Find another girl and fuck her to get over it, says some new terrible buddy in my head. The only one I can think of is the first-year and how nervous she was, scared.
First-year, now you’re doing it.
I am heaving, sitting on the edge of the tub fully dressed. Heaving with how much I want her, and how the shame sickens me. She’s the only one I would let see me like this.
You know her name’s not even a real name, Cole. You know it’s some art technique or whatever.
I’m searching for a clip I can see in my head, hot and filthy, hard in my underwear on the bed leaning over on the screen looking for it, when it hits me thunderously and I wilt and almost, sort of, vomit. It’s just one night with Grisaille in her bed, not porn. Never find that no matter how you search on your screens, you stupid broken fuck.
The trouble, I realized buying myself an awful, idiotic soda or something, standing with it cold in my hand outside the store. Girl in a car laughing at something the guy said in sunglasses. I tried to show you the real person I am. I let that happen when it seemed like the coast was clear. But the real me is terrible. You saw I am an asshole. But you, your hands I miss so much, you got away from me. And I’m stuck here. Yes, that is the trouble. You’ve figured it out, moron with a can in your hands, alone, congratulations.
The party rumbles and me quiet for hours, who knows what I say to who knows who I’m talking to. Beer in my hand and then it’s empty, fourth time. Some freeze-over maybe when I say something, or did I just glare and everyone left the room, shaky in my eyes, on the sofa shaking and trying to talk to Alec who has stayed there, out of habit, out of loyalty, or maybe he’s just too scared to go. I can only say it once, that I miss him so fucking much.
Driving around not as late as it feels. Too early to go home. Music no help, the seatbelt the only thing in the world that wants to hold me. There used to be places. Things kept me out at night. By things I mean you, Grisaille, answer something will you? Fuck me for old time’s sake, just give me your voice on the phone, your name on the little screen. Stupid lonely Friday. Saturday and Sunday ahead like a cliff.
Who can I complain to, if I don’t like the shape of the globe?
We’re all happy, I tell myself. She’s gliding someplace tonight like she does, she should be happy. Alec’s around someplace making it work. And I have everything I could, a clear night in this corner of a parking lot smelling like dogs. Happy, fuck it, it’s not working.
—Your father and I are going to try that new Thai restaurant, Cole, if you want to come with us.
Wondering if they serve poison there.
I think I see her holding hands with a guy and my blood froths up in my head until it is revealed he is a grown man pushing a shopping cart, because it is a grocery store and she’s not here.
Grisaille. You have corrupted my imagination.
It’s a Boy, says a row of balloons in a window, down the block. Poor thing, I think, on the other side of the car window. Too late for you.
This morning, Cole, you decided to focus on your run. But you seem to be sidetracked, or anyway are focused on this tree you are leaning on, breathing and crying on it.
C’mon, I am saying silently. I am saying it in the field we went to. My throat hurts so maybe it is getting shouted after all. C’mon! C’mon! I don’t even know the rest of it.
I miss her, I’m coaching at myself as I trudge toward school, like I missed a bus. Not like a limb, a life, an everything.
Had that coming, is the national opinion I guess at school. With my rep. Surprised nobody castrated that dude, somebody or everybody is saying.
This is not, while I am standing here, happiness. It is not half-happiness. It is so far from any happiness I have had once, that the light from that happiness is taking years and years to reach me here trying not to cry in this stupid class I’m in.
Stolen is how it feels, looking around the yard wondering what bench to disappear into. I know she’s not a possession I owned, but still I can’t help it. She was in my possession. In my arms, at least. In your legs, it sounds dirty I know but I miss it. Sex with you, in you, the dirtiest parts and all of it, too, the rest, the whole thing gone like it was taken.
A year later, and I’m fine. I’ve learned my lesson, my comeuppance, I’ve zipped up and treated everyone right. I’m making this up, desperately. I’m happy now. A year later and the clock on the wall in the school in the middle of my endless painful day has not moved two minutes.
The first-year even meets my eyes with a little sad shrug before I can say sorry, or whatever it was I was going to say when I stopped in the crowded doorway. My rep, who doesn’t know about it. Courtney can’t be surprised. She knew, she tells herself, what she was getting in for.
So this week I have this other guy I know, Oliver, hanging out a little. He’s the nicest person, the only one right now being nice. But what am I going to tell him?
Kristen leans over so her head is level with mine, flat on the desk. Her boyfriend, it’s been how long and she’s still so happy with him, is waiting in the doorway.
—Whatever happened, you totally deserve it and it’s totally your fault.
I tell her I know.
—But I do pity you, if that helps.
I have to say something. —You know what would help?
But she’s already walked away.
In the shower the water feels like her mouth everywhere. Get hard, get lonely, the patheticness, dude, of your wretched life this morning. These are the details, somebody. And every night I fall wide-awake on my mattress.
I wasn’t just a fuck to them, any of them probably, is what I’m seeing. For every girl I thought I was uncomplicated sex, it wasn’t. Put it this way: if you can’t see the complication, you’re probably it. I zipped up in all those places, left them walking out of my car, or a kiss at the bus stop. And they shivered like this, while I did nothing but lick my lips, thrust through all of it. And then to Alec.
I sit down on a bench next to this girl from Bio last year.
—I’m having a shitty day.
But she just puts her bag on her shoulder right away.
—I have a boyfriend, Cole.
The nighttime’s closing in like the same trap, definitely time to go home and jump out of my skin. In my room stalking around with my shoes off, flopping down to roll and reroll on my bed. Stupid and stupefied, my eyes on the ceiling, the wrecked-up blanket, wide open. And every time I shut them it’s that place by the open elbow, comfortable and safe as she reaches over us to slide shut the window. That spot right there, front and center forever in my goddamn head it won’t stop.
It’s one thing to write love poems. Another, though,
to deal with that river-god of the blood: hidden, guilty.
Even the girl, who thinks she knows her young lover,