I told my friend I was swearing off men. We made a pact. Three months we said, no dating, no flirting, no men of any kind, just life empty of all the needless complication. No waiting by the phone. No wondering. No needing someone else to validate you. Enough is enough. We pinky swore and chased the promise with vodka cocktails. It’s time to grow up, we crowed. It’s time to learn to be so perfectly alone. I was already halfway there, purging my heart of weakness and keeping them at arm’s length. No more. We were high on the freedom of blinders, the ability to look straight ahead. I danced and I drank and when I sat down to rest a friend introduced me to him. It only took a five-minute conversation before I thought, “Well, shit fuck damn.
At 7:17am they turned the radio on, listening to clips of news between rushed conversation and the habitual movements of yogurt to bowl, grinds to french press, and steaming liquid to mug.
“Have you ever been to the Toothy Moose?” The mother asked the daughter, rinsing out her to-go coffee mug and leaning against the counter.
“Only one or twice. I was there on New Years.” The daughter mumbled squinting at the label on a container, shrugging, and dumping it into her bowl.
“They just said it was closed down, five citations, they said. Five. And there were drunk people passed out in the bathrooms when they went in to shut it down.”
“That so?”
Her mother looked at her and frowned slightly, the skin gathering in tiny folds between her brows.
“They said the place was supposed to only have 100 or so people in it and there was double, maybe triple, that many.”
“Bastards.” The daughter said sprinkling dried cranberries on top of the cereal.
Between the lull that followed the radio piped up.
—considering changing the last call in bars from 3:30am to 2:00am. Stay tuned for weather and—
“Well, that won’t do anything but backfire.” The daughter cut in.
“I think it’s a good idea, get the drunks off the street and—”
“No, see, what it will do is put them on the street, earlier, around 10ish to get in the way of all the people that don’t want to see them. Remember that time we walked home from the play? When did that end? 10:30? It was some holiday the next day or something and there were drunk frat boys and skanky skanks everywhere. 10:30.”
“It was obscene!”
“Yeah, it was. Bringing us down from our sophisticated night on the town. You want that every weekend? That’s what will happen if they close the bars early.”
“Maybe, what they should do is just wait for someone to get drunk and then drag ‘em in the street to be shot!”
“Brilliant plan, Mom. Though, from what I remember, you might not have thought that was such a great idea on your last wedding anniversary.”
“I wasn’t drunk!”
“The dog vomited on you, you looked in your lap and said, ‘Oh, that? Don’t worry about that, I’ll clean that later.’ And then you went back to shouting out Trivial Pursuit answers.”
“It was a heated game!”
“You should be shot.”
The mother faux-glared at the daughter for a moment and then pulled her roughly into a hug, bowl and all.
“You should be studying Law out in BC with your brother, you little argumentative cuss.”
The daughter smiled softly, took a bite and said between chews, ”well, I learned from the best, didn’t I?”
Leaning into each other, like two dominoes about to fall.
The radio offered —snow today between 2 and 4 centimeters and chances of freezing rain—
And they broke apart. Toppling.
“What? Snow? Now? After weeks of sun? Right when we try to leave? This better not delay our plane. I don’t know why every time, every single time, the weather and the damn—”
“I think it’s because they love us.”
“What? Who?”
“Halifax. They don’t want us to go.”
A half-smile.
“Did you pack yet?”
“No.”
“Are you planning to pack even five minutes before we leave this time?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll pack your passport next to mine, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And I love you, Lindsay.”
“I know.”
“But, I wasn’t drunk.”
“Okay, Mom. You weren’t drunk.”
“Of course I wasn’t drunk.”
“Because that would be obscene.”
“Go pack before I smack you.”
The mother went back to filling her coffee mug and listening to the radio. The daughter gathered her bowl, mug, banana, and glass of water in arms and gingerly made for the stairs. Hesitating just outside the door. There, if we could see her, standing in the shadows, you might see the skin around her eyes soften, the hand around the glass tighten, all the signs that something bright and muffled was expanding in her chest. The picture of her mother, puttering, back-lit by the soft light of March. A million mornings like these.
“This is for services rendered.” He tells me pushing a chocolate coin into my hand. I flip it between my fingers.
“A chocolate whore. The best kind.”
The night is a haze and my eyes are puffy. It’s coming to a head, lately. All the things left unsaid. He disappears from my bed leaving a warm imprint beside me. I try to fall back asleep. I try to silence my mind, drift into that dark oblivion that beckons kindly, an old friend.
When the peace slips out of my fingers again I open my eyes and blink into blindness, set the chocolate on my bookshelf, gulp down emotions like bile in the back of my throat. I remember the coins an old love tossed to me in a different bed, years ago. The joke that never gets funny, no matter how many times you hear it, or in how many different ways. The Madonna.
Dissect me, spread. Take these organs, still throbbing, save them labelled in jars. Preserve me; embalmed.
Transplant what still has miles in it. I will live a dozen different lives, beating, breathing, pumping in strangers’ bodies. Warming them like these words that I bleed into the silence.
It’s Valentine’s Eve. I follow myself through bars, dancing wildly. A ghost haunting my own footsteps, hovering, reaching out to brush the hair out of my own eyes. I want to collect myself, a broken bird flailing. I want to mend my wings with tape and throw me back to the sky. Learn to fly again.
I don’t want to be the sparrow that falls down chimneys. I don’t want to starve, panicked in a dark box, beating myself against metal. Making a tomb of this wood stove. Begging for someone to find me and open the door.
The men that smell my fear, sense my hesitation, and circle sniffing.
This heart that could so easily be yours, if you wanted it. If you just reached out and claimed it for your own.
We make French toast in the morning. The cinnamon and nutmeg filling the house with a comforting warmth. His arms find my waist and my lips search out his while the pan sizzles. I turn on the radio and put the kettle on for his tea, pour myself a cup of coffee, and lean back against the counter. He crouches on the ground doling out affection to my two Australian Shepherds. His hands in their fur he glances up at me, eyes laughing, revealing the little boy still alive inside the man. I want to rub my hands through his hair and let his eyes close, the way I have grown accustomed to. I want to feed him our concoction, sucking syrup from his bottom lip. I want to push him backwards to the floor, straddling him. The morning sun in our eyes until the bread burns, forgotten.
Instead, I collect condiments and set the table. I find him a book of New York Times crossword puzzles and read The Nation editorials while he interrupts me occasionally to verify an answer. I’m not much help but I rejoice when an answer I offer fits. I lay my legs over his lap under the table, settled, content. I go to check my messages on my cellphone and it freezes. So, I upset myself and jog upstairs to get my old standby. I switch out the sim cards as I head back downstairs and am turning my old phone back on as I settle into my chair when the first message in the inbox punches the wind out of me.
I can’t wait for cuddles and Chinese food with my baby.
Message after message, all dated the year before, all from L. My eyes glued to the screen and my thumbs scrolling viciously through each one. The books I was recommending he bring into his English class. The plans we had for the night. All the I Love Yous and endearments burning my eyes like chlorine underwater. I read them all, lost in nostalgia and the dull ache of scar tissue from a wound that never healed quite right.
“Denouement. That means ‘the end’ right?”
His voice startles my fingers from the keys and my mind back to the present.
“Huh?”
“Denouement. C’mon, English grad.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. I thought you were saying something else.”
I turn back to my phone, heart palpitating unevenly, pulled back from the edge. All the texts filling my memory with wasted space. The silly things we leave behind, unknowingly. I select ‘delete all’ and slide my phone away from me on the table. Take a bite of my breakfast, the syrup bittersweet on my tongue. The last word on the last page of a book you loved but needed so badly to finish.
I spend the night with my best friend, filling our cups with vodka, then tequila, then rum, and dancing wildly to electro at a club. We walk arm in arm through the streets and find ourselves at a friend’s house. Joints and cigarettes between our fingers. I blow supers into her mouth, lip to lip, and laugh loudly. I find a fedora and tip it low over an eye. Everything is loud and I trap a barking dog in a room, cautioning it like my demons. I call him to come find me and he does.
I get turned around on my own familiar streets and he rights me. I get hungry and he makes me grilled cheese from homemade bread. I eat it propped up in my bed watching Office Space, giggling. I get tired and he curls me into his wing. I don’t remember falling asleep, I only remember waking up with his bicep as my pillow and his body curved around mine. I only remember needing him to fill every pore of me, every cold space and every forgotten room. I wake him with my hips, slowly grinding into his. Rolling myself back and forth against him until he can no longer feign sleep. Until his hands pull the clothes off me and we devour each other in yesterday’s crumbs, smacking our lips and sighing.
On Monday he picks me up and we get coffee at Local Joe’s. He orders orange pekoe tea and spills it all over our wobbly table. We laugh and relocate. Our banter is easy and immediate. We bounce over topics, smiling, stopping only to sip from cups and chuckle. I don’t think to be nervous. We leave to check out our favourite used bookstore but it’s closed so we blow off plans with friends and drive. We drive a half hour out to the beach, my beach. I show him the house I grew up in and we stumble over rocks on the frigid shore to find Orion. It feels like a refueling, like I’ve been starving myself until now. I gulp in the ocean air and the familiar landmarks of my youth. I hold the nostalgia cupped in the middle of my tongue and then swallow it down, thick and sweet at the back of my throat. Lawrencetown.
On the way back to the city I scroll through his mp3 player and then hook up mine. We introduce each other to all the music we had been missing. I watch his fingers drum out beats on the steering wheel and search out the leftover Christmas lights on the houses we pass. The night feels young so we go to a bar for open mic. We whisper to each other under the music and my leg finds his under the table. Thigh to thigh. He’s always cold, he says, but I warm him. I pull the knit hat from his head and run my fingers through his short hair. His eyes close. When they open there is a moment hanging between us, the moment to lean forward and claim what is out there, on the table for the taking. The moment to lead him, or allow myself to be led, down to the dark anonymity of the stairwell. Reduce ourselves to quiet breaths and fingers exploring new lands. Then, one of us looks away or takes a swig of beer and just like that the string falls, the moment lost.
On Tuesday we go to The Last Word. We lose ourselves in stacks of books, organized perfectly for only the owner, Wayne, to find. I pile up my choices, reading backs and first pages, while he leans against the counter talking to Wayne. When I go to pay, I pull out the hand written gift certificate my parents give me every Christmas and try to pay the balance but my money gets waved away.Wayne asks about my parents, soul mates, and tells us that this is what it is all about; finding someone you can be comfortable with and then the falling in love comes easy. I choke on a giggle and avoid his eyes. When we get back to the car he pulls out Bluebeard and Heart of Darkness and adds them to my pile.
“You’re not going to make me read this, are you?” I ask, holding up the Conrad.
He laughs and I put it back on my pile, I guess so.
On Wednesday he is determined to kiss me. He lounges on my bed as we decide what to do. Then in an instant his hand is at my back and my lips are on his. The rest of the night is a blur. We walk through Point Pleasant Park and my gloved hand finds his for the first time. The world is hushed. The naked trees curling against the burning sky. He stops me and our cold noses meet. He shakes his head as we continue to walk and I demand to be in on the joke.
“Nothing. This.”
I smile, knowing.
On Thursday he meets my friend, B. Charms her. Wins her over, easily, as though he’s been doing it all his life. They argue and I take the impartial stance. I sit across from them on the bed and play neutral. I remember that she never really liked my ex and this tugs at the corner of my mouth. She gives me the thumbs up when he goes to the bathroom. We go to Tribeca and dance until we are sweating. I dance battle with a guy in a striped shirt who lifts me up and spins me around when he is close to losing. I detach myself and find my way back. Find his hand in the crowd. It shouldn’t be this easy, I think. The easiness of it makes it complicated, paradoxically. When we get home, back in my bed, he tells me he was waiting all night to get me here. We tease each other going to the edge and then stepping back, again and again, until we are both glazed-eyed and aching.
In the dark he tells me his fears. I tell him mine.
“Usually, by now, I would be running away.”
I nod into the dark, I’m a flighty one, myself.
“Don’t run,” I tell him quietly. “Stay.”
“This is where I want to be.”
His forehead finds mine. We lean against each other. I stroke the back of his neck, his naked back. I want to breathe him in, all of him, have him beating inside me like a moth trapped behind glass. I want to preserve this moment in the sap of a tree. I want to turn these quiet kisses into fossils. I want someone to uncover them carefully with kindly placed tools.
I want to be remembered.
On Friday we wake up slowly, languidly. Falling back into sleep I dream I’m following a technicoloured fawn through the woods. Always nearly catching it, wondering what the fur feels like under my palm. Its legs leave perfectly placed holes in the snow, like water dripping from the branch of a tree. My eyes open and I curl back into him, his arms pull me close, the hair on his chest tickles the back of my neck, his legs fit into mine, and I think that I know. This, it feels like this.
The year ticks to a close while I’m on an elevator travelling between floors. I glance at my phone to determine the time and am shocked to see the numbers glowing on the screen, midnight already. I hug my friend B and we scream our Happy New Year! to the walls until the doors slide open and our cab awaits. She tells me later the guy she is seeing steals a first kiss, a first kiss and a New Years kiss, on the pavement in front of her building while we wait in the car and it’s so poetic that I exchange sly smiles with the universe; good one there. Sometimes the things we deserve do come to pass, if we wait long enough, if we trudge through the slushy sidewalks until we hit dry concrete, if we keep on walking long after our shoes are soaked through and our feet frozen.
The drive downtown is peppered with explosions. Fireworks fly dazzling into the sky, showering the city with celebration, with good intentions. A new year. Our phones chime and our text messages get clogged in the country’s collective push to wish each other well. I lose service and stow my phone away in my purse, it’s enough just to live it. To send my thoughts to the sky trailing the brilliant sparks of so many others. I love you, thank you for being here.
It takes a while for the bar to fill up and I hardly notice when it does. I am lost in the good will and the refilling drinks. A girl in a pink tutu finds us on the dance floor. I’m intimidated by the way her eyes claim mine, her big white boots and the glitter in her hair. There are lights in the air, hovering. There are music notes climbing to the rafters. I am moving, moving, moving, afraid to stop for a moment and examine myself. That I could be so assuredly not who I am. That I could live this pretend life like it was real flesh and blood and not just words reaching up and out and all around.
I turn away from the men that have the nerve to approach me. I skip behind dancers and let my friends do the dirty work, the ‘take a hikes’ and ‘she’s not interested’. With each drink I am more at home in my body, I stretch my fingers open and closed, I marvel at the extension of a limb like I’ve just learned to walk. The night drags on and soon we disperse. One friend to the night, the other two in a cab to a warm bed and sweet pillow talk. I stay. I find my brother and he tells me about a girl he loves and wants to buy a ring for and then leaves with someone else. I lean against the wall watching the dance floor. The pink tutu girl has found a friend, it takes me a moment but I realize they have exchanged clothes. Her little white tank top stretches over the other girl’s curves, wondering why it no longer fits. Her pink tutu sags limp and disappointed on the new frame. The black dress she is wearing fails to capture the pounding life inside her, it longs for colour, for vibrancy. They run to the bathroom, hand in hand, and I follow. Just in time to watch them disappear into a stall together. I watch their feet at the bottom, in between each other, glued to the floor. A shirt comes off. The pink tutu and the black dress. I imagine hands in hair and soft lips finding each other in a quiet stillness formed by eyes and moments and life. The chattering of the bathroom diminishing to a low hum. I wash my hands and leave.
Back against the wall. Always against the wall. Always on the sidelines. I find myself yearning for something new. The desire to strip off this life and exchange it in a bathroom with a stranger. To wear my heart so ostentatiously. To be the girl in the pink tutu. Maybe her life is a mask, too. Maybe we are all just looking for someone to undress us.
I find a man in the crowd. Beautiful eyes. Chiseled jaw. Short hair. Tall. I watch him until he turns around looking for the source of my gaze. I draw him to me without words or gestures, with my eyes. He takes slow, unsure steps until he finds himself in front of me looking down, perplexed. He leans in to ask me something, my name perhaps, but my lips have already silenced him. Then it is my own dance of hands behind heads and hips meeting and merging. Pounding music. We are anonymous.
Not quite a pink tutu. But, it’s the first of January now. An entire year stretches out in front of us. All the places we could go; all the people I could be.
I am set adrift, a string of multicoloured Christmas lights tied to the stern of my tiny boat. It’s the rhythmic rocking of alcohol, the blurred vision. I lean my head against the wall and let my leg be trapped between his underneath the table. I play with the glass in my hand and he reaches over to fill it, catching my eye. I look away.
He’s supposed to be a friend. There are so many things about the situation that I would erase. White out. I ask him about his girl friend. He smiles and releases my leg. I’m boxed in the booth by another friend’s lanky frame. I lean back and let myself sink further down the vinyl. Would that I could be anywhere but here.
My nights are bottoms of beer. My days are queasy stomachs and pounding headaches. I get sick and then sicker and don’t care enough to medicate. I punish myself and then escape in wine glasses and drunken laughter. I have nothing and so I have nothing to lose. I am not sad. I experience nothing. My laughter is not my own. My smile is not my smile. I lay still inside my mind and watch the strings pull up a hand here, move a leg there; a puppet’s life.
Wooden.
Christmas passes in a blur. I live it without moving, without taking much in. There are few moments that break beneath my shiny veneer. I play the part convincingly and am not sad. I am shocked by my brother’s hands on my head as he stands behind my chair, palming me like a basketball. I want to curl up in his hands. I want him to crush me in his fist, grind me to dust and give me to the wind. I want to be particles that dance a distance and then settle on shoulders; on the bottoms of shoes; in gutters.
I want to be packed up and put away. But, the show must go on. The audience loves my painted tears, my half smile and half frown. Make me laugh, they say. Make me cry.
Make me feel something.
I carve stories for you from the muscle of my heart. I write the letters on my skin. I shed it all and am still shedding. There is always a layer underneath, always something more to tear into, something else to discard. A new part of me that bleeds.
I search for truth at the bottom of my glass and for hope in the lipstick smudges on the rim. I carry my weight like it’s already gone. I bail out my boat and wait to starve. I cup my hands and drink from the sea; waiting for the starless sky to swallow me up.
Waiting to see land. Waiting to feel sad. Waiting to feel something.
She told me she was having doubts. She’d been having them for a long time. Regrets balanced with the need to know for sure. How long does it take to put things straight in your mind? To know that someone is wrong for you and to believe it. I’m not a role model here. I’m still strapped in riding this roller coaster. Each time I climb a hill and peer over the edge, I smile. The moment that your breath abandons you right before falling. Weightless. Rails rushing at you. Sharp turns. My mind doesn’t have time to think things through, I am hands in the air enjoying the ride. Of course, the ride is the same ride until the wheels clip and the car is suddenly derailed. We have no way of knowing. Safety inspections do nothing to prevent freak accidents. Still, I like the fear that this time might be the last time. I pull the bar down, exchange grins with my seat mate and wait for the groan of machinery to catapult me around the turn. Heart thumping. Hands shaking. The pause at the top and the view that reminds you some things were built to make you scream.
I tell her to wallow. To get right in there, her dark place. To cry until the tears dry up and no more tears come. To scream with abandon and throw things. Burn his clothes and rip up pictures. Demolish the memory of this relationship with gusto. Like a professional. To grieve for a while, yes. But, then, to get up and get out and pick up and move on. To polish that heart up for another. To love like loving’s all we have.
I just wish I could be there to share that first single girl shot. Hard and fast at the bar. Climbing the first hill, the fear and anticipation at the top, the world spread before us burning our eyes with the bright glare of promise. The other at our side and the men at our feet.
The night was supposed to be simple. See Zombieland and then go for drinks. I didn’t account for derailments. I should have. I really fucking should have. I should have detailed escape routes planned out by now. I should have emergency exits. I should have up to plan D ready and waiting. Why don’t I? Why do I always think it will all just work out?
The movie is amazing. Just so you know. I was prepared. I brought snacks. We shared them and I tried to ignore his elbow on the armrest and his whispers in my ear. I told myself we are just friends because we are. Doesn’t matter that we made out. We are just friends, now. I laughed at him when he admitted he was afraid of clowns. He laughed at me when I jumped so predictably. I ignored the outline of his jaw in the dark. I ignored the brush of his hand.
At the bar his friend came to meet us. Half-way through the night he slipped into my booth, the friend. He kissed me and then kept his hand on my leg whether or not I would pull away. His friend got drunk and said something stupid about something implying something disrespectful that he might have said. I locked eyes with him as the friend rambled on and tried to backtrack. I dared him to make a stand but he never did. They never do. I’m pretty sure it was all the friend’s bullshit but that’s not the point. The point is here I am in a sketchy bar with two guys and why? For what?
This is my life. This is my life tumbling down cliff edges. This is my life sidestepping. This is my life moving from one broken heart to another and this is my head on his shoulder as he drives me home. Apologizing for his friend. Patting my knee as I cry silently. What am I doing here?
We find ourselves in a bar called Dixie. Bras hang from the ceiling like medals. He opens a tab for happy hour and keeps me with an endless supply of cheap American beer. It’s not great, but it’s okay. It takes about half a beer but we set ourselves at ease. He tells me about his not-girlfriend. I tell him he is kidding himself. He smiles with the corner of his mouth and admits that he probably is.
“The thing is… this is going to sound… I just know that I’m never going to want to marry her, so…”
I nod.
“Well. You say she’s not your girlfriend but you practically live with her and judging by the constant text messages she sends you, she’s not exactly comfortable with you hanging out with me…”
“We talked about it. We are on the same page. I am free to do what I want.”
“So, if you were to hook up with someone else…”
“Yes?”
“Would you feel guilty?”
Hesitation, “I guess I probably would.”
“So then she’s your girlfriend.”
“She is not my girlfriend.”
“If you say so.”
We take long swigs of beer and change the subject. We reminisce about Corfu. I tease him about his drunken confessions to me. He says he remembers. I’m surprised. That he remembers and that he would admit to it. We laugh until the floor tips slightly as I make my way to the bathroom.
At the show they stamp the inside of my arm in red and we take up residence next to the bar. I make friends with the girl dancing next to me in her white tank and fedora. Effortlessly cool. I think how I wish I could pull off a fedora. She gives me her number. I make friends with the bartender who slides free shots to me every once in a while and tells me how we should hang out after. I tell him sure but never get around to giving him my number or name. I make friends with a girl in the bathroom who retrieves my phone when I drop it on the sticky floor. They all keep buying me drinks and I just love Portland so much. The openers are upbeat. I catch eyes with a guy at the other end of the bar and when he sees he puts a hand possessively at the small of my back and brushes the hair off my face and then we are kissing in the crowd. I pull away and laugh, never having expected this.
We retreat outside where the cool air greets us, drying the sweat on our skin. I sink down next to him cross-legged on the pavement. We share a cigarette. He starts telling me things I don’t need to hear so I stand up suddenly and tell him I can hear Gaslight Anthem starting and I’m going in because that’s what I came for. He nods. I go to buy another drink and realize I’ve had plenty so I change my mind. I retrace my steps and look for him leaning against the building but he’s gone. I’m convinced in my heart that he’s abandoned me. I’m texting him, asking where he is. I can feel stress tears gathering behind my eyes when he appears next to my side.
“I thought you left.”
“No. Never.”
I take his hand and lead him back into the center of the crowd. Fedora-girl hugs me when she sees me and asks where I’d been. We dance, hands in the air next to each other. He keeps a hand at my waist or on my back. Always. I notice that he stops answering the buzz and glow of his phone.
After awhile we get tired of the noise and heat so we leave. Wandering toward the waterfront we find a bench. He sits and gestures for me to join him. I drop my purse in a heap beside him and straddle his legs. He laughs but when I shrug and go to move he pushes down on my hips and keeps me trapped to him. We kiss and we kiss and we kiss. The occasional passer-by never distracting us. His hands on the skin of my back. Tasting of beer and smoke and good music. I stop to catch a breath and lean my forehead against his.
“So, do you feel guilty?”
“No. God, no.”
Later, we sit on the back of his truck. He is telling me that the thing is he can’t see himself marrying me, either. I laugh.
“Seriously? Is that what you thought I wanted?”
“No. I guess not. I don’t know.”
“Well. It’s not. Not at all. I just want to have fun. Can we just have fun?”
Yeah, he says. We can just have fun. He lays back and pulls me with him. I settle into his shoulder.
“I’m just no good with relationships.”
The lights of the city and my phone chiming in my pocket. I’m not sure who said it. We lay still and silent with plastic ridges digging into our skin; both of us miles away thinking the same thing about someone different.
