When we first met, she used to draw pictures. She was young. Growing up.
The pictures were like works in progress. Each one a part of something bigger. Nascent potential. All of it filled with hope, character, individuality, and a dash of irrepressible youth.
I fell in love with that freedom. I fell for the enthusiasm, and the passion, and the raw emotion.
At a time when people called me a robot, she chose the word subdued.
It felt like something special between us.
It felt like something warm.
We sat together in lonely cafes, and let our coffees go cold.
I scribbled words and sentences. Played, mostly. Too short to be fiction, too long to be poetry. Ideas like fragments of broken glass.
She sketched objects. Played with shape and form. Sometimes a pair of hands, sometimes an ear. Sometimes the silhouette of a sleeping woman, or a sleeping man. A sleeping cat.
Everything was asleep, back then. Everything mere moments from waking.
We were bundles of incomplete ideas and half-experienced feelings.
In this way, we fell into something like love.
When I left for Japan, there was an ocean between us. There was space.
It stretched time. Tampered with the flow of it. Slower some days, faster others.
We shared emails and waxed nostalgic. It felt easier to focus on the past, ignore the present and the future.
We shared that. The past. The others were shadows. Clouds. Haze.
Sometimes, I shared my new world. I wrote it down in words, but they were always lacking. Japan changed me in ways my words would never change her. It warped my perspective — expanded it and made it flexible.
In that space of stretched, tampered time, we found empty romance and lost, lingering feelings with other people. We held other bodies and kissed other mouths.
This, too, felt something like love.
Home was difficult. Hard. Impossible. The same, but different.
I was always foreign, in Japan. Always a foreigner. But it was unsettling to return home and feel the same way.
I don’t belong here anymore, I thought.
Still, I longed to meet her. See her. I thought she would be different. Hoped she would be different. She would understand — or at least try — to see the colors I saw. The blends and the hues and the shadows.
She might share of the fading warmth.
She didn’t draw anymore. Said she didn’t have time.
She worked at a small PR company as an account assistant. It was busy and hectic. Frantic. Every day, she said, but she loved the rush and the pace. She talked about office dynamics, hush-hush new deals, press conferences and potential promotion.
There was too much I didn’t know. Too much I would never catch up with. I could only listen and nod.
We tried to talk like old times. I told her I hadn’t kept up with Breaking Bad. I didn’t know who Sam Smith was, or his latest album. I said politics at home felt like watching a foreign film without subtitles.
I said I still wrote stories. Had actually finished a couple.
She smiled then, like a mother might smile at a child with a crayon drawing.
She said she wished she had time to sketch again. She missed it. Loved it. Loved those days, that time, and that freedom. She sighed, like it was gone now.
Like it was never coming back.
She stood to go back to work. Said it was nice seeing me. I said I would get the bill, and she laughed.
She said my gentle gaze and smile reminded her of a robot.
And she left.
I sat at that lonely cafe, and I let my coffee go cold.
In my notebook, I scribbled some words and sentences.
It was something like heartbreak.
I realized that in that stretched, tampered time, I’d clung to an idea. A hazy fragment of what could be. It was a seed, which I planted. It flowered in my mind.
But the soil of my imagination was vastly different to what remained back home.
I never loved her, I thought. Not really. I loved the flower I grew. A flower I didn’t want to stop watering. It had grown to look so beautiful, however non-existent it was. Surely, somewhere in this world is a flower just like this one, I thought. I believed.
I dreamed.
It was something like hope.
Not long after, I made the decision to leave.
Everyone asked what I would do about money, health insurance, a pension, life, the future, my yet-to-exist family.
It seemed so trivial, at the time. Out across the sea were completely different worlds. Whole new spectrums of color and culture and experience and language. People living completely different lives.
And you want me to stay here, and work, and prepare for the day I retire?
Yes, they said.
We agreed to disagree.
I will work things out, I said. Or things will work themselves out.
I will be okay.
It was something like faith.
She gripped my hand in hers. It was warm. Soft. There were memories in it.
So this is it, she said.
I have to see the world, I said. I want to see it, and write about it, and live it. I can’t do that here.
She looked me in the eyes for some time, and she smiled.
And for a fleeting instant, there was something between us — the flash of a flower that could have been but never was. A flower we’d planted together, and lost in the forest that grew up around it.
Good luck, she said.
There was trust in her eyes.
It was something like understanding.
Something like love.
And for that, I was grateful.
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The eighteen year old died after choking on saliva last Saturday, whilst engaging in a — what’s a posh way of saying making out? Pre-sexual activity? Probably. Whilst engaging in pre-sexual activity with a young man named Ola Johnson at his family home in the East London suburb of Beauford Green. It was his saliva.
On second thought, the 10’o clock news probably wouldn’t reveal his name. The eerily soothing newsreader voice would be neutral of accent and emotion as they informed the public of my watery demise. Tonal inflections gliding up and down as it relayed a thirty second contracted biography of my life. Predicted Three As and a B at A Level, Temi Adesina was planning to go to UCL this October to study law. She is Nigerian so I guess that is no surprise. Although I do wonder what her parents think about that pesky B. Nigerian parents are known to have pretty high standards. Particularly hers. She would say it in the same factual tone, chin dipping and tilting in micro-movements, the way newsreaders usually do when they want to add some spice to their performance. She leaves behind an extensive collection of MAC lipsticks, and 947 Twitter followers. Her best friend Jasmeen Khan told London News Night that she was hoping to reach 1000 by the end of this year.
Wait. Nope. I’m black. There’s a slim chance they would mention the fact that I’m going to UCL. I bet they’re going to mention the time I got caught on the DLR without tapping in. They’d use my supposed vagrancy to paint my death as inevitable. And which picture would they use? The selfie I took in Jazz’s bathroom the other night with that new filter would be ideal, but I have a feeling they’re probably going to use a picture from last Halloween, when I dressed up as 2009 Nicki Minaj.
Ola pressed closer, his tongue an aggressive tango instructor to mine. Backward bends. Twirls. I mean, I get that saliva is kind of part of the whole deal, but there’s a specific degree of wetness that is agreeable in this kind of scenario. I felt like we had surpassed it. The more excited he became, the more sloshy each head-tilt got. I shifted on the sofa. It was June, and the air that meandered in from the windows was slow and tepid. My skin made a minute kissing sound as it unstuck from the leather. I was wearing denim shorts and an over-sized white t-shirt that scooped low at the neck and displayed a thin, gold chain with a T hung from it. It swung low like a pendulum. Apparently it was kind of hypnotic. Ola’s eyes followed it — or whatever lay beneath it — before shifting my body beneath his. Technically it was hot. However his wetness kept on disrupting my commitment to arousal and the irony was irritating. He shifted up and down a little. It was high tide in my mouth.
I hope Jazz isn’t too grief-stricken to tell the funeral cosmetologist to use Ruby Woo on my cadaver. It’s my favourite. Brings out the warm reds in my skin.
Ola pulled away and pushed a hot, sweet breeze across my face. He’d chosen Ben&Jerry’s as a snack. When we first kissed, the taste of chocolate and caramel had made me optimistic. Made me follow where his lips led. Maybe I confused the taste of ice cream with the taste of him. He was heavy lidded, a sultry obsidian glint squinting through a frame of long, feathery lashes. The combination reminded me of summer nights in Lagos at my family compound. Grey-blue puffs softening the dark night sky, stars peeking through the haze. Their flashes of light winking and incising through the deep azure blur. Don’t be fooled, they chimed. Yeah the sky looks romantic as fuck, but there’s still fire in this shit. Not us, because we’re dead, but we’re reminders. Things are still burning within the depth of this height. I could never tell if the soft edged smokily translucent blobs in the Lagos sky were puffs of pollution or cloud. Plumes of toxicity or water; life. They looked beautiful either way.
A small smile slid around on Ola’s Abercrombie & Fitch model face, complementing his sultry gaze. Calling for camaraderie in pleasure. Incidentally, Ola did actually have a summer job at Hollister. The one in our local shopping centre had a new diversity scheme. One black and one Asian to add to the rotation of pink-nippled, faux-caramel, topless hunks paid London Living Wage to stand outside and entice fifteen-year-old girls into a darkened mock-beachhouse. Ola got the role of the black.
I’ve been inside a Hollister exactly once. It was for my fourteen-year-old sister’s birthday present. She wanted some hoodie that made her feel like she lived in a sleepy beach town in California. She already called our Westfield ‘the mall’ and pronounced Adidas, ‘A-dee-das’. She didn’t need encouragement. Adolescent disappointment was a sobering thing to be the object of though, so I decided to get it as well as a purple, leather Moleskin diary for her to chronicle her teenage years in.
“Why did you get me a notebook?”
“It’s… a diary.”
“Why?”
“When I was your age—”
“Ew.”
“Writing things out helped with a lot of stuff. Made me straighten things out in my head. And it’s fun to look back on when you’re older. Sometimes you don’t realise how awesome you are till you read back your own words.”
“Like when you read your own tweets back?”
“Right.”
“So it’s like old school Twitter.”
“Except it’s just for you. And you have the freedom to do you without worrying about other people’s opinions. It’s like, self-developing.”
She nodded slowly. “K. Thanks for the hoodie.”
Going into Hollister was a triggering experience. It smelled like the preppy white boy I’d met at a party who informed me that He Just Loved My Skin-Tone It’s So Gorgeous And He Was Planning For A Gap Year In Africa What Age Did I Arrive Here Wow I Didn’t Sound Nigerian Where Did I Go To School Was It Grammar You’re So Well Spoken Ha Ha, before leaning forward, breath smelling like jaegerbombs and curiosity and confessing that He’s Never Kissed A — quick furtive, shy look to my right shoulder, and then to my face — Black Girl Before. Said with a shit-eating-gee-shucks-aren’t-I-so-open-minded-self-congratulatory smirk.
He was a faux-bro; the kind of guy who said sick and dope and fam and bruh with a Chelsea By Way Of LA lilt. “Kendrick Lamar, man,” he told me by the chips and dips as we were being warned to Not Kill The Vibe, “is the fucking man, man. So dope. What a dude. So sick. To Pimp A Butterfly? What an insight into the Black Experience you know?” I cast an eye out for Jazz so she could save me from this funky-fresh hell, but she was giggling and smacking Adam Suliman’s arm and he was smiling demurely and looking at her like she was a slab of skinless chicken breast and boiled broccoli (he was a gym nut). He was newly single and so was she and far be it from me to get in between my best friend and the man of her vision board (Adam kind of looked like Drake). I would have to endure V-neck-tee for the time being and when I really thought about it, tilted my brain a little and squinted, it was really quite entertaining. He seemed delighted by his attraction to me. So fucking wild with his exotic taste in dark-skinned black girls. I had waist-length black and purple box braids then too, so I bet he gave himself extra points for having the hots for an Authentic Looking One. Probably would have given himself half a point if he saw me with the wavy, 16-inch weave I have on now.
I smiled and titled my head to the side, “How does it go again? It starts with this sample… super old school — ” I shut my eyes and waved my hand around. “Kinda like the theme of an eighties sitcom…” I opened my eyes and gestured to him, “You know right?” He smiled, pleased that he could finally give me something to bite. “Every nig — “
He stopped. Frozen for a sick, silent second. He coughed, his cheeks matching my white, plastic cup of £5 rosé. I sipped from it — nodded deeply. “Ah, that’s right. Every nigga is a star.” To my knowledge he did not kiss a black girl that night.
Ola’s grin was a wicked slant. Turned out he also looked good in Ruby Woo. We shared the same base tones.
Ola sang.
I found this out at our end of year talent show — he treated us all with a Chris Brown ditty, the lyrics of which could be referred to if you ever you required a list of synonyms for moist and vagina. Jazz had squeezed my arm, lilac shellac digging into my skin but I was already looking right at Trey Wrong, who, to be sure, was giving me a look designed to make my pussy purr. I can’t take responsibility for that neat bit of alliteration, though. Pussy purr was a lyric in the bridge, and it was what he was serenading me with when his gaze sought and snatched mine. It was a particularly-tricky-to achieve balance of urbane nonchalance and seductive charm. It was cultivated to disarm, but my security systems were reinforced with questions and he had just blinked the machinery awake. Welcome To Temi Adesina’s Intrigue. Name and qualification? Will You Make Her Laugh? Be able to discuss Junot Diaz and Hip Hop in the same conversation?
I cocked my head and squinted my eyes and let the notion ruminate as he rhymed kitty with licky, flicky with sticky. The proposition rolled in my mind as he body-rolled and lifted up his shirt to display part of a six-pack that narrowed into a razor sharp V. Almost exactly like the one that Usher displayed in the “Confessions” video. That was a pivotal moment in my pubescent transition.
There was no real stratification in our school; if there were though, if this were an American high-school rom-com and I was doing the introductory voiceover, he would be the person the camera zoomed in on in the cafeteria wearing a letterman jacket, a football under his arm, surrounded by cheerleaders and sycophantic bros.
“And that? That’s Ola Johnson.” My words would slide through a sigh. “Star of the football team. He sits behind me in English. We talk after class sometimes. He once wrote a poem about how he’s conflicted between working for his dad’s construction business and his dream of singing Justin Bieber covers on Youtube before being discovered and having his own line of urban streetwear! He’s so sensitive!”
“But…” — a pause as the camera pans to me sitting at a table with Jazz. Probably staring forlornly. Maybe with an open notebook in front of me, signifying the fact that I’m an introverted writer — “I’m not part of his world. Not really. He just sees me as the nerd he talks to about books and the complexities of Kanye West. He’ll never see me like The Other Girls. Like A Cool Girl.”
That though, would lean on a movie trope that provides the only reason for my inability to suspend disbelief in your average teen rom-com — a genre in which one can only find the perfect date outfit by trying on fifty ridiculous ones to a pop-rock soundtrack at a suburban mall.
It relies on teenage girls with dichotomous personalities. Bookworms or fashionistas. Smart and funny or vacuous and conventionally hot. One is not like the other. And as per the diktats of the genre, the Hot Dumb Chick only has the guy for maybe 60 minutes of a 108-minute movie. Smart, Funny Bookish Girl has him — spiritually for the whole movie and physically for the last eight minutes — and as hinted at, Ever After. Sickness and in health. University and the quarter-life crisis after uni where you don’t know who or what you are or if you truly want what you always thought you wanted. There would be various clumsy awkward meet-cutes on the way, of course. Dropped books. Hands brushing accidentally. That fission upon first physical contact that causes electricity to course up his veins right through to his optic nerves to jolt the advent of him seeing you in That Way.
The origin story of how I ended up beneath Ola Johnson in his front room didn’t quite happen that way. I wasn’t humbled by his attention. Like I said, there was no real de facto social hierarchy at our school. It allowed for the complexity of human beings and didn’t compress to faction. So the fact that I liked books didn’t relegate me to a life of not knowing what clothes suited the dip of my waist and the curve of my hips. Model UN didn’t teach me that my smile is a weapon and the fact that I often spared boys from it only conserved its potency, concentrated it, increased its lethality so when I shot a sniper smirk at them their hearts stopped. I wasn’t overly concerned with being liked so I guess that made me liked. Treat them indifferently cultivate a mystery. I had a close-knit group of friends, with Jazz and I a unit within it. But I wasn’t special. The only thing about me that teased out curiosity was the fact that I didn’t date. No boy at our school had got a Nandos stamp from me yet. It’s important to note that this wasn’t out of any worthy objective. Like, I wasn’t saving myself for Michael Bae Jordan. I needed to sow my wild oats before I settled down within his sinewy arms. There was technically choice. I’d been asked out at school. And even though I’m ideologically opposed to them I was shortlisted for the Pengest Girl of Year 11. The most prestigious of accolades. If fifty spotty, skinny boys finding me attractive isn’t proof of eligibility I don’t know what is.
The fact of the matter is, no one appealed to me. Dating for dating’s sake wasn’t attractive either. Sure, you’d maybe get a free meal out of it if you were going on a date with a guy who didn’t bend feminism to balance his cheapskate on. But most of the time we know — within the first three seconds — whether we like someone, and everything else is an extended road to disappointment.
When I say liking I’m not talking instant hots. Though it helps. That moment where eyes meet, that gaze-kiss acting like a key for unlocking a trap-door within your belly, allowing electricity to slip through and dip low and make your blood pulsate like 2011 pop-R&B-electro. That’s great. That’s thrilling. But I’m talking about something less tangible. Within the first conversation, I think you know — whether you acknowledge the knowledge or not — that there is a premise for something more. Most people ignore it, braced by the fear of being alone. Flattered by the notion of being Wanted. Reward: the burden of Feelings. Yours and another’s.
One time I got tricked into going on a double date. Jazz, some guy she met at a University open day, and his best friend. We were at a Pizza Express on a Wednesday night. That was the only day they accepted a student discount. There was a small candle lit between three Americans and a Sloppy Giuseppe. Jazz and her guy were talking about something that caused her to flick her thick, dark hair off her shoulder and tilt her chin like she did when she was in her zone and a guy was unwittingly experiencing his last few moments of autonomy before he found himself fully submerged in the Jazz Juju that inspired two love letters on Instagram and a now-deleted passive aggressive Twitter rant in the past (Mandem. Girls are RUTHLESS uno!). There was a tinnitus-inducing silence between myself and Wingman. Two anchors trying to bond. Eventually, he asked me what my favourite kind of TV was.
Comedy.
Him: Like, “Big Bang Theory” and stuff?
Me:
Jazz: (Wide eyes. Warning. Pleading)
Me:
Me: “Big Bang Theory” is not comedy.
Him: That tall dude is pretty funny.
Me: I mean sure Sheldon is an alright comic character — but I mean, that doesn’t detract from the fact that the show is a lazy caricature of nerd culture. Like it’s so one dimensional. Besides, Sheldon’s character lacks creativity — he’s only quirky because it’s implied that he is slightly autistic. So it’s not just unfunny, it’s offensively funny. Don’t even get me started on race and the fact that the Asian guy — Raj? — is used to buttress bullshit racialised idiotic jokes. I tuned in the other day because I was waiting for “New Girl” to come on, and this guy with a bad haircut walks in and says “What’s up my nerdizzles!”
I paused. His smile wavered. I jutted my chin out, beckoning him with a nod.
Me: I mean what the fuck right?
Him (scratching the back of his neck): Ha. Yeah. So weird. You go proper in. Fair enough. You gonna get the cheesecake?
So maybe I’m also just not breezy enough for it. I can’t drip-feed my personality; temper it till someone gets used to my temperature. I can only be hot or cold. My lone (pesky) B in GCSE physics taught me that heat is energy. It’s easier for me to focus on things I know won’t waste it. Myself. My friends. School. Things that don’t require anything but me, unrefined. Things I don’t have to soften to make me digestible to them. Things that don’t require ego-stroking.
So, Ola and I meandered around each other. He joined our school in sixth form; we didn’t know each other well. He dated around, I didn’t date at all. But in the space between us, I guess there were question marks. He was my direct rival in AS politics. Top of the class flirted with both of us depending on its mood. We quietly competed for its affection. If I rolled my eyes surreptitiously when someone said something dumb in class, Ola would catch it and shoot me a small smirk. He had a face I liked. Jazz once described his skin as “deeply lickable.” Objectively, I had to agree. His skin was dark and poreless, lips shaped ridiculously finely — delicately — for things so full and bold and heavy. He often held a pen between them when thinking. He wore black-rimmed glasses in class. They complemented a jaw that could slice a finger when dragged across it and were propped by the strong curves of his Yoruba nose. He pushed the sleeves of his shirt up often — the politics classroom was stuffy. His arms were steep slopes, sharp dips you might take a trip up or down if you were so inclined. I was latently intrigued.
Ola was at that party where I met Mackle-oh-hell-naw. He’d walked in alone, but upon entrance, a girl had linked arms and nuzzled into him like a cat, back arching, tongue darting out, licking lips that were already glossy, eyes flashing. She was skilled. It was as if she had some sort of sixth sense that was triggered when he walked in — she had turned around immediately, alerted maybe, by the scent of her prey — notes of sandalwood and genuine confidence alloyed with the fake-it-till-you-make-it variety that didn’t look counterfeit to the untrained adolescent eye. I hadn’t recognised her — this was an inter-collegiate party, the birthday of someone who went to a neighbouring school. Friends of friends and frenemies of frenemies in one suburban semi-void of responsible adults, due to a weekend wedding in the country. I didn’t know her, but I knew she was cooler than me, probably. She had blue and black bum-length box-braids — half up, half down — and a gold septum piercing with tiny, intricate, jangling adornments. She looked like a manic-pixie-Tumblr dream in a crop-top and culottes pairing. I’m not intimidated by much, but a girl who can pull off culottes comes pretty close.
His best friend had just announced him town-crier style, Just Look At That Handsome Motherfucker, and he had been making a beeline for his posse before she intercepted and dragged him over to the make-shift bar in the corner of the room. She led him by the hand. She was beautiful; her skill, artful. An arm-slap would mutate into a stroke. That stroke would evolve into a breast-stroke as she reached over to get a bottle opener, shirt brushing arm. It was a dance and Ola knew each of the moves, performed his part. He bent his head so she could whisper something in his ear — the music was, after all, at a very reasonable decibel for comfortable conversation. He nodded, flashing a grin as he quipped something that would make the girl shake her head and slap him on the arm and the canon would begin again. She followed as he drifted over to his boys. She meandered over to her friends once, but only so she could bring them into what was becoming a rookery of penguins trying to keep their heat in. Once or twice or thrice his gaze cast out and caught mine and he released a small self-effacing, slightly embarrassed smirk, like he was above all this, the posturing, this makeshift clique that had formed so his friends could survive this party — fortify themselves against social nakedness — and my face remained straight, maybe turned up a little as I sipped from my dinky white plastic cup, because I wasn’t about to swallow his lie. I wasn’t about to let him believe it either. I respected him too much — he had beaten me by a percentage in our last mock before exams. I knew and he knew that part of himself enjoyed being a part of it — even if he felt apart from it.
I tore my eyes from his and turned to a friend who was tugging at my arm to dance, and when I glanced back at the cluster of cuties he was breaking free. Septum-piercing had stumbled back unnecessarily to perform her shock at his audacity in extricating himself from her promise. Her eyes trailed his movements; they happened to be in my direction. It only took about six strides to cross the room and he was on step four. I turned to my friend — she shook her head to dismiss any attempt at explanation and vanished. Her movement revealed that Jazz — from Adam’s lap — was smirking with wide mock-scandalised eyes. I rolled mine, and by the time they turned back in front of me, he was inches away. His smile was boyish and shy and dangerous.
“Hi. You’re here.”
“I am. Or am I? Are any of us really here?” Did I always have to tilt my head like I was doing right then when I wanted to look him in the eye? Was he always this tall? Had I ever really looked him in the eye?
“l wasn’t expecting you to come. You don’t come to these things.”
“Gotta chill with the mortals every once in a while. Keeps me grounded. Relatable.”
He caught the beat between his teeth. He nodded, face straight. “Of course. Remind me of your powers again?”
“Eyes that can carve out the hearts of wastemen. All I need to do is say when.” The corner of his mouth rose up, presented a slanted curve. The spark of his grin ignited something in the space between us. His eyes didn’t leave mine. Something shifted. This was different from any other conversation we had ever had — in that it was a conversation. Before, we had moved around each other in corridors and classrooms, brushing past each other, potential energy crackling, but he was always dating and I was always hating the idea of it. Besides, I had convinced myself that despite his promising veneer, disappointment lay behind it. Nothing personal, but just the very fact that he was a teenage male. Unfair, maybe. Protection, probably.
I’d seen Jazz get her heart broken. Eight months with a guy from a nearby sixth form college. He cheated on her. She’d found out through a social-media hole, big brown eyes filled to the brim, chest heaving. We balmed the wound with ice cream, sleepovers, and movies with Channing Tatum. There was nothing extraordinary about it. It happens daily. Globally. Universally. But maybe that’s what I found so insidious about heartbreak. It’s so very ordinary. And it reads so boringly. He cheated on her. They broke up. It neatly compacts and diminishes the residual damage — like my best friend with a smile like daybreak found it trapped beneath the rubble of hurt for two months following. Or the fact that her bounding, trusting eyes took months to shed scales of skepticism and regain its light and playfulness and her ability to see potential again. The worst part of it all were the questions. Insidious and dangerous. Lacerating her self-esteem in such broad strokes that I too, standing as close I was to her — always am to her — caught the edge of them.
WasItMeDidIDoAnythingWrongWasIStupidWhatMakesHerBetterThanMeWhatsWrongWithMeAmINotPrettyEnoughAmINotSmartEnoughAmINotFunnyEnoughAmINotEnoughAmINotEnoughAmINotEnough?
And all of these questions were asked knowing that he was a piece of shit.
He wasn’t absolved, but still, the self-doubt nicked at her resolve. Jazz was sunlight and strength; a sweet cocktail with sugar round the rim of the glass that held it and burned through your chest as you swallowed, but she was knocked. He cheated-and-they-broke-up, doesn’t include the strength it takes to rebuild one’s self after someone has broken off bits of you.
Cheated-and-broken-up doesn’t include the effort it takes to neutralise the bitter aftertaste. Doesn’t encapsulate the self-love it requires to cleanse your palette and choose to resolutely, stubbornly believe that there is nothing wrong with you; to let that fact alloy to your mind to protect it from the questions that resurrect themselves in your quietest of moments or when you run into him with another girl at Westfield Vue while queuing for some Marvel film. It doesn’t nod at the confidence it takes to run such a cool eye across him that his fro-yo stops melting — before turning away, leaving him shivering and regretful in your wake, the pretty girl with him smacking his arm and asking him whothefuckwasthat. There is a certain strength, requisite for the rolling of eyes, the shrug at the potential tension and wound opening, to move on with a group of hot men in tight costumes avenging something. Teen heartbreak sounds trite — a supposed rite of passage, but it’s brutal and siphons emotion, energy. I didn’t think I had the capacity for it. I was sparse with my feelings and tight about things I gave a shit about. I guess this was probably why I was intense with the things I gave a shit about. Friends and writing, and in a dry, objective sense, school. Romance was a high risk emotional expense. I didn’t have space for it. I wasn’t willing to make space for it.
There’s something about romantic trust that gives intimate power to its object. You can have many friends but traditionally romance is a narrower scope. It has an element of being chosen — its object has something over you. It knows it’s been separated from an ore of technical potentials. With the right person, that should feel like a privilege. In the wrong hands, a license to exploit. If the wrong hands are attached to a canny brain it means they’ll work out that the more they make themselves chosen, the more they can get. “More” might be attention, affection. Could be sex. Often it is. I’ve noticed that if the wrong hands and canny brain are attached to a young, straight male, everything that comprises what it takes to make a girl Choose can be cynically melted down to a key: Make Her Feel Like She Too Is Chosen. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The wrong hands will try this key, just in case it clicks. A lot of teenage boys are the wrong hands.
But. Ola smelled kind of good right them. Really good. Mint and citrus and sandalwood and seriously was he always this tall and I liked his bomber jacket and his collarbone was like etched from polished mahogany or whatever and it gleamed from the neck-line of his thin, grey t-shirt and he was looking at me, really looking at me. It was the last party before the end of term. There were two weeks before we left for exams. It was unlikely we’d see each other again properly without concerted effort. He seemed aware. He was bolder tonight, the glint in his eye wilder. He used to edge around me before; we’d never had a proper conversation. Not one held long enough to give us time to unpack the fastening of gazes and the tilt of the atmosphere between us. There were nods and heys, nothing else. But the nothing else only accentuated the something else. And now we were here. Him, me and our blushing, pet elephant.
He nodded. “So. You look really gross tonight.”
“Thank you. I was really going for repellent though.”
A short pause. Ola’s gaze glinted, his grin too, kept at bay, bouncing against the film of his pupils. “Of course you wouldn’t get offended like I’d planned for.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“Because I just said something offensive.”
“Did you? Because all I heard is you trying to do A Thing.” The smile was picking at my lips, trying to pry it open, push the corners further apart. I bit it back. I hitched a shoulder up. Ola bent forward, his eyes trained on mine.
“Okay, so it’s for a thing. Can you please play along? Gasp and be pissed and ask me how fucking dare I. Like, I know I’m an idiot. You remind me of that in class. You’ve reminded me for two years. Humour a brother.” My smile began to rattle in its cages. I cleared my throat and put my drink down on the table I was leaning against.
“Okay. Go.”
He shot me a look of gratitude before he cleared his throat. “Wow. Temi.” He ran his eyes across me almost imperceptibly, purposefully. The glint in his eye snagged on the corner of my mouth and tugged it upwards. “You look…really awful tonight. Just…ugh. My eyes.” His smile deepened. “They’re melting, from like” — he waved hand in front my face — “the horror. Of your face.” Something escaped from my lips. Might have been a laugh. I swallowed it back down quickly.
“How fucking dare you.” My voice was flat, making space for our new energy. My eyes sparring with his. My lips started to become uncharacteristically malleable.
He cleared his throat, Shakespearean with his principle line. “Sorry. I do this thing where I say the opposite of anything that comes to mind when I see beautiful girls.”
My eyes glanced upwards and my smile remained inwards. “Ah.”
He shrugged. “I get nervous. Say the wrong thing. Come on way too strong. I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying too hard you know? I figured I need to start playing hard to get. Want them to wonder what’s going on in my head. Like Oh , Ola! What is he thinking! He’s so mysterious!”
I bit my lip but it slipped from my grip. When the fuck did he become funny? Was he always this funny? I always thought he was vaguely amusing when I caught residues of the sarcasm he directed at his friends. I retweeted him sometimes. But this was an interesting turn of events. He caught my smile on its way out, swallowed it and stepped closer. He looked like he had won something. I had a sniper smile, but this guy was acting like he had a death wish. I cleared my throat. “Yeah. You’re fucking impenetrable.”
“Right. And I bet it’s working. You’re intrigued right? I bet you want to know how long I’ve been playing this game for.”
I shifted my weight within my boots and relaxed against the wall next to us. I was wearing Docs and a grey jersey midi-skirt and a crop-top combo because I was really into the sartorial representation of the fact that I was tough but cute. I drew a circle on the inside of my cheek with my tongue. Picked up my drink, sipped. Put it back on the table. He was feeding me the lines, but I didn’t mind. I was curious to see where the crumbs would lead. His words were building a gingerbread house and I wanted to know who would be swallowed whole and who would be burned up or if it was going to be a case of both.
I bit into my cue. “How long have you been playing this game for?” He turned his lips downwards and looked to the side — the theatrics of a thought process, a calculated presentation of a calculation — before snapping his gaze back to mine so sharply it almost elicited a jolt in my pulse. Almost.
He shrugged. “I dunno. Two years, maybe.” I stilled to make up for the inner whirr.
“How do you think you’re doing?”
“Well. You haven’t said ‘when’ yet.”
“There’s time.”
“Not much though.” My eyes narrowed slightly in assessment, lips now completely pliable, softly curving to match his. Definitely bolder. If all his edges were blurred before, if I could never really define him, everything was coming into sharp focus now. Intense eyes, long lashes. Sure my smile could kill, but his could feel like a kick in the guts. It wasn’t anything to underestimate. It bubbled under the surface like he wanted to share it with me but didn’t want it to spill over to other people. When he finally released it, it was like he reckoned I was worth the risk.
I nodded behind his head, in the direction of the pretty panther who was shooting us bullets from between two heavily lined lids. I’d snatched her catch. “She’s buff.” Ola didn’t turn around. His eyes remained on mine.
“Who Kyra? Yeah. She is.” The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was taut with promises. Felt volatile. The music faded into a distant thud, and it was replaced by the one tapping a new rhythm on the drum in my ear. He smiled and I ran my tongue across my lip and nodded slowly, releasing a sharp exhalation through my nose together with a sound that I guess could be interpreted as a laugh which was weird because boys never made me laugh and yet here we were, bubbles falling out fast and loose. Every time they escaped, his lips bent deeper in triumph.
He put the beer he was holding down next to my plastic cup. I looked up at him challengingly from where I stood against the wall. He took a half step closer to me. We were contained, and with the minimisation of the space between us the air became thicker, whatever we had, more potent.
His head was bent. His voice lower, more naked, something about its timbre speaking to something base in me and it was talking back which is bizarre because I thought it was mute. “What do I have to do.” It was a question but also an acknowledgement.
“Nothing. It’s not personal. I just don’t date.”
“That’s been well publicised.”
“By who?”
“Every guy in school who’s tried to save face and cover the huge fucking hole in their chest after you’ve rejected them.”
Yet another smile slipped out. “We’ve got exams.”
“And a whole summer after them.”
“And then we’re off to uni — ”
“In the same city.”
“New people, new experiences.”
“Two years and we barely know each other. We count.” I paused.
“What if I just said no?”
“Are you saying no? If you are, no problem.”
I stilled. I’d never had to think about that question. No usually fell out freely, rejection by rote, but right then it kept getting stuck in my throat, halted in its progression by the way he was looking at me. I was weakening. My usual defences kept snagging on their way up. I was pressing on the trigger but no bullets were being spat out. That had never happened before. Tactics had to be switched. Apparently I couldn’t stop myself. I had to make him stop.
I shook my head. “Okay. You wanna know something about me?”
“I thought I made it clear. I’m not interested in you at all.”
“I’m a romantic. A huge romantic. A sucker for a grand gesture.” Ola rose his brow skeptically.
“Really.”
“Oh yeah. I love the drama of it all. I love public declarations. For example, trying to stop various modes of public transport just so you can jump on board and tell the love of your life that you like the way she crinkles her nose when she laughs and picks tomatoes out of sandwiches, all to stop her from moving to a new city. Buses, planes, trains, I’m not picky. It’s just so fucking romantic, y’know? “I Love You” written on a jumbotron at a sports games. Do they have that in England? I dunno. I’m sure it’s possible in like Leicester Square. You know what’s also cool? Blimps.”
“Blimps.”
“Blimps. Your love literally being written in the sky. Stand outside my house with a boombox. Chase after me on New Year’s Eve. Tell me, breathless with realisation that I am Not Like Any Girl You’ve Ever Met. Whilst crying, preferably. I’m cool with just a touch of mist.”
Ola nodded slowly and rubbed his jaw, his head dropping as he laughed, before meeting my gaze.
“Okay. I get it. You don’t date.”
I hitched a shoulder up. “Sorry.”
His smile was soft now, small now.
“Don’t be.” He reached for my elbow, gently touching it as he bent down and kissed my cheek. It was a fraction of a second, but it was an almighty burning brush of lips against skin. It was so searing that it must have been noted by giver as well as recipient. He straightened back up, nodded at me, frowned, and then suddenly put his hand flat against his chest, tapping frantically in a circular motion. He pulled a grimace, and slowly brought his hand before his face, a look of horrified realisation adorning it. His heart had been carved out. It melted back into a gentle grin and he walked two steps backwards, bowed, and turning around, faced his court.
My blood cooled. I had approximately 30 seconds to gather myself before Jazz extricated herself for a debrief but every time I picked up a piece of what was supposed to be me, I didn’t recognise it.
Fuck.
My stomach started to swirl sickly, darkly, deliciously and leaning against the wall became a practical need for support rather than the semblance of nonchalance.
I planned for everything. Everything I did was weighed and measured. I had to work hard to get good grades so I could study law to proactively assuage and appease my parents in preparation for when I neglected that degree and hurtled towards the uncertain, unsteady realm of The Arts. I wanted to write. Anything or everything and anything and would go anywhere that passion transported me. Law would be their comfort. Their £9k comfort. I planned for romance in a distant mythical way. In a maybe-I’ll-meet-someone-in-uni sort of way. I didn’t have time or the capacity for it and it never seemed worth it but now I was presented with something I never expected. Finding Ola Johnson really kind of fucking adorable.
His words fell out and into place with mine, matching in beat and in tone, parrying and thrusting, and speaking of thrusting he was really stupid hot. He smelled really good. I’ve said that.
It was pushed to the back of my mind for a week and a half. Superficially, it seemed we had fallen back into being acquaintances. Cursory interactions. Smiles and nods. Except now, when he smiled, it wasn’t shy, or polite. It was small, and deliberate and concentrated. It made something velvet and dark and chocolate pool in my belly. The air between us felt tauter, like if you plucked it something would snap. Someone would snap.
Then came the talent show. Ola, on the stage of our school hall, spectacularly calling my bluff through impressive riffs. Touché. I shook my head. He winked at me. I laughed and Jazz’s jaw dropped. This was my grand gesture. It was ridiculous and technically embarrassing for us both. In reality it wasn’t though, because this was just for us. Now we had some glue, further traction. It was a public, private joke. It was the work of an evil genius. The dark pool in my belly simmered. On his last note, he threw the microphone on the stage, making it screech in protest over the roar of our year. He leaped off the stage and weaved through the audience and picked up my hand and led me out into the corridor and said, still breathless, sweat glistening on his forehead, “It doesn’t even have to technically be a date. Doesn’t have to be a huge thing. We can just watch Netflix. Eat snacks. You can destroy my self-esteem. We can chill”.
The “Shit. Fine.” made its way through a bubble of a laugh without cognitive acquiescence.
But now we were here and I was drowning.
It started off well enough. He’d opened the front door to an empty semi (his family was visiting friends) with a half-smile, black t-shirt and jeans, scents of white musk and cocoa butter ushering me in. Fresh out of the shower. “I always thought you lived in a beach house in Westfield.” Ola groaned as he followed me inside.
“I needed a job. They scouted me. Saving up for NYU summer program next year. Film.” Of course. Why quit with the cute now? He gestured to my leather jacket and I slid it off. He hung it on the coat-hook. I think I swallowed my startle but I wasn’t sure I did it fast enough. It may have made my eyes glint. Can’t be sure.
“Cool. I was looking into their lit summer program. I write.”
“I know. I read your blog. All the time. It’s sick.” We both paused. He nodded slowly.
“Wow. Rewind. Really, you write? That’s cool.” My smile widened. Biting it back was no longer an option.
He had Netflix set up on his TV. On the glass coffee table was popcorn, Doritos, M&Ms, water, Coke and a first aid kit. I looked at him questioningly. He shrugged. “My heart just grew back. Don’t wanna bleed out on mum’s carpet. Never too old for the slipper.” My laugh tripped and rolled out. It never saw its triggers coming.
“Relax. Your heart isn’t in danger of being eviscerated from your body. Again.”
Ola sat next to me and rose a brow. “Woah. Look, I like you, but isn’t it a bit soon for you to be declaring your love for me?”
“Sorry. Got a little ahead of myself. Is it awkward now?” I noticed that he had Brown Sugar queued. He must have done his research. It’s my favourite. I made a mental note to hit up Jazz to check if Ola had hit her up. He relaxed beside me, smile playful and slanting, cocoa butter wafting into my sensory attention. “Just rein the emotion in bit. It’s a little embarrassing”
Ola’s smile faded. Registration fell on his face. I wasn’t present. “You okay?”
He held still on top of me. The smile melted and slid. His brow furrowed. I wiggled my head about, trying to encourage words that were both right and kind to fall in formation. “Um…it’s just…”
“Fuck.” He hoisted himself up and I straightened, readjusting my top and reaching for a bottle of water. He groaned. “I thought something was weird. Like, in my head I just keep remembering the fact that you don’t date and it took two years to talk to you and now you’re here, amazing, and here and there’s all this pressure and I guess I overcompensated and… too much tongue?
I took a third swig of water and put the bottle back on the table. I either did us both a disservice and protected his feelings (however temporarily, because we would not be kissing again if what had just happened continued happening) or I respected whatever metallurgical reaction was happening between us. Gave it a chance to show us what it could do. This meant being myself — full capacity. Untempered. “Kinda. And with the tongue comes a lot of like… wetness?”
“Thank you. I want to die.”
I shook my head with a laugh that this time, worked no magic. I scooted closer to him on the sofa and unpicked his hands from his face — he had dropped in them, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Hey. It started off okay. Good, even. But I think you started to think too much. And it made me think too much. And maybe I didn’t give it enough attention. So you overcompensated. I dunno.”
“You know what it is? I don’t usually do this on a first date.” There was a stubborn light dancing in his eye despite the potential awkwardness, determined to maintain our rhythm. “I have morals and principles. You’re a bad influence.” His straight face bent my lips. I was still holding his hand. “This doesn’t count as a date.”
“Even worse. What are people gonna say? That I’m easy?”
“Yeah. You’re kind of a slut. I’ve lost a lot of respect for you.”
“My dad always said, never kiss on the first date. Stay away from girls with faces like yours. Smiles like yours. Chicks who wear leather jack — ” I pulled his deflective humour into my mouth. It tasted just like mine. A few seconds, and he followed. His lips took their cue. Their stage fright was wearing off. His thumb and forefinger moved to tilt my chin upwards and he beckoned me deeper and the dark, delicious feeling I was missing rose and then sank me further into whatever this, whatever this could be. My eyes closed. They hadn’t before. My hands took the scenic route to his shoulders — up the steep slopes of his arms — and pulled. His own curved round my waist to my back and pushed. We were kissing like any second we could both be burnt up. Control was ceded as quickly as it was seized on both sides. I guess our competition had moved from the scholastic to another arena. As soon as we parted for air we came back together more voracious. Oxygen + fire.
Eventually my palm pressed against his restless chest to separate us slightly. I cocked my head to the side in question. He shrugged in explanation. “You kissed me this time. Maybe knowing for sure that you’re into me was what I needed to — ”
I snorted. “Cute bullshit.”
“Had to try.” Our mouths and noses bumped and hovered and the heat was ratcheting up again. Our eyes locked. R&B electro. 2011 Usher. Ola’s lips spread against mine, into our conversational silence. “ Hi. You’re here. I wasn’t expecting you to come. You don’t usually — ” I flicked his arm and gave him a laugh to taste. “Wanna get Nandos with me tomorrow?”
I entered a short story competition, a collaboration between 4th Estate Books and The Guardian (an amazing one, a blessing, one that I think is groundbreaking and will change the British publishing industry) and I made the shortlist. I didn’t win, but it isn’t hyperbolic or bullshit triteness when I say that I feel like I did. Making the shortlist meant a lot. A lot. Even if you know you can’t not do something, even if you don’t know who you are without it — even when your brain and fingers feel too heavy and too full when you don’t do it, you still wonder if you should. If anyone would even want it once you’ve done it. I don’t often dwell on things I should technically be proud of. I move on quickly and eye up the next goal. This is different. This is something that is me in a way that is different from anything else. Writing is very much my first love. Well, second. After reading. They’re related anyway. I messed around with siblings, so sue me, I like to have fun. I have a lot of stories to tell. Mainly for young girls. Young black girls in particular. Girls who don’t often see themselves in the type of stories they love most. I craved them when growing up. This is the first time I’m putting something out there for strange eyes. I’ve always written for myself. It’s fun to know that other people may want to read what I’ve written too. It’s humbling and I am very grateful. OKAY, YEAH YOU’RE RIGHT, EW, GROSS.
Hope you enjoyed! (or not. Your prerogative. Just don’t @ me, I am a delicate flower. With petals that can close in and bite your face off.)
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Verna just hasn’t been the same since that magician hypnotized her at the Marfan Syndrome fundraiser in July. She sees red chairs when she should be seeing pink ones. She sees white chairs too, but that’s with her eyes closed. I would qualify this, but the presenting of specific facts makes for only more of a conundrum; and this, after all, is what I’m, these weeks at least, trying to, in a sense, preclude. Not that I want to befuddle anyone or be accused of obfuscating matters for my own personal satisfaction. There are bows to be tied around this thing, and, from what I can gather, one to two ways or a few others will do to shed a slice of light on it.
I sent my regards to the Laundromat. They came back bleached and tumble-dried. I hardly recognized them. The way they were folded made me feel almost super, but not quite.
For some time now I have felt like a car with its turn signal left on, and the car keeps going straight and not turning. Also, I have realized of late that I’ve come to prefer looking forward to things rather than having those things I’m looking forward to actually happen. This doesn’t please Verna in the slightest. But that’s decent of her, for she senses my gut instincts better than I do, and she prefers being bored to being pleased or excited by something. Somehow, we manage.
In the mornings it’s come to liverwurst pancakes smothered in horseradish. We have pickles on the side instead of toast. Sometimes I spread butter on the pickles just to remind my senses of what it was like to have things the way they were before. The clock, pensive and deliberate in its ticking (not to mention its tocking), pats our dreams on the back while they’re still melting away from us. Verna cranes her neck to catch a glimpse of the mailman through the front door’s rose-tinted glass. I pluck my nose hair and set it gingerly on the morning paper, which I, very noticeably, do not read at all. We sometimes grab each other’s earlobes to see how cold they are. This is done while seated.
The garage door opens and closes on its own. There is no pattern to it. We hardly know when it will occur, but when it does, well, let’s just say that it’s almost a magnanimous occurrence. Around these parts, well, that’s special. I want to leave the thing unplugged and roll the door up manually when we need to drive the car somewhere, but Verna is staunchly opposed to this. She has come to hate unplugging of any kind. She tells me the moon has changed its color, that it is now Isabelline when previously it had in various phases of its cycle been old lace, expired half-and-half, seashell, pale magnolia, whipped-cream-on-dusty-curtains, envelope white, tapioca, cereal-soaked milk, cotton, cow udder, and shiny silver dollar. I am afraid of unjustly upsetting her. The vacuum’s been plugged-in for weeks.
The hypnotist — a swarthy, barrel-chested man with a squarish head of thick, chestnut hair who reminded me of an odd-toed ungulate — warned us that Verna may suffer from some relapse effects, and that things like being hypnotized for the first time can tend to linger in one’s psyche long after the deed is done. We were aware of some small chances we were taking, but the benefits seemed to far outweigh any pernicious side-effects that would result, like her not being able to tell the difference between crocodile soup and alligator stew. What we were not expecting was for her to start using initialisms like FYI in her sentences, or for the act of showering to become inconsequential. I try not to hate her a little more all the time, but it is becoming difficult.
Verna has taken to leaving me notes on scraps of butcher paper around the house. She uses crayons. Her favorites seem to be Raw Umber and Atomic Tangerine. The notes say things like, “I love you dearly. Stay away from me constantly.” “Bring flowers to the lawnmower.” “You are awake.” “There’s a picture of us arm-in-arm on Catalina taken fifteen years ago. I used to know where it was. Now I remember that day better. It was hot. Your hair was sandy.” “Board the car on the left. I will not be waiting.” “I keep walking towards you. Keep walking the other way, my love.” “Quarreling is for sissies and assholes. Miss me so I won’t have to keep missing you.” “Go to bed.” Sometimes she draws stick-figure pictures to go along with them. I collect them in my sock drawer, under my socks.
I stand in our bedroom on the four-poster where Verna will no longer lie with me. I pull the shades. I turn off all the lights. I grab a fire extinguisher from the closet, hold it up above my head with both hands, run in place, and pretend that I’m running for my life. Verna knocks on the door and asks if I am in need of a spatula. I don’t respond. In the contest to see who can be the kindest we are both losing. I can hear her breathing. She says, “I will light myself on fire but only if you promise to extinguish the flames before my fingernails melt.” I keep running. The sound of pelicans snoring and skateboard wheels rattling over the street are all that I attempt to listen to, and after a while I don’t hear Verna breathing anymore. This is as it should be.
On weekday evenings I often catch Verna whispering to the carpet, down on all fours like somebody weeding a garden. She’s minding her own business; that’s fine and dandy with me; but it’s just the boysenberry jam slopped through her hair that makes me feel like an oven that’s been left on low heat overnight with a jar of mayonnaise inside. I snoop, slyly painting myself up against the wall, and try to overhear her esoteric mumbling. It’s no use. What she is saying is incomprehensible and for the carpet’s ears only. Her lips are so close to the Berber that I sometimes wonder if they might sneak a kiss or two. Her backside wiggles back and forth. Her back arches. The toes of her bare feet dig into the loop pile, crunching and cracking, clenching and releasing, finding definition in the thick, coarse, curls. I make a wish on the bent tines of an old dream’s silverware. Nobody takes me home.
There are criminals in our neighborhood. They break into dollhouses and loot wig factories. They run from the cops while hurling jelly doughnuts at them. Verna says the criminals have her respect, as they are loud but not obnoxious, and they hardly make unnecessary motions. Sitting idle becomes them. They attack guard dogs and chuck spare change at traffic. The criminals don’t worry about mealtime; they don’t make a salary; nobody’s ever accused them of naming names; and there is more common decency among them than in The United Nations. Verna wishes they would ride horses and rob banks. I figure there’s a heart-shaped gesture in there somewhere. As it stands, until further notice, plodding through the purgatory of life as we’ll never know it, we leave the doors unlocked. Timing is beyond either of our capacities.
“Tell me again what singing you started to tell me about a day without gum or coffee.”
She sings it.
“I don’t have any more responses left in me.”
“Worth living!” She is shouting now. “Is it? Is it worth living a day? Without? Without gum or coffee? Gum or coffee! A day without gum or coffee is not really a day at all!” It’s not singing. But it’s close.
“I know you.”
“Used to.”
“Know who?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“What? Who?”
“Nothing. Nobody.”
This was a conversation we had while we were lying on the grass in the backyard one afternoon while a blimp was hovering overhead. I remember how the sky looked. It was fringed with lace. It was herringbone clouds. It was splotch of sun, orange and blurry. It was smashed violet Jujubes and a clutter of grape skins. It was humped and worn-out. I wanted to shoot the blimp from the sky with a bow and arrow. I held Verna’s small hand as I thought about this. She didn’t hold mine back.
If I knew now what that hypnotist at the Marfan fundraiser knew then, well, I’d at least know what to expect next, and last for that matter. Verna has acquired a heavy German accent, and keeps ending her always incomplete sentences with, “…while I’m still alive and kicking.” It’s, fortunately, something that I, under the circumstances, presently, have come to understand.
Late at night, while the crickets crepitate each to each from the wall’s dead spots and I tumble 180s under the sheets, I think back to those times when Verna still didn’t utter collapsible syllables, when she’d offer to teach me parakeet hymns and would tie my shoes to a loaf of bread. Those are the times I’ll keep, not these ones of the lost-cartilage failures of understanding.
Peace quiets the airy loot of our place-specific sense of loss. I will the oilbirds of what we’ve got to the dust-gray clouds, and somehow the someday of what I used to only know in bits and pieces into the mouths of spoonbills.
I tell Verna that we’re going out tonight, and that she’d better wear that red dress, the one I used to like so well. Her mouth goes ovate. I tell her that I know a place where the dancing’s free. She scratches her ear and winks at me, clutching a baseball in her left hand, rolling it around a bit with her fingers in the palm, getting ready to be somebody. I stand there, leaning against the pantry door, pondering the difference between the there of here and here’s there that’s always a there even when here’s not. Distance evades me. I am not moving towards or away from her. Verna, as always, is calling the shots; she turns the whisky of me into water. Tonight I drive the milk truck of my past into the cement wall of my future. Don’t ask for me at the door. I’ll be gone before the dew hits the flowers in the morning. Settling, like punching seven numbers into a phone, is out of the question.
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On Breakups and Algorithms
“We don’t talk anymore, but when he starts dating again I’ll know,” I told a friend. We were sharing a joint at my going away party, days before I would print out a one-way ticket to the clean slate of Los Angeles. To start over, or to try.
“How?” she asked.
“He’ll delete my profile from his Netflix account,” I told her.
It made logical sense: he’d come home from some date — a setup or a Tinder swipe, I wasn’t sure — and get settled into an apartment I have never seen and probably never will. He’ll turn on his TV, or maybe his laptop, and before he can even begin to scroll through any number of wildlife documentaries, there I am. My name, my square — that ominous orange reminder of that time we shared our lives. Maybe there’s a girl with him, and her presence will remind him of my absence in every place but one. And poof. Gone, Girl. It’s only right. We’d broken up six months ago, and I’d never thrown him my half of the bill, anyway.
But when I crawled into bed at 3 a.m. that night to watch movies with my surrogate lover (the laptop that sleeps on the right side of my mattress), I was met with a surprise. The orange square was gone. I considered phone tapping, psychic abilities. Then I logged out of his account for the last time and registered my own. Rated a couple movies to expedite the Getting to Know You process. Passed out within five minutes of turning on the ABC Family drama, Cyberbully. My first rebound.
Any act of starting over has incidentals. You can lose your Netflix account, for example, and even entire neighborhoods. On bad days it feels like you’ve lost years, until insidious memories sneak into your brain and remind you of all the good things, the growth. How could those years be lost? They’re practically part of your muscle memory.
And yet. Pieces of you do get lost in relationships. Even those of us who cling to our individuality are bound to compromise on the “little” things. Like sure, we can listen to this album instead of that one. Let’s binge-watch this show, not that show. Let’s stay at my house; it’s more comfortable. Look how well we get along! By the way, have you seen my basic essence anywhere?
When you spend a long time with someone, it’s hard to remember which is a You Thing and which is a Relationship Thing. A Relationship Thing isn’t necessarily a compromise, it’s just something you enjoy together. Breaking Bad. That Mediterranean restaurant with the bangin’ bastilla. Andrew Bujalski films. Whatever.
But sometimes you start practicing Relationship Things during You Time. You forget that you also love to scream Michelle Branch at the top of your lungs, or that you’re free to go to all the bars your partner hates, or that you miss the thrill of playing dice for money. Instead, you go alone to the Mediterranean restaurant with the bangin’ bastilla because like, where else is there to go? Honest question, I don’t remember anymore.
This happened to me, my last week in Brooklyn. I was alone most days and spent them wandering around with the same thought knocking between my ears: “What will I miss?” There had to be some restaurant, some boutique, some bar or patch of sidewalk that warranted a goodbye. I tried to think back to the years before him and couldn’t remember where I’d spent my time, or why I’d stopped; if it were my choice or his. Some places closed, of course. Others, I just outgrew. Maybe. Point is, I gave up on goodbyes and took myself to the Mediterranean place for breakfast. Too early for bastilla and too late for some other things.
Lately when I look at my Instagram feed, I scroll all the way back to the beginning. I don’t even realize it’s happening until I reach a picture of myself holding a yellow poetry book. It was taken in 2013, on the first day of a job I left five months ago. When I reach that photo I think, “I’m doing it again.” It: Using the facts to piece together who I was.
Seamless has a similar effect. In my dropdown list are the four offices I’ve worked in, the five apartments I’ve lived in, the two apartments he lived in, that awful Airbnb in San Francisco, the house where we cat-sat the week of Christmas when it was decided we’d break up in 2015. Disaster preparedness. “Not right now, there’s no reason to do it now,” I’d said. We had Christmas and plans and love, still. “But in 2015…”
We broke up four months later, but not before casually entertaining the idea of moving to Los Angeles. (Casual, entertaining — these words are not accidents.) In the end, we both moved here anyway, separately. After months of processing the breakup together, it seems Los Angeles was maybe the only thing both of us were sure about.
If I had to choose one word to explain why the relationship ended, it would be incompatibility. It was his word. I had never considered it: I thought we had no future because I’m bad at cooking and closing cabinet doors, because of the size of my bones, because I take astrology a little too seriously. Things that could be forgiven, could even be loved. But no, the problem was more fundamental than that. We were born mismatched. It just took me forever to notice because I believed — believe — so deeply that relationships require effort. Showing up. Quieting the voice in your heart that sometimes reminds you, “But maybe this would be a little easier with someone else?”
A friend recently asked me if I wished I were a teenager in the 90s. I reminded her I had been, albeit briefly. Then I thought of my sister, who has sixteen years on me and lived out her twenties with answering machines and primitive AOL and boyfriends who disappeared when they became ex-boyfriends. “I wish I’d been in my twenties in the 90s,” I told her. She asked why. “It was the last time people had to make an effort to maintain relationships. You had to go out of your way to use a payphone, leave a voice message, ring doorbells. You could let the phone ring dozens of times and it wasn’t weird. And when things ended, they ended.” Lately I find nothing more romantic than falling out of touch.
Whenever I open Venmo to send money, my ex’s name appears at the top of my suggested friend list. Of course. You can’t give so much of yourself to one person, over and over, and expect all will be forgotten. Not anymore, anyway.
Netflix does not help me remember who I once was, not like Seamless or Instagram. I first shared an account with an ex-roommate, Venmoing him $50 every four months or whenever I remembered. Then my ex got an account and gave me a profile, and I switched between the two. Building disparate sets of preferences. Letting each profile differentiate between Relationship Things and Me Things. I never got to compare the two; they’ve both been deleted.
And now we start over. And now I live in a blank slate of a city with a blank Netflix account. A Netflix account that angered me the other day when I realized, after scrolling through my recommendations, that I was not Getting To Be Known. I had watched for hours, given countless stars, shared my input. But whatever the old Netflix knew about me is gone now. It tells me to watch The Interview, Worst Cooks in America Collection. Since moving, I have watched fourteen hours of The Twilight Zone.
What did I expect? This whole thing — the moving, the breakup, the algorithms — you really do have to start over. You have to collect whatever’s left of yourself and redistribute it. Again again again. You have to get out of bed and learn a new city, even when you discover your stowaway depression hiding in the darkest corner of your suitcase. You have to keep a whole and vulnerable-enough heart to let a boy with eyes like aventurine kiss you in broad daylight. You have to let [the city, the boy, the Netflix] take their time with you. You have to take your time with them.
God. The desperation in wanting to be known by anything, even an algorithm.
The boy with aventurine eyes told me about Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature. I get thirty songs delivered to me each Monday: songs I might like, or used to like, or had completely erased from memory. Songs I gave up during all those negotiations. Songs I gave up to grow up.
“Connected” by Stereo MC’s reminds me of driving on the interstate with my brother, all the windows down in 90-degree heat because his beat-up Toyota had no air conditioning. “Canned Heat” by Jamiroquai reminds me of watching Napoleon Dynamite in a friend’s dorm room freshman year, just months before meeting the first of many men I’d tell, “Whatever you want.” “Pale Blue Eyes” by Velvet Underground reminds me of watching Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland and just longing for any time, any love but the one I had.
Every Monday I am recollecting the lost bits. Rediscovering the Before of Bastilla and Bujalski. Dancing with someone I thought was dead. I am not being known; I am remembering myself. And when that’s all taken care of, then. Then is when we start over.
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“So a few weeks back, I saw a guy sleeping on the train.”
“I see that all the time.”
“Yeah, but this guy was sleeping on a girl’s shoulder.”
I’d seen this, too.
“And she was looking at her phone,” he said, “probably playing Puzzle & Dragons or something, while the guy slept. Gentle breaths, in and out. That awkward posture of a person sleeping in a cramped space.”
He took a swig of his beer. Watched memories swirl near the bottom of the mug. Continued.
“I looked at her, and I looked at him, and I figured they were together. I remember thinking how nice it must be to sometimes have a shoulder to sleep on.”
“Instead of just sitting there with your head back and your mouth wide open, looking like an idiot?”
“Right, right. But then the train stopped at Ikebukuro, and the guy woke up. He turned to the girl, muttered an apology, sumimasen, and then he was out the door. She nodded, watched for a moment, and then just went back to her phone.”
“They weren’t together?”
He shook his head.
“They weren’t together.”
We watched a drunken group of tourists stumble down the street. One of them sang. The others laughed. We shared a smile and a wave, and I waited.
“In that moment,” he said, “I thought, damn, here’s an opportunity I’ve been missing out on for the six years I’ve been in Tokyo.”
“This isn’t going where I think it’s going, is it?”
He shrugged.
“So over the next week I tried it out. I sat next to friendly looking people, and as the train rolled from the platform, I yawned and pretended to fall asleep. I swayed to the rumble of the train, and slowly let my head fall on the shoulder of the person next to me.”
“And?”
“And most of the time, it worked. Most people will sit there and let you do it. I don’t know if it’s a Japan thing, but more often than not, they shift slightly to accommodate the weight, and go back to their books, or their phones, or their newspapers.”
I thought of the times I’d seen people asleep on the train. Imagined them swaying towards my shoulder. What I’d do. What I’d say.
I weighed the effort of saying something against just letting it go.
Came up blank.
“What was your success rate?”
“A little over sixty percent, I’d guess. But even then, when you fail, people simply nudge you in the opposite direction. One day, I went from one shoulder straight to another. It was wonderful.”
“Kindness abounds in the darkness of the subway.”
“On the shoulders of its commuters.”
What is that, where you can fall asleep on the shoulder of a stranger, but you can’t approach them face to face? A shared sense of exhaustion? Or an estranged cry for help, perhaps — implicitly understood, and forgiven between stations.
“But why’d you keep doing it?”
“I don’t get out much, man. You know? I don’t have a girlfriend. Haven’t had one in a while. I don’t make friends easy. I work from home, and I’m always alone. I guess I wanted contact. Affection. This was a warmth I could steal. No baggage. No consequences. Just a little relationship that starts at one station and ends at another. No break-up, no goodbye, just a single moment of shared warmth.”
The words echoed in a way that enticed. Tempted. They made sense, and yet the environment felt wrong. Like fixing the colors in a painting that was already upside down and inside out.
The problem here was deeper than the palette selection.
“After a while though,” he said, “I really started falling asleep. I closed my eyes, hit a person’s shoulder, and dozed off.”
“I’ve never been able to do that. On trains, I mean. I’m almost envious.”
“It was beautiful. When it was there, it was a little pocket of bliss in a crowded train. A connection. A moment of peace. Intimacy without the baggage.”
“Sounds too good to be true.”
“In the end, it was.”
I paused.
“Oh?”
“I had trouble sleeping. I couldn’t find that sweet spot on the mattress. My pillows were too soft. The blankets suffocated. I’d wake up sporadically through the night. Woke up in the morning uncomfortable and bent out of shape.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, work suffered. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus. I started taking the train more often. Way more often. I’d ride the Yamanote Line in a loop, sometimes twice, trying to steal enough sleep from people’s shoulders to remain functional.”
It’s funny, the way bad habits snowball. How they start as little hairline fractures that go ignored until the window is shattered and the plane is crashing.
“One day, I was all haggard, unshaven, and I rode the line from Takadanobaba to Ueno, sleeping on the shoulder of a middle aged woman with a Prada handbag. I had this dream I was looking through fields for my old dog, Spooks, and somewhere I could hear The Byrds, playing Turn, Turn, Turn. I hadn’t heard that song in years. Decades maybe.”
“Funny. I don’t think I ever hear music in my dreams.”
“Well, when I woke up at Ueno, I realized it was her. It was the woman. She was humming The Byrds. And she looked at me and said you need to get some rest. And I said, yeah, you’re probably right. She said we all get tired sometimes, and she smiled.”
I waited. He looked for a place to put his words.
“She told me I looked like her son. He was a computer programmer. Like me. She said he lived at home, sometimes came home late, sometimes slept at the office. They kept a bird at home. A parrot. He taught it to say lines from songs by The Byrds. Thought it was funny. He said it would keep her company. I listened to her talk, and missed my stop. I said, where’s your son now? What’s he doing?”
“And what’d she say?”
“She looked at me, and she smiled sadly, and she said, this is my stop. And she left.”
“Woah.”
“I wondered about that conversation the rest of the day. I couldn’t get that look out of my head. Her eyes. Like a beautiful painting colored in pain and loss and kindness. That night, I slept like a baby.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
He shook his head.
“Actually, I bought a bicycle. I try not to ride the train these days. It’s…” he paused. “It’s healthier this way, you know?”
He stared at his empty beer mug. I saw more behind his eyes than what was said. Feelings and emotions he didn’t have words for.
I wondered if in his experiment, he stole warmth from others, or if they stole it from him. I wondered about the give-take ratio in that equation.
Was there a balance somewhere, in that upside down, inside-out painting he’d colored?
I lifted my mug. Empty.
“Another round?”
He nodded.
“Another round.”
Probably, we’d never know.
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