Love Life

I wrote this piece earlier tonight at DrawnTown Sioux Falls 5, graciously hosted by Kiel M.

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Love Life

THE GENERAL

I was twenty, she just a little older.  She had just moved to the mainland from Maui.  She was my roommate for two days, my girlfriend for six weeks, and then my roommate again for ten months. She shared her surname with a famously ruthless Japanese military leader.  I called her The General as a little joke. The second time we slept together she told me to forget the condom; she wanted to feel close to me.  If you would have asked me in that moment, I probably would have said I loved her.  Nothing came of the lapse, luckily—no infections, and no baby.

A FUN TIME

I met a woman in a bookstore.  I talked with her about the author she was browsing.  I made reading suggestions.  She told me I had a nice voice.  (I don’t, really.  It’s thin, and feminine in all the wrong ways.)  Soon we were sharing a dessert at a little restaurant down the street.   Next weekend we went to the movies, and she talked loudly throughout.  If for no other reason than this, I knew things wouldn’t work out between us, but afterward she still spent the night at my apartment.  In the morning, as she was leaving she said “I like your place.  I could get used to it here.”  Next day she texted.  Sorry, she wrote.  She and her ex had reconciled.  Still, she assured me, she had fun.   

RHYMING PHRASES

Grade 6:  By some wonderful trick of fate, I was seated to the immediate left of my crush for an entire semester.  Our teacher stood in front of the class and insisted on reading a poem I wrote.  I kept my head down.  I could feel my crush looking at me quizzically as the teacher read.  My face burned with a mix of mortification and pride that would become very familiar later in my life. 

ACTIVISM

After things between us ran their course, my high school sweetheart and I remained friendly.  We lived in the same city after college.  She brought me to political events and introduced me to her activist friends.  Sometimes she would get tipsy and pretend to be my wingman.  I struck up a flirtatious conversation with one of the activists.  My former-sweetheart observed all the casual but deliberate touching, and overheard each clumsy innuendo.  Later, when I told her that the activist turned down my dinner invitation on account of her longtime boyfriend, my former-sweetheart slurred, “You know what she is?  She’s a cock tease.”  Thereby forever securing a place in my heart. 

SLOW LEARNER

Three pregnancy scares over the course of three years; each scarier than the last.  The prospect should have been less frightening as time went on.  The fact that it wasn’t was a big red flag that I ignored.

DINNER IN

At a party I almost skipped, I successfully flirted with a smart and beautiful friend of the host.  Several weeks later she cooked me dinner in her apartment for my birthday: Chicken breast with caramelized shallots; red potatoes topped with a delicious rosemary and onion concoction; green beans with lemon.  I sat at her dining table and rambled as she cooked.  I couldn’t think of anything I could do for her that would be as nice as this thing she was doing for me.  She wore a snug green t-shirt and capri pants.  She stood on the balls of her bare feet to check the back burners.  I could barely finish a sentence in front of her.  For dessert: Braised pears with ginger, topped with vanilla bean ice cream and cinnamon.  Blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

CLOGGED DRAINS

“He only wanted me for my hair,” she told me, speaking of an old flame.  She was obnoxiously fixated on her hair, and assumed everyone else was, too.  She lived three hours away, but spent most weekends at my apartment.  There were elaborate rituals at night: washing and combing and braiding.  I only really noticed her hair when she was gone.  Long curling black strands left in intimate places.  Lying on pillow cases.  Clinging to whichever of my t-shirts she had made her pajamas.  Catching between my toes in the shower.  She always joked that it was her way of marking her territory.    

SLANT RHYME

Nineteen years later, my Grade 6 crush and I are catching up over bottles of red wine on her porch.  She rolls little cigarettes by hand.  I recount that day with the poem.  We laugh about it.  It’s dark out, so if my face is burning, she can’t see it.

CONFESSION TIME

On the way to our table—well before the movie theater chit-chat, even—the girl from the bookstore waved to a table of men in white collars.  “That’s my priest,” she told me.  This is going nowhere fast, I thought.

SHARED GLASS

On our second date—a couple weeks before that birthday dinner—we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and walked to the Herkimer for lunch.  The bar was out of the beer she wanted, so our waitress suggested she wait and taste mine.  I made a little joke about the waitress being presumptuous for assuming we were comfortable drinking from the same glass.  As instructed, she tasted my beer when it arrived, and ordered one for herself.  As I prattled on about something or other she took another drink from my glass—no asking this time, eyes fixed on mine.  Careful… I told myself.  I left the waitress an obscenely large tip.

CLOSE CALL

She invited me to her wedding, where she wore her celebrated hair in a dozen intricate braids.  During the service her pastor read from the Book of Revelation.  At the wedding dinner her groom asked everyone to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  I laughed with my date about how I had dodged a bullet.  I went home with my date after the reception, and spent the next three years with her, sick at the thought of those tests coming back positive.

EXIT STRATEGY

A month into our courtship, The General began receiving mail from a California prison.  I looked the other way at first, but eventually we had a talk.  She was engaged to a cocaine smuggler.  He had told her he was an air conditioning repairman at first.  She was upset with him when he was arrested, but she had decided to stand by her man.  I said I understood, and then shut myself in my bedroom across the hall for the next ten months.  

LAST CHANCE FOR A SLOW DANCE

We realized at prom that neither of us had many friends.  My high school sweetheart and I swayed back and forth in that familiar, awkward teenage two-step .  I felt stupid and self-conscious for being there at all.  Things have to get better than this, I thought.  As we danced, my high school sweetheart locked her knees and began rocking in place, moaning like a zombie.  Thereby forever securing a place in my heart.