The Two Of You

I do not see in her eyes what I saw in either of yours. When I stare longingly into them, as is the custom with these types of things, I am not greeted with the same sense of depth. She holds in her only a mere fraction of the beauty that you kept coiled so precariously inside of you. She carries no interests, no dreams, no desires for the future like you did, but she is a body to keep warm with at night and this winter has gone on for too long.

I recount to her the same worn out stories I once told you, but they do not capture her the way they did you. You listened so fervently, hanging on every word as if my tongue were a cliff and the words that flowed from it might save you from the fall. With her I only see the words bounce carelessly off her shoulders, not even making their way to her ears only inches away. I suppose this is partly due to my lack of desire to project those syllables the way I did with you. As it is, even getting them past my teeth is an accomplishment. 

She's saying something and I can't quite hear it.

"Later would you....coffee.....maybe at....parents...?"

I'm lost somewhere else. I catch myself like this more often than I am comfortable admitting. Drifting through memories or even just to what I might be having for lunch later that day. So it is with most of our days. The sunrise comes, absent of our attention since it is rare that either of us wakes before noon. Days that I emerge from the tangled sheets and blankets before her allow me a gladly welcomed respite. 

During these reprieves I allow myself a cigarette while I catch up on my reading. She wants me to quit, and despite her lack of interest in the ins-and-outs of romantics, she is bent on our attendance at every social function she can get her hands on. Consequently, I am hardly ever able to find the time necessary to properly ingest literature. 

It is amidst these fleeting, private moments I am so very reminded of you. Memories flood my brain and I allow them to do so because living vicariously through my own mind might be the only sustenance to my life at this point. Everything always seems so recent, the night we spent in my dorm room fumbling around in the dark, for the first time learning the shape and subtleties of each others bodies. Even though that night was years ago I can recount every detail with ease. How your skin felt against mine, the way you somehow stretched out comfortably on that twin bed enveloped in the sweatshirt that  belonged to my grandfather, a sweatshirt I saw you in so many times afterward. 

Today is not one of those days. Apparently we are getting dressed in order to go have coffee with her parents. While walking towards the coffee shop I notice a patch of hydrangeas and am reminded of how I brought you flowers when your uncle passed away. I intended it as an apologetic and somewhat romantic gesture, but you took one look at me holding those almost-wilted roses and erupted in tears, turning away and retreating inside your parents home. It was only after weeks of not speaking to me that you explained your hatred for flowers, saying that they were beautiful if only for a moment and so shortly after, crumbled and died, a waste of money you said and a poor representation of feelings. 

Your disappearances were infrequent but certainly not uncommon. Each time leaving me broken and confused, as rarely an explanation was given at the forefront of these hiatuses. It was only upon your sudden return that you decided to impart to me what had been troubling your brain,

"You looked at our waitress like you look at me."

"I was on a search for God. I didn't find him."

"Your parents don't like the way I dress and I'm not in the right place to take that sort of criticism."

Suddenly I'm peering over my cup of coffee, which was an unbelievable hassle to order. Her parents, as always, have chosen some ritzy bistro where only ordering the simplest cup of black coffee is frowned upon. Her dad, after minutes of contemplating his order, decided on a frozen, low-cal beverage. I can't remember what it was called. I wasn't paying attention. 

Now her parents are playing their favorite game,

"When are you going back to school?"

"Next Spring,  I'm focusing on my art right now."

"When are the two of you going to tie the knot?"

"Probably never. I hate both of you and can't imagine having you as in-laws."

No, that isn't right.

"Maybe next year. I'd like to finish school first."

"And when are you planning on doing that?"

"I'm not sure. I'm going back in the Spring."

Not that you were the only one who ever left. I can remember each time I ran away so vividly. Always for the same reason. I was terrified of you. Of us.

I would find someone else for a week, a month and project upon them every last insecurity of mine hoping they would be able to accept them the way that you so gracefully did. I was always wrong. 

We were just so volatile. I thought the fighting meant we were broken, but what is just so terrible about being broken? There was always a glint in your eye when you were yelling, pulling strands of hair out, breaking my possessions, slamming doors, a shine I have never seen in hers. 

She and I have returned to her car and are headed to-

A car. I told myself after you, there would never be another without a car. The countless hours I spent weaving my way down the darkest of back roads to make it to your home. How difficult the week was when one of my headlights ceased its existence. I do recall one particularly foggy evening. We had spent the earlier part of the night at my parents house, but I remember the drive more than anything. Taking you home, curving around each bend carefully, quick glances so as to retain the shape of your smile in the recesses of my memory. The way you begged to open the sun-roof so as to properly see the clouded night skies. 

I am for the first time today actually noticing her. Her choice of clothing so carefully organized in order to be simultaneously flattering, professional, and eclectic. She has had this look perfected since the day we met. 

The antithesis to you. Every stitch you wore was meticulously chosen at random from the contents of piles stacked from floor to almost-ceiling. I could hardly bear it. Mismatched patterns fighting one another to be focused on as none could work together to form a basic structure. 

She has us lined up for a dinner party her sister is hosting tonight. I think that's what she said. Maybe a sorority sister. I'm not sure if she even has a sister. 

I can only remember when I was still in school and all the classes I wouldn't attend because I felt my time better spent with you. Days spent in bed mostly, listening to records or watching some television show, limbs intertwined not knowing whose leg was whose, which arm was falling asleep, and wondering how it had gotten to be four o'clock already, whose turn it was to buy cigarettes.

I hadn't smoked in a week. She catches me biting at my cuticles, a nervous habit I've picked up since "quitting".

Every time I am able to sneak one in the comfort of those mornings spent alone, my mind wanders to days spent on the porch of my old house in our respective chairs or you in my lap, arms draped so lazily around my neck.

When did we arrive at this party? Who are all these people? One of her friends is trying to talk to me, but I am never able to give these people my full attention. I always feel smothered at these events. I can never remember which party is which. Who is who. All of them nameless faces in a sea of insignificance. 

I find a couch and sequester myself in the leather so as to drift away from nonsensical conversation about who's marrying who and promotions and-

Those nights spent exploring the city. Finding parts of our home town we had never laid eyes upon. The old, hollowed-out brewery standing for so many years vacant and untouched. Making our way up its rusty stairwells to emerge into the cold, night air. Drinking in the view, perched on that ledge overlooking the entire city. You plopped down next to me, afterwards saying,

"You looked like you wanted someone next to you."

Back home and she is already asleep. The king size bed we share allows for separation.

How different compared to the forced but not unwelcome closeness in my old twin bed we shared for so long. Nights spent reveling in the others stare. Records playing in the background serving as a soundtrack to our nights. My brain shifts uncomfortably to the last time I saw you.

She was out of town for the weekend allowing me freedom I had not experienced in months. I bought a pack and took a book to that coffee shop you and I wasted so many days in. It almost seemed out of habit that I ended up there, an involuntary reflex. I weaved through the maze of legs belonging to chairs, tables, and humans, somehow managing to find an empty table.

We came here so often because it was one of the few places left in the city where you could still smoke indoors. I grab what is my first cigarette in what feels like months and feel the familiarity of it between my fingers. Clinging so desperately to it with my lips I raise my lighter to it and glance up to see you standing over me.

"I thought you quit"

I laughed and looked back to respond, but you were gone. Another of your disappearances. I still wonder where you went.



It is morning already and she is saying something to me that I didn't catch a word of.

Overcoat

I find it somehow ironic that we met in the winding-down of fall. Days getting shorter and leaves gasping their last photosynthetic breaths, the precursor to winter and to us. Slowly the cold overtook us. 

Everything was so beautiful in the beginning. Every day was coffee, conversation, and cigarettes. Lying face to face listening to your favorite record in its entirety just to build up the courage to spill our guts to each other. 

But it just kept getting colder. 

My black, woolen pea-coat was a staple of those days. I found it on sale last year. A tremendous deal. Perfect construction. A veritable blanket against the harsh winter. 

But you never seemed to get as cold as I did. You never seemed to feel it. I found that hard to believe. At times I found you hard to believe, as I should have. 

Thirty degrees outside, you need your jacket. You'll freeze to death. When you first put it on after feeling the frost-bitten fingers of winter inching up your neck, caressing not-so-softly your ears and nose, how wonderful is that coat? 

But it is not temporary. It is not something affixed to your skin or even to your first layer of clothing. No matter the material, the cost, the time, the care, or the labor put forth in the construction, that coat will not last. It may make it through two, maybe even three winters, but eventually holes will form (which I mean, you can cover with patches but then other holes will show up and you'll need more patches and then one of the patches might fall off and you'll need another patch or a hole might even show up in one of those oh-so-sturdy patches that you spent an entire five dollars on and then you've got a patch covering up a patch and eventually the jacket isn't a jacket anymore) or you'll lose it in some tragic, larger than life accident and you will need another coat because winter is a sure thing. 

But October was still warm and so were we. An unnaturally warm October if I remember correctly. Late nights spent on my porch plotting out our course for the future. Summer in a far away country, unrestricted by the troubles of home. Weekends spent lazily laying out our lives to each other. Recounting memories explained in detail for the sake of understanding each other just a little better. 

November and December were different. As the cold came, I seemed to need my coat more than you needed me. I felt less in your embrace than I did in the covering of my arms from its sleeves. Sure there were those fleeting moments. But how did they compare to the countless nights I spent driving to whatever party you were frequenting to resolve an argument only to find you drunk and passed out? 

Or New Years. 

It was frigid. And I had left my coat at home. We hadn't been speaking. You were God-knows-where and I was alone at a party. The question on every lip was where is she? Is everything OK? I didn't know. I couldn't. Where had I left my jacket? Where were you? It all culminated with frantic phone calls placed from the inside of my car in the driveway of my home. Words shoved in between panicked breaths begging for two minutes with you only to be ignored. 

The difficulty with outerwear is that if you take it off, and sometimes you have to, is that winter is still there. It twists up your spine and leaves you shaking. 

You were an overcoat. Stitched together to hold off the cold, but you didn't make it through the winter. 

Every Line I Don't Want to Write

Is it possible to have a mid-life crisis at twenty-four? Maybe this is the middle of my life. I have always joked that I will be dead by thirty-seven. That it is, "all downhill from there, right?". What if I'm right? 

Sleepless nights and stupid fights. 

Those have been my weeks, and I feel old. I feel older than I should. Especially when you are so young. Are we already an old married couple? The kind you feel bad for at supermarkets? That thirty-five to forty year old couple sifting through twenty percent off deli meat, laden with preservatives to preserve their children. I hope not. I never wanted to be that. 

This seems difficult, but doable. 

You have been studying for exams. I am worrying about numbers at a shoe store. Worry that neither one of us can relate to. 

How could you possibly care about the amount of Special Brand Natural Beeswax that I sell? "In order to best protect your investment, I suggest using this every few weeks to remove scuffs and scratches as well as protect from rain and stains."

How could I remember clearly what it was like to cram for Honors United States History? Especially since I was never in the Honors program. "William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States of America got stuck in a bath tub." Will this be on the test?

College feels so far away from me. Those three semesters at community college. Wasting my time and my parents money. I knew instantly that it was not where I belonged, but you need a degree to be successful. You need a degree to support your family. You need a degree. You need a degree. You need a degree. You need a degree. 

By the time you get yours (and of course you'll get one, you need it) I will most likely be in a factory or running my own shoe store, or I'll be exactly where I'm at right now, but tonight I am at home, and you are out with your friends. Celebrating the end of finals. I am celebrating that I have tomorrow off. My one day off a month. 

I thought by this time I would be married with a job that I loved. Something I really found fulfilling, but what no one tells you is that nothing is fulfilling. The most fulfilling thing in my life right now is opening a pack of cigarettes and seeing them all lined up, a row of seven, a row of six, a row of seven. Perfect and beautiful. 

You keep telling me to quit. 

"You know that's killing you, right?"

"Yeah, thirty-seven, that's the goal."

I know you wish I wouldn't joke like that. I am starting to worry that it isn't a joke. 

I keep saying, "I'll go back next semester." "I'll go back next year." What is there to go back to? A business degree and a cubicle? 

"A steady income to support your family" 

A degree. You need a degree. 

But I'm still on the couch. You're still out with your friends. There's still nothing on this god damned television. 

At least there's you. 

Something to hold on to. Something to keep me afloat amidst all of this. Throughout all the fighting, those I love you's kept surfacing. They kept me above the surface. You kept me alive. 

So here I am. On the couch. You'll come home and fall asleep next to me. Tomorrow we'll go waste our money on commercialized caffeine and I'll smoke cigarettes and you'll tell me to quit and I'll say I'm going back to school next Spring and you'll say "oh, bullshit" and we'll laugh and both know you're right. 

A Month Ago

A month ago, you told me you were happy. I know I am not making this up. You were sitting in my bed. You were wearing that shirt I hated so much, the one with that actress that I could never remember the name of on it. God, that shirt was hideous. But you told me, you looked me in the eye and said that you were happy.

A month ago things were fine. We still talked.We still laid in bed together wishing our youth away, wishing we were older or that we were somewhere else. We still loved each other. But that night. Something did feel different. When you said- I couldn't and still can't quite put my finger on what it was about the way you said,

"I am happy"

"I do love you"

I am.

I do.

I believed you. Where are you now?

Floating by me in shopping malls. Hair swirling near your shoulders - who would have ever thought it would get that long again?

Showing up at my apartment, crying to me about how your love for my best friend is unrequited. Telling me of your new venture into sculpture and how you only make ashtrays because that's all you need.

Passing by me on roads we now share separately because you're finally driving again.

How strange it is now. We still say I love you, it's just not to each other.

Somehow, some one new comes along, for both of us.

But a month ago, I loved you. You loved me. It is almost funny the way it just fades. Fades into something else. Into someone else.

Do you now crave his attention the way I crave hers?

It is all so unfathomable. It is as if we are all just part of some theater troupe, traveling the city, putting on our desperate show for everyone to see. Hoping they will enjoy it enough to toss us some change and validate what we do to ourselves, to each other.

But still I wonder, what happened? What fault was there in the intricacies of the inner workings of our intellects that led to our demise?

I have since tried to wonder not where we went wrong, but where we went right. Sifting through the failures to find some grain of goodness that you refuse to believe existed. There was something there but now that something is with him, for me it is with her.

So we will say I love you.

To him.

To her.

Bradford Pears

When I was younger, there was a Bradford Pear Tree that stood outside of my home. These trees are not so suitable for climbing, but against my mother's wishes I climbed it anyway. I could never make it to the very top of those branches. When I was old enough to climb that tree, I was too heavy for the topmost branches. They were too thin and I was too heavy.

I could make it about three quarters up the limbs. I could never reach the top.

Too thin.

Too heavy.

One night, lightning split the tree and it fell. I would never reach the top. The top and the rest of the tree hit the ground and was soon hauled away. Stuffed into the back of some nondescript truck with the other victims of that storm. Branches that 24 hours previously waved and swayed in the wind, whose branches played host to a multitude of children, but no more.

Too thin.

Too heavy.

Coke

The first thing you need to learn about anything, the first thing that your parents should teach you is that love isn't real. It's a chemical reaction in your brain. I say that to say this:

A few months ago I met someone.

A girl.

My brain started. My pupils dilated. My palms got sweaty. My breathing became quicker as did my heart rate, all the sure fire signs of love. Love at first sight.

Love is not real. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain.

She was tall. Brunette. Gorgeous. Quiet. We didn't say much. At least not to each other. A few of us were smoking cigarettes in my friend's apartment's sun-room, getting ash all over, well, everything until somewhere close to four o'clock in the morning.

My ride leaves and I'm stranded with this beautiful girl in her bed.

This is not my forte. I'm good at holding hands, paying for dinner, meeting parents. I am not good at this. I didn't sleep with her that night. I kept going over there until we did.

In the process the chemicals in my brain told me I was in love. I tried to ignore it. I was getting laid, but she was quiet. I knew there was more to her than her bird tattoos on her calves or her septum piercing or her long brown hair. I knew there was something beneath her skin.

There were chemicals that regulated her breathing and her heart rate. Chemicals that told her she was not in love with me. I told her I wasn't looking for anything more.

But I was. And I did. My chemicals and her chemicals didn't agree.

This is not a love story because love isn't real. Love is a chemical reaction.

I chased though. I wanted it to be love. I wanted it to be real. I had never been with someone like her. I had been with girls you could bring home to meet your mother. But she was so different.

One night, in that sun-room I came to know so well, I watched her do a line of coke off a silver tray.

And then two lines off a book of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

 Four through a hundred dollar bill.

A few bumps in the bathroom.

Off her desk when she woke up.

I watched her begin the slow, steady degradation of her life. I tried to distance myself. It didn't work.

We made love while she was high. We went to dinner while she was high. We watched movies while she was high. She met my parents while she was high.

She couldn't do anything without it. She couldn't be around me, or anyone, without it.

She was adding chemicals to parallel mine. Elevated mood. Dilated pupils. Increased heart rate. It was all there. Her chemicals matched up with mine. True love it would seem. Finally.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

You can't believe it. You can't trust it. Because those chemicals can stop reacting, and those "feelings" can and will pack their bags and leave just as quickly as they arrived. Turns out you can't trust coke either.

Because one day she sobered up and she left.

Beer

On my 21^st birthday, my parents gave me a six-pack of beer. It came out of nowhere. I never would’ve thought they’d buy me beer. You see they were Christian folks, good upstanding citizens, members of the PTA and all that crap. So when they got me beer for my birthday I didn’t have a damn clue what to do. I guess it would’ve been different if they’d gotten it for me as a joke, a gag gift, but that was all they fucking got me. Beer.

            Now, I’d drank before. I didn’t buy into religion and all that bullshit the way they did. Jesus turned water into wine didn’t he? Then why the hell am I not allowed to have a couple brews? So I took it. What was I supposed to do? Not accept the one gift they got me? That would’ve gone over great. My mother is all kinds of strange about gift giving see? So I had to take it. I didn’t have a choice.

            Two months later and now I’m lookin’ at the last goddamned bottle. Having a staring contest with the son of a bitch. I could drink it, but by now I’m half full of gin. Saturday night and I’m sittin alone in my apartment drinking gin and attempting to steal cable from my neighbors. All I can get is Wheel of Fortune. Jesus, who watches this shit anymore? Me, I guess, on a Saturday night, drunk and alone, staring at the last of the beer my parents got me for my birthday.

            I’d gone easy on the first one. I wanted to savor it, the first beer of my 21^st year, all that sappy, romantic bullshit. But the next couple I drank after my girl left me. I’d already had a few but I got two or three out of the pack my parents got me too. I mean what the hell, my girl just walked out on me, might as well drink myself to sleep and forget about her. After this incident I was left with just the one.           

            Since my 21^st I’d been keeping a lot more alcohol around my place. And why shouldn’t I? I’m allowed to, but for some reason I wouldn’t drink the beer my parents got me. After the first one, I probably went through two cases of my own and two pints of scotch before I drank those other three. Well, that was between Mary and myself, but she’s gone now. All I’ve got left is this last bottle.

            She was there when they gave me the beer. My parents took us out to a real fancy restaurant. It was the first time they were meeting her. Big fucking deal and all that. That night was the last time I really remember being happy. All of us dressed up going out on the town. Now that was a way to spend a night. Not like this. Not sitting on my couch staring at a beer while watching fucking Chuck Woolery spin that goddamned wheel on the tube.

            I thought about givin Mary a ring tonight. See if she’d want to come over and have a drink, maybe even take me back. She drives me up the fucking wall, but damn it if I don’t love her. It probably wouldn’t do any good though; she was always stubborn. Probably wouldn’t pick up the goddamned phone. Too busy layin some other guy or painting her toenails. She was always this way.

            I break my staring contest with the last of my beer, feeling as if I’ve come out of some sort of coma. I’m damn near about to pick up the phone when I think, what’s the fucking point? So I light another cigarette, take a couple drags, put it out, and crack open the last of that beer.