Are you nothing but beginnings and ends with nothing in between?
The worst parts of you are like shit clogging a toilet. You’re tired of telling this story over and over again. Every time you tell it, you feel the worst parts of yourself resurface. You begin to tell the story just like you always do. You start at the end when you told her to leave.
Leave. Just leave.
You tell the story: remembering, hating, wanting, and waiting. You tell the story and feel yourself shrink as you resist calling her a bitch in front of your best friend, co-worker, blind date, etc. You swallow it and all of the shit that the last seven years made you feel. You’re eyes burn and water, but you don’t cry because this story happened such a long time ago. Maybe you forget all the stuff in between each time you tell the story, but you always remember how you looked at her when you told her to get the fuck out with a kind of lyrical violence that makes public hate speech look like Green Eggs and Ham.
You grabbed her shoulders. You squeezed them. You felt like you could pick her up and throw her so far up into the sky that when she came down, Heaven would have removed every trace of insecure, cheating, broken bitch from her. You monster. You weren’t and will never be strong enough to throw her, but if you didn’t take your spindly hands from her when you did, you may have tried to throw her. You’re an artist! You can’t have thoughts like this!
Your hands flew from her and dangled to your sides. You breathed. Slowly. Sadly. Trying not to cry. You whispered get-the-fuck-out, Sarah. You are betrayed, burning, suffocating on your self-doubts. The only thing you want to touch is the cool nylon comforter of the soft, forgiving, womb-like bed in the Parisian hotel room that you may as well have defenestrated her from. But, you can’t sit. She exits, but the act is less like an exit and more like a candle burning into nothing. She swiftly seeps out of the door and leaves it open as you stand there. Paralyzed. The open door is a black hole and so are you. The space between you is a wormhole, a short bridge between the dickless, cuckold of a man you feel like and the indestructible vampire of a creature you intend to transform into. Before you walk the bridge you close the door and wait in the hotel room for a few days. You pace. You drink. You eat. You stare at the television that you can’t understand. You repeat. You begin to smell like shit from the scents of all of the room service food, sweat, and unexcused farts that have been building up in your “womb.” The stink reminds you of two things: smells present at the end of the universe, and the smell of birth. There’s no way that could have smelled good.
Before you cross the bridge between yourself and your (prospective) self, you think through time and ask how exactly did I get here?
Satisfy me, she said with her chest poked out. You were sitting down at a bar in New Orleans almost a year after you graduated college. “The Riverside.” You just joined an Americorp group. You’re going to take over the world with all of your good deeds. They were having a fundraiser for Katrina victims. It was 2006. You were 24. Your crew was just getting together for a “get-to-know-each-other session.”
What?! You almost spit your beer all over yourself.
You heard me. Satisfy me. She stood close to you with her thighs straddling one of yours. She knew exactly what she was doing. From your knee you could feel the warmth that radiated from between her legs. You could already smell the sex smell that would reoccur for the next four years. Maybe it was the humidity, but you knew she was serious. Your knee told you this. She wanted you; you didn’t know where or when, but she wanted you and you were going to have her.
What’s your name?
Sarah.
Sarah looked at you like a chess master looking at the opposing king. Sitting down, you and she were the same height. Before she pounced, you didn’t even get the chance to give her the ole’ “once over.” When you did get the chance, you ran out of ways you could possibly make conversation with this perfect manic pixie. She wore her hair long. The color was brown and blonde and auburn—something awesome and unnatural—a color too vivid and fuck me-ish to have originated on this planet. She wore a green neon “UCLA Class of 2002” shirt with the sleeves cut off and widened enough to see her hot pink Victoria’s Secret bra. (Does she come here to do this often? If she does, she totally has my admiration. I’m not even mad at it.) She wore short khaki work shorts and ugly brown boots from the job. When you peaked at her zipper, you tried to cross your legs before she moved in closer and slammed her hands down on your knees.
Just like that: the bitch caught you.
At first it was drunk unbelievable flirtation. You said your name was Perry Keaton, Jr. like you were a kid from Kansas and she laughed and she smiled and you looked at her and soaked her up.
And you soaked her up.
(Damn girl.)
For the first time in days–weeks–you weren’t so scared to be far from home. Her unnaturally brown eyes were radioactive. You were all what’re you drinkin’ like you were James Dean or something.
Whiskey shots and P.B.R. for $5. Had to be the best bad idea you ever heard. She started tap-drumming on your knees. She was already drunk and you weren’t much of a drinker, but the both of you kept drinking. Fast. 45 minutes later, you were listening to the bartender.
I’h got figh’ chil’ren . I’h got Tommy, Ginny, Daryl, Vincent and Carl an’I love’m. Dey all goin ta school. Da boys all played foot-ball. Some dem still’ playin foot-ball. Mah girl, she move to New York ta get huhsef inta fashion. Nah y’see dey talk all dey want about how dumb black folk is and how poor black folk is, dey don’ know nuthin’ about mah babies. Dey gonna all be in de White House, you watch, Ha! Ha! Dey gon’ do what me an’ my husbin couldn’t do. Black folk had a hard time. Wadin’ no black folk in school or in de foot-ball fieels. We just sit at home or go to church. Das we’hre I met dey Daddy. I tell you. We did whud we hadda do. Wuddin’ nobody gonna tell me shit. Me and dey Daddy built dat house. We raise them chil’ren and ain’t go nothin’. Ain’t got nothin’ . Now Katrina come along and give everybody: nothin’. I tell you ain’t godda be smart. It’s gon’ take sum time, Lord knows. But we gonna make somethin’. We gon’ make somethin’ outta nothin. Cause das what we do. Gonna make somethin’ good… Now whatchu’ want?
The bartender looked like Ving Rhaymes with a perm. Not the best look for a woman of 63. Her name was Big Nonni and apparently she makes some meeeean eye-Talian food. She also made the mixed drinks a little too strong. You didn’t know it at the time, but that meant she liked you.
(Shit is this vodka?!)
You ordered two fishbowls by accident, you fucking idiot.
(Don’t get sloppy. Not in front of Sarah. Not in front of Big Nonni. DON’T SHIT THE BED ON THIS ONE.)
You tried to continue listening to Big Nonni, but that damn Sarah just kept on a’rubbin’ your leg and whispering sweet somethings into your ear. Every time Sarah drew closer to whisper, you felt like she was going to bite off your ear and chew it slowly in front of you. What kind of nutjob is she? Are all the girls this crazy?
Okay, I’ve been sitting here all night laughing and bullshitting with you, can’t you take the hint, Sinatra? Or are you a Woody Allen?
…
Or are you *gasp* waiting until you’re married?
…Ha! Uh!… Sigh! You improvised the fakest cough. What were you waiting for? A rhyme and a reason? It’s just sex you dummy, and you’re in your twenties. (Use it before you lose it.)
Then, finally! you did something so cool. You put your hand on her hips. Thank fucking God. You put your hands on her hips and that one little gesture sparked the man in you.
Now aren’t we being bold.
I don’t normally kiss on the first date.
This is a date?
I bought you a drink, we listened to some crazy Big Nonni tales stories. You touched my knee. Yeah, that’s a date.
She laughed at your lame sense of humor and drew closer.
Well this date took me by surprise.
You drew closer. And you didn’t even have to have a proper conversation. Her tapping Morse code on your knee was enough. She was going to be a cool ass girl.
I know. This moment became an outer-body experience as you photoshopped yourself out of reality and replace him with Harrison Ford. It was a sneak date. Hook. Line. Sinker. You-had-her. She drew closer and you thought she was going to kiss you, but instead she just licked your nose. This was the beginning of the end. You two left the bar and gave Big Nonni a smack on the cheek. Everyone’s drunk, so everyone’s known each other for yeeeeears.
Ya’ll betta keep yo’ skinnny behines oudda trubble.
You two ran around the streets of New Orleans holding hands. A hot mess covered in each other’s sweat and sloppy kisses, like one of your mother’s trashy romance novels. Both of your legs were so dirty as you stumbled into the pizza place to order fried chicken. On the plane ride down you had been craving some authentic New Orleans cajun fried chicken; it’s just like you, you idiot New Yorker, to settle for whatever fills your gut at the moment. You didn’t want to wait on any lines. The worst part is is that you knew as you were eating it that it wasn’t going to be anything special.
After a conversation about Fifel Goes West, you dedided to check out a karaoke bar. Instead of singing, you both left the joint with two huge ass beers labeled “Huge Ass Beers.”
Huge. Ass-Beers. Huge. ASSBEERS! … ASSBEERS! (This joke would become your number one annoying, eternal inside joke, right above the lyrics to the Mr. Softee jingle[1] you improvised that time you guys visited Portland…Ugh…You wish you could fucking forget Portland.)
It was pretty cool that you guys could drink in the street. New Orleans was a crazy ass place.
You took the trolley home and went back to the volunteer house. Your room was empty. You both walked in. The door shut. Your bed was the top bunk. You’ve never done it there before. You put in a DVD to moderate the awkwardness of trying to remember how to initiate a sexual encounter. All of the conditions were perfect, you just needed to activate what was already there. You should have turned the lights off you dummy.
You put your finger through her hair and kissed her like she was the last woman you’d ever kissed. Thatta boy. She took your shirt off and ignored your lack of muscle definition. You almost had abs. (Although, now you do.) You both climbed to the top bunk, where you both felt a little dangerous, like pornographic trapeze artists. It was like “me Tarzan, you Jane” up there, only when Tarzan fucks the shit out of someone, he knows what he’s doing–he’s been naked in the jungle fucking jungle-women, you’ve been Irish Catholic in Long Island until now. You didn’t know it at the time but this was the beginning of the end for you. You thought this was something special. You confused making love and even having sex with pure, carnal fucking.
She didn’t. Anything that happened after this was really her seeing the world your way.
She didn’t want you to go down on her. She didn’t want to go down on you. She didn’t want anything special. Fact is, you were two bodies, one average and one slightly above average that needed to feel the heat of another heaving, panting body. Like eating anything, listening to a story you’ve heard a thousand times before, or shitting, this was transient. You both came. It was over. Just like it is right now.
And that’s really the way the story goes. You dated for years. You were going to be married. But somehow the entirety of your courtship could be summarized in a simple we fucked once in New Orleans and I made it more than it was. You blew it up and placed this fuck on a cosmic scale.
At least you’ll never make that mistake again.
Before you left The Riverside, someone took out a disposable camera in the bar and yelled picture! as she was already hooking your neck and putting you in pictures that you would forget were taken. It’s just like you to forget about the pictures taken between the beginning and the end, Perry Keaton.
by Michael Stevens
[1] We are your neighborhood ice cream man; we like to sell you ICE CREAM. Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry are some of our favorite FLAY-VORS. You-can-have-some-ice-cream-too!-Please. Buy. IceCream… (Repeat).
About Michael Stevens
Michael is a writer for Rookerville and an aspiring writer at the beginning of his first significant meltdown: the Quarter-Life Crisis. He likes to think of himself as 'the alien of the group' or 'the android attempting to be human.' He is interested in many things so it would be easier to describe all the things he is not interested in: Sports. Read his stuff if you want to hear everything but sports. He is currently at large.
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