A Dialogue

She tried to leave this morning. She woke up in his bed at 8 a.m., climbed over him in the darkness, got dressed, washed her face, gargled with his mouthwash to avoid the furry teeth feeling that she hates, then went into his room to find her lip gloss and to drink some water, with every intention of slipping out. She stood by the side of the bed, right near his pillow, drinking, because that’s where the glass was. Maybe part of her wished he would wake. As she drank, she contemplated waking him -- should she kiss him good bye and lie to him that she’d see him later? Or should she just go? Go and let him wonder where she was? Go and let him wonder, and don’t ever come back?

She thought, this is the perfect opportunity to leave and never come back. All this mess of feelings and yearnings and sadness, all this mess of love. She could just close the book on him. She’d never have to tell him what was going on in her head that morning, never have to ‘flesh out’ all the bad things that were eating away at her, like, why didn’t you invite me to your sister‘s birthday party, was it because you didn’t really want me to go, because you didn’t really want to introduce me to your sister, even when you said you did, and why were the sheets on your bed all crumpled like you had had sex in them recently even though I haven’t been over since Sunday, and why is it that sometimes I look at you and I have no idea who you are? If she had left just then, without waking him, she would never have to trouble him with that discussion, would never have to really figure out what was going on in her own head and in her heart and actually formulate full sentences for another human being to understand or be upset by. She’d never have to speak, if she left. Now. Not ever explain her very real feelings in this ‘trial’ relationship that would, without fail, end. Soon. With luck, perhaps today.

She is the horse that rears at the first sign of trouble. Rears, shrieks and runs.

Unfortunately for her, the rest of humanity, the course of human history, and her own, he awoke. He opened his eyes, reached for her, kissed her bare thigh. “Where you goin’, J? Are you leavin’?” he said, through the heaviness of sleep. Her heart skipped, then cowered in its cage.

“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I just feel like I should.”
He paused to wake, and then understood.
“Come 'ere, stupid.”
“No, I really think I should go.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Come here, lie down next to me.”

Reluctant, she curled up beside him in the space between his outstretched arm and his chest. “Tell me what’s going through your head.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes. You’re not leaving until you tell me what’s happening. Then you can go.”
“But that’s why I’m leaving - so I don’t have to talk about it.”
“If you’re leaving because you have to work something out for you, then that’s fine. I understand it and I respect it. But if you’re leaving because you need to work something out that has anything to do with me, then you have to stay and talk to me about it."
She stared at his left nipple. Bit her lip.
"In fact, I think it would be good for you to be forced to hang out with me for the rest of the day.”
“The rest of the day??”
“Yes. The rest of the day. Punishment for trying to leave early in the morning without saying good-bye.”

He took her hand. His hands were always warm and dry and just slightly rough, like he’d been working outside with trees. She noticed now that they felt like her father’s hands, and maybe that meant something weird or secret or hidden, but still, his hands comforted her. They tell her she is being held by a strong man.

“So? Tell me.”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
Silence.
“You’re not leaving until you tell me.”
More silence.
“Jesus Christ, J, how am I supposed to figure this out if you don’t talk?”

She sat up. Glared at him. Made little fists with her hands and curled her mouth into a pout. Sent him looks of death.

“J, you can leave if you have to, but I promise you‘ll regret it.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not.”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it.”

But then, maybe she did. Maybe she had to. “I don’t want to talk about how I feel like a burden to you when you’re supposed to be figuring your shit out and having fun and doing whatever the hell you want to. Or how you should just be carefree and you shouldn’t have somebody like me weighing you down.”

Her jaw tensed. “I don’t want to talk about how I am constantly wondering where you are and what you’re doing and who you’re with and worrying about why we’re not connecting and whether we’ll ever connect again and I don’t want to burden you with this... this having to talk about shit when you’re not supposed to have to deal with it. That’s what I don’t want to talk about and that’s why I’m leaving, because its my shit, not yours.” She started to stand but he pulled her down, down to his chest, where her head always finds a comfortable place to rest, and he wrapped his arm around her neck.

“J.” He petted her head. “You’re not a burden at all. I want to be here with you. If I didn’t want to, I would’ve said something. There are times when I've told you that I need my own time, that I need space. But I‘ve been honest with you every step of the way.”

Her feet squirmed. But her cheek was on his bare skin, which was smooth and cool and so she couldn’t lift herself away from it.

“There are times when we don’t connect. But when we do, it's incredible." He paused, as if carefully choosing his next words. "And J, you’re kinda young when it comes to this ’love’ stuff. I bet you’ve gotten really good at running away. And you’re probably not used to having a guy sit through this with you, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m just here, observing and enjoying you.”

She sat up again and looked him straight in the eye. This was the crux of it, this thing she was about to say. This was the live or die moment. Surely once she said this he would throw her out and not want to have anything to do with her ever again.

“There are times when I look at you and I think I don’t know you at all.”

He didn‘t flinch. Her heart sank - he seemed perfectly unfazed. “You never know anyone, J. It takes a lifetime. You’ll be sitting next to your wife of ten years at dinner and all of a sudden she’ll say something about how she and her friends had been in an orgy together so many years ago and you’ll say, 'gaddamnit I didn’t know that. Hell, we’d better have one tonight.'”

She giggled. He stared at her with his clear blue eyes. His mouth looked hard. “You learn a person, J, you learn all the time. One minute you think you know somebody and the next minute they turn around and they’re completely different or they’ve changed in some drastic way and it's not always for the better. But you just observe and let it happen, because that’s what people do. They change. And you have to let them do that.”

He gave her hand a wiggle. “Stick around a little longer and just let it be. Stop freakin’ out.”

She couldn’t look at him. It was too much to be told these things. Her heart, beating in its little cage, knew the door was open should it want to escape, but it was utterly incapable of taking that step.

She breathed a long, deep breath and settled in to his body, lying so solidly next to hers. Perhaps she is the horse that rears at the first sign of trouble, but eventually even horses stop rearing.

The Boys' Club

I remember that last summer in yellow – not a sunny yellow, but the pale yellow of twilight. It’s the yellow of a Nuprin commercial, where the background is mostly black and white. It’s a jaundiced yellow - one that says there is something inescapable looming in the distance.

I was seven and had two friends: my brother and the neighborhood kid that lived down the street, Patrick H. Since my two best friends were boys, we spent many a free afternoon doing boy things outside: played with Matchbox cars, staged massive ninja fights, threw Frisbees, pretended we were perishing in a swamp of boiling hot lava, poured salt on slugs… It never occurred to me that other little girls had girl best friends or how that might be different. The few girl friends I had were not half as exciting as my big brother and Patrick H.

Patrick lived in a small house with his parents and a Dalmatian called Lucky. His attic was haunted – I knew, and feared. Across the street from Pat’s was a three-story white house with fake geese in the yard, the residents of which no one had ever seen. The only evidence that it was inhabited came to us from a window on the top floor which overlooked our yard. Awakened by our hooting and hollering, a hand occasionally emerged from the darkness within to separate the white curtains hanging in the window. The burn of invisible eyes peering down on us from above was enough to provoke a quick retreat to the house, even if the only thing to do was watch the Love Shack video on MTV.

The three of us passed most of the time at our house. This was in part because of Patrick’s haunted attic. It was also due to his proximity to the white house with fake geese which, I swear, moved when you weren’t looking. Since we lived at the end of Dow Street, we also had a paved, open turnaround for a driveway. The turnaround: a vast, deserted track for the Bicycle Grand Prix (training wheels permitted, to my utter relief).

One especially hot summer day, Patrick suggested that we turn the Bicycle Grand Prix into a new game. Patrick was older and towered over both of us so it made sense that he made up the games (although Boiling Hot Lava sprung from my brother’s brilliance). I regarded Patrick with the awe one reserves for celebrities: he was, after all, a middle-schooler and I, a mere mortal in the 3rd grade, armed with over-sized pink glasses and an eye-patch. I remember desperately seeking Patrick’s approval. Mostly, however, I just felt left out from the Boy’s Club of which I was both an Integral Member and Founder.

According to Patrick, Spit Wars went like this: ride as fast as humanly possible without crashing and as soon as your opponents are in view, hawk the biggest loogy imaginable on your opponent. By the end of the game, whoever is wettest loses. I was intrigued – the genius!

The pavement was hot and gummy beneath our bike tires. I gripped the handlebars of my pink Huffy. Its tassels began to sway in the wind as I peddled. My training wheels clicked on the road, then spun in midair on the release. We drove in circles, picking up speed second by whirring second. Now with training wheels barely grazing the ground, the scenery blurred to a frenetic green, the pink smear of my bike tassels horizontal in the wind. I saw Patrick approaching in the distance, eyes focused on me. A duel was coming my way, and fast. I swallowed hard, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. As he drew closer, Patrick’s mouth shaped a round ‘oh’ and the muscles in his neck contracted, head tilting back and then forward again. As if in slow motion, the wet, hot lump that burst from his lips came closer, and closer, growing bigger and bigger with each passing moment, until it finally struck my left cheek with the force of a jet engine – a hit! I cringed from the impact, then zoomed around again, screaming with anticipation.

This went on for what seemed like hours. By twilight, I was a soppy sponge, a yellow-spotted jellyfish, a walking ectoplasm. My Mother must have cried in panic at the creature that replaced me. By far the wettest, I had lost miserably. Disembarking from my steed, the smell of other people’s saliva and the sticky sloshing of my clothes made me queasy. I gingerly shuffled back to the house in the dying sunlight, and tried to keep my clothes from suctioning to my skin. This is what defeat felt like: sticky, smelly… inevitable.

Grasping my pink Huffy bike by my side, I cursed my femaleness. Integral Member and Founder of the Boy’s Club, yes, but equal? Never! The missing ingredient to my Membership, found! I wept mercilessly. The insurmountable problem of gender had finally revealed itself: I was, in fact, a girl.

And I hadn’t enjoyed Spit Wars. Not one bit. I didn’t like being covered in other people’s spit, and I definitely didn’t like losing. I wondered how these boys would fare at girl games. The unfairness of it all made my belly hurt.

I stopped at the steps before our front door and glanced back. The remaining Members of the Boys Club had moved on down the street. From the corner of my eye, I noticed the plastic garden geese in the yard across from Patrick’s house. They had moved – I knew it. No, something else had moved – the curtains in that third story window.

I squinted. Was that a hand? I noticed my heartbeat – it pumped harder now. I stood alone in the twilight, and the being in the darkness had been watching me. I swallowed. I ran the back of my hand across my cheeks to wipe away the streaks from my tears. I pushed the kickstand to the ground, and let the head of the Huffy lean to one side.

With cautious steps, I ventured to the middle of the lawn and stopped, eyes lowered. Could I really do it? I asked myself. Could I look back? What would happen if it saw me looking? Would it kill me?

With great poise, I lifted my chin, my eyes, my spirit, and confronted the being in the darkness. I wondered if she’d forgive me.