dangerous

I wish there were more photographs of my parents, younger, happy. There’s not enough evidence that there was ever a time of relaxing, contentment, queasy, lovesick stomachs. I’ve seen baby pictures, high school yearbooks, and a wedding album. Time then skips to the hospital, where I lay in my mother’s arms, a tiny bundle of pink sheets and skin. So much lost time. Were my mom and dad in bed for two years before that hospital visit, so infatuated and obsessed with one another that it was a chore to tear their lips away and drink a glass of water? I would like to think that’s the truth. What’s more likely is that after the wedding, my mom got fat, cooking every night and staying at home reading decorating magazines while my dad was out earning money to spend on novelties like snow skis or timeshares. This extra chub was not attractive to my dad, who then stopped trying to initiate sex and thereafter just jacked off in the shower thinking about his long-time celebrity crush, Elizabeth Taylor. As my mother yo-yo dieted for the next two years, my dad took increasingly longer showers. One night, while listening to Van Morrison’s “Warm Love,” they decided to be intimate. My dad led my mom into the bedroom, shut off the light and closed his eyes. My mom felt special. Six weeks later, she was scared shitless when the doctor congratulated her. “You do know you’re pregnant, right?”

I believe these are close to the circumstances surrounding my conception.

If I ever have a daughter, I’ll lie to her. I’ll say, “You were planned, the only thing missing to complete our lives. You were the chorus of our favorite song. We loved each other so much, and we wanted to love you.” This way, she can believe she started her life out right.

This will never happen. I’m sterile.

pill

She stands in front of the pharmacy counter waiting for the Asian man on the phone to come to her assistance. It’s always like this here, she thinks. No one rushes to help her anywhere she goes. She looks like a well-bred, polite, middle-class, suburban young lady, and she is. She knows she could be more demanding in getting what she wanted, but she’s not there yet. For now, she just stands at the counter pretending to balance her checkbook. She clears her throat and the pharmacist looks up, but doesn’t come over just yet.

She doesn’t even want the pill. In fact, she didn’t even want to have sex. There had been an uncomfortable conversation and then an understanding between them that everything but was okay, but going all the way was something sacred.

She snickers thinking about that now. Her roommate complained about him sleeping over every night, that it was awkward seeing the two of them tangled up in the morning. Back then, it was exciting just to be touched by him, even accidentally.

It happened last night when her roommate was gone, probably at a stupid frat party. It was 1:05 a.m., she remembers, when it was over, because she opened her eyes and glimpsed the digital clock on her nightstand, then shut them again. She was so tired. She had felt lips brushing her neck and stirred. Hands traveling across her chest, down to her stomach. She awoke, but said nothing, her eyes still closed. He was touching himself, she could hear it, and then he was touching her, and she finally responded by kissing him, and that gave him confidence. He was on top of her and she was tired, so she didn’t stop it. She didn’t open her eyes, but silently allowed him to do what they had agreed not to, and then it was over in one minute, at 1:05.

This morning, he told her he didn’t use protection. She didn’t think he had. You need the morning after pill, he said. I’ll buy. She declined. I’ll go alone. She waited until half an hour before the pharmacy closed to get in the car and drive. She thought if she ended up being pregnant, it would be satisfying to have the baby and leave it on his doorstep, wrapped in her dirty sheets, and a note that said, “For you.”

But instead, she walked into the pharmacy. She walked down the candy aisle and opened a package of Red Vines. She ate the whole box and then went to the pick-up window, where she now pretends to balance her checkbook.

small changes

I’m convinced that if my name was Lola, everything would be better.  “Lola,” friends would say, “boys love you.”  “Lola,” other friends would say, “girls love you.”  I would be a subtle bisexual with the ability to charm and deceive.  My eyes wouldn’t have that red tinge, either, if my name was Lola, the redness that betrays the countless days I’ve spent trying to pretend it doesn’t hurt to look at people.  If I was called Lola, I would drink red wine at room temperature and like it.  I would wear fur and have a driver.  My hair would be blonde and my skin olive, perfect.  I wouldn’t be completely shy and self-conscious and would occupy myself with thoughts of how wonderful last night’s dinner party was.  I would denounce jeans and insist on wearing pantyhose under everything.  My lips would be naturally rosy and full and would distract the bicylists riding down Market Street.  There would be several catastrophic biking accidents every day due to this.  I would smile, shrug and know by the expressions on the bloodied faces that I was forgiven.  I would appreciate snow and rain and would look beautiful wearing scarves.  My name would look more at home on the jacket of a book if it was Lola.

sooner than expected

say we’re in a box, and i stayed, and i came, and the box is home. a little bag of cocaine, perhaps, to fuel the pervasive anorexia that creates an awkward space between us, but that we dare not speak of. i drink sangria, even in the winter, even though the label instructs, “Enjoy with barbecue.” You stand near the window smoking a cigarette, not to let the smoke out, but so that someone, perhaps, across the way from our box, walking by, or maybe smoking a cigarette of their own, will see you and think you look moody or important. And I do think you’re important. And I also think to myself, “Why am I not important?” So I stand by the window too, sans cigarette, because I can’t pull that off. I wear a transparent robe so that if a glimpse of a nipple is seen I can pretend I’m innocent.

This doesn’t last long. I wish I could be interested in one thing for more than five seconds, but I know it’s impossible. I sprawl out on the coffee-stained couch that isn’t even ours and wonder if we’re really artists, and if we are, why can you do everything and I can only write? The artists I know are on magazine covers and are friends with architects and have exciting haircuts. I’m too plain. Do I fit here? I won’t ask you because I’m afraid you’ll tell the truth. I’m so thin that I slip through your fingers when I walk past, into the bedroom, hoping you’ll follow, but soon after, I hear a typewriter. You’re close to a masterpiece and I’m no closer than I was when I first met you. I had wind-chapped skin, I don’t know if you noticed, that didn’t go away for months. It was such a nuisance.

What’s a nuisance now is this box that contains not much more than you and me. I want to be happy, but I’m jealous. Why can’t I be your equal? You’re more creative. The things you say to woo me are darker, and therefore, more meaningful. The city suits you. I didn’t think it would. I’m wrong about more things than I care to admit.

And you could probably play the piano if you tried. Me, my limbs won’t cooperate. I don’t get it. I think about twenty things at once all day, but my two hands, they won’t play different notes. In a way, I guess I’m not surprised. Once, my right hand waved goodbye while my left, deep in the pocket of my jeans, crossed its fingers that you would understand. I’ve held hands with my right hand while wiping a tear away with my left. I can’t even trust my own body parts. Not entirely surprised.

And I’ve always liked the word “somnambulist.” I can feel that you like it too. Here in our box, you’re typing away, and I’d almost bet that you’ve used that word today to describe me in that chapter.

i’m doing quite fine

If fine is what you call dreaming about someone who is distinctly, painfully not who is laying next to you, peacefully unaware of the mutiny that you’re planning when and if only dream boy would answer your e-mails. It’s sad that feelings I evoke from years ago move me more than my current relationship does. Don’t we all have that could-have-been, that i-wish-it-had-been, that I-fucked-it-up? It’s a different story if you know in your heart, you can sense with an uncanny, extraterrestrial certainty that there’s still time. It’s a different story if, even in the midst of the thing, you say, “We’ll meet up ten years from now. That’s when it will be right.” Will three, four years be sufficient instead? By 2014, I might be uninteresting. I might be drained of all the laughter and adventure that you want to convince yourself are just not your cup of tea, not your childhood candy, but that I have seen embrace you no matter how hard you kicked, screamed or wrote. Was I alone in the mall that day when no one believed, but we ferociously insisted that there would be a springttime wedding? When I said your car smelled like crayons? When you looked at my photographs and, though you must have felt so far superior to me, told me, “This one has potential”?

These are the things that keep me from sleeping. I should be writing. I should be working. I should be trying to develop a new fallback mechanism besides repetition, but repetition is what I know, what I’m good at. Repeating the year in my mind. Repeating your words, at times unintelligible, again and again until I know them by heart and I twist them and work out how to steal them, make them mine. You couldn’t do anything about it. I would rub it in your face. “Special thanks to my dear mistake.”