You ever feel these before?
I press my hands over them—up, down, left, right, like a Hail Mary—unsure of what to do. I lick. I suck. I crunch my hips against her, but I’m not sure what kind of contact I’m making, or where. I move my hands down between her legs, under the lace, fumbling for something familiar. It must feel familiar right? Nothing feels familiar. I am shaking and circling my hands, grinding my torso against her leg like a newly neutered dog. She is sucking on my neck, moaning, Oh yeah, that’s right, but I know this is an act of kindness. Of mercy.
It is true, when I say that I am always about to cry.
By two thirty A.M., Addison, Dani, and Claudia are packing bulbs of purple haze into a glass pipe shaped like an elephant.
Let’s call this pipe Anne Bowl’leyn, I say, but nobody gets it.
The girls speak with flat, croaked voices as we swat smoke and mosquitos.
Sorry, dude. Maybe the lines really are tied up, says Dani.
Or maybe she drives really, really slow, says Addison, chuckling to herself until she forgets what it is she’s chuckling about. We are high.
My phone is in the middle of the table, between the ashtrays. A dead, blank face to it. Nothing. Claudia’s inside, shouting the contents of Dani’s refrigerator as we scream yes or no. Addison pulls on a lace bodysuit she plans on wearing to a Lady Gaga concert. Her nipple rings glitter here, in the dark.
I don’t smoke grass, I say, sucking from the trunk of the elephant.
Yeah, it doesn’t look like it, says Dani.
Remember when you used to bug out? says Addison. You always thought you were dying.
We’re all always dying, I say.
You’re so full of shit, Addison goes on. You don’t smoke grass like you never drank, like you never sucked dudes off in the school parking lot. You always deny everything you want. Addison, always a philosopher when high.
True, I say. But that’s not the same as not wanting it.
What the fuck are we talking about? asks Dani. Like, what?
In middle school, Clarissa and I went to Disney with our friend Geri. In the Universal Studios bathroom, Geri leaned back on the stall door, Manic Panic green bangs sweat-smeared across her forehead, and she laced her fingers behind my neck, said, Practice. Why don’t we practice for the real thing? She opened her mouth for me, just like that, the O of her choir face, and so I leaned into it. Let me in on the practice, Clarissa said, and the three of us kissed one another—1-2-3, you go left, I go right—tongues sloppy, braces clicking. Later that night, we met some boys near the hotel pool. Clarissa kissed someone in the dark as I watched the blue glow on Geri’s bare stomach. Geri’s pruned feet. One of the boys leading Geri away as she let go of my hand, laughing, saying, I’ll be right back.
We all take the stairs to Dani’s bedroom. It’s still pink, lacy as a tablecloth, unchanged since high school. The lavender sachets in her pajama drawers are brown by now. The sheets, too starched.
The girls fall asleep with their clothes on. I curl up on the carpeted floor, watch the lights of passing cars slash up and down the walls. My phone does not buzz in my hand. I check and recheck to make sure it’s on, charged. Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting.
Louisa. Lennox Price.
Her name drags me down the stairs, out the door, to my car, where I drive home along the beach. The sun lifts and bleeds out along the ocean. It’s a new year, and the air is already warm. Louisa. I walk barefoot into my house, bury myself under my childhood covers, and sleep.
The next day there are pictures of her, partying in Fort Lauderdale with her old friends. In the days after that, more pictures of her appear on the Internet, with the comedian. She posted the photos herself, the two of them in a white, linen bed with Koko the cat. Happy holidays! We love you!
She does love him, I think. The look of her—she does. Whatever comes before or after men is a footnote; my life has taught me this by now. I nod my head at the computer, understanding, forcing a smile, as if this were our final conversation. Lennox Price went back to the boyfriend who would love her, need her, the simpler life, of course she did.
By spring, I do, too.
FOOTNOTE
This is how it goes for a while:
Jane’s fingers are long and her knuckles are smooth and white as beach stones. She’s a painter with a shaved head and a lip ring, and I don’t know anything else about Jane except for the way she looks at me across the bar. Her hands when she pours a drink. The exact distance between the blue of her jeans when she walks. We scoot orange pills across the surface of her bar that keep us up all night, sipping bourbon, smoking when the lights dim, talking. I always come here alone.
Jane pulls down the bar shutters with an aluminum thwack. There’s a blizzard outside. We share a cab—we do this sometimes—but tonight, her hand squeezes my knee.
Need a place to stay? she asks. It’s nasty out there, she says, as we cross the Queensboro Bridge. This is no longer in the direction of my home.
I don’t answer Jane’s question, but I follow her out of the cab, I shut the cab door, I steady myself against her—Careful now—I don’t want to slip. The snow is coming down in great creamsicle smears beneath the street lamps, and then I’m following Jane inside her apartment, into Jane’s room, where I nudge off the lights and crawl on top of Jane and unbuckle the teeth of Jane’s belt.
Easy, she says.
I pull her pants down to her knees and push my face into her and taste what I want to taste. I fuck her with my hand. Relax, she says. I’m the one who tops here.
Jane tries to flip me over, but I don’t want her to touch me. As if by reaching inside me she will find the very pith of my fraudulence. I have a UTI, I lie, crushing my hips into her leg.
Sometimes I jerk off thinking of you, she says.
I come when she says this.
The next morning, Jane breathes on her window and traces my name in the steam. We do not kiss good-bye. I wash my face in her chipped sink, pull my hair back into a bun. I call a cab and travel back over the bridge, where I buzz open the door to David’s apartment, crawl into our bed, and tell him it was bad out there, too dangerous to go so far.
COLLECTED DATES WITH MY FATHER
I.
Every night, my father bends one arm under the crook behind my knees, the other around my waist, and carries my body to bed. He tucks my mermaid covers up to my chin, squeezes my feet over the sheets. Darkness is heavier when alone in it. My father moves the pads of his fingers down my nose, across my forehead, so slow and gentle, like he’s offering me holy water. He calls this “fingertips” and tells me not to be so frightened, there is nothing that can hurt me, not as long as he lives.
I close my eyes and the stories come: There once was a little girl with a flying horse. Everybody loved her. The fact that the horse could fly was a secret only the little girl knew. The girl wanted to live far, far away. Paris, maybe, or Kentucky. Somewhere with grass blue as twilight, where the wind would comb it flat and sweet. But the horse told her, No, no. You must stay where you are, in Boca Raton! The horse could speak, you see.
But I hate Boca Raton! said the little girl. The Rat’s Mouth is gross!
The horse says, Let’s make a deal. You stay in the Rat’s Mouth during the day, with your parents who love you, and at night I promise to take you away. I’ll fly you to the moon and back, to every country in the world, I’ll get you the hell away from here, as long as you’re not so afraid.
The girl says, I’ll take that deal.
The horse says, Hold on.
II.