On growing apart, Girls and Friends Like Us

She suggests we become pen pals, though we live only a twenty-minute walk from each other, and suddenly it seems like my best friends are always screens, stamps, and several failed plans away. Like I woke up one morning and we suddenly stopped making time for each other. Or maybe it was always that way and I’m only just realizing it.

Another season of Girls ends and the last scene, as Hannah is rescued by her awful mistake of an ex-boyfriend instead of any one of her closest friends bubbles up in me such a raw desolation that I can’t stop sobbing, long after the credits roll. It’s because they all seem so broken and I see myself in all of their selfishness and most of their mistakes but they’re still girls, and I’m almost 28. When do you stop having an excuse for not having it together?

I stay up way too late and think about rekindling friendships long faded, making apologies for why things ended, if I can even remember. Maybe I was too idealistic in how I thought a friend should be. Maybe I could be more forgiving.

Friends Like Us seemed like the perfect read to match my mood. And it is but it isn’t because here’s two best friends that live in their own bubble, mistaken for sisters, a language all their own—it captures perfectly that ease, the support and adoration when you’re just so smitten with a friend that the years before you knew them are almost defined by that. Before careers, schedules and relationships seem to get in the way. Before like in Girls, we start turning to others for help. Why wasn’t it Marnie, Hannah’s oldest friend, that ran to her that night? Was there too much said between them? Too many disappointments? Have they just drifted too far apart? At what point does a friendship start to erode in on itself and can you catch it, fix it, send it back on track? Or is it a kind of inevitable motion, like falling, that you just have to let play out? Set it free and if it comes back to you, yadda yadda yadda. I know now that sometimes they do.

In Friends Like Us you start out at the end, an awkward run-in for Willa and Jane, years after whatever breaks them apart has done its damage and the dust has had time to settle but they don’t rekindle anything. They say the things they’ve been harbouring for years and then they go back to their respective and very separate lives. The rest of the book is what leads up to that inevitable end. It’s depressing but captivating. All the characters are fully formed and nuanced. It’s playful, funny, but sad too, and it’s so full of longing that it’s pretty heartbreaking to get to the end and know that some friendships can’t withstand the things we submit them to. That we can mess everything up but not love a person any less. That no amount of years going by will stop you from replaying conversations, remaking moves, and wondering wondering wondering how you could have done things differently. Maybe that’s just a risk you take when you love anyone, only you expect romantic relationships to end and to ultimately get over them… but there’s no guidebook on how to get over a friend.

The Sweet Tooth

“It’s amazing that you still haven’t read Anna Karenina. And you call yourself an English major.”

“It’s not that I haven’t tried. There’s something about the title that sets me off Karenina… Kar-nin-nin-a. I want to pronounce it like an engine revving. Is that weird? Don’t answer that. Maybe it’s just that I get so much pleasure from imagining that I’ll like it, filling up my bookshelf with things I’m meant to read, someday, when I have the time. Actually sitting down and reading it, getting into the nitty gritty of consuming, well that’s something else altogether. I can’t promise we’ll get along. Me and Tolstoy, I mean. So I put it off. I like the thought of liking him.”

By now she’d stirred three helpings of sugar into her coffee without really thinking about it, one at a time, little granules covered her saucer and the reach of her teaspoon. She paused for a moment mid-flight while she studied her new friend across the table, and then scooped another lump into her cup.

“Of course, I don’t want to be one of those people that reads things just because they’re on a million different lists or worse, avoids things because they are intimidatingly popular. I want to want things in my own time. I hate that I can’t just come to it on my own now, it’s already been claimed as this great classic of the world. What if I hate it? Won’t that say more about me than Tolstoy?”

“Only as much as your sweet tooth says about sugar.”

Inhale

She’s fresh from a four-month adventure in India. I’m pregnant with inertia. She offers me a one on one yoga class and we bend and stretch to the soothing current of her voice in my backyard, mosquitoes slapped against necks and arms between breaths.

“This is why my guru tells us to practice indoors.”

An hour in we gather an audience, neighbors perched on roofs and peering out of windows in the apartment building across the fence.

She drapes her body against mine in an effort to bring my pose deeper. She corrects and comments on my flexibility. I watch her brush a blonde curl out of her eye.

I feel off-balance. Out of tune. My legs shake with the effort to stretch, reach, ground into the earth. I build my body from the feet up, limbs stacked, muscles tensed, arms reaching, pulling myself in separate directions.

I concentrate on my breathing. Everything inside me is crumbling, I am fractured in a way I can’t begin to understand or address, but this, this deep breathing? This I can do.

Inhale, extend.

Exhale, go deeper.

I come out of it dazed. Feet filthy.

A smile smeared into the corners of my eyes.

Something, at least.

Kings of Convenience – Power of Not Knowing

Like a Heatwave

It’s a heat wave and the radio warns us of the extreme temperatures burning through sunglasses and riding the wind. Humidity. Droplets of sweat forming above lips and between breasts. The sheen of summer on the small of her back as she flips over and groans.

All of it inescapable.

We tell time in discarded Diet Coke cans and the laps from towel to lake and back again. Our skin browns in unison.

“Swim?”

A nod and we are padding through the sand again.

The water cold, sprouting goose bumps along the wave line against my shins, knees, thighs.

“On three? One, two—”

I am submerged before she finishes the count.

This is how it always is: the cold kiss of water on every pore, my long hair trailing behind me like seaweed, bubbles escaping from my lips in short bursts.

The dive like falling in love and

never

wanting to come up.

Aeroplane vs Friendly Fires vs Flight Facilities – I Crave Paris

(via Chris @ dailybeatz)

Off The Wagon

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.

I tried.”

The Drive

Photo by Randy P. Martin

(photo via Randy P. Martin)

The whole drive was platonic.

Platonic bantering.

Platonic stops for munchies.

Platonic food fight on the interstate.

Platonic bickering over control of the radio.

Platonic battle for leg room.

It wasn’t until they slept that an arm was flung absentmindedly overhead.

That fingertips found a shoulder blade.

That a thumb rotated softly in time with the soft murmurs of sleep.

They were falling in love in their dreams, and didn’t even know it, yet.

Denouement

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.

Paolo Nutini – No Other Way (Live)

No Direction Necessary

“Did you know L has moved back to the city?”

“What?!”

“Yeah, just a couple streets over.”

She gestures vaguely in the direction of the ketchup and I scan the restaurant, sure that with the mention of his name he will appear at my shoulder or manifest in the booth by the window.

“Unacceptable. This is my city. Tell him to go back to Hubbards where he belongs.”

She laughs and takes a couple of sweet potato fries from my plate.

Later, we are walking arm-in-arm down the slick streets as big fat snowflakes settle in our hair, heading homeward. My eyes dart from green car to green car. My stomach turns over when I see what could be a familiar back in the window of a bank. When we pass the commons we both stop suddenly, sure that the solitary figure walking a small dog is the last one I would want to see. The dark plays tricks on my mind, the lighting swallows up reality and presents me with ghastly form after form, daring me to look too close or glance away. I am sidestepping feelings and joking about stealing back my dog when it dawns on me.

This is a bad habit. Looking for him in the faces of strangers. Worrying. Letting him steal into my mind, a cold gust of wind when I was sure I had been insulated. No. No longer.

This is my city. My happy heart. I will not fear the turn of the corner and every beard and black frames. I will correct myself like I do my posture. I will stand straight as an arrow pointing to the sky and up and up. I will not bend and contort myself. I will not make room. These are my streets. That is my park. I am painting my name on roadside curbs, on the newspaper bins, all the windows he walks by each day. That’s my reflection staring back at him, frozen. I will not be trapped in the glass.

I will not be a character in his story. I will be his phantom and he can be my pavement.

My heels will kiss him with each step, violent as fists, and when I see him, if I see him, his face will be sidewalk grime and his body the car exhaust that we try not to breathe in. I will wipe my hands clean of him on my jeans or the sides of passing buildings. The litter of a past life, unsorted.

This is my city. My heritage buildings and indie coffee shops. My clock tower and waterfront. My homeless pirate in front of the liquor store. My squeegee kids and trendy upstarts and pseudo-hipsters hating on themselves. I built the soundtrack. I cut the scenes. I’m editing the script in between takes and he isn’t welcome here.

I’ll set up the hose, if need be. I will wash the streets clean and yell “action” in the crowd and fake rain.

I will. No direction necessary.

Frightened Rabbit – Backwards Walk

The One With The Orange Tree

“Well?”

“Well, which way did the coin fall? For me, it landed heads up… twice.”

I think about the internal debate, about the strength it takes to hold yourself still while your blood boils. The control you feel steeling your veins when a red-faced man screams into your face, sprinkling you with angry spit.

The strength it takes not to move, to keep your feet planted, growing roots in tendrils through the carpet, the wood, the levels of a house, down, down, down to the ground.

I smile.

“So, am I going to see you soon?”

“Definitely.”

I let the days go by. I start a new job and enjoy it. I watch friendships and relationships around me begin to crumble. Still, I let the green push itself through the hard, cold, earth. The deeper they reach the harder it gets to hear the hissing of fear. I burrow down deeper into the ground, make a home of rock and soil. I pass remnants of others. I get dirt underneath my fingernails. No, I’m not running this time. I will go deeper. I will go to the center. I will go core deep.

He rings my doorbell, tells me to get bundled up because we’re going sledding on Citadel hill. He watches me pull on layer after layer. I want to wrap myself up in his arms, use him as fleece and wool. We pick up his friend and smoke a joint at the bottom of the ice-covered hill. My heart beats in 4|4 time. I blink the blurred lights of the city in and out of existence. The sled catapults me to the sidewalk and the road. Cars pass but don’t honk. For a moment it feels like flying and then there are waves of snow in my eyes, colder than anything I have ever felt. I hold a frozen finger to my eye and wonder if I’m crying, forming icicles at the corners of my eyes. Climbing the hill again I collapse and pass off my sled, lay back, let the cold envelope me, seal me in a thin transparent case, an ice queen. I can feel every pore in my skin condensing around the cold, holding it like you might a fragile form. An insect. A cocoon. The shell some butterfly left behind.

A faint fluttering in my chest, it takes me a moment, while I watch them climb back up the hill. Happiness.

We get cold and hungry. So, we drive through and I ponder the perfect French fry; the ratio of salt and crunch. We drop his friend off and drive aimlessly for a while. At peace with the night and the music. I shed clothes in his front seat. We decide to people watch at Wallmart and giggle our way through the aisles, hand in hand. I find the most atrocious pair of rainbow furry slippers but abandon them for orange Tic Tacs at the till.

On the drive back to my house I convince him to put a handful of the candy in his mouth all at once. I do the same, running my tongue over the little ovals, a mouthful of marbles, a nest full of eggs. A basket of tiny oranges.

He tells me I’ve ruined orange Tic Tacs for him, his second favourite flavour.

I laugh, wondering to myself how he could go and do the opposite without even realizing it.

Days later, I will buy the citrus Tic Tacs and melt them at the center of my tongue. Candy harvested in perfect nights from the twisted branches of an orange tree.

Broken Bells – Vaporize

The Whirlwind

Iron & Wine – Cinder and Smoke

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.