You've Escaped

Love Notebook #7

For the first 16 years of my life, you were the boy next door and I didn’t see what was right in front of me. My family had moved into the terracotta-colored house next door to yours when I was 5. You were 7 and your bedroom window looked into mine. I saw you watching movies in your beanbag chair, drawing the scenes you were watching; years later, you told me you used to watch me as I read books in my big purple chair, pushing my falling glasses up on my 10-year-old nose. I never thought of you because you were always there. After my dad taught me how to ride my bike and let me go to learn by falling, you would always run alongside me ready to catch me if I fell. The one time you came too late and I did fall, you, a thoughtful 11-year-old, carried me home, letting me cry against your neck and bleed against your shirt. You were the only boy my mom would let me play with and we grew up together, screaming all the way down the slide into my pool on weekends, making a new club (of which I was always president) every 30 seconds in my treehouse, sharing popcorn at the movies on summer afternoons. If ballet class and reading books and my family made up 2/3 of my childhood, you made up the last third.

It all ended when I was 14. The entire neighborhood found out that my mom had been cheating on my dad with the cardiologist down the street; my parents were getting a divorce. I stopped talking to everyone, locking myself in my room from the moment I got home from school. My parents and their lawyers argued for weeks about assets but the custody battle lasted two days. I refused to live with either of them, disgusted by my mother, disappointed in my dad for somehow letting things fall apart. I demanded to live with my grandparents, the people who had emotionally raised me my entire life. My parents gave in quickly, tired of fighting and scared of making me more upset. Our house went up on the market and sold quickly just as summer had begun. Movers came and packed up the separated furniture, clothing, knickknacks, plates, baby photos, Christmas ornaments, barbecue tools. I sulked on my bedroom floor as my life up until that point fell apart around me, nails removed from the wall where paintings hung, dents left in the rug where the dining room table once sat for Thanksgiving dinners. It’s rare in life when you get to watch something end but when you do, it’s fascinating and shattering all at once.

I stared at the ceiling fan spin above me when I heard a loud smack at my window. I looked up and saw you throwing colored pencils from your desk at my window. You gave me a questioning look and I knew that you wanted to come over. I hadn’t seen you except when entering or leaving my house in weeks, and I’d ignored your phone calls and instant messages, not wanting to talk about the permanent knot in my throat that made it impossible to get words out anyways. I sat up and looked at you, nervous and sincere in your tshirt and jeans. I hesitated. Something inside me opened up for a split second, just enough to want to let you in and I nodded at you. You smiled, picked something up from your desk, and left your room.

I ran a brush through my long hair and walked downstairs, unlocking the door before you could knock. I didn’t know where my parents were and didn’t care. I let you in and we stood awkwardly in the foyer for a minute without saying a word before I turned and padded quickly up the stairs to my bedroom. You followed close behind, patiently not bounding up the stairs with your long legs as you usually did. I walked into my room and sat on my bed, holding a pale yellow pillow in front of me as I leaned against the headboard. You sat down near the footboard and fiddled with a wrapped package shaped like a cd.

“What’s that?” I asked, watching your long fingers flip it around on your lap.

“I got it for you last week. I had been hoping to see you so I could give it to you Before you moved, you know.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Here, open it.”

You handed it to me and I unwrapped the tape from the plain blue paper, ripping it in the process. I smiled when I saw what it was: Amnesiac by Radiohead. I looked up at you as my fingers began working at the cd’s seal.

“Oh god, thank you. I forgot that it was coming out last week. I’ve been waiting to listen to this for months,” I said.

“No problem. I mean, we had talked about it so many times, I knew you wanted it and I figured with everything going on, you might have forgotten. Plus, I just wanted to get it for you.” You met my gaze and I felt myself blush. I looked down at the sticky sealing I was having trouble with.

“Can we listen to it now?”

“That’s what I was hoping for.” You were still looking at me. “Here, let me do that. You’ve always been bad at this.”

You easily removed the seal and opened the case, getting up and putting the cd in my stereo. You pressed play and adjusted the volume before walking back to my bed. Scooting next to me, you reached your arm out for me to lay in it and I gingerly laid my head against it, my body not even two-thirds the length of yours. Your hand rested around my shoulder as the first track played and we listened together. I hadn’t been held in months. I shied away from the usual kisses and hugs from my parents, afraid of what would happen if I let anyone too close to me. Yet here I was, letting you hold me for what felt like ages. The second track began and I listened to the lyrics.

i jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
all the figures i used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little row boat
there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. It played over and over in my head and I realized that for the first time in my life, there was plenty to fear and doubt. Tears welled in my eyes and I choked on the aching sob that came out of my mouth. I felt you tense and look down at me in concern as I buried my face against your chest. I cried like I used to when I would fall off my bike and hurt myself and just like then, you silently comforted me. You brushed the hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. I wrapped my arms around you and we listened to the rest of the album like that. My room was quiet when it ended and I could your heartbeat against my ear. The gentle thumping lulled me to sleep and I felt my eyelids close as your lips once again met my hairline. I slept the whole night for the first time in a long time.

When I woke up the next morning, you were gone but you left a note on my nightstand on top of the cd case. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and picked it up to read it.

Enjoy this. If you need me, I’m here.

I tucked the note into the liner notes and set it down. I laid back against my pillows, the exact spot I stayed for the next days as the movers finished packing up the rest of our house and even my room. I refused to pack and watched them pack up my things, taping shut boxes of my trophies and books and clothes. I finally had to get up when they moved my bed from the room, the last thing to go. I grabbed my pillow and cd case, watching from downstairs as three burly men carried my mattress and then the parts of my bed down the stairs. My grandparents soon arrived, hugging me and whispering how much they loved me into my ear. I gave stiff hugs to my tearful parents and I took my last walk down that driveway. I got into the backseat of the car and we drove around the cul de sac and onto the road. I looked out my window and saw you watching from your garage. I held the cd case tightly in my lap and turned my face forward as we drove away from my childhood. It was over.

My grandparents’ house was 15 minutes away and I had been going there since I was little but it felt different now. My grandparents had moved lovely new furniture in and painted the walls a sweet shade of rose but I still felt like I was just visiting. After dinner, I settled into my new bed and tried to sleep. I tossed and turned, tried to read, watch tv, but nothing helped. I looked at the phone on the nightstand and frowned. It might be too late to call but I had to try. I dialed the number to your room line and hoped the phone wouldn’t wake up your family. I shook my foot as I listened to the dial tone and I heard you pick up.

“Hello?” You sounded sleepy.

“Hi. It’s me.” I swallowed and felt nervous suddenly.

“Hi. Are you ok?” I could hear you sit up slightly.

“I’m ok. I just can’t sleep. It feels weird here I guess.”

“That makes sense, I guess it’ll take time to get used to it. How do you like it so far?”

“I don’t know. I love my grandparents but I just hate that everything is happening.” I laid back and suddenly, in the dark without your light eyes on me, I could feel myself open up more than I had in a while.

“I know. I wish I could make it stop.” You sighed.

“Me too. Do you want to watch something together, over the phone I mean?”

“Yeah, what do you want to watch?”

“What do we both own?”

“Um. Jurassic Park.”

“That works.”

We put in our movies and settled in to watch Jeff Goldblum run from velociraptors. We laughed all the way through the movie, knowing the script word for word. After it ended, we kept talking until I got sleepy finally and we said our goodnights. This routine lasted all summer and as school started, my freshman year and your junior year of high school, I went off to my private school and you went back to public school. We rarely got a chance to see each other with school and extracurricular activities but we talked on the phone as often as we could. There were times that we didn’t talk as often but in a few weeks we would come right back to whispering into the phone late at night.

You told me about how you really wanted to study film but that your parents were pressuring you to be an engineer like your dad. I told you about how I hated my changing body, and how I had tried to starve away the new breasts and hips that made me feel awkward and fat. You told me that the one time your dad had hit you when you were a kid made you lose respect for him. I told you when my now deranged mother got a DUI and had to go to rehab, and how badly I wished for a different mother. You told me about how scared you were to go to college in a few months and how you knew everything would be different then. I told you that I wasn’t sure if true love existed and how I was scared my mother had given me a bad parent gene somehow. You told me that you weren’t sure how to be happy a lot of the time, that the older you got the less things seemed to make sense. I told you that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about these things because it was awkward to bring up in the middle of comparing homecoming dresses. One night just after my sophomore year of high school had ended, you paused in the middle of one of these talks.

“Do you want to come over tomorrow?” You swallowed after you said it.

“To your house?” I had been avoiding going back there since I had left it. I didn’t want to see my childhood home.

“Yeah, I mean, we haven’t seen each other in a while and my parents will be at work. I want to see you a lot before I leave for school in September.”

“I just… I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be weird.”

“You don’t even have to look next door, just come inside and it’ll be like we’re at my house like old times. I promise.”

“Okay.” I could never say no to you.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at 10. Sweet dreams.”

“Night.”

We hung up the phone and I felt anxious about seeing you, being back near my old house, stirring up so many memories. I stayed awake for a long time, sleeping for just two or three hours before waking full of nerves again. I showered, brushed my hair, got dressed. I sat on my bed until I heard you honk the horn outside. I smoothed my skirt and grabbed my purse as I ran out the door, waving to my grandma.

You were in the used Camry you had chosen instead of a new car and I opened the passenger door and got inside. I hadn’t seen you in months and you had bloomed into a man. Your shoulders were broader and your jaw was more defined, and I could already tell that you had a different scent. I felt your eyes on me as I evaluated you and I blushed, still uncomfortable in my body. Neither of us spoke and we looked at each other. You reached your long arms out and pulled me close to you. My arms instantly snaked around your neck and it felt so good to hug you like that. It felt the same as always but there was a click I hadn’t expected. We stayed like that for a while. I slowly began to let go when I realized that my grandparents were probably watching from the window. I sat back in my seat and put on my seatbelt, palms resting on my thighs.

“Hi,” I said shyly with the stupidest grin on my face.

“Hi.” We had never been more like teenagers.

You pulled out of the driveway and began to drive the familiar route to your house. We listened to Belle and Sebastian and talked about the lead singer’s slight lisp. Out the window, I could see us getting closer and I felt anxious. You seemed to sense this and grabbed my hand as we talked about music and school. It felt so good to hold your hand, much bigger than the dirty hand I used to hold as we jumped into the pool together on summer days.

We pulled into the neighborhood and I was shocked that it looked exactly the same. Mrs. Cohen still had her jacaranda trees and the Greenbaums still had the dent in the rear bumper of their Volvo. You pulled into your driveway and I tried to ignore my old house to my right. I was trying my best to wonder why they changed the color of the shutters when you pulled inside the open garage. You parked and looked at me in the shadows of the garage. I felt better just looking at you.

I followed you into the house I knew so well and sat at your kitchen island. You brought two glasses of iced tea over and we drank them quietly. My anxiety melted as I realized how comfortable I felt with you in your house, how it felt like nothing had changed at all here. I could also see that you were uncomfortable in your house and that you looked like you didn’t know what to do there anymore.

We went upstairs to your room and you put on your parents’ copy of Abbey Road on your record player. I sat on the floor and you joined me, sitting close to me, both of us with legs outstretched. We spent the day on that floor, talking about our favorite bands at the time (you Sunny Day Real Estate and the Promise Ring and me Rilo Kiley and Minus the Bear), all my childhood injuries that you couldn’t save me from, that time we switched swimsuits and our moms were furious. Hours passed and we kicked off our shoes and got comfortable, lying on the rug and moving only to change the record.

Our bodies draped over each other, my bare foot under yours, my head resting on your chest as I watched your facial expressions as you talked. I could feel the warm afternoon sun through the window and I looked up and saw my old bedroom window. I stared for a full minute and I didn’t feel the yearning I had expected. I realized that it all was done and I was in the exact room I was supposed to be in at that moment. I looked back at you, still talking about The Virgin Suicides, and stared at your mouth. Without thinking, I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to yours. In all the years I had known you, I had never kissed you on the lips, not even jokingly, and now I was doing it and I was definitely not playing around. Your lips were soft and I opened my mouth for your tongue. I felt the stubble on your face under my fingers and I rolled onto my side and you rolled with me, your hand on my waist pulling me closer to you. I didn’t even open my eyes. That kiss began something that seemed to be written from the moment you decided to run next to my wobbly bicycle. It was summer.

You had graduated and I had nothing to do and so we spent every day like that first one. You picked me up every morning and we had breakfast and listened to music and watched movies and went swimming. These were the activities that filled the spare minutes that weren’t filled with making out. You turned your speakers to face out your window and we listened to music as we grew tan in the pool every afternoon. I read War and Peace that summer on one of the pool floats while you attempted to flip me over into the water every few minutes. I retaliated by slapping your sunburned shoulders. I had never been so well kissed before. We were 16 and 18 respectively and we thought that it could last forever; beneath the glare of the sun, it seemed like it could.

Shortly after the 4th of July, we were in your pool, catching our breaths against the wall after racing as In The Aeroplane Over The Sea swelled from the speakers. You looked at me and I knew something different was about to happen. Your arm slid around my waist and you pulled me to the center of the pool, still near the wall, so we could stand comfortably. You kissed my neck and I felt your hand slide from my waist down inside my swimsuit bottoms. You had never touched me there before, the only hand that had been there was my own. I gasped as your fingers began to work at my clit, my feet pressing against the wall as I pressed against your body. I kissed you and moaned into your mouth as you made me come in the water. I felt my flushed cheeks and looked at you, the first man to do that to me. You kissed my earlobe and looked at me before smiling.

“Come on,” you said, swimming to the ladder.

I was shaken still but I followed and stepped onto the hot cement. You grabbed my hand and walked quickly to a part of the yard shrouded by discreet shrubs. You pulled me close and kissed me, picking me up to wrap my legs around your waist. I felt my ankles cross as I tasted your tongue. Your hands worked the strings of my top and I felt it untie around my back and neck. Still kissing, you lowered me onto the grass, and then yourself as you pulled away my bikini top. You untied my bottoms as well and I laid in the grass naked beneath your gaze. I reached up to pull down your boardshorts and you kicked them away. You gingerly pressed against me and we kissed once again. The grass tickled my shoulders and I wrapped my arms around you. I knew what was about to happen and I felt nervous. You seemed to know and you held my face and kissed me as you slowly pushed inside me. It hurt and I felt tears in my eyes. You stopped and looked at me, concerned, but I nodded at you to continue. It was soon over and neither of us were virgins anymore. I didn’t feel very different.

We didn’t say a word during sex, or after. You held me in the grass and there were no I love you’s. I don’t think either of us really knew what to say to each other. It seemed as if we had been on course for this to happen before we even knew what sex was. We laid for a while and felt the sun on our warm skin, still pressed together. Soon we put our swimsuits back on and went back inside. We laid in your bed and watched reruns of Full House, neither of us saying a word. It was almost as if once we had sex, there was nothing left to say after months and years of talking. We had more sex that summer, becoming more comfortable with it, better at it, but it still didn’t feel right. It was something we were supposed to do and that felt good but we had lost something in the process. Our innocence, maybe.

You went to college soon after Labor Day and I started another year of high school. We spent one last day on your bedroom floor, listening to Hüsker Dü while we both put your stuff into boxes. I looked around me and realized that few things stayed the way they were for long. I wondered if there could possibly be a forever as I glanced at my old bedroom through the window and sat in my childhood love’s room as the memories began to unravel, broken and jostled on the road to new things.

We finished taping closed the boxes and sat next to each other in front of your bed. I reached out instinctively and grabbed your hand. It was the same firm grip as always but I could feel everything slipping away just like my parents’ marriage had two years before. I wanted my best friend back, I wanted to tell you everything I was scared of and how I naively wished we hadn’t become lovers so that things wouldn’t have changed between us. Life had pushed us to grow up and we had taken the final step into something resembling adulthood. If it wasn’t adulthood, it definitely wasn’t childhood anymore. I looked at you and the same thought was written all over your face; we were in some kind of limbo. We wouldn’t believe in forever or sure things again for a long time, maybe not ever. I squeezed your hand and tried to imagine you carrying me home, tearful and bloody, until I knew that things made sense again.

©Anaïs Escobar

The Love Notebook Series

By yours truly and for old and new readers alike (4-7 are the best). Enjoy.

Love Notebook #1
Love Notebook #2
Love Notebook #3
Love Notebook #4
Love Notebook #5
Love Notebook #6
Love Notebook #7

Adrian Tomine’s Summer Blonde; or how everyone you will ever be romantically involved with is a creep

browsing through old book reviews, reposting and whatnot. continue.

As I read Summer Blonde earlier this week, my mind kept returning to something I had written a few months ago, Love Notebook #5. These lines specifically repeated themselves over and over again in my head:

This is a love story for the creeps and the stalkers and the freaks; for the people who call you 46 times in a row when you don’t pick up the first time; for the ones who convince you that it’s totally normal that they watch you sleep; for the people who think all your friends want to sleep with you; for the people who don’t know when to let go; for the people who delete all the photos of your exes from your computer when you’re not home; and for the people who will only know how to love in their own fucked up ways.

I loved you, too.

I know about creeps. We all do, really. At some point or another, we’ve been the creep or the creeped upon in a given situation. This is the common thread in Summer Blonde, that all of these characters, all of us really, are weirdos. They exist in isolated states whether they are involved romantically with another person or not. The comics are not only drawn subtly and in great detail but the stories are as nuanced yet realistic as the accompanying art. As in his acclaimed graphic novel Shortcomings, Tomine creates characters whose small worlds teem with the everyday insecurities and neuroses that are almost uncomfortably familiar for the reader. Tomine is successful as an artist because he is almost preternaturally aware of what people are thinking and doing behind closed doors.

Summer Blonde is a collection of four stories, each loosely linked to the other by the overwhelming feeling of awkwardness and loneliness that accompanies so many interactions between humans. The first story, “Alter Ego”, deals with Martin, a writer in his mid-twenties who has received a decent amount of praise for his first novel and is now unable to meet the deadline for his follow-up book. He is bored and distracted with his life when he receives a postcard from the girl he was in love with in high school and decides to track her down. The girl is long gone from his hometown by the time he comes around but Martin befriends her high school-aged sister and they begin a tenuous friendship as the rest of his relationships begin to crumble. “Alter Ego” is a study in getting the things you thought you wanted and then finding that you’re still not sure what you want. Martin feels like that friend who continually complains about his life but only so those around him can remind him of how lucky he is. With people like this, does that ever matter? Don’t they still find ways to see how awful their lives are regardless of reality?

Indeed, reality, or relative ideas of reality rather, is an idea that every character in Summer Blonde struggles to define and live in. The title story, “Summer Blonde”, centers around Neil, a lonely man who is jealous of his casanova neighbor, Carlo, and besotted with the Vanessa, the girl who works at the greeting card store he visits often. Neil is a nebbish in the classic sense and spends hours in therapy discussing his inability to have relationships with women and his awkward crush on Vanessa. His obsession with Vanessa grows when he sees that she is involved with Carlo. This leads Neil down a road where he becomes directly involved in Vanessa’s life in irreparable ways. Reality is not only an issue for Neil, who can only see himself as a guardian of sorts towards Vanessa, but for the other characters who delude themselves in their own perceptions of their romantic relationships. All involved are left to question whether they can ever really know the person they’re sleeping with any more than they know the person who stands next to them on the street.

Hillary Chan, a lonely, somewhat angry phone operator, is the focus of “Hawaiian Getaway”. She is fired for an error involving William Shatner (no lie) but doesn’t seem to really care. Now unemployed, she sits in her apartment all day, avoiding awkward phone conversations with her pushy mother and overachieving sister. She has little contact with the outside world and has difficulty connecting with other people. She begins to get her kicks by calling the pay phone on the street below her bedroom window when people pass, harassing and berating the people who answer. Hillary is unable to vent those frustrations towards the people in her life so she lets herself relieve her own anger by hiding behind the anonymity of a phone call. This feels familiar, not only the feelings of inadequacy and frustration with the direction your life is heading, but the feeling of needing to vent and finding yourself unable to to the people closest to you. Why else have humans kept journals for thousands of years? What about the internet, with its faceless barbs and bickering on message boards and the comment sections of websites and blogs? We all have mediums where we lash out without the repercussions of being known. Of course, the double edged sword of technology is that it’s now that much harder to remain faceless forever.

The final story in the collection moves from the awkward world of twenty-somethings to the truly tragic realm that is high school. “Bomb Scare” centers around Scotty, a lonely high schooler who has one friend, Alex, who is constantly tortured at school for possibly being gay. Scotty’s friendship with Alex ends as Scotty tries to befriend Cammie, a girl who is only well liked because of her sexual willingness. Scotty turns his back on Alex in order to impress Cammie only to find that he doesn’t really know that he wants to be close to anyone. This story seemed to be the most painful, perhaps because high school, while different for everyone, is such a singular experiment in not only hurting each other but ourselves. It feels as if we are going through the motions of being almost adult while blindfolded, having no idea how to go about the simple things.

This is a collection of stories for the voyeur in all of us. Tomine is a master at creating the most relatable and alienating images of loneliness in comics, literature in general even, these days. This of course comes back down to perception: what are we supposed to be looking at or for? Reading this gives you the feeling of looking through your lover’s drawers when he or she isn’t home. You’re expecting to find something you don’t want to see but then you find something else entirely and you’re never sure how to feel about it. This of course makes you as much of a weirdo as the significant other you were suspicious of. Welcome to the club; nothing but love can turn you into a total creep.

Love Notebook #4

Before The Girl, there was another man, an in between man if you will. Thinking back on things, he was the one I should have considered being in a relationship with, not the lesbian or the treehugger or that guy who wanted to make documentaries about turtles for PBS. I should have been with this guy because he was the wilder version of me; he made my antics look like kindergarten shit. He saw me for what I was: a conflicted, heartbroken, eternally filthy 19-year-old girl with a taste for drinking and fucking in the afternoon. He carried a torch for his much smarter ex-girlfriend who had left and I had her eyes and breasts. His name was Dirk and for three weeks, he was a permanent fixture in the passenger seat of my car. This installment is about the shortest love stories.

We met long before anything happened between us at some sort of gathering of mutual friends. He was tall and looked like he had stepped off the cover of a Sex Pistols record. Bleached hair, tight pants that revealed just enough package, old faded t-shirt, tattoos all over including his ex-girlfriend’s name on his forearm and some sort of abstract design on his neck. Not tribal, thank god. I was poured into a 1950’s style floral circle skirt dress, waist cinched, breasts presented as a gift to all in view. I was nursing an amaretto sour next to my then-boyfriend and I felt him looking at me. I looked at him and he licked his lips. He winked before turning and walking away. I was pissed off and aroused; I held onto my boyfriend’s hand more tightly.

“Who was the guy who looked like he should be in a Clash tribute band?” I asked my boyfriend as we drove home.

“That’s Dirk. He doesn’t really do much, he’s sort of just known around town. He used to live with his ex but she went to grad school somewhere in Iowa or something when they broke up and he’s stuck around town. We hung out a few times last year, before you moved here. Why?”

“No reason.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, definitely. I just hadn’t seen in anyone in an outfit like that since I was in the 8th grade going to the mall.” I looked out the passenger window the rest of the way home.

The next morning I had a new friend request on Myspace. It was 2005, after all. I accepted it although I was still annoyed by this guy’s whole schtick. I thought I might as well be friendly since we ran in the same crowds. He and I saw each other at a few parties and events over the next few months but didn’t communicate except for looks: his lascivious towards me and mine outwardly indignant but pleased and giddy inside. I turned my nose up at him and grinned as soon as my back was turned.

A few months later, my boyfriend and I were over. It may have been a fight over me eating gummi bears which “have gelatin in them, babe, and are definitely not vegetarian” and my ex not wanting to kiss me as a result. Man, I was such a dick with all the gelatin and exploited gummi bear limbs in my mouth. I moved out two days later. I changed all the appropriate internet relationship statuses to single. I was torn up about the breakup but I was very pleased to be able to eat cheeseburgers all the live long day. I went to work a few days a week and spent the rest of the time reading all the books that had piled up in my own apartment for months. Books are on the top five list of best boyfriends after all; they just don’t have cocks most of the time. Notice I said most.

I checked my email in between pottery classes at work and saw I had a Myspace comment from Dirk, everyone’s favorite Sid Vicious impersonator. I clicked on the link and opened my profile to read it.

“I want to eat chocolate chip pancakes with you.”

Now, I sat there for a good ten minutes wondering what the fuck this message could mean. We had barely said more than hello to each other and now he was giving me this specific request. I soon realized that my user info included the saucy information: “I like to eat chocolate chip pancakes after sex.” Well. It all made sense. I wasn’t sure how to respond so I sent him a message with my phone number and asked him if he preferred milk or semi sweet chocolate chips. I smirked all day at the thought of his comment. He called late that night right before I was getting ready to go to sleep.

“Hey, I meant to call you a lot earlier. I’m sorry.” His voice sounded rough and I could hear the even in and out of his breathing.

“It’s okay. What are you up to?” I paced my bedroom floor, hopping from foot to foot and trying not to sound too eager.

“I watched like, a shitload of Deadwood. My roommate had it on dvd and I just sat on the couch and smoked cigarettes and stared at the screen. That show is fucking amazing.”

“I like it. Although I think that Doris Day was a much more attractive Calamity Jane but you know, realism.” I pulled at the loose rug fibers with my toes.

“I never saw her as Calamity Jane but she was hot. My mom used to watch all those movies she did with that Rock Hudson dude. Who would think he was gay? That guy was fucking macho.” He laughed a little but I could tell he was trying to charm me.

“I know, I watched those movies with my grandma and I always had a huge crush on him as a kid.” I was quiet for a second. “Um, thanks for the comment.”

“Oh. No, don’t thank me, it’s just the truth. I want to. Are you busy tomorrow afternoon?” I heard him lighting a cigarette.

“No, I work in the morning tomorrow but then I’m free. What did you want to do?”

“I have ideas, just pick me up at 1. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, definitely. Text me directions to your house. I’ll see you then.”

“I hope you have sweet dreams.” He sounded sincere about that even over the phone.

We said goodbye and hung up. He texted me the very simple directions a few minutes later and I set down my phone to charge for the night. I laid in bed that night and mentally sifted through my closet thinking of what I could possibly wear the next day. I ended up picking something ambiguous since I had no idea what we were doing: tight jeans I had cut off before to mid thigh, a long yellow tanktop that fit more like a very short dress, and a chocolate brown cardigan. I had cut my hair into a fauxhawk a few months before and it was growing out and becoming floppy, falling into my eyes all the time. I looked in the mirror over and over again at home and continued to do so at work as well; I stared at the reflection of my ass in shorts in the glass window of the pottery classroom and tried to wink at myself to gain courage. My coworker saw this and laughed.

I left work at 12:30 and set on my way to pick up Dirk. Surprisingly I made it to his house without a problem, a miracle seeing as how I am directionally challenged. It was an old house downtown, not in the trendy part of downtown with the pretty houses with the jacaranda trees, but a few blocks east where things were a bit rougher. The house was painted a dusty blue and the driveway was mostly dirt and weeds. I parked and walked up to the door trying not to trip on the unruly lawn. I knocked and waited. I could hear shuffling towards the door and then the footsteps became more decisive. Dirk opened the door and smiled at me. He was holding a small dufflebag, the kind a kid might take to karate class or Little League practice.

“Nice purse.” I smirked and crossed my arms across my chest.

“It’s obviously not a purse, it’s just a bag.” He looked ridiculous in his tight pants and worn jacket holding this lilliputian bag in his hands.

“Ok. You and your pocketbook ready to go, Nana?” I avoided the smack to my arm and started towards the car.

He locked the door and walked to the car. He got in the passenger seat and adjusted the seat to make room for his legs. We buckled our seatbelts and I stuck the key in the ignition and turned the engine over. The Flaming Lips played on my cd player and we both just sat for a minute looking at each other.

“What are we doing today?” I asked, my hands playing with the frayed edges of my cutoffs.

“It’s a surprise, I can’t tell you.”

“Well, I’m driving so I kind of have to know.”

“Just drive to College Village and park in the front.”

“Why are we going there?” I raised my eyebrows. College Village was a sketchy apartment complex near campus. I’d smoked a lot of weed there.

“Will you just drive there please? You must be a pain in the ass on Christmas.”

“Fine. I’m only a pain in the ass on Christmas because I whine about Baby Jesus stealing the thunder from my birthday.” I put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway and began driving towards University Avenue.

“Your birthday’s on Christmas? That has to suck.” He put the small bag in between his feet.

“No, it’s the 28th actually but everyone’s hopped up on egg nog the whole month so no one cares about my birthday. It’s especially fucked since historically no one’s even sure if Jesus was even born on December 25th so it’s really just fucking with my birthday for no reason.” I made a right hand turn at the light and drove west towards College Village.

“You look cute when you’re talking shit about Jesus.” I could feel him smiling a real smile at me, one with his eyes.

“It’s BABY Jesus I’m pissed at. The grown up one with the twelve dude stalkers and the water-into-wine alcoholism is alright by me.”

We arrived quickly since our town was the size of a shoebox and I turned into the tiny parking area. I pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. Dirk got out of the car and grabbed the bag. I wondered what the fuck could be in there and followed him.

“Who are we visiting?” I asked. I put on my sunglasses as I followed him.

“No one, follow me.”

He walked around the building towards the back and I wondered if this was how I died. Getting murdered in a trashy student apartment complex by a man who winked at me for months and probably knew about that freckle on my pussy without having ever seen it. He just knew, I could tell. I walked close behind him and soon he stopped. There it was. The College Village pool. Everyone knew it as a cesspool full of diseased from student orgies and keggers that spilled over from the frat house next door. Apparently, the water was infested with syphilis; I’m not even sure if chlorinated water can contain syphilis but I wasn’t going to find out.

“No. The end.” I made a stern face at him and refused to budge.

“We’re not going to swim in it, we’re just going to enjoy the sun and have a nice afternoon by the pool. Come on.”

“Even if we weren’t going to swim in it, it’s locked for maintenance so new plan.”

“It’s a gate. Don’t tell me you’ve never climbed a gate before.” He had a slightly pouting look on his face and I was cracking.

“Of course I have, when I was a kid. I just don’t know if a gross pool and its deck are worth it.”

“Come on, honey.”

That fucker. He had somehow found out that I melted when men called me honey. I’d watched too many old movies as a little girl. Thanks for helping make me an easy mark, Grandma.

“Fine but I’m going to kill you if anything goes wrong.”

I walked towards the gate and put my right foot up on part of the lock and dropped my keys over the other side. I pushed up on my leg and hopped over pretty easily. Dirk grinned and hopped over with much more ease as if he jumped fences in his sleep. I looked around me at the pool deck and was surprised it wasn’t seedier. I expected used condoms filled with jizz and beer cans and whatnot lying around and instead all I got was a generic apartment complex pool. This could have been Melrose Place for Christ’s sake.

I sat down on a deck chair and kicked off my ballet flats. I wiggled my toes in the sunlight and tried to ignore the stickiness that is a Florida summer. Dirk sat down on the end of the chair and separated my feet over the edges of the chair so he could put down his bag. He unzipped it and took out two plastic cups, a small bottle of orange juice, and a big bottle of Popov Vodka. You may know Popov by its street name of isopropyl alcohol.

“Nice afternoon indeed. My liver’s going to cry from that stuff,” I said as I pulled my feet in to sit indian style.

“Hey, try to relax and enjoy the smooth swallows of Popov. Ok, princess?” He poured vodka into the cups first.

“Oh, I will. I didn’t need my throat anyways.”

He mixed drinks and we bumped cups as plastic hinders clinking. We drank them down quickly, my throat indeed stinging from the cheap vodka. We each had a second screwdriver and then proceeded to have a few shots of the Popov without chasers. The hot day felt stifling and I laid back in the deck chair and closed my eyes. Dirk pulled my feet into his lap and massaged them. I opened my eyes to see him looking at my toes.

“I just like them.”

He looked bashful all of a sudden with my feet in his hands. I smiled drunkenly at him and rested my head back as I looked at him. He kept massaging my feet and I relaxed again and closed my eyes. I could feel the sun beginning to burn my nose when I felt Dirk put my feet down on the chair and stand up. I opened my eyes to see him stripping down to his boxerbriefs and standing at the edge of the pool.

“Oh God, please don’t. You’re going to catch something.” I sat up straight too quickly and felt dizzy from the alcohol. “Seriously.”

“It’s fine, I promise.” He stuck one toe in.

“No, it’s gross, please.” I was concerned but I stared mostly at his broad back as he stood at the edge of the water.

“Looks fine.”

He dived in and the splash reached me in my chair. I groaned a little and watched him surface. He had this shit eating grin on his face as he floated and looked at me.

“Honey, it feels great. It’s not dirty at all.”

“When you get syphilis, you’ll be singing a different tune.” I tried to wipe off the water on me to no avail.

“Get your ass in the water, stop being a brat.” He swam in little circles and floated on his back. The water did look delicious, mostly because he was in it.

“Even if I wanted to, I’m not wearing a swimsuit.”

“Neither am I. No one’s even here, just get in in your bra and panties.”

I had no retort, my reflexes and wit dulled by the Popov. I stood up and began to undress in the sunshine. It was different than taking my clothes off at the beach, I felt like I was undressing for sex except I was surrounded by buildings and lit by a glowing, dying star; I liked it and took my time. I unbuttoned my shorts and let them slide down with a wiggle of my hips. I shrugged off my cardigan and lifted my tanktop over my head and dropped it on the ground. I felt his eyes on me. I stood in a bra and panties set I still own, soft kelly green cotton with blue lace on the edges. I was so glad I had matched my bra to my underwear for the first time maybe ever in my life. I walked to the edge of the pool and stood with my hands on my hips. I was still unsure about getting in. I closed my eyes tight and hoped I wouldn’t catch anything as I dived in, arms over my head.

There is nothing better than being in water when you’re drunk, whether it’s a pool or ocean or bathtub. It is truly glorious. As soon as my body floated through the chlorine as I surfaced, I realized I could care less if I got syphilis or not. I was beyond happy. Dirk was next to me when I surfaced and slid his hands around my waist and pulled me close.

“I told you it was nice,” he said as he pushed my hair out of my eyes.

“It’s alright. That’s all I’ll give you.” I laid my head on his shoulder as we kicked to stay above water and smelled his skin. He smelled clean and masculine.

“No, say it. You know this is awesome in this heat.” He swam towards the wall of the middle of the pool and didn’t let go of me, pushing us both towards the wall.

“Nope. It’s just alright.” I was up against the wall and he could stand there but I couldn’t. He kept his hands around my waist and pressed against me while taking my legs and wrapping them around his waist. He wrapped his right hand around my neck and ran his fingers along my collarbone.

“Tell me, honey,” he whispered. He lowered his lips to my neck and slowly began to lick it.

“Mmm. No.” I felt his wet bleached hair dripping on me and I leaned my head back against the edge of the pool as he continued to suck on my neck.

He tried to push me further against the wall but there was nowhere to go. My shoulderblades dug into the cement. He began to kiss down from my neck to my breasts. He lowered one bra strap and released my left breast from its underwire cage. My nipple was instantly hard from the water and arousal and his mouth kissing it didn’t help matters. He came back up and met my eyes. His breath was hot and citrusy near my mouth. I could feel my heart throbbing in my brain and stomach.

“Say it.” He ran his hand along my cheek.

“It’s great. It’s amazing.” I was out of breath and could feel myself dizzy as I tried to inhale and exhale.

He slammed his mouth to mine and I opened my mouth for his tongue. Our mouths tasted the same and I explored his with my tongue. I felt like I was swimming in there. I felt him hard against my ass since my legs were wrapped around his waist; I wiggled against him as we kissed and he moaned into my mouth. His hands roamed over my breasts until finally he just had me pinned by the arms to the pool wall. We were attached mouth to mouth, his hands to my forearms.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Our heads snapped up to see a secutiry guard staring at us. He was of the bumbling white dude variety so we weren’t so much terrified as we were just surprised.

“You can’t use this pool, they’re doing maintenance on it right now,” he said, staying by the gate but his eyes clearly on my exposed breast. I sunk slightly underwater to hide from his gaze.

“We’ll get out of here, dude,” Dirk said, casually moving his arm in front of me to cover me up a bit.

“You have five minutes or I’m calling the cops.” The security guard walked away but stuck close by to make sure we got out of there.

I started laughing and DIrk tried to shush me but he started laughing as well. We continued kissing for a bit while floating around since after all we had five minutes. Our hands teased each other as we laughed at the Don Knotts-esque security guard. Dirk kissed my nose and nibbled on it a little.

“That’s it, I warned you. I’m calling the cops,” the guard yelled. He started dialing his phone as he walked back to his car.

“Fuck, let’s go,” Dirk said, swimming to the ladder quickly and bounding the rungs to get out of the water.

I swam close behind and stepped onto the ladder but when my foot reached the second rung, I slipped and my left thigh met the edge of the ladder railing sharply. I screamed moreso than usual having been drinking, but I was genuinely scared when I pulled back and saw the huge gash on my leg and the water around it swirling with red billows of blood. I held onto the grip with one hand but fell back a little as I looked at my leg in shock; the only thought I had was of syphilis in my open wound. Dirk ran over and grabbed me by the arms to try and pull me out but I couldn’t move. He finally scooped me up and pulled me onto the ground. He looked at my leg for a half second and then ran and got his shirt and tied it around my thigh. The blood soaked through his old tshirt but I stood up with Dirk’s help and I wobbled towards the gate. Dirk grabbed our stuff and we opened the gate which the guard had left unlocked.

“Hurry up. Get the fuck out of here,” the guard ordered.

“Calm the fuck down, man, she’s hurt,” Dirk said angrily. I held onto his arm, worried he might hit this guy square in the jaw.

“That’s what happens when you trespass. Dumb fucking kids.” The guard locked the gate behind us.

“Fucker,” Dirk muttered.

We began walking to the car or rather, I hobbled. Dirk stood in front of me and crouched sort of and picked me up on his back despite my assurances that I was fine. I wrapped my arms around his neck loosely as he walked back to my car. I told him to put me down when I felt myself bleeding onto his jacket but he refused. I rested my cheek next to his head and thought about how despite being yelled at by a guard and bleeding profusely, this was pretty damn nice.

We reached my car and Dirk wouldn’t give me my keys. He put me down, unlocked the passenger door, and held it open for me. There was no arguing with him so I sat down. I was still only wearing my bra and panties and I was bleeding onto my car’s interior but all I could think of was kissing Dirk again. He walked around the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat adjusting for leg space for the second time that day. Reaching over and putting his hand on my cheek, he leaned in and kissed me softly.

“Are you ok?” he said, looking down at my bleeding thigh.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Can I drive my car though please?” I leaned in and bit his bottom lip a bit.

“No way, look at your leg. Plus you’ve been drinking.” His brow remained furrowed as he looked at my injury.

“I’m fine, it’s a flesh wound, I was just shocked and overreacted. You’re drunk, too.”

“Look at all the blood, we have to go to the hospital. It might need stitches.” He placed his right hand on my thigh as if trying to close the gash with his mind.

“I don’t want to go. I’m fine.” I kissed his neck softly. It tasted like chlorine.

“You were saying the pool had syphilis before and now you have an open wound from that pool and you don’t want to go to the hospital?” He tried to pull away in an attempt to be serious.

“I was overreacting, really. I just don’t want to go to the hospital, they scare me. Plus, what are you going to tell them about giving a 19-year-old girl vodka?”

“Fuck, I didn’t even think of that. Okay. We have to put a real bandage on it though at least.”

“So drive to Walgreens and let’s get some.” I put on my seatbelt.

“Right. Good idea.” He looked like he was in shock.

“Are you ok?” I asked. His skin was so white.

“Yeah, I just feel like an asshole. This is all my fault, that you got hurt.”

“No, not even. It was that guard if anyone, and it was really just an accident. Ok?” I reached for his hand and held onto it.

“Ok. I still feel like shit though, I should have let you get out of the water first.” He squeezed my hand.

“Just stop thinking like that. It’s done.”

“Alright.”

He sighed and turned on my car. He reversed out of the space and stopped to put the car in drive. He drove onto the street, cautiously the way everyone drives a car they are unfamiliar with. We rode in silence, holding hands, for the few blocks to Walgreens. When we got there, I tried to give Dirk cash to get some bandages for my leg but he refused. He ran inside the store and I put in Bossanova by the Pixies in the meantime. I was halfway through Velouria when Dirk came out of the store.

“Come here,” he said. He maneuvered me and pulled my legs out of the car, my feet on the pavement. He got on his knees in front of me and started rifling through the bag and pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“Oh, come on, you could have used the Popov instead of buying that shit,” I said. I instictively moved my legs away but he held them in place.

“Don’t be smart, I have to clean it. It’s going to hurt like fuck for a bit, I’m sorry.” He took his shirt off my leg and opened the bottle. I swallowed.

“Okay. Just do it.” I bit on my right index finger as he began to pour some alcohol on the gash. I whimpered slightly. He leaned forward to kiss my knees. I think he may have whispered sorry as he kissed them.

“Sanitized. Now, it’s just time for the Neosporin and the bandage.” He got both out of the bag and went to work and pretty soon, my leg was wrapped in gauze and tape and sealed up, no longer a bleeding hazard.

“No lollipop?” I smirked.

“That’s only for good patients, little girl.” He cleaned up all of the stuff and put it in the bag. He tied it and put it on the car floor.

“Hey.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him close by the front of his shirt. “Thank you, darlin’.”

“Anytime. Have to put those Boy Scout skills to good use somehow.” He grinned at me.

I leaned forward and kissed him slowly and deliberately. We made out for a few minutes, him still on his knees in the parking lot, my bare feet winding around him, one of them playing with one of the back pockets of his pants. Soon some kids walked by and giggled and so Dirk reluctantly stood up and got back into the car. We smiled awkwardly at each other and I rested my head back on the seat while looking at him. He wrapped his arms around my waist and scooted me onto his lap. I slid over easily, being careful with my thigh. I was still in my underwear and his arms were warm on my skin. My arms slipped around his neck and I hugged him. I can’t tell you why I wanted to hug him so badly but I just did; for once I just felt pure sweetness instead of the filthy lust that usually had me going. I knew at that moment that I would never forget the way his lips had felt on my knees when he took care of me. It was the tiniest moment of love, he wasn’t in love with me in the least but for that instant, I was the most precious thing in the world to him. I wanted to hold him so it felt tangible so I could have him in my hands even if it was just for that day and remember what it felt like to be that important to someone. It’s strange how someone can go from being nothing to something so vital to you in a specific moment. Even if the moment evaporates as soon as it begins, it existed in a moment of time true to those involved. I finally let go of him so I could look at him and I kissed him.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said as I kissed the side of his mouth.

“What do you want to eat?” He smiled and let me kiss his face.

“Sonic.”

“Seriously? You feel okay for that?”

“Definitely. I want a burger so big that I can’t fit it into my tiny mouth.” I saw his eyes glint at this.

“Sonic it is.”

It was getting late as we drove there, the sky was beginning to get that pinky orange glow. I remember my ex telling me that the sky was so beautiful at sunset due to pollution; I said a little prayer that he would get mauled by a bear, wherever he was. The Pixies continued singing on the stereo and I told Dirk about how instead of going to see the Pixies my senior year of high school, I went to my homecoming dance which was the same night. He told me about how he put their song Caribou on a mix for a girl and she never called him back. We both had crushes on Kim Deal. On the short drive, we also learned that we came from the same hometown, had the same favorite color of gummi bear (clear), and that we thought Revolver was better than the White Album. It was the first date stuff we should have had before the swim and the wound and the first aid experience but somehow it worked.

We pulled into one of the spaces at Sonic and ordered at the window. Dirk got mozzarella sticks and a cherry slush while I got a cheeseburger, tater tots, and a blue coconut slush. To this day, I have no idea what flavor “blue” is, but it tastes like what I imagine God’s jizz to taste like if he and it exists. I wouldn’t let him pay since he had bought all of the supplies to fix my leg up and I crawled over him to stick my debit card in the computer. He rested his chin on my lower back while I punched in my pin number and ran his hand over my ass. I tried to smack his hand away but he just slid his fingers inside my underwear. I laughed as I pulled my ass away from his hand and sat against the passenger door.

“That’s naughty, our food’s coming,” I said. I tried to give him a disapproving look but I’m sure I was failing.

“We have time.” He grabbed my ankle in his hand.

“No, we definitely don’t. Plus, I’m hungry.”

“Come here.” His hand snaked up my calf and rubbed the back of my knee.

“It’s going to be here any minute.” I felt him tug me a little by that good leg and I ended up crawling over and straddling his lap, careful with my bandage.

“See? Was that so bad?” He was slightly below my face level and so he moved his lips to my neck.

“You’re so proud of yourself. Stop looking smug.” I turned my face away a bit.

“Of course I’m proud, I got you on top of me for this glorious view of your rack and that adorable chin.” His hands rested on my hips and he kissed me before I could start bickering.

I gave in entirely and we kissed and let our hands explore each other. He was shirtless since I had bled onto it earlier and I moved my hands down his smooth chest. I had never been with a man with such a smooth chest and it felt wonderful. Everything about him was so taut and light, from his skin to that bleached hair. He felt wonderful underneath me and against me. His hand was sliding under my ass, making its way into my underwear again when there was a knock on the window. Our food had arrived. It wasn’t even served by a girl on roller skates. What kind of faux 1950s fast food restaurant was this? The server looked annoyed by us being half naked and slutty in her dining establishment and practically threw our food at us.

As soon as we rolled the window back up, we laughed for a good five minutes. My muscles hurt from laughing but we kissed in between hicupping laughs. Pretty soon we were back at it in full force. I was grinding against Dirk’s crotch as the Pixies sang about my namesake undressing in the sun in Ana. He growled almost as I was grinding and he pushed my underwear aside to touch me with his hand; he moaned when he felt that I was wet. He pulled them aside entirely as I unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out from his boxers. I slid onto him easily and gasped as I felt him fill me to what seemed to be my navel. His hands gripped my hips more firmly and seemed to guide my movements as he thrusted up inside me. I bit his neck as he fucked me at a furious pace. He seemed to fuck me harder the harder I bit. I moved my hips against him and my breasts still in my bra bounced in his face as I found myself throwing my head back. I had one hand against the window and my eyes open as he slid one breast from my bra to bite my nipple. He rubbed my clit with one hand and soon after, I came hard. I arched my back as I came, hitting the steering wheel. He came soon after and I felt him shoot inside me as I was kissing him, his moans filling my throat and my lungs.

I sat with him still inside me as we kissed lazily. We were sweaty and the bandage on my leg had come loose but I didn’t even really notice. He tried to talk but I kept my mouth on his. He protested when I climbed off of him. I reached for the seat lever and pushed his seat all the way back. I got down on my knees on the floor in front of him and grabbed his half stiff cock in my hands. He smiled as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I stroked his cock for a minute or two and by the time I took the tip of it in my mouth, he was hard again. I ran my tongue over his balls and he shivered. He outright moaned when I ran my tongue along the length of his shaft. I gripped his thighs as I took him entirely into my throat and I looked up at him as I slightly gagged. He looked concerned for half a second until he understood that my look meant that I wanted him to fuck my throat, that I wanted to gag. I could taste my pussy on his cock and the thought just made me open my throat even more. I dug my nails into his thighs as I sucked him off, my tongue swirling around him fast. I could feel him throbbing in my throat and I could feel him grip my shoulder as he was about to come, as if to warn me to back away. I closed my eyes and let him shoot directly into my throat, feeling the warm, salty semen slide down my throat. It dribbled onto my lip as I finally pulled away and I licked it up. I smirked from the floor and he pulled me up into his arms.

“I want my cheeseburger now,” I said. He threw his head back and laughed a real laugh, a hearty one.

“After that performance, you can have whatever the fuck you want, honey.” He kissed my forehead and cheeks.

“Good. It smells like someone’s been fucking in here.” I crawled back to my seat and put my feet up on the dashboard. I began to lower my window.

“Some filthy animals must have been spreading their seed all over in here.” He lowered his window and relaxed back into his seat, putting away his dick in the process.

It was twilight now, and everything looked a bluish grey. We divided our food and I tore at it like a starving child. I stared at the sky as I ate what was the best cold burger of my life. Our slushes had melted but we drank the sugary syrup anyways. Our mouths became red and blue and we were a mess. I pressed my toes against the windshield and left small toe-shaped smudges. The day seemed surreal. Nothing could top the day we had in the history of first dates. We had taken a weekday afternoon and turned it into a modern day indie adaptation of the Bonnie and Clyde story. Dirk and I couldn’t hang onto anything real or serious because we weren’t there really. All we could handle were those small moments, everything else seemed too big for either one of us. There wasn’t enough oxygen in any room for the both of us, no matter how much love was in that room or how fast we could roll those windows down.

I knew that day despite my fluttering heart that there could be no future for the two of us then. We both felt too much in a colossal way. I loved him instantly in powerful moments that knocked my ribs around in my gut but we had nothing to stand on. From the moment we met, we were dancing around each other, floating through our lives in denial. He couldn’t offer me anything that wouldn’t disappear moments later and vice versa. We had lost so much before that we couldn’t risk getting hurt, not for a love that took its breaths in first aid kits and in passing tater tots in the front seat. He was a risk I couldn’t take then, I wasn’t ready for someone like him.

We were what you would call together for three weeks more or less. He was never my boyfriend and I think the most expensive thing he ever bought me was the first aid things and maybe that bottle of Popov. No, it was the first aid things for sure. I was nineteen and I was living my first summer after truly having my heart broken for the first time. I felt like love was something that was supposed to fit and just exist and be perfect on its own. I didn’t expect that I could love someone and he would leave, or that I could love someone in a way and then not want to be with him. I didn’t know that I could love a woman and feel just as safe in her arms as I did in a man’s. I didn’t understand how I could find someone who was perfect on paper but who didn’t make me feel complete or understood at all. I didn’t yet understand that I too could cheat on a lover and still be a good person. I didn’t know that trust was more about my own insecurities than about the person I was trying to trust. I didn’t yet know that I could show or tell someone everything I hate about myself and have them just say, “Okay.” I didn’t understand that someone loving you means that you could really fuck up and he’d still want to be there. I had yet to find out so many things at nineteen.

Dirk was there for three weeks but he taught me that some loves don’t have to last a long time to have an impact. Not all love is the same, I’ve learned. Not everyone is going to be your soulmate and your spouse and live happily ever after with you. You’re going to have more than one soulmate if you’re really lucky, and they’re not all going to be romantic. You’re going to have people you date for a month, ten years, and no matter how long you’re with them, they’re going to do something to the course of your life. They might fuck things up royally, but they’re still going to do some damage to the way things turn out. The people you love and fuck aren’t going to make you who you will be but they will leave their marks. Maybe it’ll be a kid for one of you. Maybe an unlucky person will have a permanent scar from some abusive shithead. My ex got a tattoo for me; no matter what happens, even if she tries to have it removed, some part of it will always remain on her. Dirk’s pool gave me a 2 inch raised white scar on my left thigh. Three years later, it’s still there to remind me anytime I’m not wearing pants. It’s faded over the years but every time I look at it, I remember the short time a guy loved me the best way he knew how.

Because, that’s the thing about love, really. No one will love you how you want to be loved, they’ll love you in the only ways they know how. Life throws everyone down drastically different paths so how can we expect everyone to love in the same way? The person you’ll spend your lifetime with will love you in their way and you’ll love in yours, and maybe you’ll meet in the middle and it’ll last. None of us know what we’re doing, you see, we’re just fumbling for matches in the dark. If you’re lucky, you might eventually just strike the right one.

"Because, that’s the thing about love, really. No one will love you how you want to be loved, they’ll love you in the only ways they know how. Life throws everyone down drastically different paths so how can we expect everyone to love in the same way? The person you’ll spend your lifetime with will love you in their way and you’ll love in yours, and maybe you’ll meet in the middle and it’ll last. None of us know what we’re doing, you see, we’re just fumbling for matches in the dark. If you’re lucky, you might eventually just strike the right one."

—

Anaïs Escobar: Love Notebook #4

Click on link to read the whole thing. Thank you to roamin for the reblog of this old piece.

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I forgot how much I liked this.

The Love Notebook Series

I’ve compiled the Love Notebooks (I can’t believe there are this many already!) into one post and they will be in the sidebar of my tumblr from here on out in case someone wants a reread or someone is just stumbling upon these. Also, still working on the writing archive.

Love Notebook #1
Love Notebook #2
Love Notebook #3
Love Notebook #4
Love Notebook #5
Love Notebook #6
Love Notebook #7

Love Notebook #7

For the first 16 years of my life, you were the boy next door and I didn’t see what was right in front of me. My family had moved into the terracotta-colored house next door to yours when I was 5. You were 7 and your bedroom window looked into mine. I saw you watching movies in your beanbag chair, drawing the scenes you were watching; years later, you told me you used to watch me as I read books in my big purple chair, pushing my falling glasses up on my 10-year-old nose. I never thought of you because you were always there. After my dad taught me how to ride my bike and let me go to learn by falling, you would always run alongside me ready to catch me if I fell. The one time you came too late and I did fall, you, a thoughtful 11-year-old, carried me home, letting me cry against your neck and bleed against your shirt. You were the only boy my mom would let me play with and we grew up together, screaming all the way down the slide into my pool on weekends, making a new club (of which I was always president) every 30 seconds in my treehouse, sharing popcorn at the movies on summer afternoons. If ballet class and reading books and my family made up 2/3 of my childhood, you made up the last third.

It all ended when I was 14. The entire neighborhood found out that my mom had been cheating on my dad with the cardiologist down the street; my parents were getting a divorce. I stopped talking to everyone, locking myself in my room from the moment I got home from school. My parents and their lawyers argued for weeks about assets but the custody battle lasted two days. I refused to live with either of them, disgusted by my mother, disappointed in my dad for somehow letting things fall apart. I demanded to live with my grandparents, the people who had emotionally raised me my entire life. My parents gave in quickly, tired of fighting and scared of making me more upset. Our house went up on the market and sold quickly just as summer had begun. Movers came and packed up the separated furniture, clothing, knickknacks, plates, baby photos, Christmas ornaments, barbecue tools. I sulked on my bedroom floor as my life up until that point fell apart around me, nails removed from the wall where paintings hung, dents left in the rug where the dining room table once sat for Thanksgiving dinners. It’s rare in life when you get to watch something end but when you do, it’s fascinating and shattering all at once.

I stared at the ceiling fan spin above me when I heard a loud smack at my window. I looked up and saw you throwing colored pencils from your desk at my window. You gave me a questioning look and I knew that you wanted to come over. I hadn’t seen you except when entering or leaving my house in weeks, and I’d ignored your phone calls and instant messages, not wanting to talk about the permanent knot in my throat that made it impossible to get words out anyways. I sat up and looked at you, nervous and sincere in your tshirt and jeans. I hesitated. Something inside me opened up for a split second, just enough to want to let you in and I nodded at you. You smiled, picked something up from your desk, and left your room.

I ran a brush through my long hair and walked downstairs, unlocking the door before you could knock. I didn’t know where my parents were and didn’t care. I let you in and we stood awkwardly in the foyer for a minute without saying a word before I turned and padded quickly up the stairs to my bedroom. You followed close behind, patiently not bounding up the stairs with your long legs as you usually did. I walked into my room and sat on my bed, holding a pale yellow pillow in front of me as I leaned against the headboard. You sat down near the footboard and fiddled with a wrapped package shaped like a cd.

“What’s that?” I asked, watching your long fingers flip it around on your lap.

“I got it for you last week. I had been hoping to see you so I could give it to you Before you moved, you know.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Here, open it.”

You handed it to me and I unwrapped the tape from the plain blue paper, ripping it in the process. I smiled when I saw what it was: Amnesiac by Radiohead. I looked up at you as my fingers began working at the cd’s seal.

“Oh god, thank you. I forgot that it was coming out last week. I’ve been waiting to listen to this for months,” I said.

“No problem. I mean, we had talked about it so many times, I knew you wanted it and I figured with everything going on, you might have forgotten. Plus, I just wanted to get it for you.” You met my gaze and I felt myself blush. I looked down at the sticky sealing I was having trouble with.

“Can we listen to it now?”

“That’s what I was hoping for.” You were still looking at me. “Here, let me do that. You’ve always been bad at this.”

You easily removed the seal and opened the case, getting up and putting the cd in my stereo. You pressed play and adjusted the volume before walking back to my bed. Scooting next to me, you reached your arm out for me to lay in it and I gingerly laid my head against it, my body not even two-thirds the length of yours. Your hand rested around my shoulder as the first track played and we listened together. I hadn’t been held in months. I shied away from the usual kisses and hugs from my parents, afraid of what would happen if I let anyone too close to me. Yet here I was, letting you hold me for what felt like ages. The second track began and I listened to the lyrics.

i jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
all the figures i used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little row boat
there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. It played over and over in my head and I realized that for the first time in my life, there was plenty to fear and doubt. Tears welled in my eyes and I choked on the aching sob that came out of my mouth. I felt you tense and look down at me in concern as I buried my face against your chest. I cried like I used to when I would fall off my bike and hurt myself and just like then, you silently comforted me. You brushed the hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. I wrapped my arms around you and we listened to the rest of the album like that. My room was quiet when it ended and I could your heartbeat against my ear. The gentle thumping lulled me to sleep and I felt my eyelids close as your lips once again met my hairline. I slept the whole night for the first time in a long time.

When I woke up the next morning, you were gone but you left a note on my nightstand on top of the cd case. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and picked it up to read it.

Enjoy this. If you need me, I’m here.

I tucked the note into the liner notes and set it down. I laid back against my pillows, the exact spot I stayed for the next days as the movers finished packing up the rest of our house and even my room. I refused to pack and watched them pack up my things, taping shut boxes of my trophies and books and clothes. I finally had to get up when they moved my bed from the room, the last thing to go. I grabbed my pillow and cd case, watching from downstairs as three burly men carried my mattress and then the parts of my bed down the stairs. My grandparents soon arrived, hugging me and whispering how much they loved me into my ear. I gave stiff hugs to my tearful parents and I took my last walk down that driveway. I got into the backseat of the car and we drove around the cul de sac and onto the road. I looked out my window and saw you watching from your garage. I held the cd case tightly in my lap and turned my face forward as we drove away from my childhood. It was over.

My grandparents’ house was 15 minutes away and I had been going there since I was little but it felt different now. My grandparents had moved lovely new furniture in and painted the walls a sweet shade of rose but I still felt like I was just visiting. After dinner, I settled into my new bed and tried to sleep. I tossed and turned, tried to read, watch tv, but nothing helped. I looked at the phone on the nightstand and frowned. It might be too late to call but I had to try. I dialed the number to your room line and hoped the phone wouldn’t wake up your family. I shook my foot as I listened to the dial tone and I heard you pick up.

“Hello?” You sounded sleepy.

“Hi. It’s me.” I swallowed and felt nervous suddenly.

“Hi. Are you ok?” I could hear you sit up slightly.

“I’m ok. I just can’t sleep. It feels weird here I guess.”

“That makes sense, I guess it’ll take time to get used to it. How do you like it so far?”

“I don’t know. I love my grandparents but I just hate that everything is happening.” I laid back and suddenly, in the dark without your light eyes on me, I could feel myself open up more than I had in a while.

“I know. I wish I could make it stop.” You sighed.

“Me too. Do you want to watch something together, over the phone I mean?”

“Yeah, what do you want to watch?”

“What do we both own?”

“Um. Jurassic Park.”

“That works.”

We put in our movies and settled in to watch Jeff Goldblum run from velociraptors. We laughed all the way through the movie, knowing the script word for word. After it ended, we kept talking until I got sleepy finally and we said our goodnights. This routine lasted all summer and as school started, my freshman year and your junior year of high school, I went off to my private school and you went back to public school. We rarely got a chance to see each other with school and extracurricular activities but we talked on the phone as often as we could. There were times that we didn’t talk as often but in a few weeks we would come right back to whispering into the phone late at night.

You told me about how you really wanted to study film but that your parents were pressuring you to be an engineer like your dad. I told you about how I hated my changing body, and how I had tried to starve away the new breasts and hips that made me feel awkward and fat. You told me that the one time your dad had hit you when you were a kid made you lose respect for him. I told you when my now deranged mother got a DUI and had to go to rehab, and how badly I wished for a different mother. You told me about how scared you were to go to college in a few months and how you knew everything would be different then. I told you that I wasn’t sure if true love existed and how I was scared my mother had given me a bad parent gene somehow. You told me that you weren’t sure how to be happy a lot of the time, that the older you got the less things seemed to make sense. I told you that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about these things because it was awkward to bring up in the middle of comparing homecoming dresses. One night just after my sophomore year of high school had ended, you paused in the middle of one of these talks.

“Do you want to come over tomorrow?” You swallowed after you said it.

“To your house?” I had been avoiding going back there since I had left it. I didn’t want to see my childhood home.

“Yeah, I mean, we haven’t seen each other in a while and my parents will be at work. I want to see you a lot before I leave for school in September.”

“I just… I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be weird.”

“You don’t even have to look next door, just come inside and it’ll be like we’re at my house like old times. I promise.”

“Okay.” I could never say no to you.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at 10. Sweet dreams.”

“Night.”

We hung up the phone and I felt anxious about seeing you, being back near my old house, stirring up so many memories. I stayed awake for a long time, sleeping for just two or three hours before waking full of nerves again. I showered, brushed my hair, got dressed. I sat on my bed until I heard you honk the horn outside. I smoothed my skirt and grabbed my purse as I ran out the door, waving to my grandma.

You were in the used Camry you had chosen instead of a new car and I opened the passenger door and got inside. I hadn’t seen you in months and you had bloomed into a man. Your shoulders were broader and your jaw was more defined, and I could already tell that you had a different scent. I felt your eyes on me as I evaluated you and I blushed, still uncomfortable in my body. Neither of us spoke and we looked at each other. You reached your long arms out and pulled me close to you. My arms instantly snaked around your neck and it felt so good to hug you like that. It felt the same as always but there was a click I hadn’t expected. We stayed like that for a while. I slowly began to let go when I realized that my grandparents were probably watching from the window. I sat back in my seat and put on my seatbelt, palms resting on my thighs.

“Hi,” I said shyly with the stupidest grin on my face.

“Hi.” We had never been more like teenagers.

You pulled out of the driveway and began to drive the familiar route to your house. We listened to Belle and Sebastian and talked about the lead singer’s slight lisp. Out the window, I could see us getting closer and I felt anxious. You seemed to sense this and grabbed my hand as we talked about music and school. It felt so good to hold your hand, much bigger than the dirty hand I used to hold as we jumped into the pool together on summer days.

We pulled into the neighborhood and I was shocked that it looked exactly the same. Mrs. Cohen still had her jacaranda trees and the Greenbaums still had the dent in the rear bumper of their Volvo. You pulled into your driveway and I tried to ignore my old house to my right. I was trying my best to wonder why they changed the color of the shutters when you pulled inside the open garage. You parked and looked at me in the shadows of the garage. I felt better just looking at you.

I followed you into the house I knew so well and sat at your kitchen island. You brought two glasses of iced tea over and we drank them quietly. My anxiety melted as I realized how comfortable I felt with you in your house, how it felt like nothing had changed at all here. I could also see that you were uncomfortable in your house and that you looked like you didn’t know what to do there anymore.

We went upstairs to your room and you put on your parents’ copy of Abbey Road on your record player. I sat on the floor and you joined me, sitting close to me, both of us with legs outstretched. We spent the day on that floor, talking about our favorite bands at the time (you Sunny Day Real Estate and the Promise Ring and me Rilo Kiley and Minus the Bear), all my childhood injuries that you couldn’t save me from, that time we switched swimsuits and our moms were furious. Hours passed and we kicked off our shoes and got comfortable, lying on the rug and moving only to change the record.

Our bodies draped over each other, my bare foot under yours, my head resting on your chest as I watched your facial expressions as you talked. I could feel the warm afternoon sun through the window and I looked up and saw my old bedroom window. I stared for a full minute and I didn’t feel the yearning I had expected. I realized that it all was done and I was in the exact room I was supposed to be in at that moment. I looked back at you, still talking about The Virgin Suicides, and stared at your mouth. Without thinking, I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to yours. In all the years I had known you, I had never kissed you on the lips, not even jokingly, and now I was doing it and I was definitely not playing around. Your lips were soft and I opened my mouth for your tongue. I felt the stubble on your face under my fingers and I rolled onto my side and you rolled with me, your hand on my waist pulling me closer to you. I didn’t even open my eyes. That kiss began something that seemed to be written from the moment you decided to run next to my wobbly bicycle. It was summer.

You had graduated and I had nothing to do and so we spent every day like that first one. You picked me up every morning and we had breakfast and listened to music and watched movies and went swimming. These were the activities that filled the spare minutes that weren’t filled with making out. You turned your speakers to face out your window and we listened to music as we grew tan in the pool every afternoon. I read War and Peace that summer on one of the pool floats while you attempted to flip me over into the water every few minutes. I retaliated by slapping your sunburned shoulders. I had never been so well kissed before. We were 16 and 18 respectively and we thought that it could last forever; beneath the glare of the sun, it seemed like it could.

Shortly after the 4th of July, we were in your pool, catching our breaths against the wall after racing as In The Aeroplane Over The Sea swelled from the speakers. You looked at me and I knew something different was about to happen. Your arm slid around my waist and you pulled me to the center of the pool, still near the wall, so we could stand comfortably. You kissed my neck and I felt your hand slide from my waist down inside my swimsuit bottoms. You had never touched me there before, the only hand that had been there was my own. I gasped as your fingers began to work at my clit, my feet pressing against the wall as I pressed against your body. I kissed you and moaned into your mouth as you made me come in the water. I felt my flushed cheeks and looked at you, the first man to do that to me. You kissed my earlobe and looked at me before smiling.

“Come on,” you said, swimming to the ladder.

I was shaken still but I followed and stepped onto the hot cement. You grabbed my hand and walked quickly to a part of the yard shrouded by discreet shrubs. You pulled me close and kissed me, picking me up to wrap my legs around your waist. I felt my ankles cross as I tasted your tongue. Your hands worked the strings of my top and I felt it untie around my back and neck. Still kissing, you lowered me onto the grass, and then yourself as you pulled away my bikini top. You untied my bottoms as well and I laid in the grass naked beneath your gaze. I reached up to pull down your boardshorts and you kicked them away. You gingerly pressed against me and we kissed once again. The grass tickled my shoulders and I wrapped my arms around you. I knew what was about to happen and I felt nervous. You seemed to know and you held my face and kissed me as you slowly pushed inside me. It hurt and I felt tears in my eyes. You stopped and looked at me, concerned, but I nodded at you to continue. It was soon over and neither of us were virgins anymore. I didn’t feel very different.

We didn’t say a word during sex, or after. You held me in the grass and there were no I love you’s. I don’t think either of us really knew what to say to each other. It seemed as if we had been on course for this to happen before we even knew what sex was. We laid for a while and felt the sun on our warm skin, still pressed together. Soon we put our swimsuits back on and went back inside. We laid in your bed and watched reruns of Full House, neither of us saying a word. It was almost as if once we had sex, there was nothing left to say after months and years of talking. We had more sex that summer, becoming more comfortable with it, better at it, but it still didn’t feel right. It was something we were supposed to do and that felt good but we had lost something in the process. Our innocence, maybe.

You went to college soon after Labor Day and I started another year of high school. We spent one last day on your bedroom floor, listening to Hüsker Dü while we both put your stuff into boxes. I looked around me and realized that few things stayed the way they were for long. I wondered if there could possibly be a forever as I glanced at my old bedroom through the window and sat in my childhood love’s room as the memories began to unravel, broken and jostled on the road to new things.

We finished taping closed the boxes and sat next to each other in front of your bed. I reached out instinctively and grabbed your hand. It was the same firm grip as always but I could feel everything slipping away just like my parents’ marriage had two years before. I wanted my best friend back, I wanted to tell you everything I was scared of and how I naively wished we hadn’t become lovers so that things wouldn’t have changed between us. Life had pushed us to grow up and we had taken the final step into something resembling adulthood. If it wasn’t adulthood, it definitely wasn’t childhood anymore. I looked at you and the same thought was written all over your face; we were in some kind of limbo. We wouldn’t believe in forever or sure things again for a long time, maybe not ever. I squeezed your hand and tried to imagine you carrying me home, tearful and bloody, until I knew that things made sense again.

©Anaïs Escobar

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Don’t ask me why I made a Genius playlist for Addicted to Love. You should be asking why I’m enjoying it so much while writing Love Notebook #7.

Love Notebook #6

While you were still at work, I went to your house after school let out at 2:30 to wait for you. I had the key you had given me and I parked in your gravel driveway and walked up to the door with the hibiscus flowers growing around it. I unlocked the door and let myself in. Your wood floors felt flexible beneath my shoes and I put my bag down on the couch. I kicked off my shoes but left my socks on. It was one of the few cold days in Florida and I could feel the wind creeping in through the unsealed edges of your windows. I went into your bedroom and pulled your U of Guelph hoodie from the back of your closet. I slid it over my head and pushed my hair out of my face and into a ponytail. Your sweatshirts were always huge on me and I liked to tuck my arms inside while wearing them and hold onto my arms the way you did when we napped together.

I stepped into the hallway and walked to the kitchen. From the first time you took me to your house, I had always felt at home. It was unlike the cold, ornate house I grew up in and quieter and more still than the place I considered home, my grandparents’ house; it was warm and small and I knew every corner and nook to it almost instantly. I poured myself a glass of sweet tea from the pitcher I had left you in the fridge before I went to school, before you went to the library. I sat with my feet up at your table and sipped my tea as the blue-tinted afternoon sun filled the window. I had helped you pick out the yellow curtains that hung around that window. You could care less about how it looked but you were excited about my desire to leave my mark in your house. The light that filtered through the curtains was cool and unlike regular Florida sunshine. I shivered and took my tea into the living room.

I set down my glass on the coffee table and walked to your bookshelves. They were built into the wall just like mine were at home and filled with more books than most people could ever imagine even skimming through. You had read them all. You brought them from Guelph, from your parents’ house in Wisconsin, and now they sat on the shelves you had painstakingly hammered into existence. You dusted your books regularly, you kept them more pristine than your appearance. They were exquisite. I ran my fingers over each one, my eyes quickly reading the spine of each one. I knew the moment I saw these books that I would be yours.

These books said more about you than your eyes or your hands or your words did. They told me that while your brothers were wrestling in the living room as kids, you were hiding on the back porch turning the pages of The Portrait of Dorian Gray as fast as your eyes moved across the page. They told me that you read things not assigned in sophomore English while waiting for your mom to pick you up from track practice. They told me that you had to buy a second copy of The Poetics of Space after you dogeared and highlighted it into oblivion while writing your senior thesis. They told me that you knew more than most people did and that those people would probably never learn about the worlds that lived beneath your floppy blond hair. This was my first step into those worlds. Every talk over breakfast, every whisper before we fell asleep at night, every conversation as we passed sections of the newspaper to each other on the couch, they just showed me another glimpse of the things I wanted to know about you and about life.

I pulled Life Studies by Robert Lowell off the shelf and made my way down the narrow hallway. I was still freezing and grabbed my coat out of the hall closet; it had been in there since we had gone to New York for the weekend two months before. I slipped it over my shoulders and pulled the hood up on my head. It had funny fake fur around the collar. I hated it until you said I looked like I should be kissing Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago.

I went into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. I stepped into the dry tub and sat back with my book. You always laughed when I did this but I loved being fully clothed and laying against the cool surface of the tub. I opened the book to “Skunk Hour” and began reading. I made it through a few poems when I heard the front door open and close.

“Honey?” You called to me, your voice deep but sunny.

“In here,” I said. You knew exactly what “in here” meant.

Your footsteps made the floorboards creak as you came closer to the bathroom. I heard you round the corner and then you stood in the doorway. I saw your lean runner’s legs in their jeans first and then looked up to see you smiling quietly at me. You leaned against the door frame and crossed your arms.

“Come here often, miss?” This was the game we always played when you found me reading in your bathtub. You were almost too tall for the door frame, the tallest man I had been with up to that point.

“Now and then.” I turned my fur-framed face to you. “It has a nice atmosphere and the drinks are swell, sir.”

“Are they now?” You walked in and lowered the toilet lid and sat down, your forearms resting on your knees as you leaned towards me. “What are you having?”

“Scotch and soda, it’s what we ladies drink.” I put the book down on my thighs and leaned forward, my arm on the edge of the tub.

“Ladies? Where?” You looked from left to right as I giggled. “I thought you were just an eskimo girl in that coat.”

“Well, it’s drafty in this bar. What else could I do?” I smiled at you and placed my hand on your arm. “Give us a kiss.”

You stood up suddenly and held your hand up. I protested as you backed out of the bathroom quickly.

“One second, one second,” you shouted as I heard you rummaging in your bedroom.

“Fine,” I sighed, laying back against the tub again.

You came back two minutes later with your camera in your hands and a shit-eating grin on your face. You kicked off your shoes and climbed into the tub, standing over me.

“Now,” you said, looking through the viewfinder. “Smile for me, eskimo girl.”

“I hate you.” I tried to keep a scowl on my lips but I couldn’t help smiling as you put the shower curtain over your head like an old time photographer.

“Look at the birdy, little eskimo girl.” You waved your hand above your head as you snapped photo after photo of me laughing at your shtick.

“Are you done yet?” I reclined in the tub and looked up at you.

“No.” You kept taking photos as you knelt awkwardly over me, your long limbs splaying out of the tub. You took a photo of just my face as I smiled a real smile at you. “Now, I’m done.”

You leaned down and gave me my kiss. Your face brushed against mine and against the fur, your tongue darting inside my mouth. I opened my eyes while we kissed and saw yours were open as well. Your eyes were so green at that moment as you looked into my brown ones. I still haven’t met anyone with eyes as green as yours. My hands found their way around your neck as we kissed lazily in the tub. You pushed back the hood to kiss my earlobe.

“What are you reading today?” You bent your chin to kiss my fingers that seemed to be made for your mouth.

“Life Studies.” I sat up a bit and we faced each other almost level now.

“Again?” You motioned that you wanted to move around me and I moved forward as you laid back against the tub. You held your arms out for me to lay against you.

“Don’t again me.” I sat against you and leaned back against your chest, your arms wrapping around my waist. “You’ve read that copy so much it’s falling apart.”

“You’ll put the final nail in its coffin though.” You kissed the back of my neck.

“Whatever.” I picked the book up and opened to where I was when you got home. “Read to me, semi sweet man.”

“Fine.”

You read “Man and Wife” in a soft voice and I stared at the ceiling as I leaned my head against your chest. We were at home like this. If this was all that life involved, books and secret games and making love, we would have stayed in that tub for the rest of our lives, our hair graying as we struggled to lower our arthritic limbs into the bathtub for an afternoon of Amy Hempel’s short stories. Instead there was your job, my school, my parents, my supposed future, the difference in our ages, my insecurities that seemed to halt me at the doorway of actual happiness, the way I felt you loved me too much. Our chemistry was perfect but it couldn’t exist outside of this space. As soon as it hit oxygen, we would shatter. For a year, we would hide out until we had to face the world again.

We stretched out our legs, my short ones in between your long ones, and we read until the still of twilight fell over the house. You were still as you breathed into my ponytail and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to have found you. The way you loved me made every nerve ending fire on all cylinders and made me feel as if I could take on anything. You cradled me for a year and when it came time to make decisions and see where we would go, I was the only one who did any going. I left you behind because we couldn’t continue living our lives away from reality. I hated the idea of wrenching myself from the comfort of your arms, your couch, your kitchen curtains but I needed to face the ugly things alone. You couldn’t hold my hand, you couldn’t protect me, you couldn’t go through things for me, you couldn’t fix me; I had to grow up on my own.

You loved me like a man but I could only love you like a girl. I wasn’t a woman yet, we weren’t equal. The fact that I needed you to become myself seems cruel but maybe that’s what you were for me. Maybe I was something else for you and now the world is different as a result. The world around you always changes when something ends or begins. Each lover that doesn’t work gives you a new set of eyes and another piece of baggage to carry around with you. Sometimes though, some of the baggage gets taken by someone who loves you enough for the both of you.

I dream of your bookshelves sometimes, your books deeply cared for, lovingly treasured belongings held on a pedestal. This is how you loved me, how you took care of me. We’re sitting in front of your books and you’re holding my hand. You tell me to pick any book I want and take it. I stand and look for a long time at all the choices and pick up a slim blue volume. I open it and the pages are blank. I turn and look at you only to see you mouthing something to me.

“Go.”

I hear a crack behind me and I back away, watching the beams of your bookshelves crumble and all the volumes on it fall in a pile of rubble. You sit watching it fall, standing only when the debris was still. You pick up a torn book from the pile and look at me over your shoulder.

“Time to begin again,” you say.

I wake up and look at the ceiling. My book is not entirely empty by this point in my life but you’ve left me plenty of room to keep filling it. I think of you now after this new heartbreak and begin anew.

©Anaïs Escobar

Love Notebook #5

This is a love story for the creeps and the stalkers and the freaks; for the people who call you 46 times in a row when you don’t pick up the first time; for the ones who convince you that it’s totally normal that they watch you sleep; for the people who think all your friends want to sleep with you; for the people who don’t know when to let go; for the people who delete all the photos of your exes from your computer when you’re not home; and for the people who will only know how to love in their own fucked up ways.

I loved you, too.

I sat on the edge of my bed and waited. I counted the hangers on the rod in my open closet to try and relax. The clock on my nightstand read 4:37 PM. It had been 53 minutes since I had left my now ex-girlfriend at her job and driven home. She hadn’t let me drop her off at the door, pulling away from my grasp as I tried to keep her in the car. I had broken up with her a few minutes before and we were both red faced with swollen eyes from crying. She slapped my hand away and slammed the door as she stalked away.

I rolled down the window and tried to convince her to get back in the car but she just walked faster, wiping at her eyes. I stopped the car in front of the door and watched her walk in. I put the car into drive and drove home, shutting off the radio angrily at a red light. I parked in my driveway and walked inside my house in a daze. My roommate Karen was sitting on the couch with her laptop and looked up as I walked in. The smile fell off her face as she saw me sniffling and weepy.

“Oh my god, Anaïs, what happened?” she asked, putting aside her MacBook Pro and standing up.

“We broke up.” I put down my keys on the coffee table and stood with my hands awkwardly at my sides.

“Oh honey, I’m sorry. Who did the actual breaking up?” She put her hand on my back.

“Me. I’m fucking suffocating and I got this email from Max yesterday that just made me realize that I can’t be with her anymore.”

“Anaïs, please tell me you did not break up with Alyssa because you want to get back together with Max. Just tell me anything else but don’t tell me that because I will kill you.” Her eyes squinted as she looked at me sharply.

“No, definitely not but there are still feelings there and I can’t be with someone who just gave me an almost engagement ring when I might have feelings for my ex.”

“Well, I’m glad you ended things with her. She’s been living here rent-free for three months and barely even paying for her small portion of the utilities. She’s fucking trash.” She pulled her laptop onto her lap again.

“Don’t say that, she’s just been struggling since her mom cut her off.” I sat back and hugged a cushion to my chest. “It’s not like our situation where our parents find out we’re dating a girl and they just ignore it.”

“Well, that’s because our parents realize that they’d rather have semi-dyke daughters with careers than homeless, penniless ones in the future.”

“You’re such a bitch.” I laughed and relaxed a little bit.

“I know, darling.” Karen turned her attention back to her laptop.

She tapped at her keyboard as I sat still and tried to calm down. My hands were still shaky and my stomach had been a mess since that morning; I was never good at breaking up with anyone and never would be. My phone vibrated in the pocket of my jeans and I took it out to check it. I had a text message from her. I swallowed and flipped it open to read it.

Were you going to tell me that he emailed you? Yeah, I read your email, you fucking slut.

“Oh my god.” My mouth hung open as I read the text again in my head.

“What? Is it her?” Karen leaned over and grabbed my phone from me. “Oh shit. I can’t believe she read your email. How did she get your password?”

“I don’t know, she must have copied it to herself some time when she used my laptop, all my passwords are saved on there.” I started to cry again.

“No, calm down. You have to reply. This is creepy shit, Anaïs, get it together.” She held my phone in her hands. “Now. Tell me what you want to say and I’ll type it.”

“What do I say to that? Fuck.” I sniffled. “Okay. Say ‘Why did you read my email? That has nothing to do with us breaking up’. Does that sound okay?”

“Perfect,” she said as she typed the message and hit send. “I would have been meaner though.”

“Whatever. My skin’s crawling, I can’t believe she would do that.”

“I can, girl’s a total possessive creep.” Karen eagerly held onto my phone waiting for the response to come.

“She’s not that bad, Karen.” I bounced my left leg up and down. “She just gets jealous a lot.”

My phone vibrated in Karen’s hand and we both jumped. Karen flipped it open and we read the reply.

I read it cause I knew there was a reason you were leaving me and it’s that dick. I’m coming to your house to get some of my shit now, Jen’s going to pick me up in 30 minutes.

“Oh shit,” Karen said, looking from the phone to my face. “This is going to be bad.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Oh god.” I took deep breaths as I tried to avoid a panic attack. “She’s going to kill me.”

“She’s not going to kill you, she’s just going to cry and scream and be dramatic as all fuck.” She closed her laptop and stood up with it. “I’ll be in my room if you need first aid afterward. Or a drink.”

“You’re leaving me to get my ass kicked by my ex-girlfriend?” I was terrified of what Alyssa would do if she encountered me alone. That should have been a sign that she was someone to never, ever be with.

“You’ll be fine, I promise.” She looked down at me thoughtfully. “You need to do this on your own, you’re twenty.”

“Fine but if I die, you’ll be sorry.”

I stood up and followed her down the hallway to our bedrooms. She gave me a little wave as she walked into her room and closed the door. I was alone now and terror set in. I walked into our bedroom, my bedroom now, and looked around. Framed photos of Alyssa and I were all over. Post-its covered my desk with little hearts and “love you”s and seemed to be a pox over every surface. I was overwhelmed by her things everywhere: her gym bag, her shoes lined up on her side of the closet, her psychology textbooks piled on her nightstand. I sat down on the edge of the bed and this is where I was waiting when I heard her open and then slam the front door closed.

Alyssa was probably the most petite girl I had ever known but her footsteps made her presence known even on carpet. I heard her make her way down the hallway to our room. She opened the door forcefully and looked at me sitting on the bed. She was sweaty from walking to my house in the sun and her face was swollen from crying. Closing the door behind her, she stared at me, her jaw set.

“Stand up,” she said. I was too overwhelmed to move and started crying again. “I told you to stand up, you slut.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not a slut.” My voice was shaky as I spoke.

“Yes, you are. Your ex-boyfriend emails you and you break up with your girlfriend? What do you call that?” Her arms were at her sides and seemed to twitch.

“That’s not why I broke up with you, I don’t want to be with you because I’m not happy with you and I can’t lie to you about it anymore.” I shifted from one foot to another.

“You were happy last week, you were happy the month before that and all the months before that. Why now? Oh, right, Max.” Her voice was angry but her eyes were full of tears.

“I don’t know if I love you anymore. I don’t feel how I used to.” I gulped as she looked hard at me. “It wasn’t fair to you, I’m sorry.”

Alyssa looked at me without moving for a few moments before letting out the most pained cry I’d ever heard in my life. She sobbed and I moved towards her, taking her into my arms. She pushed me away and backed against the wall.

“I never want you to touch me again, you’re disgusting,” she spat out, tears running down her face onto her collarbones.

“I just want to hug you, I’m sorry.” I was crying as well and still tried to move closer to her. “I feel terrible.”

“You should feel terrible. You’ve ruined my fucking life. I have nowhere to go now and that doesn’t even really matter because I hope I fucking die.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is that all you have to say? Is that really all you have to fucking say right now?” She was shouting, a rare thing for her to do.

“I don’t know what to say, Al,” I whispered.

“Don’t call me that, don’t even say my name. I never want to hear my name on your lips ever again.”

She pushed away from the wall and walked towards the closet. She began pulling her shirts and pants and shorts off the hangers and holding them in a huge pile in her arms. Throwing them on the floor, she grabbed her duffel bag from the top shelf of the closet and began shoving clothing inside the bag.

“Let me help,” I said, hovering around her.

“I don’t want your help, you’ve done enough.”

She half zipped the overflowing bag and left it on the floor as she walked into the bathroom. I followed her and stood in the doorway as she grabbed an armful of her shampoo and body wash and deodorant and toothpaste and everything else she could carry. She dropped all of it into her backpack and closed it.

Walking over to the wall, she pulled a framed photo of the two of us off and smashed it over her knee. She let the debris fall to the ground before tucking the photo in her back pocket. I looked at her, horrified.

“You don’t deserve to keep these,” she said, as she took another photo off the wall and did the same thing.

Soon the floor was covered in glass and cardboard and wood, and brightly colored images of our ski trip and Halloween and days at the beach were sticking out of her back pocket. I stood in front of my desk on one side of the bed as she stood on the opposite side of the bed. She suddenly remembered and looked directly at me.

“Give me the ring,” she said.

“Here,” I said, as I tried to walk around to hand it to her.

“I told you to not come any closer,” she almost shouted. “I don’t want you to hand it to me, I don’t want to touch your fucking hand.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” I seethed at being treated like a leper by someone who had just had their hands all over me not two days before.

“I don’t give a shit what I’m being, I just don’t want you near me,” she said. “Now throw it on the bed.”

“Fine.”

I pulled off the diamond and white gold ring she had given me a few weeks before for an anniversary and placed it in the middle of the bed. It had been an engagement ring of sorts, she had given it to me as a token of her commitment to me and I put it on my left ring finger; things had gone downhill from the moment I received it. I didn’t want it. I was happy to give it back to her. The ring lay between us for half a minute before Alyssa reached out and scooped it into her pocket. We stared at each other.

“I should never have given you this ring,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re fucking sorry. It doesn’t even mean anything, you just feel bad because this is uncomfortable for you.”

Her phone rang and she answered it. From her end of the conversation, it seemed to be Jen, her sorority sister, on her way to pick her up. Alyssa hung up the phone and slid it into her pocket. She looked at me for a second before going to gather her packed things up in her arms.

“I don’t want help, so don’t even ask,” she said, reading my guilty mind.

“Okay.” I watched her put on her backpack and throw her duffel bag over her shoulder. “What about the rest of your stuff?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back for it in a few days when you’re not here and I’ll leave my key.” She opened the bedroom door and began walking down the hallway.

I followed her as she walked towards the front door. I knew I could stop her at any time. I could apologize, say that I had been temporarily deranged, but I didn’t want to. As guilty as I felt, this was right. She looked back at me at the door.

“Have fun with your boyfriend,” she said, holding the door open. She walked through it and closed it behind her.

It was over. I stood in the living room for a while staring at the door. Soon I walked down the hallway towards my room only to find Karen peeking her head out of her room and looking at me eagerly.

“That sounded bad. Are you okay?” she asked, as she opened the door and stepped out of her room.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” I felt exhausted. “Can you make me a drink?”

“On it, you read my mind.”

She passed me on her way to the kitchen and walked directly to the fridge. I followed and sat down at the glass kitchen table. Karen pulled a bottle of Absolut purchased by older friends out of the freezer and a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. She filled two tall glasses with ice and sat down across from me as she poured us each a screwdriver. I drank mine down in a few gulps and Karen sipped faster to keep up. She poured two more and we drank them quickly. We didn’t talk much just sat together getting increasingly intoxicated as the sun set outside the kitchen window.

Soon we moved to drinking the vodka by itself and finished off the bottle. Looking around the kitchen made me dizzy so I put my head down on the table. The glass was cool against my cheek. Karen put her head down as well and we marveled at how much we had had to drink in such a short time. We giggled incoherently until Karen began snoring softly. I lifted my heavy head and stumbled down the hallway towards my room, falling against the walls as my jelly-boned legs seemed to collapse with every step.

I walked inside my room and looked at the hazy mess on the floor. Broken glass was everywhere and I had no idea what to do with it. I started to cry as I realized what had happened a few hours before. I wiped my face as I took off all my clothes and got into bed. The sheets smelled like both of us, our fluids from the last time we had sex just a few days before. I rolled onto my side and my pillow became wet as I cried. At some point, I blacked out; the day was over, it was all done.

I woke up the next morning hungover and remained hungover for the next few days. I skipped classes and got a haircut and a manicure. I reread Lolita and avoided calls and texts from our mutual friends telling me that I was being a bitch. It’s not until a breakup occurs that you find out who your real friends are; I didn’t have many left in that town.

Alyssa came with her friends a few days later to get the rest of her things. She didn’t want me to be there so I drove around the block 87 times, making sure that she didn’t burn down my house. I watched her as she got into her friend’s car and left, her face drawn and tired. I pulled back into my driveway and went inside to inspect the expected damage and found the room pristine. I noticed she had taken a photo of herself from my bulletin board and walked over to sit at my desk. I opened my laptop and waited as it woke up from sleep. She had taken all the Post-its she had written me but I noticed a new one still on the pad written with a blue marker that sat next to it.

Who’s to say?

I looked at it and recognized the lyric from our song, a Vanessa Carlton one. I felt awkward reading it. She had obviously left it for me to find but I couldn’t figure out why. Did she have hope for getting back together? That seemed an unlikely possibility after the things that had been said. Not to mention, I had indeed begun talking to my ex-boyfriend Max again and we seemed to be moving towards a long distance reunion. I wondered what was going through her head. I folded the Post-it in half and stuck it in my desk drawer; I didn’t want to think about it anymore that day. I signed into my email and put it out of my mind. She and I were done.

Three weeks later, Alyssa and I had both moved on. She was dating a bright eyed freshman girl she met at the local gay club and I was sharing late night phone sessions with Max. She put her new relationship status on Facebook and it was official. I was slightly miffed; Max was excited.

“Now that she’s with some girl, we can put our relationship status up, baby,” he said as we chatted on the phone.

“No, you don’t know how she is. She’ll freak out.” I chewed on my nails as I considered her reaction.

“We can’t hide forever. Besides she probably thinks we’re together anyways so what does it matter?”

“I guess you’re right.” I clicked on the open Facebook tab and sent Max a relationship request. “There.”

He confirmed it and there it was on Facebook, making it official in all social circles. I expected Alyssa to burst through my window at any second to strangle me. I was nervous. I said good night to Max and hung up the phone. I went back to Facebook to continue my ex stalking and looked at photos of Alyssa and her new girlfriend. I was way cuter than this girl. She was obviously some sort of rebound thing. I clicked on picture after picture of the two of them and realized that they looked sort of happy. Jealous, I closed my computer and went to sleep.

I was late to class the next morning and stumbled over my own feet as I made my way from my illegally parked car to class. I spilled hot soy latte over my hand and stopped to lick it off before it got all over my clothes. Out of the corner of my eye, I felt like someone was watching me and I turned in that direction. Nothing. I finished cleaning off my hand and walked towards my classroom building for what was left of Latin American history. I tried to look busy as I took notes and avoided my professor’s cold looks.

Class ended and I walked back out into the cool March day, lighting a cigarette as I strolled underneath the trees. I enjoyed the weather as I walked, hoping I wouldn’t get a parking ticket for being parked in the wrong area. Nearing my car, I saw the familiar paper under the windshield and stomped my foot. I walked up to my car and grabbed it angrily when I realized it was just a folded piece of notebook paper. My relief at not receiving a ticket faded as I unfolded it and read it.

I miss the way your cunt tastes.

My eyes widened and I looked around me quickly. It was Alyssa’s handwriting and I wondered if she was watching me from some corner to see my reaction. I folded it until it was small and put it in my pocket. I got in my car and sat there for a while. I was disturbed and anxious but aroused. Even if she wasn’t around at that moment, I knew she was watching me in her mind’s eye. I shook the thought from my mind and drove around town for a while.

I aimlessly drove around campus for thirty minutes looking at all the students bustling about. I reached the edge of campus and turned right on 441 as I rolled my windows down. I pressed on the gas as I drove towards Paynes Prairie with the stereo all the way up. Wind made my hair fly around my face as I drove and I let one arm hang out the window. I needed to let my mind be, just for a minute; it had been full from the minute I told Alyssa it was over. I hadn’t stopped going and going. I wanted to stare at brush and animals and let my head empty.

I sang along to Ryan Adams until I noticed that a white car had been following me for a bit. I had seen the car on campus but didn’t think anything of it. Now it had been tailing me for a good while. I couldn’t believe what I was thinking. I picked up my phone off the passenger seat and texted Alyssa.

I know this is ridiculous because you don’t have a car and I’m on 441 right now but are you following me?

I hit send and waited a second before closing it. It vibrated almost instantly. I opened it again to read the reply.

I got a new car a few days ago and I wouldn’t call it following. I’m not sure what I’m doing. Pull over at the observation deck.

I was going to argue with her but it was where I was going anyways so I accelerated and spent the next ten minutes of driving seething. I made the left hand turn to the gravel parking area and sat in the car until Alyssa pulled in and parked next to me. I watched her get out of her car before I opened the door and stepped out. We met in between our cars. She looked spent. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her shoulders were hunched in her loose t-shirt. She stared at me.

“So now that we’re here, are you going to tell me why you’re following me?’ I asked her, sounding braver than I felt.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged at me. “I haven’t been right since we broke up.”

“You have a girlfriend, you seem happy enough in all your photos.” Even I thought I sounded bitter.

“Fuck, Anaïs. Do you really think I can really feel anything like I felt for you for someone I’ve been dating for less than a month?”

“I don’t know, you moved on fast enough, what am I supposed to think?” I could feel a headache coming behind my eyes.

“You left me, you fucking crazy girl!” She yelled at me. Her hands were in front of her, probably ready to strangle me. “You broke up with me after I told you I wanted to spend my fucking life with you!”

“I know, I’m sorry.” I backed closer to my car. “I know I have no right but I’m still fucking upset that you moved on so fast after giving me such shit about me being the one.”

“I haven’t moved on, I’m going through the fucking motions with this girl.” She looked on the verge of tears. “All I do is think about you and compare everything about her to you. The things she says, how she eats her cereal, the way she feels when we’re fucking. I spend every waking hour and even the ones where I’m not awake thinking about you. I’m a fucking mess.”

I didn’t know what to say as she started to cry in front of me. I just watched her and didn’t move. A group of girls that looked to be our age pulled up and parked. They looked at us curiously as they made their way onto the observation deck. I could hear them whispering as they walked away. I looked at Alyssa thoughtfully.

“I’m a mess, too, you know,” I said.

“No, you’re not.” She sniffled. “You’re with that fucker and now your life is perfect. You got your dyke phase out of the way and now you can go back to that dick. Remember how you spent months when we first met telling me how he made you feel so fucking small, so fucking bad about yourself?”

“Things are different with him now, they’re good.” I was telling myself this as much as I was telling her. “Besides you made me feel just as bad about myself so who gives a shit.”

Her eyes flared in a way I had never seen, not even on the day I broke up with her, and she lunged at me with one arm up ready to hit me. I was quick and grabbed her arm and held it above our heads, my fingers gripped around her slim forearm. She looked me in the eye for a full minute before pressing her mouth against mine. Her breath was stale but my lips parted for her tongue out of habit as well as desire. I held onto her arm but she pushed me against my car as her free hand roamed down the front of my pants. She kissed my neck as she slid a finger inside me.

“You’re wet,” she murmured into my ear. “I must have not made you feel so bad then.”

“No, don’t turn it around like that.” I barely managed to get the words out as she moved her fingers inside my panties.

“I missed your cunt. Apparently, it missed me, too.” She took her hand out of my pants and licked her fingers.

“No, it fucking didn’t,” I said as I pushed her off me. She stumbled against her own car. “This is what I mean. You don’t fucking own me, you sick bitch. I don’t want to be with you because you’re controlling and manipulative, not to mention, ragingly insecure. You can’t scare me into wanting you anymore, you’re not that powerful.”

Alyssa stared at me for a long time before wiping her hand on her jeans. I swallowed and looked back. I’d never been that honest with her before.

“It’s not that simple, Anaïs.” She took her keys out of her pocket and began to walk around to the driver’s side of the car. “None of it is and you know it.”

She unlocked the door and got in the car. I heard the engine turn over and she reversed out of her space before speeding onto the road, not looking at me. Her car became tiny in the distance. It would be a long time before I saw her again. I leaned against my car for a while. I heard the group of girls chattering as they walked back to the parking lot. I got back inside my car and turned onto 441, my windows up this time. I screamed by myself and I didn’t feel any better. I called Max when I got home and acted entirely normal for that phone call and for the next three months; he and I didn’t last any longer than that spring.

The early summer sun beat down on me as I walked into my summer session Introduction to Women’s Studies class. I took a seat in the middle of the room and opened my notebook. I wrote the date in the top right hand corner and underlined it like I always did. Looking up, I saw Alyssa walk in the room, followed closely by her girlfriend. She smirked at me and took a seat in the row in front of me as her girlfriend sat next to her. They chatted until the professor came in and began calling names for attendance. Alyssa took out her phone and began to fiddle with it; soon my bag began to vibrate. She couldn’t be more obvious if she tried. I opened my phone.

I like your hair. Lunch?

I closed my phone and exhaled. I couldn’t believe she was this insane. I answered when the teacher called my name and focused on taking notes. Whenever I looked up, she was peeking back at me, turning her head to the front when I caught her. I was livid watching her look at me while her oblivious girlfriend stared at the syllabus in front of her. To this day, I don’t know what I saw in Alyssa. We had little in common, she hated anything new or different, and she didn’t understand me at all. We dated for the better part of a year and I can honestly say she had no idea who I was at all. She wasn’t even that attractive. I couldn’t explain my attraction to her, to the downward spiral that constituted our relationship, but I knew that I wanted her more than she annoyed me or pissed me off time and again.

Everyone has someone like that. As soon as said person is out of the room, you realize that he or she is a grade-A moron but as soon as you see them, it’s hard to not fall into the same trap. There’s an inexplicable draw to the people who are wrong for you, bad for you; it’s for those of us who yell that there’s trouble when nothing’s wrong. You need to destroy things especially yourself. You find those people who will help you destroy yourself faster, the really fucked up weirdos who know how to hit the spots that will sting every single time. You tell yourself again and again that it doesn’t make sense and you’re not happy yet there you are, not falling, but jumping back in.

I opened my phone halfway through class and replied to her text.

Meet me at my car at one.

©Anaïs Escobar

Love Notebook #4

Before The Girl, there was another man, an in between man if you will. Thinking back on things, he was the one I should have considered being in a relationship with, not the lesbian or the treehugger or that guy who wanted to make documentaries about turtles for PBS. I should have been with this guy because he was the wilder version of me; he made my antics look like kindergarten shit. He saw me for what I was: a conflicted, heartbroken, eternally filthy 19-year-old girl with a taste for drinking and fucking in the afternoon. He carried a torch for his much smarter ex-girlfriend who had left and I had her eyes and breasts. His name was Dirk and for three weeks, he was a permanent fixture in the passenger seat of my car. This installment is about the shortest love stories.

We met long before anything happened between us at some sort of gathering of mutual friends. He was tall and looked like he had stepped off the cover of a Sex Pistols record. Bleached hair, tight pants that revealed just enough package, old faded t-shirt, tattoos all over including his ex-girlfriend’s name on his forearm and some sort of abstract design on his neck. Not tribal, thank god. I was poured into a 1950’s style floral circle skirt dress, waist cinched, breasts presented as a gift to all in view. I was nursing an amaretto sour next to my then-boyfriend and I felt him looking at me. I looked at him and he licked his lips. He winked before turning and walking away. I was pissed off and aroused; I held onto my boyfriend’s hand more tightly.

“Who was the guy who looked like he should be in a Clash tribute band?” I asked my boyfriend as we drove home.

“That’s Dirk. He doesn’t really do much, he’s sort of just known around town. He used to live with his ex but she went to grad school somewhere in Iowa or something when they broke up and he’s stuck around town. We hung out a few times last year, before you moved here. Why?”

“No reason.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, definitely. I just hadn’t seen in anyone in an outfit like that since I was in the 8th grade going to the mall.” I looked out the passenger window the rest of the way home.

The next morning I had a new friend request on Myspace. It was 2005, after all. I accepted it although I was still annoyed by this guy’s whole schtick. I thought I might as well be friendly since we ran in the same crowds. He and I saw each other at a few parties and events over the next few months but didn’t communicate except for looks: his lascivious towards me and mine outwardly indignant but pleased and giddy inside. I turned my nose up at him and grinned as soon as my back was turned.

A few months later, my boyfriend and I were over. It may have been a fight over me eating gummi bears which “have gelatin in them, babe, and are definitely not vegetarian” and my ex not wanting to kiss me as a result. Man, I was such a dick with all the gelatin and exploited gummi bear limbs in my mouth. I moved out two days later. I changed all the appropriate internet relationship statuses to single. I was torn up about the breakup but I was very pleased to be able to eat cheeseburgers all the live long day. I went to work a few days a week and spent the rest of the time reading all the books that had piled up in my own apartment for months. Books are on the top five list of best boyfriends after all; they just don’t have cocks most of the time. Notice I said most.

I checked my email in between pottery classes at work and saw I had a Myspace comment from Dirk, everyone’s favorite Sid Vicious impersonator. I clicked on the link and opened my profile to read it.

“I want to eat chocolate chip pancakes with you.”

Now, I sat there for a good ten minutes wondering what the fuck this message could mean. We had barely said more than hello to each other and now he was giving me this specific request. I soon realized that my user info included the saucy information: “I like to eat chocolate chip pancakes after sex.” Well. It all made sense. I wasn’t sure how to respond so I sent him a message with my phone number and asked him if he preferred milk or semi sweet chocolate chips. I smirked all day at the thought of his comment. He called late that night right before I was getting ready to go to sleep.

“Hey, I meant to call you a lot earlier. I’m sorry.” His voice sounded rough and I could hear the even in and out of his breathing.

“It’s okay. What are you up to?” I paced my bedroom floor, hopping from foot to foot and trying not to sound too eager.

“I watched like, a shitload of Deadwood. My roommate had it on dvd and I just sat on the couch and smoked cigarettes and stared at the screen. That show is fucking amazing.”

“I like it. Although I think that Doris Day was a much more attractive Calamity Jane but you know, realism.” I pulled at the loose rug fibers with my toes.

“I never saw her as Calamity Jane but she was hot. My mom used to watch all those movies she did with that Rock Hudson dude. Who would think he was gay? That guy was fucking macho.” He laughed a little but I could tell he was trying to charm me.

“I know, I watched those movies with my grandma and I always had a huge crush on him as a kid.” I was quiet for a second. “Um, thanks for the comment.”

“Oh. No, don’t thank me, it’s just the truth. I want to. Are you busy tomorrow afternoon?” I heard him lighting a cigarette.

“No, I work in the morning tomorrow but then I’m free. What did you want to do?”

“I have ideas, just pick me up at 1. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, definitely. Text me directions to your house. I’ll see you then.”

“I hope you have sweet dreams.” He sounded sincere about that even over the phone.

We said goodbye and hung up. He texted me the very simple directions a few minutes later and I set down my phone to charge for the night. I laid in bed that night and mentally sifted through my closet thinking of what I could possibly wear the next day. I ended up picking something ambiguous since I had no idea what we were doing: tight jeans I had cut off before to mid thigh, a long yellow tanktop that fit more like a very short dress, and a chocolate brown cardigan. I had cut my hair into a fauxhawk a few months before and it was growing out and becoming floppy, falling into my eyes all the time. I looked in the mirror over and over again at home and continued to do so at work as well; I stared at the reflection of my ass in shorts in the glass window of the pottery classroom and tried to wink at myself to gain courage. My coworker saw this and laughed.

I left work at 12:30 and set on my way to pick up Dirk. Surprisingly I made it to his house without a problem, a miracle seeing as how I am directionally challenged. It was an old house downtown, not in the trendy part of downtown with the pretty houses with the jacaranda trees, but a few blocks east where things were a bit rougher. The house was painted a dusty blue and the driveway was mostly dirt and weeds. I parked and walked up to the door trying not to trip on the unruly lawn. I knocked and waited. I could hear shuffling towards the door and then the footsteps became more decisive. Dirk opened the door and smiled at me. He was holding a small dufflebag, the kind a kid might take to karate class or Little League practice.

“Nice purse.” I smirked and crossed my arms across my chest.

“It’s obviously not a purse, it’s just a bag.” He looked ridiculous in his tight pants and worn jacket holding this lilliputian bag in his hands.

“Ok. You and your pocketbook ready to go, Nana?” I avoided the smack to my arm and started towards the car.

He locked the door and walked to the car. He got in the passenger seat and adjusted the seat to make room for his legs. We buckled our seatbelts and I stuck the key in the ignition and turned the engine over. The Flaming Lips played on my cd player and we both just sat for a minute looking at each other.

“What are we doing today?” I asked, my hands playing with the frayed edges of my cutoffs.

“It’s a surprise, I can’t tell you.”

“Well, I’m driving so I kind of have to know.”

“Just drive to College Village and park in the front.”

“Why are we going there?” I raised my eyebrows. College Village was a sketchy apartment complex near campus. I’d smoked a lot of weed there.

“Will you just drive there please? You must be a pain in the ass on Christmas.”

“Fine. I’m only a pain in the ass on Christmas because I whine about Baby Jesus stealing the thunder from my birthday.” I put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway and began driving towards University Avenue.

“Your birthday’s on Christmas? That has to suck.” He put the small bag in between his feet.

“No, it’s the 28th actually but everyone’s hopped up on egg nog the whole month so no one cares about my birthday. It’s especially fucked since historically no one’s even sure if Jesus was even born on December 25th so it’s really just fucking with my birthday for no reason.” I made a right hand turn at the light and drove west towards College Village.

“You look cute when you’re talking shit about Jesus.” I could feel him smiling a real smile at me, one with his eyes.

“It’s BABY Jesus I’m pissed at. The grown up one with the twelve dude stalkers and the water-into-wine alcoholism is alright by me.”

We arrived quickly since our town was the size of a shoebox and I turned into the tiny parking area. I pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. Dirk got out of the car and grabbed the bag. I wondered what the fuck could be in there and followed him.

“Who are we visiting?” I asked. I put on my sunglasses as I followed him.

“No one, follow me.”

He walked around the building towards the back and I wondered if this was how I died. Getting murdered in a trashy student apartment complex by a man who winked at me for months and probably knew about that freckle on my pussy without having ever seen it. He just knew, I could tell. I walked close behind him and soon he stopped. There it was. The College Village pool. Everyone knew it as a cesspool full of diseased from student orgies and keggers that spilled over from the frat house next door. Apparently, the water was infested with syphilis; I’m not even sure if chlorinated water can contain syphilis but I wasn’t going to find out.

“No. The end.” I made a stern face at him and refused to budge.

“We’re not going to swim in it, we’re just going to enjoy the sun and have a nice afternoon by the pool. Come on.”

“Even if we weren’t going to swim in it, it’s locked for maintenance so new plan.”

“It’s a gate. Don’t tell me you’ve never climbed a gate before.” He had a slightly pouting look on his face and I was cracking.

“Of course I have, when I was a kid. I just don’t know if a gross pool and its deck are worth it.”

“Come on, honey.”

That fucker. He had somehow found out that I melted when men called me honey. I’d watched too many old movies as a little girl. Thanks for helping make me an easy mark, Grandma.

“Fine but I’m going to kill you if anything goes wrong.”

I walked towards the gate and put my right foot up on part of the lock and dropped my keys over the other side. I pushed up on my leg and hopped over pretty easily. Dirk grinned and hopped over with much more ease as if he jumped fences in his sleep. I looked around me at the pool deck and was surprised it wasn’t seedier. I expected used condoms filled with jizz and beer cans and whatnot lying around and instead all I got was a generic apartment complex pool. This could have been Melrose Place for Christ’s sake.

I sat down on a deck chair and kicked off my ballet flats. I wiggled my toes in the sunlight and tried to ignore the stickiness that is a Florida summer. Dirk sat down on the end of the chair and separated my feet over the edges of the chair so he could put down his bag. He unzipped it and took out two plastic cups, a small bottle of orange juice, and a big bottle of Popov Vodka. You may know Popov by its street name of isopropyl alcohol.

“Nice afternoon indeed. My liver’s going to cry from that stuff,” I said as I pulled my feet in to sit indian style.

“Hey, try to relax and enjoy the smooth swallows of Popov. Ok, princess?” He poured vodka into the cups first.

“Oh, I will. I didn’t need my throat anyways.”

He mixed drinks and we bumped cups as plastic hinders clinking. We drank them down quickly, my throat indeed stinging from the cheap vodka. We each had a second screwdriver and then proceeded to have a few shots of the Popov without chasers. The hot day felt stifling and I laid back in the deck chair and closed my eyes. Dirk pulled my feet into his lap and massaged them. I opened my eyes to see him looking at my toes.

“I just like them.”

He looked bashful all of a sudden with my feet in his hands. I smiled drunkenly at him and rested my head back as I looked at him. He kept massaging my feet and I relaxed again and closed my eyes. I could feel the sun beginning to burn my nose when I felt Dirk put my feet down on the chair and stand up. I opened my eyes to see him stripping down to his boxerbriefs and standing at the edge of the pool.

“Oh God, please don’t. You’re going to catch something.” I sat up straight too quickly and felt dizzy from the alcohol. “Seriously.”

“It’s fine, I promise.” He stuck one toe in.

“No, it’s gross, please.” I was concerned but I stared mostly at his broad back as he stood at the edge of the water.

“Looks fine.”

He dived in and the splash reached me in my chair. I groaned a little and watched him surface. He had this shit eating grin on his face as he floated and looked at me.

“Honey, it feels great. It’s not dirty at all.”

“When you get syphilis, you’ll be singing a different tune.” I tried to wipe off the water on me to no avail.

“Get your ass in the water, stop being a brat.” He swam in little circles and floated on his back. The water did look delicious, mostly because he was in it.

“Even if I wanted to, I’m not wearing a swimsuit.”

“Neither am I. No one’s even here, just get in in your bra and panties.”

I had no retort, my reflexes and wit dulled by the Popov. I stood up and began to undress in the sunshine. It was different than taking my clothes off at the beach, I felt like I was undressing for sex except I was surrounded by buildings and lit by a glowing, dying star; I liked it and took my time. I unbuttoned my shorts and let them slide down with a wiggle of my hips. I shrugged off my cardigan and lifted my tanktop over my head and dropped it on the ground. I felt his eyes on me. I stood in a bra and panties set I still own, soft kelly green cotton with blue lace on the edges. I was so glad I had matched my bra to my underwear for the first time maybe ever in my life. I walked to the edge of the pool and stood with my hands on my hips. I was still unsure about getting in. I closed my eyes tight and hoped I wouldn’t catch anything as I dived in, arms over my head.

There is nothing better than being in water when you’re drunk, whether it’s a pool or ocean or bathtub. It is truly glorious. As soon as my body floated through the chlorine as I surfaced, I realized I could care less if I got syphilis or not. I was beyond happy. Dirk was next to me when I surfaced and slid his hands around my waist and pulled me close.

“I told you it was nice,” he said as he pushed my hair out of my eyes.

“It’s alright. That’s all I’ll give you.” I laid my head on his shoulder as we kicked to stay above water and smelled his skin. He smelled clean and masculine.

“No, say it. You know this is awesome in this heat.” He swam towards the wall of the middle of the pool and didn’t let go of me, pushing us both towards the wall.

“Nope. It’s just alright.” I was up against the wall and he could stand there but I couldn’t. He kept his hands around my waist and pressed against me while taking my legs and wrapping them around his waist. He wrapped his right hand around my neck and ran his fingers along my collarbone.

“Tell me, honey,” he whispered. He lowered his lips to my neck and slowly began to lick it.

“Mmm. No.” I felt his wet bleached hair dripping on me and I leaned my head back against the edge of the pool as he continued to suck on my neck.

He tried to push me further against the wall but there was nowhere to go. My shoulderblades dug into the cement. He began to kiss down from my neck to my breasts. He lowered one bra strap and released my left breast from its underwire cage. My nipple was instantly hard from the water and arousal and his mouth kissing it didn’t help matters. He came back up and met my eyes. His breath was hot and citrusy near my mouth. I could feel my heart throbbing in my brain and stomach.

“Say it.” He ran his hand along my cheek.

“It’s great. It’s amazing.” I was out of breath and could feel myself dizzy as I tried to inhale and exhale.

He slammed his mouth to mine and I opened my mouth for his tongue. Our mouths tasted the same and I explored his with my tongue. I felt like I was swimming in there. I felt him hard against my ass since my legs were wrapped around his waist; I wiggled against him as we kissed and he moaned into my mouth. His hands roamed over my breasts until finally he just had me pinned by the arms to the pool wall. We were attached mouth to mouth, his hands to my forearms.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Our heads snapped up to see a secutiry guard staring at us. He was of the bumbling white dude variety so we weren’t so much terrified as we were just surprised.

“You can’t use this pool, they’re doing maintenance on it right now,” he said, staying by the gate but his eyes clearly on my exposed breast. I sunk slightly underwater to hide from his gaze.

“We’ll get out of here, dude,” Dirk said, casually moving his arm in front of me to cover me up a bit.

“You have five minutes or I’m calling the cops.” The security guard walked away but stuck close by to make sure we got out of there.

I started laughing and DIrk tried to shush me but he started laughing as well. We continued kissing for a bit while floating around since after all we had five minutes. Our hands teased each other as we laughed at the Don Knotts-esque security guard. Dirk kissed my nose and nibbled on it a little.

“That’s it, I warned you. I’m calling the cops,” the guard yelled. He started dialing his phone as he walked back to his car.

“Fuck, let’s go,” Dirk said, swimming to the ladder quickly and bounding the rungs to get out of the water.

I swam close behind and stepped onto the ladder but when my foot reached the second rung, I slipped and my left thigh met the edge of the ladder railing sharply. I screamed moreso than usual having been drinking, but I was genuinely scared when I pulled back and saw the huge gash on my leg and the water around it swirling with red billows of blood. I held onto the grip with one hand but fell back a little as I looked at my leg in shock; the only thought I had was of syphilis in my open wound. Dirk ran over and grabbed me by the arms to try and pull me out but I couldn’t move. He finally scooped me up and pulled me onto the ground. He looked at my leg for a half second and then ran and got his shirt and tied it around my thigh. The blood soaked through his old tshirt but I stood up with Dirk’s help and I wobbled towards the gate. Dirk grabbed our stuff and we opened the gate which the guard had left unlocked.

“Hurry up. Get the fuck out of here,” the guard ordered.

“Calm the fuck down, man, she’s hurt,” Dirk said angrily. I held onto his arm, worried he might hit this guy square in the jaw.

“That’s what happens when you trespass. Dumb fucking kids.” The guard locked the gate behind us.

“Fucker,” Dirk muttered.

We began walking to the car or rather, I hobbled. Dirk stood in front of me and crouched sort of and picked me up on his back despite my assurances that I was fine. I wrapped my arms around his neck loosely as he walked back to my car. I told him to put me down when I felt myself bleeding onto his jacket but he refused. I rested my cheek next to his head and thought about how despite being yelled at by a guard and bleeding profusely, this was pretty damn nice.

We reached my car and Dirk wouldn’t give me my keys. He put me down, unlocked the passenger door, and held it open for me. There was no arguing with him so I sat down. I was still only wearing my bra and panties and I was bleeding onto my car’s interior but all I could think of was kissing Dirk again. He walked around the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat adjusting for leg space for the second time that day. Reaching over and putting his hand on my cheek, he leaned in and kissed me softly.

“Are you ok?” he said, looking down at my bleeding thigh.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Can I drive my car though please?” I leaned in and bit his bottom lip a bit.

“No way, look at your leg. Plus you’ve been drinking.” His brow remained furrowed as he looked at my injury.

“I’m fine, it’s a flesh wound, I was just shocked and overreacted. You’re drunk, too.”

“Look at all the blood, we have to go to the hospital. It might need stitches.” He placed his right hand on my thigh as if trying to close the gash with his mind.

“I don’t want to go. I’m fine.” I kissed his neck softly. It tasted like chlorine.

“You were saying the pool had syphilis before and now you have an open wound from that pool and you don’t want to go to the hospital?” He tried to pull away in an attempt to be serious.

“I was overreacting, really. I just don’t want to go to the hospital, they scare me. Plus, what are you going to tell them about giving a 19-year-old girl vodka?”

“Fuck, I didn’t even think of that. Okay. We have to put a real bandage on it though at least.”

“So drive to Walgreens and let’s get some.” I put on my seatbelt.

“Right. Good idea.” He looked like he was in shock.

“Are you ok?” I asked. His skin was so white.

“Yeah, I just feel like an asshole. This is all my fault, that you got hurt.”

“No, not even. It was that guard if anyone, and it was really just an accident. Ok?” I reached for his hand and held onto it.

“Ok. I still feel like shit though, I should have let you get out of the water first.” He squeezed my hand.

“Just stop thinking like that. It’s done.”

“Alright.”

He sighed and turned on my car. He reversed out of the space and stopped to put the car in drive. He drove onto the street, cautiously the way everyone drives a car they are unfamiliar with. We rode in silence, holding hands, for the few blocks to Walgreens. When we got there, I tried to give Dirk cash to get some bandages for my leg but he refused. He ran inside the store and I put in Bossanova by the Pixies in the meantime. I was halfway through Velouria when Dirk came out of the store.

“Come here,” he said. He maneuvered me and pulled my legs out of the car, my feet on the pavement. He got on his knees in front of me and started rifling through the bag and pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“Oh, come on, you could have used the Popov instead of buying that shit,” I said. I instictively moved my legs away but he held them in place.

“Don’t be smart, I have to clean it. It’s going to hurt like fuck for a bit, I’m sorry.” He took his shirt off my leg and opened the bottle. I swallowed.

“Okay. Just do it.” I bit on my right index finger as he began to pour some alcohol on the gash. I whimpered slightly. He leaned forward to kiss my knees. I think he may have whispered sorry as he kissed them.

“Sanitized. Now, it’s just time for the Neosporin and the bandage.” He got both out of the bag and went to work and pretty soon, my leg was wrapped in gauze and tape and sealed up, no longer a bleeding hazard.

“No lollipop?” I smirked.

“That’s only for good patients, little girl.” He cleaned up all of the stuff and put it in the bag. He tied it and put it on the car floor.

“Hey.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him close by the front of his shirt. “Thank you, darlin’.”

“Anytime. Have to put those Boy Scout skills to good use somehow.” He grinned at me.

I leaned forward and kissed him slowly and deliberately. We made out for a few minutes, him still on his knees in the parking lot, my bare feet winding around him, one of them playing with one of the back pockets of his pants. Soon some kids walked by and giggled and so Dirk reluctantly stood up and got back into the car. We smiled awkwardly at each other and I rested my head back on the seat while looking at him. He wrapped his arms around my waist and scooted me onto his lap. I slid over easily, being careful with my thigh. I was still in my underwear and his arms were warm on my skin. My arms slipped around his neck and I hugged him. I can’t tell you why I wanted to hug him so badly but I just did; for once I just felt pure sweetness instead of the filthy lust that usually had me going. I knew at that moment that I would never forget the way his lips had felt on my knees when he took care of me. It was the tiniest moment of love, he wasn’t in love with me in the least but for that instant, I was the most precious thing in the world to him. I wanted to hold him so it felt tangible so I could have him in my hands even if it was just for that day and remember what it felt like to be that important to someone. It’s strange how someone can go from being nothing to something so vital to you in a specific moment. Even if the moment evaporates as soon as it begins, it existed in a moment of time true to those involved. I finally let go of him so I could look at him and I kissed him.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said as I kissed the side of his mouth.

“What do you want to eat?” He smiled and let me kiss his face.

“Sonic.”

“Seriously? You feel okay for that?”

“Definitely. I want a burger so big that I can’t fit it into my tiny mouth.” I saw his eyes glint at this.

“Sonic it is.”

It was getting late as we drove there, the sky was beginning to get that pinky orange glow. I remember my ex telling me that the sky was so beautiful at sunset due to pollution; I said a little prayer that he would get mauled by a bear, wherever he was. The Pixies continued singing on the stereo and I told Dirk about how instead of going to see the Pixies my senior year of high school, I went to my homecoming dance which was the same night. He told me about how he put their song Caribou on a mix for a girl and she never called him back. We both had crushes on Kim Deal. On the short drive, we also learned that we came from the same hometown, had the same favorite color of gummi bear (clear), and that we thought Revolver was better than the White Album. It was the first date stuff we should have had before the swim and the wound and the first aid experience but somehow it worked.

We pulled into one of the spaces at Sonic and ordered at the window. Dirk got mozzarella sticks and a cherry slush while I got a cheeseburger, tater tots, and a blue coconut slush. To this day, I have no idea what flavor “blue” is, but it tastes like what I imagine God’s jizz to taste like if he and it exists. I wouldn’t let him pay since he had bought all of the supplies to fix my leg up and I crawled over him to stick my debit card in the computer. He rested his chin on my lower back while I punched in my pin number and ran his hand over my ass. I tried to smack his hand away but he just slid his fingers inside my underwear. I laughed as I pulled my ass away from his hand and sat against the passenger door.

“That’s naughty, our food’s coming,” I said. I tried to give him a disapproving look but I’m sure I was failing.

“We have time.” He grabbed my ankle in his hand.

“No, we definitely don’t. Plus, I’m hungry.”

“Come here.” His hand snaked up my calf and rubbed the back of my knee.

“It’s going to be here any minute.” I felt him tug me a little by that good leg and I ended up crawling over and straddling his lap, careful with my bandage.

“See? Was that so bad?” He was slightly below my face level and so he moved his lips to my neck.

“You’re so proud of yourself. Stop looking smug.” I turned my face away a bit.

“Of course I’m proud, I got you on top of me for this glorious view of your rack and that adorable chin.” His hands rested on my hips and he kissed me before I could start bickering.

I gave in entirely and we kissed and let our hands explore each other. He was shirtless since I had bled onto it earlier and I moved my hands down his smooth chest. I had never been with a man with such a smooth chest and it felt wonderful. Everything about him was so taut and light, from his skin to that bleached hair. He felt wonderful underneath me and against me. His hand was sliding under my ass, making its way into my underwear again when there was a knock on the window. Our food had arrived. It wasn’t even served by a girl on roller skates. What kind of faux 1950s fast food restaurant was this? The server looked annoyed by us being half naked and slutty in her dining establishment and practically threw our food at us.

As soon as we rolled the window back up, we laughed for a good five minutes. My muscles hurt from laughing but we kissed in between hicupping laughs. Pretty soon we were back at it in full force. I was grinding against Dirk’s crotch as the Pixies sang about my namesake undressing in the sun in Ana. He growled almost as I was grinding and he pushed my underwear aside to touch me with his hand; he moaned when he felt that I was wet. He pulled them aside entirely as I unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out from his boxers. I slid onto him easily and gasped as I felt him fill me to what seemed to be my navel. His hands gripped my hips more firmly and seemed to guide my movements as he thrusted up inside me. I bit his neck as he fucked me at a furious pace. He seemed to fuck me harder the harder I bit. I moved my hips against him and my breasts still in my bra bounced in his face as I found myself throwing my head back. I had one hand against the window and my eyes open as he slid one breast from my bra to bite my nipple. He rubbed my clit with one hand and soon after, I came hard. I arched my back as I came, hitting the steering wheel. He came soon after and I felt him shoot inside me as I was kissing him, his moans filling my throat and my lungs.

I sat with him still inside me as we kissed lazily. We were sweaty and the bandage on my leg had come loose but I didn’t even really notice. He tried to talk but I kept my mouth on his. He protested when I climbed off of him. I reached for the seat lever and pushed his seat all the way back. I got down on my knees on the floor in front of him and grabbed his half stiff cock in my hands. He smiled as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I stroked his cock for a minute or two and by the time I took the tip of it in my mouth, he was hard again. I ran my tongue over his balls and he shivered. He outright moaned when I ran my tongue along the length of his shaft. I gripped his thighs as I took him entirely into my throat and I looked up at him as I slightly gagged. He looked concerned for half a second until he understood that my look meant that I wanted him to fuck my throat, that I wanted to gag. I could taste my pussy on his cock and the thought just made me open my throat even more. I dug my nails into his thighs as I sucked him off, my tongue swirling around him fast. I could feel him throbbing in my throat and I could feel him grip my shoulder as he was about to come, as if to warn me to back away. I closed my eyes and let him shoot directly into my throat, feeling the warm, salty semen slide down my throat. It dribbled onto my lip as I finally pulled away and I licked it up. I smirked from the floor and he pulled me up into his arms.

“I want my cheeseburger now,” I said. He threw his head back and laughed a real laugh, a hearty one.

“After that performance, you can have whatever the fuck you want, honey.” He kissed my forehead and cheeks.

“Good. It smells like someone’s been fucking in here.” I crawled back to my seat and put my feet up on the dashboard. I began to lower my window.

“Some filthy animals must have been spreading their seed all over in here.” He lowered his window and relaxed back into his seat, putting away his dick in the process.

It was twilight now, and everything looked a bluish grey. We divided our food and I tore at it like a starving child. I stared at the sky as I ate what was the best cold burger of my life. Our slushes had melted but we drank the sugary syrup anyways. Our mouths became red and blue and we were a mess. I pressed my toes against the windshield and left small toe-shaped smudges. The day seemed surreal. Nothing could top the day we had in the history of first dates. We had taken a weekday afternoon and turned it into a modern day indie adaptation of the Bonnie and Clyde story. Dirk and I couldn’t hang onto anything real or serious because we weren’t there really. All we could handle were those small moments, everything else seemed too big for either one of us. There wasn’t enough oxygen in any room for the both of us, no matter how much love was in that room or how fast we could roll those windows down.

I knew that day despite my fluttering heart that there could be no future for the two of us then. We both felt too much in a colossal way. I loved him instantly in powerful moments that knocked my ribs around in my gut but we had nothing to stand on. From the moment we met, we were dancing around each other, floating through our lives in denial. He couldn’t offer me anything that wouldn’t disappear moments later and vice versa. We had lost so much before that we couldn’t risk getting hurt, not for a love that took its breaths in first aid kits and in passing tater tots in the front seat. He was a risk I couldn’t take then, I wasn’t ready for someone like him.

We were what you would call together for three weeks more or less. He was never my boyfriend and I think the most expensive thing he ever bought me was the first aid things and maybe that bottle of Popov. No, it was the first aid things for sure. I was nineteen and I was living my first summer after truly having my heart broken for the first time. I felt like love was something that was supposed to fit and just exist and be perfect on its own. I didn’t expect that I could love someone and he would leave, or that I could love someone in a way and then not want to be with him. I didn’t know that I could love a woman and feel just as safe in her arms as I did in a man’s. I didn’t understand how I could find someone who was perfect on paper but who didn’t make me feel complete or understood at all. I didn’t yet understand that I too could cheat on a lover and still be a good person. I didn’t know that trust was more about my own insecurities than about the person I was trying to trust. I didn’t yet know that I could show or tell someone everything I hate about myself and have them just say, “Okay.” I didn’t understand that someone loving you means that you could really fuck up and he’d still want to be there. I had yet to find out so many things at nineteen.

Dirk was there for three weeks but he taught me that some loves don’t have to last a long time to have an impact. Not all love is the same, I’ve learned. Not everyone is going to be your soulmate and your spouse and live happily ever after with you. You’re going to have more than one soulmate if you’re really lucky, and they’re not all going to be romantic. You’re going to have people you date for a month, ten years, and no matter how long you’re with them, they’re going to do something to the course of your life. They might fuck things up royally, but they’re still going to do some damage to the way things turn out. The people you love and fuck aren’t going to make you who you will be but they will leave their marks. Maybe it’ll be a kid for one of you. Maybe an unlucky person will have a permanent scar from some abusive shithead. My ex got a tattoo for me; no matter what happens, even if she tries to have it removed, some part of it will always remain on her. Dirk’s pool gave me a 2 inch raised white scar on my left thigh. Three years later, it’s still there to remind me anytime I’m not wearing pants. It’s faded over the years but every time I look at it, I remember the short time a guy loved me the best way he knew how.

Because, that’s the thing about love, really. No one will love you how you want to be loved, they’ll love you in the only ways they know how. Life throws everyone down drastically different paths so how can we expect everyone to love in the same way? The person you’ll spend your lifetime with will love you in their way and you’ll love in yours, and maybe you’ll meet in the middle and it’ll last. None of us know what we’re doing, you see, we’re just fumbling for matches in the dark. If you’re lucky, you might eventually just strike the right one.

©Anaïs Escobar

Love Notebook #3

Whatever had happened before and whatever was to follow, a specific summer lives in my mind as the perfect summer. I spent the first half of the summer drowning my sorrows over a breakup in shots of rubbing alcohol-like vodka and lines of snowy cocaine on the bathroom counter of a bar or on the dvd case of an Angelina Jolie movie owned by a friend who is now deceased. I didn’t sleep at all. By day, I sat zombielike in classes now forgotten and rode my bike to my job at an art studio where I helped people throw pottery and screenprint shirts for local bands; at night, I’d take two bites of my dinner to assure my remaining friends that I was okay and I’d ride my bike to whatever bar or house would be able to make me numb the fastest. If I ever managed to land in my own bed, I would lay awake and listen to music that didn’t do anything for me. There was no rest.

I withdrew from my classes by June and went to go stay with my grandparents for a few days. They fed me and left me alone to wallow in my misery, it was perfect. They even paid to fix some things on my car which had been in an accident a few months prior. With a trunk full of gifts and food, I drove back to my small college town to go back to work and try to be productive with my time. I made art at work, I took photos, I ate more food. I read all the books that I couldn’t even look at since I’d moved out of his place. I joined a student organization putting on a multicultural assembly and found myself on a committee in charge of entertainment; what can I say, I interview well.

At the first meeting, I saw her. It was the very end of June and she came in with her hair pulled back too tightly in a ponytail and snug jeans and a wifebeater on. Her face was long and awkward, her teeth slightly crooked; she had a nose too big for her face. She was really skinny, not slender, but that kind of awkward skinny that I used to think you only saw on children and anorexics. Her breasts were big for her frame. She was perfect. I took one look at her and felt my chest tighten. She had the meanest look on her face, a bitchface if you ever saw one. I soon learned that this was just how her face looked all the time. I had had crushes on women before, mostly a celebrity here and there, or this one woman at my gym who was covered in tattoos and looked really angry whenever she ran on a treadmill. But this was new. I had a bonafied crush on this girl and didn’t know what to even do about it. Luckily, we were assigned to the same project so I had my first in. We exchanged numbers so we could meet for lunch and discuss our assignment. I gave myself an internal high five when she smiled her crooked smile at me as she left.

The first time we were supposed to have lunch I completely blanked on the plans and went off to go swimming in the springs nearby our town. I came back to my cell phone in the car with a few text messages wondering where I was. Shit. I called her back right away.

“Hey, I’m so, so sorry. I totally blanked on lunch, I haven’t really been all together recently,” I said, talking on the phone while driving nervously back to town.

“No problem, really, it happens. I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she laughed, a deep, beautiful laugh. “Do you want to grab some dinner instead?”

“Sure. Burrito Brothers?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you in a half hour. Bye.”

I grinned hugely as I drove, hoping I didn’t look too haggard with my sunburned cheeks and wild hair. I tried to calm down reminding myself that I had never even dated a girl and that I didn’t even know if she was gay. I gripped the steering wheel tightly as I accelerated the whole way to the restaurant.

We arrived and sat down at the restaurant and ordered burritos, mine chicken, hers steak. I fidgeted in my side of the booth the whole time but soon grew comfortable in her presence. We barely discussed the assembly and instead learned about each other’s families, favorite movies, friends in common, and mostly, about our recently failed relationships. I told her about him and for the first time in months didn’t cry as I recalled the painful year and the even worse breakup; she told me about her ex-girlfriend who wasn’t ready to be out of the closet and who kicked her out rather than tell her sorority sisters about her relationship. We closed the restaurant and made our ways to our cars.

“I had a really great time, even if we didn’t do anything productive,” I said shifting from one foot to the other.

“Well, I’d say it was somewhat productive, we got to know each other better. Work can be left for another time I guess.” Her brown eyes squinted a little as she smiled at me.

“True. I now know that you actually enjoy Desperate Housewives and I respect you slightly less.” I smirked as she smacked me on the arm.

“Laugh all you want, that show is a guilty pleasure. See if I tell you any more secrets like that.”

“If they’re all like that, I think I’d rather stay in the dark on them.” I slipped my thumb inside the waistband of my shorts.

“So mean. What are you doing now, sassy?” she asked.

“Um, probably just going home, reading or something. Why?” My skin was on fire thinking about what she was going to propose.

“I just wondered if you wanted to come over and watch a movie or something. You said you smoked so I figured we could take a few hits.”

“Definitely, let’s. I’ll follow you.” I walked towards my car trying to hide my excitement and did a little dance in my seat as soon as I closed the car door.

I followed her home and parked in one of the visitor parking spaces outside her apartment building. She was waiting by her car and we walked up to her first floor apartment and walked in. It was mostly empty of furniture, being that it was summer; her roommate was at work. She pushed open her bedroom door and I walked in, dropping my bag on the ground.

“It looks nice,” I said, looking around me at the pictures on the wall and clothes strewn all over. The turquoise bedspread didn’t seem to suit her.

“Yeah, it’s just not my taste. I had to move in quickly after I moved out of Lisa’s place and I’ve just been using borrowed stuff from friends since this is a temporary lease.” She looked through a drawer and plucked out a small bag of weed and rolling papers.

“I know what that’s like. Moving out in a day and having your whole life plopped somewhere else, sleeping alone all of a sudden. It sucks.” I kicked off my sandals and climbed onto the bed, sitting indian style in one corner.

“Yes, it does.” She sat down next to me and tucked her legs under the bedspread. She began to meticulously tear apart the weed and roll the most perfect joint I’d ever seen. She handed it to me along with a lighter from her nightstand. “Ladies first.”

I laughed and lit the joint and inhaled. I held it in for a long time making the ridiculous faces I always make when smoking pot. I exhaled and she was smiling at me.

“That was the cutest face ever. I couldn’t tell if you were dying or about come,” she laughed. She took the joint from me and took a long drag.

The smoke left her lips in long billows and I watched it float into the air. Soon the small room reeked of pot and we were both very stoned, our voices scratchy and our eyes smaller than they were before. I leaned against the wall and relaxed. Our legs had somehow found themselves intertwined at some point and we were a pile of stoned limbs. Her cool skin felt wonderful against my sunburned legs.

“Let me get you some water,” she said suddenly, and got up and walked to the kitchen.I wanted her to come back immediately, I was addicted to how she felt already.

I stared at the walls and looked at pictures of a younger version of her in a softball uniform or with her friends at Disney World. I liked this girl. She was uncomplicated and not an elitist bastard. I knew I was basically picking someone completely opposite from what I usually liked but I was sick of getting into fights about what source I used for a research paper and how Zizek was kind of ambiguous in a paper about activism. I wanted simple times and something easy, something completely unlike myself.

She walked back into the room with a swagger; she walked sort of like a petite John Wayne with tits. She handed me the glass and sat down as I sipped it slowly. We settled in and turned on the tv and watched Zoolander of all things. She leaned in close to me and we ended up intertwined once again, my head in the crook of her arm, our legs tangled. I was hyperaware of her every breath as we lay so close. I could feel the tiny hairs on her arm against my neck as I rested my head on it. We remained close to each other despite how hot the room was in the middle of summer in the South.

I was the forward one so I sat up quickly and took off my shirt and wriggled out of my shorts leaving only my bikini top still on. I didn’t look at her face to see her reaction. I laid back down and she wrapped her arm around my shoulders, her hand resting on top of my breasts. We both inhaled and exhaled evenly for what seemed like hours and eventually slid into a spooning position. My back was to her and I could feel her hot breath on my neck. Her arm was around my waist and her finger was running along the edges of my bellybutton.

“If I do anything you don’t like or aren’t ready for, just say so,” she whispered, her voice seemingly detached from her hands yet warm and soothing in my ear.

“Okay,” I replied. I arched slightly and pushed back against her.

“That’s just cruel,” she laughed.

Her hands reached up and slid their way under my bikini top, my nipples instantly alert at her touch. She had them hard in the palms of her hand and she squeezed them with her soft hands. I gasped a little at the contact as her fingers tugged on my nipples. Her hands were so much smaller than what I was used to.

“No, that’s cruel,” I said, eyes closed.

She laughed as her left hand left my breast and began to slide down my stomach teasing the edge of my bikini bottoms with her fingers. My whole body was on fire and I was ready to scream for her to slide her hand inside my fucking panties. She rubbed my pussy through the fabric for what seemed like forever and I moaned a little. Suddenly and so slyly, she slid her fingers under the fabric and I felt her fingers directly on my pussy as she kissed the back of my neck.

“Oh god, you’re so wet,” she breathed. I whimpered as she removed her fingers to lick them and she moaned as she tasted them. “I can’t believe how good you taste. I wondered what you would taste like.”

She moved from behind me and slid down in between my legs. She expertly slid my bikini bottoms off me, now soaked with my fluids, and lifted my feet over her shoulders, pulling my ass in the air and my pussy directly in front of her face. Her tongue darted out from her lips and she began lick my clit at a rapidfire pace while her ring finger and middle finger of her right hand curved and twisted and moved inside me. She lowered me back down after a while and laid on her stomach as she continued to torture me with her tongue and fingers. One of her hands reached up to squeeze my breasts as my hips rose to meet her mouth and fingers. I came hard against her tongue and she continued to lick even afterwards, making me shiver and pull away from the sensitivity. I looked at her between my legs and spoke before I really knew what I was saying.

“Take off your clothes.”

I got to my knees and so did she and we both began pulling at her clothes. I slid my hands under her shirt and pulled it over her head as she lifted her arms; she unbuttoned her pants and kicked them to the floor. I pushed her onto her back on the bed, knelt on the floor and immediately pushed aside her panties to touch her with my right hand. It was the first time I’d ever done this but it was second nature; it was like looking in on your own body from the outside. She was incredibly wet. I pulled her panties off her and threw them on the floor next to me. I leaned forward and parted her lips and licked a little bit cautiously at first not knowing what to expect. I had tasted myself before on my own fingers or men’s fingers or on their cocks after fucking but I had never tasted a pussy besides my own. I wasn’t disappointed. I licked her up and down, alternating rhythm until I could feel her moving blissfully against my mouth. Meanwhile I sat on my knees and reached down to rub my own pussy as I ate her out. I came half a minute before her, my own orgasm by my fingers making me lick at an ungodly speed. She moaned my name as she came and I felt her legs tense before she completely released.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand but I could still feel my mouth shiny with her fluids. She looked down at me still on my knees staring up almost obediently and she looked at me curiously.

“What are you doing? Get back into bed,” she said, reaching for me.

I got up and climbed back into bed and we lay face to face for the first time ever. I could see freckles on her nose and all of the pores on her skin. She ran her hand through my messy hair and looked at me closely. It wasn’t like looking at a man after fucking. Men are rougher and after sex, you can still tell how, even with that gentle hand running along your collarbone, that he could tear your apart with his hands and even ravage you with his cock. I love this, which is why I sleep with men 98% of the time, but right then, I loved knowing I could take this girl if she were to try to hold me down with her knees and arms.

“We haven’t kissed yet,” I realized out loud and looked at the way her skinny neck curved from her shoulder. “Somehow that worries me more than eating out a girl for the first time.”

“Why?” She ran her hand down my spine until it rested on my ass.

“I don’t know, it just seems more intimate to me. I sound like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or something.”

“Wait, I’m not paying you, am I?” She grinned as I smacked her on the ass. “Careful, I might like that.”

I looked at her smiling and leaned up on my elbows. I wasn’t sure about this. I knew I was avoiding everything that had happened by falling into someone all wrong and so different from anything I was. This was going to end badly and a few months later I would definitely regret it; I knew that lying there in her bed in late June. But I didn’t give a fuck right then. I leaned in and kissed her hard, stupidly surprised by how soft her face was, how her tongue politely twirled around mine, how her mouth opened exactly as I needed it to at that moment. I straddled her as I continued to kiss her slowly, my legs parting for the fingers that would stay there for the next year as we smoked pot, fucked each other in the front seat of my car, and whispered things we could never promise.

I closed my eyes and took it in.

©Anaïs Escobar

Love Notebook #2

I remember what it felt like when you left. Not the first time or that second time when I lost it a little bit or when you threatened to leave town or all the times you planned on leaving town for ten million different reasons but the time you actually left town and packed everything from the apartment that used to be ours into your small silver car. I handed you a mix cd I made you as is my way when I’m trying to find words that aren’t easily coming for once. You left for the clean, crisp air of a national park to meet new faces and forget mine, to jump off waterfalls and wish me dead.

I sat amidst all the pieces of out failed love. The paint and tshirts and blown up photos (larger than life, larger than love) and the guitar that was mine but had always been yours and most importantly, the bike you found me.

Olivia.

A maroon mixte frame Raleigh, the smallest frame we had seen in a long time, perfect for me because of my height; you got her for me when I was broke and got me bike lights and a basket and a new seat and tied a green ribbon on her that I always kept on the handlebars. The first time we rode bikes together, I fell off and you laughed which hurt more than anything. I didn’t ride her after that due to the scrapes on my elbows and also because the sting from how mean you were never really went away. You never forgave me for not using my bike more and a line was drawn in the sand, it was the beginning of the end.

That was the item that hurt the most after you left, seeing that bike sitting in my apartment, reminding me of all that I was and couldn’t be, illogical thoughts for why a relationship didn’t work out. I decided to sell her and made arrangements to meet a girl who was also vertically challenged and having trouble finding a way to put the fun between her legs. I took a soft cloth and wiped Olivia’s dusty frame and handlebars and got her ready to walk her over to campus. I pushed her along outside when I began realizing that I wanted to ride this damn bicycle one more time.

I rolled up my right pantleg, adjusted my headband more securely, and swung my messenger bag up on my back; I literally stepped through and pushed onto my right foot nervously, praying to some higher power that I wouldn’t fall, knowing that it would somehow symbolize everything about us that had cracked. As i pushed and lifted my left foot on the other pedal, I wobbled a bit at first but pushed forward, pedaling the way my dad had taught me when I was little. I was riding, I was flying, the familiar burn of cycling in my thighs, seeing the world around me going by quickly but slowly enough to take in my surroundings in detail. As soon as I started riding, I knew I couldn’t give her up. I met this girl and apologized over and over but I couldn’t sell her this bike.

I went about making her mine. I bought new griptape, minty green tape, and met my friend Robert for lunch who taught me how to put it on properly. I took the green ribbon off the handlebars and painted a tiny heart on the stem. I rode her all day, skipping class and having no destination in mind really, just relearning the world post broken heart; I was still in pieces but I was enjoying flowers and peoplewatching and the summer sun on my shoulders and I was starting to come out of my shell more, talking to old friends and new people and just actually trying to live again.

Robert and I went out to the bar that night on our bicycles, both freshly heartbroken and wanting to attempt to have some fun. Our underage selves drank before we got there but we were able to get drinks anyways; jean cutoffs and plaid and smiles will do that for you sometimes. We danced badly and got progressively more and more drunk, the room around me getting darker and smokier by the minute. I saw my friend George who used to be our friend George, and we talked for a while. George was an upfront guy and told me that he was sorry about us breaking up but that he had had an interest in me for a while and would be foolish not to make a move. I laughed awkwardly as I do in such situations because for all my intelligence I don’t deal with situations like that well. We parted ways amicably and I immediately ran into two other friends, Zach and Chris.

“Have you heard from him?” they asked me, everyone in the room curious as to what had happened since the indie scene’s golden alternative couple had ended things two months before and one had split town in ways that had since become legend.

“I haven’t, I’m not really sure where we stand. Plus, I don’t know if he’s really been in contact with anyone, he’s kind of secluded where he is,” I replied, casually sipping my whiskey and coke, trying to appear unbothered when my heart pieces were thrashing in my chest and in my ears.

“Well, he sent me a postcard and apparently he sent Kristen one. I was just wondering how you guys were since you know, everything,” Chris said, also feeling the awkwardness of such a moment. We exchanged a few more facts about mutual friends and we went our separate ways.

As soon as I turned from them, the tears I had been fighting filled my eyes and I made my stumbly way to the bathroom where I squatted in a stall and cried the kind of tears that make everything in your body hurt. I cried for everything we had and lost and threw away and threw at each other and I prayed that I would never feel this kind of pain ever again, not over you at least; I could keep breathing as long as I remembered that you were not the right one, you never were, this was just a case of being mismatched and stubborn. You were never, ever the one as much as I didn’t want to believe that.

I washed my face, my brown eyes lighter than usual, my eyeliner softly smudged around my eyes, mascara gone, lips swollen; I snorted two lines of coke as I did a good amount of that those days and looked in the mirror, the same girl I had always been, the same exact heart-shaped face I’d had since i was a baby but less light behind the eyes.

I made my way out of the bathroom, a line of girls looking drunk and angry at me, one shoving their way in to relieve herself or do whatever it is that girls do in bathrooms of seedy college bars. I found Robert and told him I was leaving and to be safe going home, and set upon finding George. I found him standing at the bar drinking a girly drink and I tapped him on the arm.

“I’ve never done this before but if you want to go home.. together, with me, then let’s go, I can’t be here anymore,” I rambled, words falling out of my mouth like vomit, made worse by being drunk and the fact that I was now starting to feel the coke in my blood.

He looked me in the eye and saw something was off but just nodded and followed me out. He had walked from his house nearby so we walked there together, he pushing my bike for me (on a side note, we attempted to both be on my bike, him riding and me standing on the back, but his legs were too long for a 46cm frame. As are everyone’s.)

We got to his house and stood around for a little bit talking about random things and dancing around what was about to happen. Then I got brave, kicked off my shoes and knelt on his bed and pulled him close by the shirt, kissing him with my eyes closed so tightly. Our clothing came off and we blindly explored each other’s body, kissing and biting and licking and scratching. At one point, he pulled me onto him and stopped to apologize for grabbing my arm so tightly, suddenly aware of the difference in our strength.

“I can’t feel anything right now, so I need to see it on me,” I told him, and for one moment, he looked into my eyes and understood.

We fucked like animals, we didn’t have sex, and we definitely didn’t make love. Nothing about it was gentle or soft except for the fact that he was hurting me to help me at that moment and it was one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me. I felt empty but the best empty I’ve ever felt in my life. We laid there afterwards and I just felt like I had taken the first step to being free; I wasn’t there entirely but I felt in control again, no longer victim to the ghost of you that came to me night after night as I lay in bed trying to keep bad thoughts out.

It was almost morning and so I got up and dressed, George and I said our goodbyes for the time; it wasn’t the last time we’d see each other that summer. I stepped into my black and painted Chucks and walked outside where the sun was starting to peek over trees and made everything sort of pinky and orange. I unlocked my bike and climbed on after cracking my neck, wiggling my fingers a bit, and popping a piece of gum from my pocket into my mouth and rode home.

I chewed on some arctic mintyness as I pedaled hard, few cars on the road, and felt the damp morning air hitting my face. I carried Olivia up the stairs and inside my apartment, and set her on my messy bedroom floor before taking off my smoky, dirty clothes and bra and climbing between my sheets in my underwear, bruised and scratched, and looking at the new and improved Olivia and at myself for a brief second in the mirror as my eyelids closed. I slept better than I had in months and easier than I ever had next to you.

©Anaïs Escobar

Love Notebook #1

We were in your shower the first time you told me that you loved me, right after we had what is officially the worst sex I’ve ever had in my life.

Let me start a little further back.

You went home to visit your parents for the weekend; they wanted to see you for your birthday so we didn’t spend that day together. We spent the weekend dreamily texting about songs that reminded us of each other and how your fingertips would brush against my neck and collarbone while I slept. It was sickeningly sweet but hey, we were young.

You finally drove home Sunday afternoon and your roommate let me into your apartment so I could prepare my belated birthday surprise for you. I baked a three-layer cake and decorated with inside jokes about cooter lickin’ birthdays and intense star-shaped candles. You didn’t know I was at your place and I recruited your roommate and his girlfriend to be lookouts for my surprise. She was not pleased.

I took off all my clothes and laid the cake on your nightstand. I waited for what seemed like weeks and I sat naked on your bed, cross-legged and wiggling my foot. Finally your roommate shouted that he saw you parking and I started lighting candles on the cake only to have my plan foiled by your fucking ceiling fan. I jumped like a fool on your bed and turned it off and quickly lit as many candles as I could. I lounged on your bed, thighs slightly parted, revealing a pussy highlighted by the Brazilian wax from the day before; I held the cake in my hands and practiced my best come hither smile.

I heard you unlock the door and come inside. You greeted your roommate and were directly pointed into the direction of your bedroom. I could hear the confusion in your voice as you asked why you had to go in there. You opened the door and gasped.

“Happy birthday, baby,” I said. I smiled wryly at you.

“Oh my god. Oh god. This is the best birthday ever.” You looked slightly deranged.

“Come here.” You moved towards me at the same time I said it and lunged towards me, your hands on my face and moving through my bobbed hair.

Your mouth met mine and my lips parted for your tongue. At the time I couldn’t imagine anything tasting as good as your mouth. It always seemed salty any time of the day. We kissed while I still held the cake, the lavender frosting getting on your arms and elbows and smearing on my breasts. You finally took it out of my arms and placed it on the floor while I tugged at your belt, unbuttoning your pants. You came close again and crawled towards me as I moved smiling back towards your headboard. You pulled me back to you by my ankles and I wrapped a leg around you to pull you down on top of me.

“This is messy,” I laughed, as I licked frosting off your forearm.

“Quiet, I’m enjoying my cake.” You took a long lick of frosting off my left breast and swirled your tongue around my nipple.

We continued removing frosting from each other’s bodies, your hand between my thighs, your fingers sliding inside me as I gasped. You wouldn’t let me touch you as much, holding me down as you kissed your way down my tummy in between my legs.

With your face in between my legs, we heard your roommate’s girlfriend complain loudly.

“Are they going to be in there forever? This is so fucking annoying, we can hear everything.”

“Shhh, babe, seriously. She made this awesome surprise for his birthday, just shut up,” your roommate whispered.

I giggled at this as you continued to work your tongue on me, tasting me. You made happy little noises as you teased me with your tongue. I kept hearing your roommate’s stupid girlfriend complaining and I couldn’t focus. I felt bad and so I attempted to moan pleasurably.

“Baby. You can stop faking it now, I know you’re not into it,” you said, in between licks before lifting your head and stopping completely. “I’m going to have a word with her.”

You kissed me on the mouth and I could taste myself on your lips. You went into the living room and shut the door. I couldn’t believe that that had gone so awry thanks to that stupid girl. I could hear you telling her off. I walked into your bathroom and turned on the water and waited for it heat up. I got in the shower and began to wash off the rest of the sticky frosting still on me. I didn’t hear you come in until you pulled the curtain aside and stepped in next to me.

“I didn’t get to finish my cake!” You grabbed body wash off the shelf and began to lather your arms.

“Well, we were interrupted by someone who shall remain nameless.” I turned towards the water, feeling the warmth on my face and neck.

“Yeah, I told her to fuck off and quit her whining. I don’t think we’ll be interrupted again.” Your hands slid from the small of my back to my hips and rested there, your chin on my shoulder.

“It’s too late, she fucked it all up. I’m sorry it got messed up.”

You turned me around and pulled me against you. You looked into my eyes and held my face in your hands.

“I love you.” You looked at me for reaction and looked worried. “I said I love you, baby.”

My breath caught in my throat and I hugged you to me and pressed my lips against your ear. “I love you, too.”

You wrapped your arm lazily around me and squeezed my ass as water fell on us. Nothing felt as good as that moment for us. Even when it fell apart multiple times, a few days later, months later, after we divided our stuff and I kept your robot t-shirt to be a bitch, that moment was gold. Every I love you from then on tasted like frosting and always would. We don’t speak anymore but I know in my gut that that was your best birthday; it wasn’t my birthday, but it’s my favorite birthday as well. Sometimes when I’m in the shower, I think you’ll be smiling at me and pulling me against your chest like I’m 18 again. You always knew how to make an entrance even if you were ridiculously awful in bed.

©Anaïs Escobar