself in my work at a publishing press. I write poetry in the evenings. I get up early to go running on brisk mornings, my breath a frosty cloud. I date other guys--but one’s too into video games; one’s too available; one’s too egotistical. I savor the increasingly infrequent days when a new message from Jack appears on my phone--the excitement, the unknown. He sometimes appears in my late night poems. Three years after our bowling, pool, and burrito dates, Jack lets me know he’s gotten a job in New York--not so far from DC, he points out. I tell him that as luck would have it, I’ve planned a visit to see a friend there in just a few weeks, and I could probably spare an hour or two if he wants to grab a coffee. I immediately proceed to tell my New York friend that I’d like to visit her. *** I arrive late to our date and savor the chance to watch him without him watching me, just for a moment. I see only the back of his head, but it is him. I know the wide shoulders, the shaved head. It’s really Jack again, after all this time. He’s stooped over a book--has he been waiting long? And then, OK this is it--I weave around rows of tables, cappuccino-sipping Brooklynites, nondescript chatter. I tap his shoulder, as if running into an inconsequential acquaintance, say, “Nice to see you,” as if I saw him last week, no big deal. We hug, with mostly arms, no torsos involved. I sit down. He already has a coffee and clamps his hands tightly around the mug. We small-talk about the weather and my bus-ride to DC. When he smiles, a long dimple runs down his left cheek. His face is the same as I remember: freckled nose--less sunburnt than before--squinty eyes, stubbled cheeks. He asks if I’m nervous to see him again, after so long apart. “No, I’m fine,” I say through a smile. Little does he know that before our date, I gulped down wine and fake-meditated, thinking of him the whole time. Sweat jewels his forehead. “Three years,” he sighs, “But you haven’t changed.” “Thanks,” I say and get up to ask for tea before he notices the pink heat in my cheeks. “What were you reading before I got here?” I ask, returning with a pot of jasmine. “Oh, my book? It’s my friend’s new book of poems. Really incredible. The poem I was reading when you came in is about how sometimes you can know someone deeply before you learn much about them at all. Sometimes knowing doesn’t come from learning.” He pauses, not meeting my eyes. “Would you like me to read it to you?” But some preschool twins come in, shouting for cookies. Their bedraggled mother, hunched over an infant in a shoulder-sling, shouts at them to be quiet, only adding to the ruckus herself. “Another day,” says Jack with a sigh. We’re now silent, surrounded by noise, and my mind returns to the night he held me in the pool--our goosebumped arms, wet kisses, jagged lights on the water. Now that he’s moved from Los Angeles to New York, he’s just a drive away--we could make it work if we decide to. When we finish our drinks, we walk around Prospect Park, along the trash-infused pond, past couples holding hands and kids playing tag. Three years, and we have little to say; we ask each other the basics: movies we’ve recently seen, books we’ve recently read, how our jobs are going. There are long, tense pauses between every topic. He doesn’t have much to tell me about his new position teaching Feminism and Intersectionality at Columbia. I want to ask him whether he’s ever concerned that his white maleness limits his ability to effectively teach this subject, or if he realizes he’s essentially taken the position from candidates of other genders and races, who’d be better suited to teach it. But I bite my tongue. He suddenly asks me how often I think about our night together. “Not often,” is what I say without thinking, which isn’t true. I’m not sure why I lie to him. I’d imagined, endlessly, what it would be like to see, hear, touch him again--and if I ever would. But when it’s time for me to go, I give him a quick hug, my face away from his, signaling that I don’t want to kiss. A kiss would be random, out of place. We hardly talked about anything today. Plus, I don’t like that he teaches Feminism and Intersectionality. And I don’t like his shaved head or his slight lisp. I don’t remember him having a lisp before, but I don’t find it cute. I longed for him for three years, but now that we’re together, I want him to leave. Yet once he leaves, he stays stuck in my mind. On the bus back to DC, I see him over and over--I try to breathe deeply and let him fade--but there he is, again and again: sea green eyes, soft voice, the drop of coffee on his stubbled upper lip, the way he walked by my side around the park: leather shoes, fitted jeans, corduroy coat that covered the anchor tattoo on his bicep. I have to wonder, is he disappointed? I begin to ruminate. Maybe if I’d let him kiss me, we would have returned to that night three years ago. I should have done more to bring us back there. He’s probably annoyed and doesn’t like me now. All is lost--we’ll never speak again. No, he still likes me, we’ll see each other again, it will be better then. Why do I even care--I barely know this guy. Time to move on. There’s really no point in any of this. But of course, I still want him to want me. He hasn’t texted me yet. I turn off my phone. I try to sleep like everyone else, relax into the bus seat, just sleep. But wheels spin. Street-lights glare. Rain strums, thin as violin. I turn on my phone--has he texted me yet, to tell me he had fun? No. The sun crashes below the horizon. Clouds and thunder cough and lunge at me. I turn off my phone again. My thoughts--how I long to turn them off as well. But they pour freely as the watercolor blur of yellow lines and neon lights and stop-signs.
0 Comments
|
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed