when i was lonely

09

I leaned over the window, letting cool air fan the heat on my face.  I could smell the alcohol on my skin, could feel my tongue heavy in my mouth.  My heart ached in a way that it hadn’t for days, and when I felt his hand rest on my shoulder, gentle, soothing words urging me to step away from the window, I began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concern etched on his chiseled face.  When my mind was clouded with the taste of rum, he always appeared cuter.  Now, he looked like a god.

I shook my head.  “Nothing.”

The truth was, I was consumed by the knowledge and clarity alcohol provided.  My reality was clouded with silly thoughts and make-beliefs, but with the liquor running through my veins, the hard, pressed truth that the love of my life had stopped loving me weighed on me like it had never before.  I knew then, if I hadn’t before, that he was never going to love me again.

“You had me worried.  Don’t do that shit.  You’re really small and you’ll probably fall right over.  I don’t need you to haunt me.”

I laughed as the tears continued to spill over.  He didn’t ask me if I was okay.  Instead, he wrapped an arm around my shoulder in the awkward way a male friend hugs a girl.

Falling in love was easy.  The moment was perfect for the magic to happen.  He was a good person, a familiar face, an attractive guy.  I enjoyed his company and the silence we shared.  By all means, I should have lifted my chin, puckered my lips, pressed blindly ahead and hope he didn’t reject me.

But I didn’t.  Because falling out of love was much harder.  My heart would remain chained by another who had no interest in holding the key.  I would wish hopelessly that I could love someone who was better for me, who was easier, who was near arm’s reach, but the dream would never come true.  Even in the arms of another, he would be the only thing on my mind.

He inched back a bit.  “Want some more?”  He looked at the bottle on the tiny table in the middle of his room, empty red cups frighteningly bright in the darkness.

Nodding, I held out my cup and waited for it to be filled.  I laughed as I took a sip, choked on the bitterness, and wished once more that I could love him and not him.

08

I stood by the door, my fingers playing with metal keys as I shifted my weight from one foot to another.  It wasn’t like I needed my keys anyway, since the front door of my building was always open, thanks to the countless break-ins that left the lock as useless as the intercom system beside it. 

He stood in front of me, awkward and shy, his hands stuffed into his pockets.  He couldn’t really look at me.  It felt like a replay of the countless of times we had stood in the same exact place, me ready to head back inside, him about to go, me giving him every open opportunity, him being too scared to take it.

“I… guess I should go now.”  I played with the keys a little while longer.  If this had been a bedroom scene, I’d be practically spreading my legs open in mid air and wearing a neon sign that pointed to my vagina.  But it wasn’t a bedroom scene and there was no neon sign pointing to my vagina.  Instead, there was just him and me, standing in front of am old, beaten red door, a girl waiting for a kiss, a guy too shy to give it.

I turned, hand on the door knob.  “Okay, I’m gonna go.”  My voice didn’t even bother trying to hide the disappointment. 

“Wait!”

I turned back, slightly annoyed but, more than that, too hopeful.  I mean, we weren’t even dating.  We had tried that the year before and for three months he couldn’t rack up the courage to take my face and plant a wet one.  And now, I was only a month away from getting on a plane to fly to the other side of the country and he couldn’t muster his bearings and kiss me.  I had every right to be annoyed.  But more than that, I was just waiting.  Hoping.  That maybe, just maybe, he could find it in him to kiss me and I would know that we were meant to be and I wouldn’t feel bad about leaving because I would know that it would be okay, because somehow, someway, I would find my way back to him.

“What?”

“Hold on.”  He breathed in deeply, his hand grabbing my wrist.

“Okay.”

He took a step closer, and then another, until his face was close to mine and we were breathing each others’ air.  I could see the whiskers on his chin, the way one of his eyes had a different fold than the other, the way his nose flared when he was nervous and breathing too hard.  I could see a slight mar on the bone of his brow, making his eyebrow grow a little weirdly.  I could see a lot of things, but the only thing I could really take in were his eyes, staring straight into mine, and all the love I saw there, reflecting right back at me.  It was my face I saw in his eyes, like a mirror, and I understood right then and there that there would be no one in this world capable of ever loving me the way he loved me.

When our lips met, I was almost sure that every star in the universe had realigned themselves into perfect harmony, that the world had stopped in its movement, and that somewhere in the distant heavens, angels sang.  Fireworks went off behind my closed eyelids and every part of my skin felt alive, as if lit by an invisible fire that had charged right through and changed me.  It was perfect in every way of the word and there was no other way to describe it.

Suddenly, he leaped away, just as a young man opened the front door, stared at us, and walked away.  He looked back at me sheepishly before stepping right in front of me and swooping down again.

It lasted a few more seconds before a bunch of kids ran through, screaming and throwing things.  He looked pissed beyond belief as he waved goodbye, muttering something under his breath.

A few hours later, my friend’s name flashed on my phone.  I picked up and before I could say anything, “He said that he was glad his first kiss was with you.  He said it was worth the wait.”

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

07

I used to make calendars.  I enjoyed the process of tracing perfectly straight lines, writing in perfectly round letters the name of months and days, color-coding seasons to make my life easier.  My favorite part was making the month of my birthday, and on the 30th day, writing in big, bold letters: MY BIRTHDAY!

That changed over the years.  I became less eager.  The point of saying “Happy birthday” was to suggest that day of one’s birth was cause for celebration, elation, happiness.  But my birthdays seemed to always stray on the verge of being depressing, mournful events.  The word “happy” was a laughable, almost insulting thing to use. 

On the day before my eighteenth birthday, my uncle died, and so the next day became a flurry of phone calls, people offering their condolences, and my father calling me a bad daughter.  The very next year, I avoided the day like the plague, hoping people would forget, and getting that exact wish.  People remember death more easily than they remember life.  

I was turning twenty.  I had pretended to be busy the night before, but instead, found myself praying to an empty altar that housed my belief: nothing.  I was left feeling incredibly lonely, looking for some kind of forgiveness in the form of chanting ancient words and hoping something greater would hear me.  I begged for happiness and for second chances.  But like always, I was disappointed.  The day did not bring forgiveness or acceptance.  I did not stop crying for someone who no longer lived.  I did not stop crying for someone who actually lived.  I was a mess of tears, mourning the loss of two men, one dead and the other alive.

I ignored the calls the next day.  I didn’t check my Facebook nor did I answer the tweets.  I pretended I had been rubbed off the face of the earth.  That I no longer existed.  That I was far, far away and that nothing could reach me, not death, not love.  And especially not hurt.

There was a knock on my door.  I was faintly surprised but figured it was probably a bouquet of flowers, maybe sent by my dad as he couldn’t get out of bed to see me.  I stared into the mirror for a few seconds, deemed myself decent, and went to open the old door that had seen enough people walk out of it to be a point of Badness in my life. 

He stood on the other side.  It had been over a month since I had last seen him.  He looked exactly as I remembered him: handsome in a way only I seemed to find him, eyes as dark as the way my soul felt the day after he left me, lips still perfectly curved.  I blinked a few times, just to assure myself I didn’t see an apparition but an actual human being made of flesh.

“Hey.”

I didn’t respond.  I stared at the box he held in his hand, wrapped in shiny yellow paper. 

“Happy birthday.”

I looked at him, meeting his eyes, willing myself not to look away.

“I brought you something.”

“Why?” I cut in immediately.

He looked uncomfortable.  He shifted from one foot to the other.  “Just open it”

“No.”

He sighed.  “Andy, just take it and open it.”

“No.”

He grew frustrated.  “Look, you’re going to regret it later.  Like you regretted not telling me you loved me when I asked.  Like you regretted breaking up with me.  Like you regretted a lot of things.”

I snarled and snatched the gift, ripping the paper apart, silently grieving the death of the pretty paper.  I shook the box angrily before prying it open and looking inside.

The first thing was a picture.  It was an old one from prom, a badly angled picture where I was smiling and he was leaning over, kissing my cheek.  It was before he had grown into his good looks, back when he was still shy and insecure and I was the only one who found him beautiful. 

Next was a movie.  It was the first one we had seen as a couple, a few days after I had landed on New York ground and the first time we had seen each other in months.  As awkward as I had believed it would be, we were completely and utterly comfortable in each others’ presence.  He had asked me if he could kiss me near the end of the movie and I snapped because I hated being distracted during movies.

Third was the email he wrote me when he told me why he liked me.  It had been a short, almost superficial letter, but it was one of the things I read almost every day for a year. 

Finally, there was a closed enveloped.  I stared at it before flipping it over, my finger lifting the flap and reaching inside.  A folded, college-ruled paper with small, hurried writing came out.

“All you need to read is the last part,” he said, taking the paper and turning it over, a finger pointing at the last few sentences.  “The rest you can read later.”

I love you.  That’s all you need to know.  That’s all that really matters.  I have, always, loved you.  I know that I, always, will.  I’ll try as many times as I have to until we’re together for the rest of our long, long lives.  So, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and please, say you’ll take me back.

Happy Birthday, Andy.  Happy Birthday.

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. 

06

We lay in my bed, stripped to our underwear.  We didn’t even bother looking at each other, didn’t bother trying to sneak peeks and try to do anything inappropriate.  We were stagnant, like the kind of water where a mosquito leaves their spawn in.  It was just too hot to be clothed, too hot to move, too hot to fuck.  Not that we fucked.  Our attempts were laughable at best, disastrous at least.

Not that I didn’t want to.  But it was difficult.  Our sexual escapades were limited, due to the fact that my mother was home often and his mother was home all the time.  Renting hotel rooms meant less money for shopping, and neither of us was willing to give that up for a few minutes of romp.  And finally, there was the fact that, despite how much we loved each other, we didn’t love ourselves enough to be comfortable with being bare.

“I think I’m melting,” he said seriously, turning over and propping himself up on his elbows.  His skin was smooth, like a girl’s, making me fully aware of my hairy arms.  He ran a finger up the length of the inside of my arm before letting his head fall into a pillow.  “I’m dying.”

I slapped his back, a loud sound due to the sweat.  “Stop whining.”

He moaned.  “I’m going to die.  I’m going to melt away and die.  I’m going to melt away and die a virgin.”

I rolled my eyes.  What a drama queen.  He complained that all I did was bitch and moan and pretend I was worst off then anyone.  If only he could hear himself.

“Stop it.”

He turned to face me, one slanted eye glaring at me.  “You’re going to let your boyfriend die a virgin?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t mind.  That’s all on you.  If you want to alleviate that, do it yourself.”

“I wonder what Lisa is doing today…”

“Oh, shut up.”

Suddenly, he was on top of me.  He pinned me down to the bed with the press of his chest and the heat from his body.  Frankly, he could have pinned me down with the smolder of his eyes, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.  He held my arms above my head with one hand, the other tracing lines on my side.

“Here’s the thing,” he started.  He kissed my jaw lightly.  “I know all this sex shit has been hard but… I love you.  I’ve always loved you.  Fuck, the way things have been for the past few years, I probably always will.  And so I want you to know that I think you’re one of the most beautiful girls on the face of the planet and when I see you, I want to kiss you all over the place.  And when you wear a shirt that’s low cut or a short skirt, I go crazy because I want to be with you in every way.  So, listen fucking closely.  You’re beautiful.  I love you.  I don’t care if you have stretch marks or shave your legs everyday.  Just let me look at you, let me love you, because that’s all I want to fucking do.”

You can’t learn to love yourself in a day.  It’s a work-in-progress, and sometimes you take one step forward and two steps back.  But hearing those words from the only guy I could imagine spending the rest of my life with (because I didn’t have enough courage to continuously make efforts in trying to become comfortable naked in front of many men) made me realize that I was imperfect and that sometimes, that’s okay.  Because he was a guy, and he’d probably never notice the fact that my ass has stretch marks, only that it’s big.  He’d probably never notice that my boobs aren’t perfect, just that they’re good enough to squeeze.  He’d probably never notice that I have belly flab, because all he’d want to do is kiss it on his way down.  He’d probably never notice that I have a nasty birthmark on my ankles, only that my legs are good enough to wrap around his waist.  So I could freak out about my looks, but he’d never even bother to care because to him, I was beautiful.

I craned my neck to kiss him, pulling his lower lip with my teeth.  I let go and settled back on the pillow.  “I guess I would feel bad letting my boyfriend melt away without helping him out.”

He smiled.  “That’s what I like to hear.”

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.

05

After a while, you forget.  Or maybe, it’s not exactly forgetting, but attempting to live life without having to look back.  It’s more of a moving forward instead of a moving on; you remember the past but you can’t allow yourself to dwell on it anymore because it only causes you pain, and you know that you will never be able to forget the memories you’ve made with that person.  So you move forward and try to look at the past with fondness instead of heartache.

I think that’s what I did.  For two years, I thought about the growth I would experience.  The life changing moments I would have.  The people I would meet and the people I would lose.  They were all things in my future that I could move towards to.  I wouldn’t forget those that lingered in my past… but that’s where they would remain.  Fragments of the life I used to have that slipped away due to silly mistakes and harsh words.

So when I landed on the New York City ground for the last time of my college career, I didn’t know what to expect.  New York was my past in every way.  All the things I missed and had to move away from lived and breathed in the City that Never Sleeps.  I was unsure of how I felt about such a thing.  I was finally okay.  I didn’t want to risk not being okay.

It wasn’t so hard getting back into the swing of things.  Like riding a bike, you sort of just know.  You don’t forget your way on the train; the street corners are all the same.  It is ingrained.  And such a thing makes you wonder whether you were ever meant to leave at all, whether you’ve actually moved forward or just pressed pause on the life you used to lead.  As I looked around Columbus Circle and recognized everything, even the trees, I became fully aware that nothing had changed and that while my life was different and I had grown, I wasn’t exactly someone else.  I was still me.  And my heart was still my heart, aching and pained.

Something happened then.  My heart, which I had forgotten existed for two whole years because it had been frozen in an effort to numb the constant throb of heartbreak, plummeted to the pit of my stomach.  I stood shock-still, the intensity paralyzing me.  What happened, I didn’t know.  Suddenly, I wasn’t okay, and the feeling was vaguely familiar.

I turned when I could.  I saw him standing there, looking just as handsome as I remembered him.  His hair was just the right length, only a little tamer.  He was still just as thin, only with a little more muscle.  His eyes still squinted in the sun and his skin was still nearly-translucent, and his lips still curled in the most delicious of ways.

And then I noticed the girl beside him.

She was beautiful in ways I could never be.  She was thin, with creamy skin, and eyes as big as saucers.  She walked with a grace I did not possess and her nose fit her face.  In almost a tragic, ironic way, she was everything I had dreamed of being.

He saw me.  He stopped, making the girl stare at him with confusion.  He blinked once, twice, and then three times, before moving again.  He came to me slowly, hesitation clear in his face.  He stopped before me and smiled awkwardly.

“You’re back?”

I nodded.  “I just graduated.”

“Congratulations.”

I looked at the girl who was standing next to him.  She smiled at me, a genuine, beautiful, perfect smile that put the sun to shame and made the flowers wilt with embarrassment.  “Hi,” she said, and her voice sounded like little glass bells twinkling.

He looked at her and nodded.  “This is my girlfriend.”

My heart, still sitting unpleasantly in my stomach, proceeded to drop even further, all the way down to my feet.  “Oh,” I said, and I was sure the disappointment in my voice did not go unnoticed.  “Andy.”

Her smile dropped for a moment before finding its way back.  “Well, we should get going,” she said, looking at him.  He nodded.

“It was nice seeing you again,” he said, extending a hand.  I took it for a second before dropping it.  “We should catch up.”

Sometimes, things happen and you realize that the past was a beautiful thing.  It taught you a lot of things, despite all the pain it may have made you feel.  You grow and you become a better person.  You learn more about yourself and you realize that the things that don’t kill you really do make you stronger.  Maybe not physically, but it’s not so easy to get through you anymore.  You’ve built up your defenses and you learn.  And the best lesson of all is leaving the past where it should be left.

“I’m really busy,” I said, and took a step back.  “Until we run into each other again.”

He nodded.  His girlfriend began to walk away.  He didn’t really spare a glance at her.  He only looked at me.

“I missed you,” he whispered.  He turned around and walked to where his girlfriend had been heading.  He turned back to look at me.

And sometimes, the past creeps its way back into the future, and you have to take it for what it is worth.  And it is worth everything.

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.