Imagine This
I don't know if anybody comes on here anymore or if anybody will read this, but feel free to comment if you do. This is orig fic I've been working on for a while. Just putting it out there...
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Imagine this: you're an above average guy. You're aesthetically pleasing to the eye. You've forsaken machismo for modesty, what seems like a wholesome veneer. Except it's more than skin deep.
You joined the Navy to pay for school, majored in Civil Engineering then Photography then Industrial Design and finally architecture. Now you're a licensed architect and it's what you've always wanted, to roll up blue prints of stadiums and skyscrapers and know it's yours. It was all your idea.
You're 26. You're renting a house, three bedrooms on the outskirts of the city's suburbs. You thought you'd be happy here. April, May, you were, with your cute-as-a-button girlfriend and your deaf pitbull named Lulu. Then she cheated on you. The girlfriend, not the dog. Things didn't fall apart, because you had them assembled so perfectly together. They fell away. You slipped into an opaque despondency, realizing how few friends you had in this town.
One Saturday night, you and a friend from work plan to go to a concert. You arrive to meet him there, wait outside until 7:59 but he never shows. You go inside anyway, because you're holding your ticket and you have nothing better to do―except apply for that job in Seattle, you remember. In the morning, you will. Now you buy an overpriced beer and resolve to elbow your way to the center of the crowd.
The lights dim and the opening band comes on and by the end of the second song you begin to care less about being alone. That's when you see her. A blonde, sharp as a hypodermic needle, swaying in the kaleidoscopic haze. Her tendrils are damp with sweat and her makeup has melted away; she seems guarded but not unapproachable. You sip your beer a nameless voyeur as another girl leans to whisper something in her ear.
I can tell you what she says because the blonde girl, that's me. Caitlin tells me she's leaving but I mishear her. I nod idly, thinking she told me she just has to pee. Then we're alone together, the outliers of the crowd pushing us closer.
I see you, filling the space beside me, a handsome catch, a sensitive kid. Your straw-pale hair is haloed by the stage lighting and when I turn my head, realizing Caitlin isn't coming back, you smile at me.
An accumulation of chords, some cathartic suckerpunch of percussion echoes, blasts, turning the figures of the band into formless shards. The swarm of adrenaline drenched twenty-somethings we are roar for an encore. I can feel you in my periphery, holding your breath in that lull. Then the din blares back to music for one last set and we watch rapt.
Why here, like this, I think when our eyes meet again. The histrionics of an establishing shot, a common soundtrack to underscore our opening, the pitch and intensity and promise of the most fleeting moment: love at first sight.
Or something else entirely.
We begin talking during that dying cacophony after the last song. In the slow crawl to the door I find out your name is Conor and you think I say mine is Michelle. I don't correct you.
You suggest we get a drink and though I know I look like an asylum escapee, with my hair mussed and my cheeks crimson-flushed, I can't say no.
Into our second hour of talking and drinking, you mention your time stationed in Bahrain. I nod stupidly and without thinking tell you my boyfriend is in the Marine Corps.
A beat passes, tense and contracting like a cerebral charlie horse. I cannot tell but I think you're relieved by the inadvertent admission. Another band we both like will be in town in two weeks. You segue nonchalantly into this topic. Staring at our empty glasses, we agree to go together.
Nathan, my boyfriend, had already expressed a lack of interest in going with me. I dread asking him. His knees are the bane of his years after discharge. Both ACLs have been torn and his doctor is pushing for meniscus transplants. He refuses. Pain is a challenge for him, a duty. He's agony's ambassador. I'm going to spare him standing three hours at another general admission concert for a band he likes less than me. It's not his fault he's become my only friend.
My best friend from childhood, adolescence and until recently, Benna, moved to Florida five years ago. We used to text and talk and see each other when she came home for holidays. She's getting married next spring and I was supposed to be the maid of honor. But I bailed, the way she expected me to, and apologized and retracted my apology and haven't heard from her since.
All life is like that, sacrificing parts of yourself, cutting out and removing people that seem expendable at the time. It's a slow series of amputations until all you can do is remember who you were with them.
You meet me in the parking lot before the next concert. We walk and talk and try to ignore that we have so much in common. We have the same hair color too, and though your features are more chiseled and refined than mine, I know we could pass for siblings.
The looks I get from other women, the one's that assume we're on a date―those looks that ask, 'What is he doing with you?' or reassure themselves 'He must be gay,' those don't bother me. I'm the victor in this picture, regardless of how people perceive us.
There are conversational subtleties in our rapport after the show. We sit and drawl on into the early morning like we've both been in solitary confinement for 25 years. You keep mentioning your big house, with extra bedrooms, the grass you have to cut and the two car garage. I finally confess I'm bored living alone (I actually can't afford it much longer) and we arrive at a confluence. This is how futures form, late at night through tipsy dialogue and with hoarse voices.
Before the week's end, I've moved in with you.
Imagine this: you are an average guy. You have a military crew cut and a thick but trimmed beard. You've met a girl but your hopes don't hinge on her. You feel discovered, comforted, needed, loved and sometimes bored with her.
After four months you ask her to move in with you. She shrugs, freezes, maybe sees a grizzly bear standing behind you. She finally says no but buries it in so much gratitude that it relieves more than piques your suspicion.
One part of you needs to plant roots, knows you could raise a family. Another part is attracted to the openness, the non-exclusivity of this, with her. A few days later she says maybe she will get a roommate. You make a joke about lesbian pillow fights. She doesn't laugh.
You wonder how you got here, with her, of all people. You feel stuck, shackled to this place. You bought this house when you were engaged to your ex and you're stuck with it for three more years. Maybe she's a distraction, a transitory companion, warm flesh to curl up behind when you're afraid you'll forget how it feels. You've grown used to this, half fallen in love with her.
She does get a roommate. She tells you it's a guy and asks if you mind. She's already started moving her stuff in though, and even if you say yes, it won't matter.
You are Nathan and never Nate. Nathan is already an abbreviation for Nathaniel, you explained one night after you had only been dating her a few weeks. She made a joke and a rhyme about syllabic verse. You didn't laugh. Now she never calls you Nate. To your face.
Your relationship is hard to explain. The two of you have a vague history. She met you when she was an undergrad. You served with her friend Adam and were sharing a story about your time at Twenty Nine Palms when she infiltrated your next thought, her hand on Adam's shoulder.
You were both drinking too much that night and what you remember of the sex is graceless, blurry and perfect. It was more than her acquiescing to your aggressive pursuit. It was one night, without even the dimmest echo of ever seeing each other again.
Four years later though, you do. You've always imagined kismet being a collision.
This is more of a tap on the shoulder.
You're standing in the same aisle at the grocery store, trying to decipher why the other seems familiar. It's an anesthetizingly ordinary scene. Tabloids and chewing gum border the check out line. The florescent lights make the chain smoking cashier seem even more wan. You've gotten older.
I know you, is how you initiate, gaping through a long pause, like a shy kid to a pretty girl at recess. She follows you back to your place, makes stir fry and you talk like old friends. Like you know each other. Like you ever will.
The memory of this unsentimental beginning, the strange intersection this was becoming, now makes your sedimentary heart skip a beat. Remind yourself: this isn't a love story. It's an examination of the snares in life, the ones we stupidly set for ourselves, stumble into and bleed out from.
There is no rush into calling what you have a relationship. There is casual sex and rough sex and casual rough sex. There are conversations about the second amendment, your disparate childhoods, how you've never seen a Disney movie. Both of your personalities synchronize eventually. Despite the many firearms you own, she's not nervous around you. You laugh at her punchlines and dissect her long post-graduate days of all work and no play.
I know those long days as well as I know you. As well as I remember this:
It's an early weekday morning. I am dressed, completely. My make up is pressed on, my hair is combed. I'm reaching for my shoes when you come up behind me. Your hips pivot into some primal grind against the clothed cleft of my ass. Your beard grates the length of my neck.
Your hand unfastens my belt, pulls down the zipper.
No, I say weakly when you bend a knee into the back of my thigh, the hips of my pants loose and descending.
Seriously, not now. I have to go to work. My breath catches on the last syllable. I forget how to breathe. You make me forget, with your hand under my shirt. My back curves into a sharp arch.
Mid-air I gasp; you lift me up and slam me down on to the dresser. The mirror bangs hard against the wall. I settle on cold change and loose ammunition. I feel more blindsided than sexy. I go with it. Or I don't. I imagine I have control. I pretend I have a choice.
You ram into me, turgid slippery heat. I meet each uneven jerk. The edge of the dresser is too close. My toes curl in the thin air above the carpet. My thighs clench. Don't fall down now, I tell myself.
This is the worst kind of balancing act.
I writhe and struggle against you. I have a feeling this is what you want. I fight back with the confidence of an insecure adversary. Just as I'm about to collapse off the corner of the dulled oak finish, you pick me up and sweep me onto the bed--more premeditated crime than rhythmic choreography.
The smothering weight of you, backlit by passion or rage or whatever you're feeling, this is what I've loved about you until now. The unspoken, sometimes awkward or timorous but always honest disclosure, of Nathan, of us, together.
Every time I try to rise, you push me back down. I feign resistance and it spurns you; the harder I fight, the more I lose. You can't slow down. Your face is stained a wicked crimson. Sweat streams down your temples. There's venom in the few kisses we exchange. Chlorine gas in your breath.
My own arousal I sustain off the fuel of memories. I try to imagine what you're thinking, if you're lashing out because I've emotionally assaulted you. I imagine I deserve this, the blunt trauma of the vaguely non-consensual. I imagine that we can recover from this, from anything. You come inside of me on the evaporation of that thought, in a guttural slur, livid steam against my nape.
I want you to tell me you love me, or hate me. You lie quiet another five minutes then stand and stagger to the shower without saying a word.
This is the only time this happens. This is the only time your misplaced anger and agony find me in their crosshairs. I tell myself you are just Nathan being Nathan. I tell myself that I know you, but I don't.
I don't know anything.
We are eleven months in to this, whatever it is we have, when you tell me.
We are lying in bed, our sweat cooling. I am staring at your legs and feet when you tell me about Ellie. She is a woman you work with. You have worked with her four and a half years and you're in love with her.
Have you told her? Does she know? I ask, not as appalled as I should be.
No.
Why haven't you said something to her, asked her out...something?
The stakes. I'm scared I guess.
You hesitate.
I mean, the way it's been, it's still a possibility. If I ask her and she says no. Or even if she says yes and it doesn't work out, I've lost that. I'll still see her everyday. She'll be this reminder of my rejection.
At least rejection is something, I tell you. If you never act, never tell her, then it's nothing.
You turn onto your side and face me, considering.
Are you seriously encouraging me?
Yes, I say, sighing. Part of being your girlfriend is being your friend. As your friend, I want you to be happy. If I can't do that for you and she can, I would let go. Let you go.
I don't hesitate to tell you:
Be pragmatic. Be realistic. Don't throw hurdles in front of yourself this way. You owe me nothing.
I want to stop talking, I'm sounding far too removed from my own role here. I sound beneficent, naïve.
Do you really think there's something there? Could you make it happen?
You shrug, smile.
Should I start looking for wedding presents and baby clothes?
You stretch to draw the blinds and put your hand over my mouth and we fall asleep, less than wholly committed and not exactly happy.
In the morning, you're in a strange mood. My encouragement last night stirred in you more suspicion than hope. You are wondering if I have already fucked my roommate. You are wondering what Ellie will be like to fuck, her thin wrists pinned above her, her in your bed, the languid hopeful warmth of her body in your bed.
You want to ask about this big open question mark standing between us. Suddenly we can see other people. Never has a girl been so eager to offer as much. You're sure it can't be all altruism and the 'I just want you to be happy' line I spouted off last night. Women yearn for fidelity. How did you get paired with one who thinks it's fiction? Your mind balloons with nervous fear. You look at me for a second and then look down at your corn flakes. You feel as though I'm nobody special in the larger scheme of your life; you lose your appetite.
At work, things are tense. You approach Ellie, make small talk but never manage the ultimatum. She is your friend and colleague. You respect her. Every day your want for her broadens, grows. It's more than lust. Ellie is brilliant, independent, she has a background you admire and a recent break-up that terrifies you. You've been watching her for years. She was with him then. Now she may not be ready to move on. She may never be ready.
You may never be ready.
I am at work too. I have no infatuation here, nobody to salivate or vacillate over. I am reading The Portable Neitzsche. I want to be like Nietzsche. I want to write a book for all and for none, to say 'Nathan spoke thus,' to contemplate the existence of eternal return.
If I had to live this life again, if it was all just an hourglass turning over endlessly, no matter how miserable the thought of inescapable deja vu, suicide as relief is utterly debunked. The days go on and on. I am bored even when I am busy.
I make notes on my folder.
-Be kind to inanimate objects. They will be there for you long after the people in your life are gone -We're all killing ourselves in some way (and for no reason)
-Eleanors: Roosevelt, Rigby, Nate's
At home things become remarkably mundane. Conor and I wake and go to work, sometimes eat together, sometimes go out. We both know where this is leading. We are meandering toward it. We are old people with Hurrycanes, ironic and ambulatory.
We have become great friends. If we do this, when we do this, that could change.
Neither of us wants a relationship with the other. I think. The mutual attraction is there. I am not in love with him. Love is fleeting though. Even if I were, it wouldn't last. Even though I'm not, I could be. It could come.
There is no angst or tension or expectation between us. We take a shower together sometimes when the hot water is scarce and non-renewable. It isn't awkward. It isn't erotic either. We are like childhood friends who never separated. There is a backstory we feel but never experienced.
It's hard to explain.
One day, after work, we are are outside, arguing about who had the best Halloween costume. The permeating pine chill of fall air fills our lungs. The setting sun is scorching ocher along the horizon. Conor and I are sitting side by side on a dilapidated swing set in our backyard. He reaches for and takes my hand, holding it, warming it. Until now, we've never done this. We've never kissed. He's seen the texts I've gotten from Nathan, overheard our directionless fights, seen him around here less often.
How long has it been since Conor's break-up? Romantic as his heart may be, he's human. I'm not unaccessible, not miserably unattractive. His hand settles on the small of my back as we go inside. We skip dinner. A scene starts to unfold.
We are lying on the living room floor, listening to Transatlanticism and wishing we were in love. Or in something else, lyrically aquatic, swimming instead of sinking in the inimitable guilt we're about to conceive.
His hand runs the length of my arm. His hand clasps mine, our fingers interlaced. Minutes later he's curled fetal, one of his long legs draped over both of mine. His lips brush my temple, my chin. He pulls back.
What's wrong? He asks.
We shouldn't be doing this.
But we are. Three syllables in the crook of my neck.
You want to stop?
I shake my head. My face is clouded with a sad uncertainty, this terminal loneliness we're projecting onto each other. I am in it with him, no matter what words there are.
The title track replays. He is tracing his thumb over my cheek, framing my face in both of his hands. There's an obscene tenderness in the gesture and for a moment I wonder if my heart isn't a rock, a dense mineraloid tethering me to the moment, leaving me paralyzingly insecure and aware of its passing.
Conor is touching me in places he's never touched me before. I reciprocate, gauging the heat of his bare back, the soft ambit of an ear lobe. The room is dark except for the azure expectation of his stare
I hope stays dark forever.
I realize now, here, how unhappy I am with Nathan. I love him, yes. Offered the promise of a future with him? I'd choose this.
We kiss for what feels like half the night. There is a maladroit prostrate dance, our determination to make floor sex less of a dirty carpet-burning grind than it is. Soon we forfeit and stumble to his bed, a capsized cause, the undertow of blue sheets pulling us down deeper. I hold my breath. I cling to him. I close my eyes. I want to pretend. I want to imagine there is such a thing as requited love, to believe that it is real and here and him.
Conor is pulling my hair, our lips crushed together, the collision of our bodies snared in a breathless lapse of time. When I let go, drowned finally in the flood of this want, it's with simultaneous panic and relief. The last breath of air escapes my lungs, the heat of his release spills like tangible regret inside me.
After, he holds me. The room feels cold. He falls asleep first. The bedroom window, frosted in the corners, vignettes the night sky. I see stars in the distance, minute and quivering. I am always seeing stars.
Imagine this: Your roommate is in love with you. Your boyfriend is in love with a Cisco-certified slut he works with.
Scratch that.
You roommate is not in love with you. He's your hostage and his infatuation is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome. Your boyfriend is still in love with a woman he works with. There is an empty feeling when you're with him. You don't want to call it loneliness. You don't want to be that girlfriend, that wife, that mistress suffering this revelation.
You love him and you're sure he loves you in some fragmented, stop-start, half of his heart kind of way.
This should be enough. You want someone to tell you, you want someone to affirm: life is hard and short and sad. Here is someone to bide the time with. A cell mate, an accomplice.
You are living with a handsome, considerate peer. He happens to be the opposite sex. He's the third roommate you've ever had and after four years of living alone, you would not have expected this to be so easy.
Conor's quiet, leaves you your privacy and remembers to put the toilet seat down. He's got scruples and shares almost everything. You split the bills and the rent and the garage. He's single and not looking and you don't blame him. The connections we crave are never worth the pain.
All life is severing ties, then trying to staunch the blood.
Nathan and this Byronic unspoken ordeal has led the two of you to be in an open relationship. You've given him permission to act on his emotions, should he muster up the courage. He, in return, accepts the odds of you falling into the arms of your roommate.
In this way you have infinite trust but no stake in each other.
At work you walk through the halls with clenched fists. When you fuck Nate, you fuck him with clenched fists. It's defensive readiness, a premonition of having to block a punch in the face. It's an attempt to break your fall as you lose your footing and plunge off a self-fulfilled precipice. Don't fall down now.
You will never get up.
The days are long. You spend ten, thirteen, fifteen hours at work. You're a coward, a deserter. You are dodging confrontation, the denouement you know is near.
Nathan was someone you fought not to love. But it happened, creeping involuntary, the slow inertia of empty hearts sinking into the same ravine. This is how you lose him:
You leave work at four. The sky's a hazy slate. It's a long drive and your car heater can circulate dust, but doesn't warm a thing. You think of stopping, turning around. He's not expecting you tonight anyway.
You're knocking on his door. How did you get here? How did either of you get here?
You don't try to bandy words. You tell him you don't love him. You tell him you never did. You lie. The frustration, the cornered, stranded irreversibility of this begins to make you cry. Rivulets wend their way into your hair. You start to feel sick. Why didn't you drink some Pepto Bismol before doing this? Why are you doing this?
I'm sorry, you say. You keep saying it. A sob lodges in your throat. You are choking on your own words. Love drains from you, leaky faucet turned torrential deluge.
You stand there a long time thinking about the word foyer. Nathan is speaking low, almost whispering. You can't hear him over the tirade of your interior monologue. Then suddenly it's darker; the hallway's lost light. He leans in and kisses you on the cheek.
You should go, he tells you.
You turn and step out in to the numb quiet night. Stumbling to and starting your car, you drive away lost. Tears well and loiter in the corners of your eyes.
Forever he will possess some part of your heart. You will never feel safe again the way you did with him. You will always be emotionally anemic.
Weeks pass. Winter wanes then recurs before nature can recuperate.
It's snowing outside, the cottony crystalline kind that seems like it will never meet the ground. You're frozen, blank, inexpressibly abashed. Conor comes in to your bedroom, finds you staring at a blinking cursor. He is not here to console you. He has good news. He got the job in Seattle and they want him to start next week.
Congratulations, you say. Great.
If your stomach weren't empty, you'd vomit.
Conor is gone before you know what else to say. There is no farewell kiss, no goodbye quickie. People come in to your life and stay for the blink of an eye. You should be used to it. You should be detached. You should get a husband and start a family and pretend that makes this less likely to happen again. In the hard vacuum of his departure you try to write, try to channel your melancholy into words. You try to exorcise with prose. But you are not feeling inspired. You are feeling more like a prisoner about to be shanked.
It is a frigid colorless afternoon. You decide to call off work. Maybe you should quit. You walk outside and settle on a swing. There's no snow, no wind just the narrow spines of trees, the dark dead mat of leaves, the hollow echo of traffic, and you, on a solitary swing. You've got your head canted, staring at the ground. The cold air makes it hard to breathe. A silhouette of empty houses is creeping up behind you. You are alone. You have been the whole time.
Imagine that.
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Imagine this: you're an above average guy. You're aesthetically pleasing to the eye. You've forsaken machismo for modesty, what seems like a wholesome veneer. Except it's more than skin deep.
You joined the Navy to pay for school, majored in Civil Engineering then Photography then Industrial Design and finally architecture. Now you're a licensed architect and it's what you've always wanted, to roll up blue prints of stadiums and skyscrapers and know it's yours. It was all your idea.
You're 26. You're renting a house, three bedrooms on the outskirts of the city's suburbs. You thought you'd be happy here. April, May, you were, with your cute-as-a-button girlfriend and your deaf pitbull named Lulu. Then she cheated on you. The girlfriend, not the dog. Things didn't fall apart, because you had them assembled so perfectly together. They fell away. You slipped into an opaque despondency, realizing how few friends you had in this town.
One Saturday night, you and a friend from work plan to go to a concert. You arrive to meet him there, wait outside until 7:59 but he never shows. You go inside anyway, because you're holding your ticket and you have nothing better to do―except apply for that job in Seattle, you remember. In the morning, you will. Now you buy an overpriced beer and resolve to elbow your way to the center of the crowd.
The lights dim and the opening band comes on and by the end of the second song you begin to care less about being alone. That's when you see her. A blonde, sharp as a hypodermic needle, swaying in the kaleidoscopic haze. Her tendrils are damp with sweat and her makeup has melted away; she seems guarded but not unapproachable. You sip your beer a nameless voyeur as another girl leans to whisper something in her ear.
I can tell you what she says because the blonde girl, that's me. Caitlin tells me she's leaving but I mishear her. I nod idly, thinking she told me she just has to pee. Then we're alone together, the outliers of the crowd pushing us closer.
I see you, filling the space beside me, a handsome catch, a sensitive kid. Your straw-pale hair is haloed by the stage lighting and when I turn my head, realizing Caitlin isn't coming back, you smile at me.
An accumulation of chords, some cathartic suckerpunch of percussion echoes, blasts, turning the figures of the band into formless shards. The swarm of adrenaline drenched twenty-somethings we are roar for an encore. I can feel you in my periphery, holding your breath in that lull. Then the din blares back to music for one last set and we watch rapt.
Why here, like this, I think when our eyes meet again. The histrionics of an establishing shot, a common soundtrack to underscore our opening, the pitch and intensity and promise of the most fleeting moment: love at first sight.
Or something else entirely.
We begin talking during that dying cacophony after the last song. In the slow crawl to the door I find out your name is Conor and you think I say mine is Michelle. I don't correct you.
You suggest we get a drink and though I know I look like an asylum escapee, with my hair mussed and my cheeks crimson-flushed, I can't say no.
Into our second hour of talking and drinking, you mention your time stationed in Bahrain. I nod stupidly and without thinking tell you my boyfriend is in the Marine Corps.
A beat passes, tense and contracting like a cerebral charlie horse. I cannot tell but I think you're relieved by the inadvertent admission. Another band we both like will be in town in two weeks. You segue nonchalantly into this topic. Staring at our empty glasses, we agree to go together.
Nathan, my boyfriend, had already expressed a lack of interest in going with me. I dread asking him. His knees are the bane of his years after discharge. Both ACLs have been torn and his doctor is pushing for meniscus transplants. He refuses. Pain is a challenge for him, a duty. He's agony's ambassador. I'm going to spare him standing three hours at another general admission concert for a band he likes less than me. It's not his fault he's become my only friend.
My best friend from childhood, adolescence and until recently, Benna, moved to Florida five years ago. We used to text and talk and see each other when she came home for holidays. She's getting married next spring and I was supposed to be the maid of honor. But I bailed, the way she expected me to, and apologized and retracted my apology and haven't heard from her since.
All life is like that, sacrificing parts of yourself, cutting out and removing people that seem expendable at the time. It's a slow series of amputations until all you can do is remember who you were with them.
You meet me in the parking lot before the next concert. We walk and talk and try to ignore that we have so much in common. We have the same hair color too, and though your features are more chiseled and refined than mine, I know we could pass for siblings.
The looks I get from other women, the one's that assume we're on a date―those looks that ask, 'What is he doing with you?' or reassure themselves 'He must be gay,' those don't bother me. I'm the victor in this picture, regardless of how people perceive us.
There are conversational subtleties in our rapport after the show. We sit and drawl on into the early morning like we've both been in solitary confinement for 25 years. You keep mentioning your big house, with extra bedrooms, the grass you have to cut and the two car garage. I finally confess I'm bored living alone (I actually can't afford it much longer) and we arrive at a confluence. This is how futures form, late at night through tipsy dialogue and with hoarse voices.
Before the week's end, I've moved in with you.
Imagine this: you are an average guy. You have a military crew cut and a thick but trimmed beard. You've met a girl but your hopes don't hinge on her. You feel discovered, comforted, needed, loved and sometimes bored with her.
After four months you ask her to move in with you. She shrugs, freezes, maybe sees a grizzly bear standing behind you. She finally says no but buries it in so much gratitude that it relieves more than piques your suspicion.
One part of you needs to plant roots, knows you could raise a family. Another part is attracted to the openness, the non-exclusivity of this, with her. A few days later she says maybe she will get a roommate. You make a joke about lesbian pillow fights. She doesn't laugh.
You wonder how you got here, with her, of all people. You feel stuck, shackled to this place. You bought this house when you were engaged to your ex and you're stuck with it for three more years. Maybe she's a distraction, a transitory companion, warm flesh to curl up behind when you're afraid you'll forget how it feels. You've grown used to this, half fallen in love with her.
She does get a roommate. She tells you it's a guy and asks if you mind. She's already started moving her stuff in though, and even if you say yes, it won't matter.
You are Nathan and never Nate. Nathan is already an abbreviation for Nathaniel, you explained one night after you had only been dating her a few weeks. She made a joke and a rhyme about syllabic verse. You didn't laugh. Now she never calls you Nate. To your face.
Your relationship is hard to explain. The two of you have a vague history. She met you when she was an undergrad. You served with her friend Adam and were sharing a story about your time at Twenty Nine Palms when she infiltrated your next thought, her hand on Adam's shoulder.
You were both drinking too much that night and what you remember of the sex is graceless, blurry and perfect. It was more than her acquiescing to your aggressive pursuit. It was one night, without even the dimmest echo of ever seeing each other again.
Four years later though, you do. You've always imagined kismet being a collision.
This is more of a tap on the shoulder.
You're standing in the same aisle at the grocery store, trying to decipher why the other seems familiar. It's an anesthetizingly ordinary scene. Tabloids and chewing gum border the check out line. The florescent lights make the chain smoking cashier seem even more wan. You've gotten older.
I know you, is how you initiate, gaping through a long pause, like a shy kid to a pretty girl at recess. She follows you back to your place, makes stir fry and you talk like old friends. Like you know each other. Like you ever will.
The memory of this unsentimental beginning, the strange intersection this was becoming, now makes your sedimentary heart skip a beat. Remind yourself: this isn't a love story. It's an examination of the snares in life, the ones we stupidly set for ourselves, stumble into and bleed out from.
There is no rush into calling what you have a relationship. There is casual sex and rough sex and casual rough sex. There are conversations about the second amendment, your disparate childhoods, how you've never seen a Disney movie. Both of your personalities synchronize eventually. Despite the many firearms you own, she's not nervous around you. You laugh at her punchlines and dissect her long post-graduate days of all work and no play.
I know those long days as well as I know you. As well as I remember this:
It's an early weekday morning. I am dressed, completely. My make up is pressed on, my hair is combed. I'm reaching for my shoes when you come up behind me. Your hips pivot into some primal grind against the clothed cleft of my ass. Your beard grates the length of my neck.
Your hand unfastens my belt, pulls down the zipper.
No, I say weakly when you bend a knee into the back of my thigh, the hips of my pants loose and descending.
Seriously, not now. I have to go to work. My breath catches on the last syllable. I forget how to breathe. You make me forget, with your hand under my shirt. My back curves into a sharp arch.
Mid-air I gasp; you lift me up and slam me down on to the dresser. The mirror bangs hard against the wall. I settle on cold change and loose ammunition. I feel more blindsided than sexy. I go with it. Or I don't. I imagine I have control. I pretend I have a choice.
You ram into me, turgid slippery heat. I meet each uneven jerk. The edge of the dresser is too close. My toes curl in the thin air above the carpet. My thighs clench. Don't fall down now, I tell myself.
This is the worst kind of balancing act.
I writhe and struggle against you. I have a feeling this is what you want. I fight back with the confidence of an insecure adversary. Just as I'm about to collapse off the corner of the dulled oak finish, you pick me up and sweep me onto the bed--more premeditated crime than rhythmic choreography.
The smothering weight of you, backlit by passion or rage or whatever you're feeling, this is what I've loved about you until now. The unspoken, sometimes awkward or timorous but always honest disclosure, of Nathan, of us, together.
Every time I try to rise, you push me back down. I feign resistance and it spurns you; the harder I fight, the more I lose. You can't slow down. Your face is stained a wicked crimson. Sweat streams down your temples. There's venom in the few kisses we exchange. Chlorine gas in your breath.
My own arousal I sustain off the fuel of memories. I try to imagine what you're thinking, if you're lashing out because I've emotionally assaulted you. I imagine I deserve this, the blunt trauma of the vaguely non-consensual. I imagine that we can recover from this, from anything. You come inside of me on the evaporation of that thought, in a guttural slur, livid steam against my nape.
I want you to tell me you love me, or hate me. You lie quiet another five minutes then stand and stagger to the shower without saying a word.
This is the only time this happens. This is the only time your misplaced anger and agony find me in their crosshairs. I tell myself you are just Nathan being Nathan. I tell myself that I know you, but I don't.
I don't know anything.
We are eleven months in to this, whatever it is we have, when you tell me.
We are lying in bed, our sweat cooling. I am staring at your legs and feet when you tell me about Ellie. She is a woman you work with. You have worked with her four and a half years and you're in love with her.
Have you told her? Does she know? I ask, not as appalled as I should be.
No.
Why haven't you said something to her, asked her out...something?
The stakes. I'm scared I guess.
You hesitate.
I mean, the way it's been, it's still a possibility. If I ask her and she says no. Or even if she says yes and it doesn't work out, I've lost that. I'll still see her everyday. She'll be this reminder of my rejection.
At least rejection is something, I tell you. If you never act, never tell her, then it's nothing.
You turn onto your side and face me, considering.
Are you seriously encouraging me?
Yes, I say, sighing. Part of being your girlfriend is being your friend. As your friend, I want you to be happy. If I can't do that for you and she can, I would let go. Let you go.
I don't hesitate to tell you:
Be pragmatic. Be realistic. Don't throw hurdles in front of yourself this way. You owe me nothing.
I want to stop talking, I'm sounding far too removed from my own role here. I sound beneficent, naïve.
Do you really think there's something there? Could you make it happen?
You shrug, smile.
Should I start looking for wedding presents and baby clothes?
You stretch to draw the blinds and put your hand over my mouth and we fall asleep, less than wholly committed and not exactly happy.
In the morning, you're in a strange mood. My encouragement last night stirred in you more suspicion than hope. You are wondering if I have already fucked my roommate. You are wondering what Ellie will be like to fuck, her thin wrists pinned above her, her in your bed, the languid hopeful warmth of her body in your bed.
You want to ask about this big open question mark standing between us. Suddenly we can see other people. Never has a girl been so eager to offer as much. You're sure it can't be all altruism and the 'I just want you to be happy' line I spouted off last night. Women yearn for fidelity. How did you get paired with one who thinks it's fiction? Your mind balloons with nervous fear. You look at me for a second and then look down at your corn flakes. You feel as though I'm nobody special in the larger scheme of your life; you lose your appetite.
At work, things are tense. You approach Ellie, make small talk but never manage the ultimatum. She is your friend and colleague. You respect her. Every day your want for her broadens, grows. It's more than lust. Ellie is brilliant, independent, she has a background you admire and a recent break-up that terrifies you. You've been watching her for years. She was with him then. Now she may not be ready to move on. She may never be ready.
You may never be ready.
I am at work too. I have no infatuation here, nobody to salivate or vacillate over. I am reading The Portable Neitzsche. I want to be like Nietzsche. I want to write a book for all and for none, to say 'Nathan spoke thus,' to contemplate the existence of eternal return.
If I had to live this life again, if it was all just an hourglass turning over endlessly, no matter how miserable the thought of inescapable deja vu, suicide as relief is utterly debunked. The days go on and on. I am bored even when I am busy.
I make notes on my folder.
-Be kind to inanimate objects. They will be there for you long after the people in your life are gone -We're all killing ourselves in some way (and for no reason)
-Eleanors: Roosevelt, Rigby, Nate's
At home things become remarkably mundane. Conor and I wake and go to work, sometimes eat together, sometimes go out. We both know where this is leading. We are meandering toward it. We are old people with Hurrycanes, ironic and ambulatory.
We have become great friends. If we do this, when we do this, that could change.
Neither of us wants a relationship with the other. I think. The mutual attraction is there. I am not in love with him. Love is fleeting though. Even if I were, it wouldn't last. Even though I'm not, I could be. It could come.
There is no angst or tension or expectation between us. We take a shower together sometimes when the hot water is scarce and non-renewable. It isn't awkward. It isn't erotic either. We are like childhood friends who never separated. There is a backstory we feel but never experienced.
It's hard to explain.
One day, after work, we are are outside, arguing about who had the best Halloween costume. The permeating pine chill of fall air fills our lungs. The setting sun is scorching ocher along the horizon. Conor and I are sitting side by side on a dilapidated swing set in our backyard. He reaches for and takes my hand, holding it, warming it. Until now, we've never done this. We've never kissed. He's seen the texts I've gotten from Nathan, overheard our directionless fights, seen him around here less often.
How long has it been since Conor's break-up? Romantic as his heart may be, he's human. I'm not unaccessible, not miserably unattractive. His hand settles on the small of my back as we go inside. We skip dinner. A scene starts to unfold.
We are lying on the living room floor, listening to Transatlanticism and wishing we were in love. Or in something else, lyrically aquatic, swimming instead of sinking in the inimitable guilt we're about to conceive.
His hand runs the length of my arm. His hand clasps mine, our fingers interlaced. Minutes later he's curled fetal, one of his long legs draped over both of mine. His lips brush my temple, my chin. He pulls back.
What's wrong? He asks.
We shouldn't be doing this.
But we are. Three syllables in the crook of my neck.
You want to stop?
I shake my head. My face is clouded with a sad uncertainty, this terminal loneliness we're projecting onto each other. I am in it with him, no matter what words there are.
The title track replays. He is tracing his thumb over my cheek, framing my face in both of his hands. There's an obscene tenderness in the gesture and for a moment I wonder if my heart isn't a rock, a dense mineraloid tethering me to the moment, leaving me paralyzingly insecure and aware of its passing.
Conor is touching me in places he's never touched me before. I reciprocate, gauging the heat of his bare back, the soft ambit of an ear lobe. The room is dark except for the azure expectation of his stare
I hope stays dark forever.
I realize now, here, how unhappy I am with Nathan. I love him, yes. Offered the promise of a future with him? I'd choose this.
We kiss for what feels like half the night. There is a maladroit prostrate dance, our determination to make floor sex less of a dirty carpet-burning grind than it is. Soon we forfeit and stumble to his bed, a capsized cause, the undertow of blue sheets pulling us down deeper. I hold my breath. I cling to him. I close my eyes. I want to pretend. I want to imagine there is such a thing as requited love, to believe that it is real and here and him.
Conor is pulling my hair, our lips crushed together, the collision of our bodies snared in a breathless lapse of time. When I let go, drowned finally in the flood of this want, it's with simultaneous panic and relief. The last breath of air escapes my lungs, the heat of his release spills like tangible regret inside me.
After, he holds me. The room feels cold. He falls asleep first. The bedroom window, frosted in the corners, vignettes the night sky. I see stars in the distance, minute and quivering. I am always seeing stars.
Imagine this: Your roommate is in love with you. Your boyfriend is in love with a Cisco-certified slut he works with.
Scratch that.
You roommate is not in love with you. He's your hostage and his infatuation is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome. Your boyfriend is still in love with a woman he works with. There is an empty feeling when you're with him. You don't want to call it loneliness. You don't want to be that girlfriend, that wife, that mistress suffering this revelation.
You love him and you're sure he loves you in some fragmented, stop-start, half of his heart kind of way.
This should be enough. You want someone to tell you, you want someone to affirm: life is hard and short and sad. Here is someone to bide the time with. A cell mate, an accomplice.
You are living with a handsome, considerate peer. He happens to be the opposite sex. He's the third roommate you've ever had and after four years of living alone, you would not have expected this to be so easy.
Conor's quiet, leaves you your privacy and remembers to put the toilet seat down. He's got scruples and shares almost everything. You split the bills and the rent and the garage. He's single and not looking and you don't blame him. The connections we crave are never worth the pain.
All life is severing ties, then trying to staunch the blood.
Nathan and this Byronic unspoken ordeal has led the two of you to be in an open relationship. You've given him permission to act on his emotions, should he muster up the courage. He, in return, accepts the odds of you falling into the arms of your roommate.
In this way you have infinite trust but no stake in each other.
At work you walk through the halls with clenched fists. When you fuck Nate, you fuck him with clenched fists. It's defensive readiness, a premonition of having to block a punch in the face. It's an attempt to break your fall as you lose your footing and plunge off a self-fulfilled precipice. Don't fall down now.
You will never get up.
The days are long. You spend ten, thirteen, fifteen hours at work. You're a coward, a deserter. You are dodging confrontation, the denouement you know is near.
Nathan was someone you fought not to love. But it happened, creeping involuntary, the slow inertia of empty hearts sinking into the same ravine. This is how you lose him:
You leave work at four. The sky's a hazy slate. It's a long drive and your car heater can circulate dust, but doesn't warm a thing. You think of stopping, turning around. He's not expecting you tonight anyway.
You're knocking on his door. How did you get here? How did either of you get here?
You don't try to bandy words. You tell him you don't love him. You tell him you never did. You lie. The frustration, the cornered, stranded irreversibility of this begins to make you cry. Rivulets wend their way into your hair. You start to feel sick. Why didn't you drink some Pepto Bismol before doing this? Why are you doing this?
I'm sorry, you say. You keep saying it. A sob lodges in your throat. You are choking on your own words. Love drains from you, leaky faucet turned torrential deluge.
You stand there a long time thinking about the word foyer. Nathan is speaking low, almost whispering. You can't hear him over the tirade of your interior monologue. Then suddenly it's darker; the hallway's lost light. He leans in and kisses you on the cheek.
You should go, he tells you.
You turn and step out in to the numb quiet night. Stumbling to and starting your car, you drive away lost. Tears well and loiter in the corners of your eyes.
Forever he will possess some part of your heart. You will never feel safe again the way you did with him. You will always be emotionally anemic.
Weeks pass. Winter wanes then recurs before nature can recuperate.
It's snowing outside, the cottony crystalline kind that seems like it will never meet the ground. You're frozen, blank, inexpressibly abashed. Conor comes in to your bedroom, finds you staring at a blinking cursor. He is not here to console you. He has good news. He got the job in Seattle and they want him to start next week.
Congratulations, you say. Great.
If your stomach weren't empty, you'd vomit.
Conor is gone before you know what else to say. There is no farewell kiss, no goodbye quickie. People come in to your life and stay for the blink of an eye. You should be used to it. You should be detached. You should get a husband and start a family and pretend that makes this less likely to happen again. In the hard vacuum of his departure you try to write, try to channel your melancholy into words. You try to exorcise with prose. But you are not feeling inspired. You are feeling more like a prisoner about to be shanked.
It is a frigid colorless afternoon. You decide to call off work. Maybe you should quit. You walk outside and settle on a swing. There's no snow, no wind just the narrow spines of trees, the dark dead mat of leaves, the hollow echo of traffic, and you, on a solitary swing. You've got your head canted, staring at the ground. The cold air makes it hard to breathe. A silhouette of empty houses is creeping up behind you. You are alone. You have been the whole time.
Imagine that.
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