Sometimes,
I hate how well you know me
Like you know every word
before it leaves my own mouth
I never liked the way you looked
with your big eyes and empty soul
your mouth tasted like onions,
I cried when you got too close
I didn’t trust you for a minute
and every time you came through
I simultaneously dodged and caught you
Whatever we had was fleeting,
no matter how well you knew me.
Nowadays, your name is spoken in disdain
like rotten food dribbling down our chins
I have returned to calling you by the nickname you never liked
````
The first time we got coffee that winter you had said that you were like your father.
We were huddled together in a little, local joint just off Washington Avenue, a few blocks from your dorm hall, and in the heart of our sprawling campus. We were served bitter coffee with polite smiles and extra napkins. With our backpacks slung carelessly on the back of stiff, metal chairs, we sat near the window, and watched as traffic moved quickly towards downtown. Commuters were anxious to get away from the fifty thousand students that swarmed the corners of the crosswalks, ignoring the signals of the traffic lights, and walking wherever they pleased.
But here, in this quiet corner, it was just the two of us. I awkwardly rubbed your knuckles with my open palm.
In what ways? I had asked, an eyebrow cocked with skepticism.
During those beginning dates, ones that carry a touch of frozen nostalgia, I asked a thousand questions. I was interviewing you for a job that you had already gotten, but it was the only way I knew how to talk back then. I had asked about your hometown and your high school, the friends you had left in Wisconsin and the trouble you used to get in. When you got diagnosed with ADD and how your sister got engaged. Why you decided on the U of M, and how you picked your major. I learned it all with patience, more questions, and an eagerness to listen. Most of the time you didn’t ask about me.
I was surprised by this particular admittance; for you had looked like your mother in the photos you had shown me a few days earlier. She was radiant, with a square face that bore high cheekbones, a large forehead with arched eyebrows, dark shoulder-length hair, and eyes that sparkled like the Pacific Ocean. Later, jokes would be made that I ought to thank her, your mother, for bringing in such beauty to the world. In my mind, you are two copies of the same person, with identical speech patterns and plump fingers. Unfortunately, I never did get the chance to prove this theory. It was a shame your folks lived so far away. I bet her eyes closed just like yours when she laughed.
We both have a temper, you had said.
You were nervously fingering the empty sugar packets I had used twenty minutes earlier. My coffee was long gone, as was yours, and the two empty cups sat invisibly in the space between us, silent jurors about to hear evidence. I remember how scratchy the tablecloth felt underneath my hands that day, rough and irritable, and how the bell above the store’s door would chime quietly whenever someone entered, how the cold air seemed to gasp for a moment as they newest patron stood in the doorstep, how your eyes followed them as they moved throughout the coffee shop, how distracted you always were.
Like I said, frozen memories.
Everyone has a short fuse, sometimes, I had weakly offered, trying to get the conversation focused. This seemed an important topic to discuss, even if your body language was trying to say otherwise.
I didn’t know much about your dad, except that he was from Detroit. His occupation had entered and left my brain in a matter of days, and I had to routinely ask you what he did for a living, a slip of my almost perfect memory. In those same photos, he is tall, and wholeheartedly Midwestern, with a tiny glimpse of a smile on his lips. Beyond inheriting his European whiteness, his blonde hair and blue eyes, I didn’t see you in him in the least.
You shook your head, slowly, already knowing I couldn’t understand it just then, so you looked up, squinted your eyes above and away from my own, against the unexpected winter sunlight that came in the through the windows, and changed the subject.
`````
I can’t believe you hit her! You shrieked the next morning.
We were finishing breakfast at my dining room table and I had just finished telling you the most dramatic moment from the previous night.
She deserved it, I had said, with a small, dry smirk, as I placed my empty coffee cup onto the table. I slowly stretched my arms behind my head and laced my fingers beneath my skull. I don’t let anyone talk to me like that.
It was mid-April, and I had been able to drink alcohol legally for six weeks. I was incredibly hung-over, the kind of pain only a newly minted 21-year old can feel. My body hated me all the time, and I hated my body for not bouncing back the way it could when it was a little younger. I was perpetually hung-over, and at times not knowing if I was drunk or just wanting to drink more to lessen the stomach pain. I had somehow scheduled a ridiculous time block for my classes that semester. My Tuesdays and Thursdays were full and bloated, but I had no classes on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. I also did not have a job. This allowed me to drink five nights out of the week, an option I routinely chose until the end of May. No one seemed to notice this or perhaps they didn’t care, maybe they said something, once, but I didn’t care, or I didn’t notice.
That morning, I was determined to keep the food I had barely eaten in my stomach down. The only other refuge, my tiny attic bedroom, happened to be two flights of stairs above the kitchen, far too much work for my delicate state. It was hard enough getting down them; I couldn’t imagine the effort it would take to climb back up. The handrail placed on the right-hand side on the last turn of the staircase had been ripped off the wall, by sheer force, after too much tequila one Tuesday the month before. I was like Wonder Woman.
I decided that all I needed was some fresh air, more coffee, and a cigarette in order to clear my head.
I stood up and walked from the dining room to the kitchen, washed my plate clean, grabbed the pot of coffee near the microwave, and poured the final dregs of the pot into my red, permanently-dirty coffee cup. I then made my way outside by walking through the main hallway, past the living room and winding staircase, towards the house’s front porch.
I had known you for more than a year, by then. We had officially broken up for the second time the previous December, and although the lasting wounds of what we had were still all too fresh, we had decided to stay friends. We had never been ‘just friends’, however, a detail we liked to overlook when we talked about our shared history. We were too young to understand time, but not yet too old to be ignorant of it.
We had hurt each other in irreversible ways. You were still my first love. Our friends, the old ones who saw us self-destruct, and the new ones who didn’t know us well enough to tell, were always confused when they were with us, because we still acted like a couple, and we never told them outright if we were or not. We openly, obnoxiously flirted with each other even if we were courting other people. Basically, we were the quintessential definition of baby dykes, toying with each other’s feelings until one of us broke first. I heard you, once, tell someone I was your best friend and my heart stopped the same way it did the first time you said you loved me. It all felt the same.
That spring was surreal for so many reasons.
You followed me outside, wanting more details from what had happened, what you had missed. Although we had spent the previous day together, and the majority of the previous night, you had decided to walk home abruptly between bars after one too many undocumented drinks. I had let you, for I was already mad at you for something else that had happened, a little fight we had gotten into. I can never remember the details, only the resentment. Only saying things I didn’t mean. One of our thousands of fights I now don’t remember.
So it was funny, but not surprising, that, here you were, at my place the next morning. I always wondered which of my five roommates that I lived with would let you inside, seeing you peer in through the large front windows, patiently standing on the porch outside, knocking continuously until they let you in. I wondered if it was ever a silent encounter, where words did not need to be said. I like to think it was.
Because now, on this front porch, we communicated just as silently, when your eyes told me you weren’t satisfied. Sometimes, I can still feel that stare. I sat down in a plastic chair that overlooked University Avenue, lit a cigarette, exhaled quickly, and started the story over again.
That night, last night, after you left, I had continued to drink. It was 1:50 am, and I was about to pay my tab when a friend slid up to the bar next to me.
I could have anyone here, she slurred into my ear. This new friend of-a-month-and-a-half had offered me cocaine earlier in the night, while you and I were in line for the bathroom at the first club we went to. I declined. All night I had seen her dance and grope various women, some with success, and some with failure. I hadn’t been that observant earlier, but now I could tell how high she really was.
Excuse me? I replied, not believing someone could be so blatantly misogynistic. I tried to look her in the eye, but she deflected, probably paranoid of how dilated her pupils were. I grabbed her by the chin and repeated the question. I was angry with her, perhaps unjustifiably so (because of our earlier fight and your sudden absence), and I was disinterested in comparing sex partners for the sake of entertainment.
She tried to turn away, but I grabbed her wrist with my left hand and struck her quickly twice across the face with my right hand. I pointed my finger at her eye and said ‘You talk that way again it’s a fist’. At the time I had meant it. I left after that, not saying goodbye to the people I had been with all night, and hailed a taxi home. In the cab, I texted you, saying I loved you. I had meant it, but it was a drunken decision, and I shouldn’t have sent it. Yet, I woke up in bed with you next to me. How lucky I was.
When I finished the story, and my cigarette, you slapped your knee and laughed loudly.
Yeah, she deserved it, you concluded.
``
I’m fucked up, you confessed.
You’re not, I responded.
We were sitting on the edge of my bed, looking through my the photos we had taken earlier that day. My window overlooking University Avenue, but here we could see the Witch’s Hat Water tower from this angle, an easy focal point on an otherwise ugly, eyesore of a road. I suddenly had a flashback to that
I grabbed the bottle of brandy near our feet and poured more of it into your cup. I turned to face you. I was already unsteady, and I should have quit drinking hours earlier, I was drunk off your presence, but in those days I had been trying to keep up with you, something I realized later I could never accomplish. You were always moving too fast. You had a sharp brain and a sharp mouth. All your words ended up hurting. When I drank I slurred my words and never said what I meant to say.
We’re all fucked up I said, as I chimed my glass with yours. I leaned in to kiss you on the cheek, but you dodged it and turned your head. Those kisses that could be either platonic or romantic. It was ambiguous on purpose. I took this rejection in stride, knowing that if I fought it more aggressively, the conversation would be de-railed. I knew which battle I could fight by this point. I knew when to take a punch or two.
Whatever it is, it’s happened before, to some other person, in some other time. I promise you that you’re just as normal as everyone else.
I saw you flick the backside of the lighter aimlessly against the inside of your wrist as your unrolled the long-sleeves of your shirt.
I saw the scabbing first, and then how dark the scabs were, as my eyes traced from your wrist to your elbow in disbelief. A large, sloppy ‘A’ was scribbled deep into your arm. I sobered up in less than sixty seconds.
How long have you been hiding this from me?
Retrospectively, this was probably not the most appropriate response to start with. I was shocked and confused, fervently racking my brain for clues. When was the last time I had seen your bare arms? Your bare legs? You had always been secretly half-dressed, even while we were dating, while we slept, while we fucked. Still to this day, I can never remember distinctive birthmarks or freckle constellations, you simply never let me see them
Later, after you left, I would fervently write about it to justify my reaction. I would publish it to further my ego and ease my conscience. How brilliant you were, for shutting me out of your family only to tell me your biggest secrets. How gratifying that must have felt, spilling confessions to a person with no power, who only knew you through whispers and darkened rooms. I took myself as the victim, a role I was happy to play.
``
During the spring I fell out of a moving car, and I chased after ghosts that were never alive to begin with, there was a feeling I couldn’t shake. I had thought I lost you. I had made a mistake and I was convinced you weren’t coming back. How surprised I was then, when you did.
That month, December, the city we had fallen in love, in love with, was hit by two blizzards in the span of two weeks, utterly silencing the metro area, our campus, and the busy street I lived on. I used it as a reason to sulk, and drink, miserably.
A friend from Duluth had been visiting during the span of the first storm, and in learning of the snow emergency laws in Minneapolis, was forced to move their car off of University Avenue by 8pm. My roommates helped, and it took six lesbians with shovels, two buckets, and dedicated dyke elbow grease, four long hours to clear that car. Five days later we were hit with another nine inches of powder in a single night, making our progress from the previous weekend feel, like the snow, static.
In any case, I remember celebrating this prior achievement, by drinking heavily with everyone in my dining room later that night. More mutual friends had arrived, mostly by foot, as the buses, cabs, and bicycles in the city were literally useless. They were mainly University of Minnesota queers: mutual classmates, ex-flings, and casual crushes. Our house was seen the hub of a small social web, where you would know at least two people who lived there, and you probably slept with one of them.
They arrived with the same exhausted face that I had worn all day. Their cheeks, noses, and ears were a bright pink color, with permanent tear-marks on their face caused by the intense wind, and the strained, lock-jawed, thin line of a mouth, that, if opened, would chatter incessantly.
I would later come to understand this look as ‘weathered’; a term I think only applies to those who have experience harsh winters. We welcomed them inside with tight hugs and strong drinks.
‘You wanna smoke?’ said a voice near the front door.
This question was directed at me, but my drunk and absent brain delayed my reaction, momentarily, which was idly thinking about you. I had been staring at the old, cement space heater in the corner of the room, the one I had leaned against the last time, the last place, we had kissed.
It had been the day before Thanksgiving and I was rushing out the door, already late for something, running up and down stairs, packing a bag quickly for a short weekend in my hometown. You stopped me, cornered me, and kissed me. Told me to slow down. I smiled with my eyes closed. That was our last moment.
I looked away and slipped into an easy joke.
‘Smoke what?’
We had owned a huge, 15-inch bong together, my five roommates and I, and I was known to be the most recreational user in the house. It sat noble-y in our moldy basement, surrounded by couches, illuminated by a black light, with cement walls covered in chalk art encompassing the area. I had, in a word, loved it. My habit that year had increased ten-fold, not only out of luxury, but also of accessibility, and boredom.
Tia laughed, but mostly out of pity. She had known I was going through a rough time, as she had heard me gently weeping the past few nights from across the hall. Tia, an art student who lived downtown, had just started to date my only neighbor in the house, Mary. We shared a two-bedroom attic floor space together, an eventual location that my other roommates envied. Identical in dimensions, our bedrooms were the smallest in the house, and mirrored each other from across a small landing space, and a narrow storage closet between us. My bedroom window faced University Avenue, while hers faced our small backyard.
We were separate up there, in our own little oasis, far away from the chaotic second floor that housed the other four bedrooms.
After I turned 21, Tia, Mary, and I would later go out drinking every other night, creating a distance between the rest of the house and us. We would tiptoe lightly up and down the brown-carpeted staircase that led to third-floor in order to silence our fun. It wasn’t that they weren’t old enough to come out with us; it was that they carried around a degree naivety that was unsettling. I couldn’t comprehend why they were so insistent on accountability. I didn’t understand how uninterested they were in meeting new people. That winter was the last time our house really got along; a divide that manifested itself until the lease ended in the summer.
~~
Tia smoked Parliaments, something her and I bonded over within moments of meeting each other for the first time. I had been at the bus stop, a block and half west from the house, waiting impatiently for my one-mile commute to campus. I could have walked, but the bus came every ten minutes, I could handle the wait, and it was too freezing to even move. On that street corner, a local bank would periodically flash the time and temperature, reminding us just how late the bus was, and how frigid our bones were. It was a 7:35am and a balmy 9 degrees.
It was also icy, as I watched Tia leave our house, descent the front steps, and slip on the sidewalk as she walked towards me. She was wearing an oversized winter jacket, one that made her look even smaller than she actually was. What was normally a two-minute walk in July now took close to ten minutes, as she had to avoid and dodge the larger areas of ice and snow that blocked her path.
She approached me, waved slightly, and lit a cigarette. I waved back and stared at her mouth, jealous at how gratifying that first drag must have been. I had not eaten breakfast. My stomach lurched. I would go to campus and steal a bagel before class, I decided. Tia then looked over at me and offered the last drag of her cigarette. I declined, but complimented her brand. She chuckled, and extended her hand.
‘I’m Tia’
I shook it, even though introductions were not necessary. I had heard her name being screamed through the thin walls of Mary’s bedroom the previous night.
‘Molly’ I smiled.
We boarded the bus and shared a seat, me to campus, and her to downtown, and I talked her ear off about the speech I was to present that morning, how nervous I was, how I smoked weed that morning in bed to calm my nerves.
We became friends immediately.
~~
Now, she had one tucked behind her ear, under a fluorescent yellow beanie, and one extended towards me. I accepted and followed her to the porch out front. The cold air hit me instantly, and I inhaled deeply to stretch my lungs. The fresh air was nice, albeit chilly.
As I lit the cigarette, and took a satisfying drag, I took a shot at Tia’s outline. She looked like me, short and small and fresh-faced, but with square glasses, a nose ring, and bleached blonde hair. Where as I wore button-ups and cordouroys, Tia opted for star wars t-shirts and jeans. She had a tattoo of Jessica Lange on her inner forearm. She was what I desperately wanted to be, but afraid to become, and ashamed that I couldn’t.
I like to think that our styles represented the neighborhoods and schools we lived in, one gritty and visceral, the other prestigious and preppy. Whereas Tia was surrounded by artistic punks downtown, fraternities and team sports engulfed me.
I wouldn’t understand it at the time, but Tia would eventually become the catalyst that caused me to finally bloom out of that particular bubble I had been in during my first year in Minneapolis. I would turn 21 in two short months, changing the relationships that I had fostered before that, and subsequently developing new ones.
‘You think that she’ll come tonight?’ Tia had asked.
‘Who?’
‘Leah’
‘Oh’.
Leah and I had slept together briefly in the summer, after you and I had broken up for the first time. The distance, roughly 300 miles, had gotten to us somehow, we couldn’t sustain it, and we broke up. I was looking for a rebound and so was Leah, after she had split up with her live-in girlfriend of three years. Leah was notorious for cheating, and it did not surprise me that her relationship ended with her infidelity with another taken woman, thus ruining her and her secret lover’s relationship. Leah was trouble. And I should have known better.
‘I’d be surprised if she showed her face’ was my response.
Leah had told you that we had been together, in a drunken admittance, two days after Thanksgiving. Sean, my only male roommate, had told me you looked as if you had been punched in the face and were seeing stars. I was glad I didn’t have to witness it. I was livid with Leah not because of what she had done, but for being so obnoxious about it, flaunting that her and you had both ‘had me’.
That night, I came back from my hometown to a quiet house. I climbed the two flights of stairs and found you fuming in my bedroom. You stared at me with eyes I had never seen as I tried to explain why I lied. I couldn’t, and you got angrier. You deserved to hate me then. I hated myself.
It had been less than a month since I had seen you last but it had felt like years. After the storm, you came over unexpectedly. I blushed and avoided eye contact just like the day we met. I wanted to impress you, to convince you i was doing fine, though I don’t think i did.
I think we missed each other, and the cold weather made us feel like we were further apart than we actually were. Really we were already too close, uncomfortably so, and we mistook the feeling of being frozen with missing someone.
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