when i was lonely

07

He didn’t ask me to join him and didn’t have to. Before going in we shared the exhaustion of keeping up with each other and relief of endorphins for forty-five minutes. He threw his shirt on the ground and walked to the bank. Instinctively I followed, not remembering how pathetic my body was compared to his.

Moonlight splashed our reflections against the rippled water. It was midnight and we were in our basketball shorts, torsos still sweaty from a four-mile jog, legs in cold water. In the night he was even more beautiful when my eyes couldn’t fully absorb him and my mind tried to extract different parts of him from half-decent memories: the heart shape birthmark on his underarm; lone freckle on his neck; how tightly his skin wrapped around his well defined chest; those piercing almond-shaped and -colored eyes.

“You see that?” he asked. He pressed his face to the sky.

“Yeah,” I looked at him.

“Those three stars,” he pointed somewhere, “are always aligned like that, all over the world.” When he spoke his words changed the air, the way a lit candle changed a dark room.  

“When I’d visit my father in the city we would go to the roof and stay up all night. He’d bring a heavy purple quilt and we’d just lie there, naming stars.”

My right hand moved to his lips of its own volition. His eyes widened with epiphany.“Come on, loser,” I snapped my hand back and waded deep into the river, “Technically you got here first, so I still have a bone to pick with you.”

“Wait.” He said. He didn’t move. “Wait.” I waded faster. “Wait!” he yelled.

I stayed still and the water calmed. My back faced his. He waded until he reached me.

His fingers traced lines on my back.

“You have a scar here,” he breathed. I shivered.

“And here. And here.”

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t look.” Not even the night covered them and the shame floored me. I couldn’t ever run away from them.

“Just like the three stars,” his voice told me he was smiling

06

We were in a small patio room, too small to accommodate twelve charged and sexually frustrated teenagers with time to kill. I stood next to the quietest one, a shy girl who in the muggy room looked crabbier by every uncomfortable second.

The proximity we shared excited and annoyed me. I was just as sexually frustrated as everyone else and being so close to people who shared my main problem created a bit of spark, a jolt. Or maybe a fire caused by the friction our chafing moods. Whatever the cause, I wanted to do something with my hands, needed to something, so I did what I didn’t have to think about and came to me instinctively: dance.

Grabbing the shyest girl by the hand, I made a fool out of myself in front of everyone else. 
“Eddie, you’re so silly,” she said, but she couldn’t help smiling.
“We gotta dance when we gotta dance I said,” and I felt a vague sting on my back. I spun her around to look.

Sitting closest to the door, dark blue eyes perpetually half-glazed, was a boy I disliked. He appeared medicated as usual, added to his plump, pouty lips, he looked like a proud hospital patient on anesthetics.

I fought a grimace.

We met before at a racetrack, bad house party, other friend’s get-together, and several other times when I was high and every time I looked at him—sober or not— I felt a pang of annoyance as crisp as a sharpened blade.

He was tamed, calm, and the lack of circles under his eyes and clear skin translated what people quickly discerned: he was comfortable with himself. Confident but not presumptuous, bright enough to sort what mattered to him and ignore the rest. The fact that we were opposites made me angry.

And then I noticed that while I was looking at him, he wasn’t looking at me—and this bothered me. Like twilight slipping through bloody clouds, it dawned on me that my dislike was a product of a paradox: I actually liked him. Too much, maybe.

And he wasn’t remotely aware. 

I stopped dancing and walked to him without trying to mask my interest, which was still a combination of disdain and attraction.

“You look different,” I accused.
He looked up and I watched his eyes absorbed my height from where he sat.
“Oh, I dyed my hair black,” he said. His mouth always moved faster than his eyes.
“Why?”
“I was bored,” he said hesitantly, finally noticing something was awry.
“It makes you look really Italian,” I said, my top lip curling. 

I walked outside to hug my cousin playfully. The calm rustle of grass on my feet and moonlight felt fresh, fitting. Like a change of heart. 

An hour later we left to another friend’s house and I sat next to the boy. We talked, about inane things, and I let my guard down. Made a genuine joke, talked to him without fighting my instinct to hurt him. And he fawned when I talked to him, wanted me to like him a little and this pleased me.

But more than petty pleasure was vague hurt. Between us sat a girl and almost immediately his hand traveled around her shoulder. She moved it, uncomfortable, and I was glad. More bluntly, he felt a similar rejection I felt talking to him.

Like a fly gravitating to a computer screen, toying with the idea of making contact with the aggravated hand trying to squash it, I continued to talk to him until I felt entirely sure of his disinterest.

Painful or not, I felt alive then. Charged, annoyed, like a predator, but alive.

When the night ended I decided to sleep over the house we were in. Everyone left in a group besides two of us. They all said their goodbyes except the boy. I was relieved at my disappointment. 

Then, at the end of the hallway, before the door closed, I heard a voice say,
“Bye, Eddie!”

I sighed. I just didn’t like him at all. 

05

He sat on a chair, ceramic coffee cup held by both hands. Against the wane light of winter the pallor of his skin made the dark circles under his eyes more noticeable than they usually were. His beautiful hair was in disarray. His leather jacket was ripped on the right sleeve. There were specks of blood on the white V-neck he wore underneath.

“Are you a fucking idiot? Honestly?”

I paced back and forth not sure to do with my hands.

“It’s morning and I wake up to finding you on the hallway floor? What were you thinking going to the bar and fighting? You could’ve been fucking killed and—”

I stopped pacing and turned my back to him. Eyes shut, I rubbed my temples together. Tears. At a time like this and I was going to cry. And not out of anger but out of hopelessness. Unlike a man who cried but remained controlled, a tear travelling down his left cheek and nothing more—I sobbed. Openly, loudly, dramatically like a inconsolable child I didn’t stop until every tear gushed out of me. I wasn’t going to let him see that. Not when he wasn’t sober. 

When I regained composure I turned around to find his face buried in his hands. The coffee cup was on its side, its contents pooled on the faux-wooden surface. His broad shoulders heaved. The window behind him framed buildings and concrete covered in snow. And suddenly like an avalanching mountain, his shoulders heaved faster and he started to weep.

Walking to him slowly, I reached from the other side of the table and grabbed his hands. He didn’t look up, couldn’t look up knowing him. Worse than being sad is someone knowing. I knew, was seeing it.

Already an object of shame, I vaguely felt like a catalog of things he’d rather forget, shove under a mattress when no-one was looking, and look through deep into the night when he couldn’t fend off desire.

“It’s okay,” I lied.

I was crying. My forehead was on his. I mouthed the words but the sounds wouldn’t come out.

“Everything will be okay.”

He didn’t let me see his eyes so I looked at the spilled juice on the table. Its sheen reflected what I didn’t want to see but knew I had to: two grown men more ashamed of needing each other than they were of behaving like troubled teenagers. 

The start of November, a week before my birthday and I knew what to expect on the morning after today. 

Ruffled sheets, his worn clothes on the carpet, some of my work clothes missing. And a piece of scrap on the night-table, “thank you” scrawled in pen. He wouldn’t return my clothes for a few months and I’d wear his jacket for the longest time.

04

You were just a boy and she was the girl who wasn’t from your dreams because when you were ten and told repeatedly that you were at fault for being different, you didn’t dream anymore, no. You were forced to go on family outings to a lake flanked by mountains. You sneaked up trails that led to mountain peaks and stared at flying birds produced by trees. In a moment, in an instant, you pictured leaping into the air and flying away from everyone and everything. Alone, comfortable. You never imagined joining a flock, feeling the refreshing breeze razored by wings in front of you. 

And you didn’t imagine that a girl would enter your life one day and in that same day hold your hand because she thought you were cute and you knew she was beautiful. Midnight June, Midnight July. You thought of her constantly and every morning for three summers you patiently waited for her knock at the door and her smile that assured you, without a doubt, today would be alright, even better than alright. It would be easy and when no-one would ask you to play with them it was okay because she was there or would be there again, dragging you on a new adventure.

Even after she left and the world was never wonderful again, you realized, eight years later, that those years were the best of your life because they were priceless, even though everything comes at a cost.

03

“Whatever. If that’s what you want to do, then do whatever.” I stood and grabbed my shirt off the coffee table. Not bothering to put it on I headed to the door.
“Wait,” he said. I didn’t.
“Wait” he said again, inches away from me.

Two frail hands crossed themselves over my chest like a fleshy target sign. I wanted to extricate myself, to pry his hands off me and walk through the door without as much as a glance back. But I couldn’t.

“Why should I,” I said after a moment and thought of fissures and sleeping fossils.
“I want you to stay. You could do that, right?” His ear was pressed to my back.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. You drink and call me filthy. Accuse me of being disgusting for things I can’t control. Do you know what I was doing this past week?” I paused until I was sure my voice wouldn’t crack. He stood behind me, not saying a word, his head moving higher up. I felt his feathery breath against my nape. “I bought tickets for a Local Natives concert. I was going to take two days off work and drive us to Miami. I reserved a hotel, planned what we would do after. Everything and—”

His right hand covered my mouth. His other my heart.

“I hear the ocean when I do this,” he moved his ear to my back again. “And when I do this,” he sniffed my skin, “I smell cigarettes.”

“And when I do this,” he let his hands drop then raised them to my neck. I felt his fingertips graze the arc to my shoulders, then arms until he reached my bawled fists. He squeezed them and tugged. I turned around and looked him in the eyes. They were bloodshot and as a result, a bright blue with flecks of yellow, like dried leaves on the surface of a pool.

He inched his face to mine.

Whiskey. Cigarettes, with a vague trace of cologne.
“You can’t keep doing this to me—” he kissed me, eyes closed. Again and again. Every kiss sent a jolt through my spine until my knees buckled slightly.

From behind us sunlight slipped through the venetian blinds of patio doors. He opened his eyes and slipped his fingers between mine, my shirt falling on the floor. “Stay,” he said, confident.

“Stay.”

02

Her new haircut didn’t match her fierceness. Five-foot one, 110-pounds, and platinum blonde, she was a walking contradiction anyway, so nothing about her matched her personality. But her hair now cropped to the length of her nape made her look tame… safe, and (ironically applicable) castrated, like a sweet kindergarten teacher. Or a mom.

“Urgh, it looks horrible,” she said as we crossed the highway. The cars whizzing by inches before us didn’t faze her. When one driver honked his horn at us she waved her hand absentmindedly, like a patient person dismissing a fly.

“I look like a mom. I told the hairdresser I wanted my ends cut and she does this. When I went home—” I was tired after work and listening to her voice, which sounded smooth, slightly subdued, like a contemporary record sung in soft soprano and turned down, barely audible against the wind, just enough to lull me, “I covered all my mirrors. I don’t want to look at it. Ugh.”

When we made it to Barnes & Noble I still had her talking. She explained a situation about a drunk guy in a club who nearly hit her when I suddenly felt alert. Awake. She noticed the change in my face and smirked. “Calm down, boy. Nothing happened.”

She approached a desk at the middle of the store and asked for a book on reserve. We waited while a clerk with glowing tan skin looked for it. Someone nearby felt rebellious and played a gentle rock n’ roll tune on an MP3.

—It’s been a long time since I came around…It’s been long time and I’m back in town.

We walked the isles and I stopped in front of Classics when I admitted I was slap-happy. “Oh, I love that,” she said and I noticed how she looked at me squarely because she wasn’t afraid of what she saw or what I saw in her. Her pupils dilated when she talked and every time the gesture was magical.

—And this town I’m not leaving without you.

We reached Poetry.

—Something, something about this place. Something about lonely nights and my lipstick on your face.

“So I’m going to art school in August.” Six months, I counted mentally. In six months. “And then I’ll never see you again.” She frowned but part of her was fascinated about the idea of clicking with someone instantly and losing them with the same ease. Or maybe that was me who felt that way. Maybe I wanted her to go just so I can miss her.

—It’s been two years since I let you go, couldn’t listen to a tune or a rock n’ roll.

We said nothing else until we reached Art and she told me that I was priceless for glaring at her. She continued her story: she had a fight with a guy and left with a broken nose, but had her hits too. I shuddered at the thought of someone hitting her.

—Your muscle car drove a truck right through my heart.

“But when you come back on break I can visit you. I’ll have a car by then. I should,” I said in the middle of her story and she smiled slowly, the way a precocious kid smiles at an adult’s childishness.

—Sit back down where you belong in the corner of my bar with your high heels on—

The music stopped abruptly and we remembered why we were in the book store. We walked back to the middle desk and the tan clerk handed her a copy of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy. We walked to the exit. I walked a few steps behind her, sullen. Then I saw it. In front of me she strutted subtly, five-foot-one feet of otherworldliness. Maybe it was the slant of twilight on her back or her Madonna-colored hair, but life seemed like an act when she was around. And the spotlight moved with her. Life was a show that had its climaxes, its tragedies and practical plots. But more importantly, definite endings. 

—It’s been a long time and I’m back in town…

*

Some people make cameos in the dull and generic set that my life becomes and their popularity alone improves my ratings dramatically, makes the session an indelible experience: they encourage me to do something crazy like buy a Convertible, get that tattoo of flocking crows, set sheets afire.

Other people provide me with contentment as sweet and necessary as desire. They’re just the little actors, the extras whose theatricalities and passions aren’t suppressed by small roles, but enlivened by them. Their appearances never leave a lasting physical impact, but a sacred, almost religious memory.

And at the moment, one hand on a fantasy hardcover book, the other wearing the silver ring I bought her one day, back facing me, I knew she was the James Dean in the 1960s Pepsi commercial that was my life. 

01

“So,” I turned on my phone and fidgeted with the settings. He looked at his phone. But as usual, he didn’t fidget. He never fidgeted. He texted someone and calmly placed the phone on the table. The clink of hard plastic on metal table seemed a lot louder than it should.

I felt every second pass me by and with it, the possibility of his coming with me to watch Avatar. Alone. Just the two of us. I felt that if I asked him at the right time, maybe in a moment of absolute symmetry like when the planets aligned or the timer on the microwave behind him read one-twenty-three AM, he wouldn’t be difficult as he usually was and just go. I didn’t hear anything about planetary alignment on the news so that was out. And unless we were asked to work well past midnight, I’d have to ask him now and wait to be rebuffed.

I couldn’t ask. Instead I asked if he worked tomorrow. He shrugged. When he shrugged like that, shoulders hunched like a baby turtle trying to hide in its shell, he looked fresh out of middle school despite his being older than I was. The implications of the thought bothered me a little so I concentrated on his hair, which was naturally beautiful. Soft, with just the right bounce, he could jump out of bed without so much as combing a strand and his hair would still look neat, classy. Uncontrollably, my mind thought of how I’d know how he would look in the morning unless I spent the night with him… in his room. With his consent. I shook my head to calm myself down. He looked at me in mild amusement then looked away slowly.

Before I knew it our break was over and he left to his section without looking back at me. The remainder of my shift all I could do was berate myself for being such an utter waste of space. I couldn’t ask him? Seriously? After spending countless hours rehearsing how I’d ask, how casually aloof I’d be about the whole thing despite the fact that I’d be able to feel the blood rush to my face; how his pretty brown eyes would widen and I’d smile in triumph before he said yes?

Yeah. I couldn’t ask him.

Finally, the night was over and we were allowed to go home, where I’d listen to depressing music and mull over how I was a pathetic excuse for a hormonal teenager. All my coworkers, including him, and I walked to the mall exit before I had to turn around and look for my ID, which I probably dropped somewhere in front of Gap’s entrance. Ten minutes later I realized I must have left it inside the store, which was locked. I’d have to wait till tomorrow.

I left the mall. Dejectedly, I walked, staring at the ground.

Then someone tapped my shoulder.

Annoyed, I turned around.

“You dropped this.” He held my ID between his pointer finger and middle finger, looking at me entirely unabashed and confident. Of course he’d find it.
“Thanks,” I said, looking away.
“We’re going the same way,” he pointed out so we walked to the bus stop. Together.

The four minute walk was just as painful as our break. He didn’t say anything and I couldn’t say anything intelligible. The wait for our busses was even more excruciating. Around us, other people who left work talked lively, energized by finally being let go after a day of dealing with insatiable customers. But we were quiet, standing a little apart from one another. I imagined what someone else saw when they looked at us. They probably would assume we weren’t even together.

My bus arrived. 

“See you when I see you, alright?” I said. He was looking at his phone when he looked up and mumbled something. The bus doors opened and I stepped in. I tried to look as if I wasn’t watching him through the window as I looked for seating. I failed. He made eye contact with me once before looking at something else. The bus moved. I looked at him again. He didn’t look up. He was texting.

There was a sting in my eye. My chest hurt. My head ached. I was tired. Really, really tired. My phone rang but I ignored it until I arrived home where, key twisted on the lock, I went through my messages and saw, brightly lit against the darkness, a message from him.

“Want 2 watch avatar tmrrow?”