And both our heartbeats filled the room with a drumming that made your bottom lip tremble as you kissed me.
You’ve got this way of making the ugliest things sound beautiful. You could take the grimmest words and wrap your tongue around them until they sound like they were sung from our church choir. All things dirty and melancholy that have gathered in your breast could leave your mouth smooth and fresh. I would taste them, and hold them against my ribs without realizing how truly macabre they are. I could watch every word fall from your mouth, and be so distracted by your perfectly straight teeth, that I’d never realize each adjunct was rolling around in the dirt at our feet.
Your mouth, it’s always been my favorite mouth. It is the color of peaches and sunsets, or maybe it’s just that every time I’ve kissed you, you’ve tasted like a summertime we spent playing games with each other. And maybe this all goes back to the fact that everything that has ever left your mouth has sounded so beautiful. That even if it’s not a great mouth, I’m sure there are thicker, softer, redder lips out there, it’s still handsome for everything it has ever whispered into the nape of my neck.
The last time I saw you, you were sitting in the passenger seat of my latest of old, beat-up sedans. You had rolled down the window, and the car was full of that fall smell: dying, mildewy leaves and browning grass. You smoked a cigarette and apologized in advance because you knew you’d break my heart. How, if I cried you’d be sad, and the only reason you’d be sad was because you actually loved me. But I was too sidetracked by that silver, matrimonial band on your finger, it kept my eyes from your mouth which usually distracted me from all its flowery, sullen remarks. So all those words, that usually sounded so beautiful, came out sounding exactly like they were meant to. They were a sharp pain in my sternum, they were ugly and bleak just as they were formulated.
You kissed me goodbye, you tasted like ashes and a bitter autumn. You used to have a way of making everything sound beautiful. But as I washed you away with pints of pumpkin ale and wild turkey, the bartender sounded just as comforting. And I realized that any old conman can make things sound beautiful just to make a few extra bucks.
How about that night that I’d spent preaching to my parents, telling them how good you were for me? That night when I told them all about you, and how every shitty thing you’d ever done was because your dad didn’t know any other way of punishing aside from using his hand. How your mom was an alcoholic, but you weren’t going to hit the bottle because you didn’t want to spend the rest of your days drifting from guy to guy, halfway-home to halfway-home. You guys lived in a double-wide because your dad lived off the government and your mom stripped, but that wasn’t a big deal to me, because your room was always clean and smelled like vanilla candles (even if your parents were always chain-smoking or burning things on the stove).
Maybe they were convinced, maybe they weren’t. But, their tacit compliance when I left the table to go meet up with you, meant at the time, that they were okay with what we were.
Little did I know that during all the dinner talk, where I’d been up against the strictest panel of all—you were in the back of your dad’s pick-up truck, making a bed out of the bed, and sucking on the mouth of some kid you knew I didn’t like. Telling him in little whispers that he was the only one who’d be able to get you out of here, the same god damn line you pulled on me earlier that winter.
The summer of the yellow dress.
“Do you remember when you dumped that red slushie on me at the fair?”
“Kind of.”
I’m lying, I remember that summer quite well, it was the summer of the yellow dress. Your mom got it for you when you guys took that trip out to the city. She’d bought you that frozen lemonade and you guys walked up and down the streets, window-shopping and smiling and laughing. You said you loved your mom’s smile, because she had the straight, white-teeth you always wanted but had ruined with years of sucking your thumb.
You only set foot in a boutique once, and it was for the yellow dress you’d seen slung off the shoulders of some plastic mannequin, who was feature-less except for a pair of big blue eyes. She reminded you of your older sisters, all thin and identical, pale and blue-eyed, all married to their high school sweethearts and living within walking distance from their family’s church. In the store, you’d tried on the dress, and it didn’t fill out quite right because you weren’t as tall or busty as the ‘girl in the window’. But your mom promised that by the end of summer, it’d look just fine with your July tan and the natural highlights you used to get from the sun.
That was the same summer that I first started noticing the slope of your neck or how your collarbones were perfectly symmetrical. Every time you wore that dress, it’d show off your ribs between budding breasts or your bony shoulders that never held up the straps right. We used to lay out on the grass, your knees would peek out from underneath the flowered-hem and I can still feel the softness of your calves against mine.
You used to tell me all the thoughts in your head, how one day you’d hitch-hike your way across the country and meet all sorts of people with all sorts of stories. How you didn’t want to die twenty miles away from where you were raised. Fourteen years old, and all I could think about was football and girls and trying to impress my dad. And there you were, telling me you were going to pack up your yellow dress and drive around with strangers until you found yourself. And I fell in love with you because your curiosity made you something I’d never be: excitable and free.
Your mom was right, by Home Days in late August, that sun dress couldn’t have looked better on anyone else. The June and July months had been good to you, you’d gone from awkward limbs to slender and graceful. It’d taken a whole summer for me to gather up the courage to kiss you. When I finally did it, it was between the elephant-ears and frozen lemonade stands, the air was thick with grease and laughter and the sounds of rings being tossed on empty milk jugs and I was so nervous I nearly dropped the cherry slushie I’d just bought us to share. We kissed, and your mouth tasted like cotton candy, and I thought you’d pull away but you didn’t. And it was enough to make me feel like I was a man.
Later that night, I was holding your hand and occupying my mouth with that red drink, because I knew that if I didn’t do something with my teeth I might try to kiss you again too soon or something. We were quiet and everything was dying down, the stars were hung up above us and when we reached the baseball fields, the sounds of the fair were just a hum in the distance. Other couples were kissing in the rafters, and when I turned to kiss you, you looked away.
“I don’t want to be a couple of big blue eyes.” And it took a minute, but when I finally understood, my eyes had adjusted to the night and I could see that you weren’t looking at me. You were looking at the stars above us and commenting on how beautiful and infinite they were, how you wanted to be strung up in the sky amongst them. How you hated being from this nothing town where people hung around from birth to death; how even their ghosts still walked the streets or creaked on porch-swings.
I knew right then and there, that you thought I’d be that ball-and-chain, keeping you from big cities and coasts. In a jealous rage, I found myself emptying the remainders of my drink all over the front of your yellow dress. Even in the night, that slushie looked like blood across your chest and down to your knees. As I took off running, back towards the fair, back towards home and my friends, I hoped I had ruined your stupid yellow dress.
You said, I am everything that could make you happy,
And now I know, you’re the girl who’s made the biggest fool out of me.
In the morning, I took my shower silently. Carefully, I spent an hour washing away every last bit of you from my skin, my hair, and from every crook of my body. It took a bar of soap and by the end of it, my nails were so white and fingers so pruney, that I knew there was nothing left of you. You were gone, out with the hot, soapy water, traveling through the pipes and maybe out to sea. I brushed my teeth, letting the streams of water pound against my face as I scrubbed away at my tongue. I spat away the last of your kiss, I couldn’t taste you anymore. Shower off.
I wrapped a towel around my head, patted my hair dry and let it sit on my shoulders. Naked, in front of the mirror, I saw what I was without you. Clean, white skin, dimples, flesh that started showing signs of aging at an age too young.
But, in the end it was clear: you would always be somewhere in me, no matter how many times I tried to shower you away and started anew. And god damn, I didn’t have the money for the water bills if I wanted to spend an hour in the shower every day, trying to get rid of you.
Sometimes, I dream about crawling through your window and laying in your bed, so I could feel all the things that made you want to do it. I guess I’ll never know, your parents put that house up for sale a year ago and moved far away. The family that lives there now, they’re ignorant to it all, and it’s probably better that way.
But sometimes, just sometimes, I’ll drive past that little house and slow down to a crawl just to remember all the shit we went through. Once, I even got out. It was two in the morning, the house was asleep, and I crept through the backyard so I could sit in the old tree-house we used to play in. I smoked two cigarettes, long enough to remember, and then I left.
It was enough to remind me that you had existed, and you weren’t just some childhood fantasy that came and went with the move.
When did we start growing tired of one another? I think it started when you called me a ‘pig’ for thinking sex shouldn’t be something so private. You hated how I preached it as the one thing we all really have in common, so why did we lock it behind closed doors and turn it into a taboo? Or how I’d grab you in public, my way of showing you affection, but your turn-off. I’d confuse the rosiness of your cheeks for excitement, when really it was just your lack of comfort burning on your face. I used to get turned-on by your turtle-necked sweaters, or when you’d pull the duvet over us mid-day, I thought your shy ways were cute and intriguing. But now, your conservative demeanor was the source of my fury, turning our intimacy into a struggle. It geared all our conversations towards it, the one thing you hated talking about was constantly on your lips: sexuality.
Your incessant sighing around me was the first tip-off that we were done; the way you’d roll your eyes when I’d reach for your hips or how you’d swat my hand away from your thigh as you read over breakfast. Dinner dates grew few and far between, you didn’t like the movies because a darkened room in public was something exciting for me but less thrilling for you. Sex was for the bedroom, it was missionary and bland, we did what we were supposed to and that was it. Roll over, go to sleep.
Now, years later, I’m sure you’ve moved on to some poised, white-collar chump with clean fingernails and a wide vocabulary including words like: verbatim, ex dividend, or ipso facto. He probably enjoys watered down coffee in the morning while reading the business section of the paper. You were always one for dry, poignant conversations and witty retorts that kept those people around you on their toes. I bet he’s that guy, constantly picking at you to button the top-button of your blouse. You think he’s helping you perfect yourself, but he’s really just another flavorless college graduate with some cookie-cutter views of the world. I’m sure you get off to his insipidity.
So how is it fair, that even though time has crept on, that I can still only get off to girls as callous and cold as you. How I look for the challenge you posed in every girl? I hope for a change every day, but in the night I always find myself pulling the clothes off some girl who’d rather the lights be off because it seems more intimate. To me, a cold, pitch-black bedroom only strengthens the fact that we are strangers. And I’ve grown tired of always being strangers.
I’m not a wise man, no, I’m a simple man. However, the things I know, I’ve mastered. I know that the best sleep I’ve ever gotten was when my stomach was full of whiskey, after I’d kissed you for what felt like hours, with your breast in my palm. I’ve learned the difference between a casual acquaintance and a friend has everything to do with eye contact and honest conversation. Or, how the nights I’ve spent piss drunk on the lake, washing you down with unmarked bottles of liquor and trying my hardest to forget about the way you said my name, were the worst of my time. Too often do I go back to those good nights, the good times that kept me afloat. How I’d give anything to relive that night when we danced in front of the fireplace, you in your underwear and me, the luckiest man alive.
But now I know better. It took me a bit longer than most to catch on, but I know what I need to be a strong man. Now it’s all a matter of making it a habit.
Oh how you were there all along, beating inside my chest.
A deep humming in my ribs, a quaking in my back.
You are my shivering skin, the vibrations in my vocal chords.
And you were there all along, there all along, but only now
Have I learned to sing you.
