bibliotheque:

I talk to people all day at work. I am a customer service robot.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Did you find everything alright?”

“Have a fantastic day.”

People are rude a lot of the time and I’m mostly a blank smile with the occasional outburst where I tell someone to die in a fire. The nice customers are rare, the ones you actually talk to even rarer.

Today, an older man walked up to where I was texting you, and bought two oranges, those organic key lime-white chocolate chip cookies, and a quart of milk. I put my phone away and put on my automatic smile.

“Hi.” I reached for the oranges.

“Hello, young lady, how are you today?” he said. His light blue eyes looked tired.

“I’m excellent, and yourself?” I scanned the items and put them in a bag.

“As good as I can be.”

“Bad day?” I crossed my arms in front of me.

“Bad few months. Shopping for food is weird without my wife.”

He lowered his eyes and my heart instantly broke for him. No one else was around so I leaned towards him.

“How long has it been?” I asked him.

“3 months.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“It’s just, you’re never prepared for it. You spend your whole life loving someone and suddenly it’s over, and you don’t know how to do anything else.” There were tears in his eyes.

“What was her name?”

“Diane. I’m sorry, let me pay you.” He swiped his credit card and waited for the receipt to print.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I would die. What was she like?” I couldn’t stop myself from talking.

“She was a schoolteacher, and she was the funniest person I knew. I could talk to her for days.”

“She sounds amazing.” I felt myself tearing up.

“She was. I miss her all the time.” He put the receipt in the bag. “Do you have a boyfriend or a husband or something?”

“Something like that, I have a man. I’m very much in love with him.” I had full blown tears running down my cheeks by this point. “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I get, I just know about him.”

“I found Diane young, too, and I knew. What’s his name?”

“Gabe. He’s really smart and makes me laugh a lot. He seems pretty mad about me even though I’m a pain in the ass. I’m mad about him.” I smiled a little as I wiped my eyes.

“I can tell. Hang onto that, okay? You won’t find it often, if ever again. Someone who will love you like that, I mean.”

“I definitely know, don’t worry.”

“It was nice talking to you,” he said.

“It was nice talking to you, too.” I held out my hand and he took it in both of his larger hands. We stayed that way for a while until he let me go.

“I hope things get easier to bear with,” I said.

“Me too,” he said. “And love that boyfriend of yours and let him love you. It’s all that really matters in this world.”

He picked up his bag and walked out with a little wave. I waved back and stood still for a long time, shaken by the incident. I felt so close to someone I didn’t even know. These things happen to me sometimes and I wonder what they mean. I wanted to call you and tell you about it. I wanted you to tell me you love me and that I shouldn’t cry. I wanted to call my grandma and ask her if she was scared of losing my grandpa after 51 years of marriage. I wondered how you exist without the one you love. I was miserable for a month without you, the possibility of death tearing you apart seems unfathomable. It was a small moment, not very important in the whole scheme of things, but somehow I am shaken. I want to stop taking things for granted, you, my family, my friends, work, school, writing, reading books, going to the beach, traveling. Things move fast and I need to get every last second out of life that I can possibly squeeze out of it. I keep thinking of this broken man, a hole permanently in him due to this loss, and I dread the day I will lose you like that. You tell me not to worry or think of those things and so I try to put it out of my mind. I think of the life that will span from this day to our last day together and I wonder what will fill it. Words, kisses, afternoon fucks, making dinner together, sleeping intertwined. I have to think of the life that is to come if I’m going to live it at all. Death is just a reminder to keep living in the same way I love you, eyes forward, leaping.

bibliotheque:

Yesterday I got a text from my old friend, Justin. He told me he had just left his therapist’s office and he had told her how much he missed hanging out with me, and about how close we used to be. I smiled because this is the exact kind of text I would receive from him. The last time I saw Justin was a year and a half ago. We went to Miami to see our friend’s photography exhibit at some swanky art gallery. Justin elbowed his way to the bar for drinks and we stood in the corner, peoplewatching and playing a game of “that’s your boyfriend”. We picked the oddest men for each other, not necessarily unattractive but just entirely wrong for each other. I picked an crazy haired mad scientist of a man for Justin and he picked these fragile wisps of men who were too pretty for my liking. By the end of the night, the mad scientist had asked for my number while Justin was putting his number in the pretty boy’s phone. We left before the party slowed down, driving down A1A with the windows down. Both those men turned out to be a bust.

“Maybe I just don’t like anyone as much as I like myself,” Justin told me on the phone a few months later.

“I think we’ve just tended to pick the worst people to date,” I replied, my phone cradled against my neck. “So maybe we haven’t liked ourselves as much as we thought we did.”

He didn’t say anything for a while.

I have gotten better at picking them but when I first met Justin, it seemed like I was picking the worst people on purpose. Justin was my ex-girlfriend’s childhood best friend. They had that kind of friendship that is built from knowing someone since before puberty but where few common interests actually remain. We all lived in Gainesville at the time and Justin and Melissa hadn’t spoken in months. I had just become involved with her, wooed by the constant attention she provided, and we had dinner with Justin one night. I picked them up and Justin was quiet in the backseat. No one spoke for a while and so I put in a mix cd when we got to a red light. Silver Jews poured form the speakers and Justin gasped.

“You like this band?” His eyes glowed happily.

“Definitely, they’re one of my favorites,” I replied, looking back at him in the rearview mirror.

“Who are they?” asked Melissa, who to this day, is the person with the worst taste I have ever met.

I could hear Justin roll his eyes at this and a friendship was born. Justin became one of my dearest friends that year. I was almost 20 and he was about to be 21, and we were everything you are at that age: moody, overly romantic, delusional, lost. I set Justin up with several of my guy friends but things never went too far. Justin was very difficult in relationships, unable to compromise at all. I, on the other hand, was the opposite at the time. I gave to a fault, letting the rest of my life fall to the wayside for the kind of love that was neither realistic nor healthy. We grew close as our group of friends became a warped microcosm of reality. I lived in a house on 34th Street at the time and my living room was always filled. Maybe none of us could stand to be alone then. I needed to be alone but I didn’t know how to do that then and so we clung to one another.

I clung to my friends even more when Melissa broke up with me that first time. Justin stood by as I drank underaged at bars, making sure I didn’t do anything stupid. He let me cry in the library as I distracted him from his homework, and he let me overanalyze my relationship with her for hours on my couch. He was comforting and warm, which is odd because Justin is neither of these things usually. I was waiting for the moment when he would tell me to stop crying and get the fuck over it. I fully expected him to slap me and tell me that even the best people get left because that’s how life works; that sometimes people leave you because they don’t know what they have and sometimes they leave for reasons you will never understand. And it doesn’t even matter, really, because anyone who doesn’t want to be with you isn’t worth your time. I was waiting for this. As painful as it would be, I needed to hear it.

It didn’t come for a while and in the meantime, we tried to ignore the things going on in our lives. I had withdrawn from my classes early in the term and was spending most of my time sleeping or barely working at my job at an art studio. Justin withdrew from his classes later in the term and with our other friends, we alternately pensive and jovial, depending on how intoxicated we were. There was one Saturday night where we didn’t go out at all, we just stayed at my house and drank vodka and smoked pot. I remember wearing nothing but cowboy boots and my underwear and twirling in my driveway with a joint in my hand. It was October and one of the first cold nights of fall. I laid down on the cement, the ground cold against my bare back, and stared at the sky. Justin crouched down next to me and sipped his drink.

“Are you having fun?” he asked, staring out at the road.

“I was until I stopped moving. I remember too much when I’m still.” I took a drag from my joint.

“Yeah, me too.”

Our other friends were drinking and laughing a little further away. They sounded so happy and we couldn’t figure out how to do that. I sat up and stood on wobbly legs, Justin standing to give me his arm. I said goodnight to everyone, giving Justin a little wave, and walked to my room. I took off my boots, pulled on a tshirt, and climbed into my bed. I curled up on top of my blankets and sniffled. I quickly fell asleep to the sound of everyone talking outside.

I woke to Justin shaking me awake. I sat up quickly, smacking my forehead into Justin’s chin.

“Fuck, Justin.” I rubbed my head sleepily. “What are you doing in here?”

“I need to sleep in here, Erin’s trying to fuck me,” he whispered.

“What? She knows you’re gay,” I said. Erin was my roommate, one of those people who are amazing before you live with them and a psychopath once you set foot into your mutual home.

“Her fucking vagina apparently doesn’t, Anaïs. I was sleeping on the couch and I woke up to her straddling me and grinding against me.”

I laughed. I laughed harder than I had in months, doubled over on my bed. Justin looked annoyed at my reaction but he started laughing as well. He sat next to me and we laughed for a good ten minutes, still slightly intoxicated, until we heard a noise outside my bedroom door. Justin stopped laughing and clasped his hand over my mouth. We waited.

“You locked the door, right?” I whispered as I pulled his hand off my mouth.

“Yes.” Justin stared at the door.

We both jumped as Justin’s phone trilled. He opened it and we read the text from Erin: “Come fuck me.” Justin and I looked at each other, his face as terrified as mine. He threw his phone on the rug and we both got under the covers like frightened kids at a slumber party after telling too many ghost stories. We were still for a minute and I knew exactly what we needed. I reached into my nightstand and pulled out one of the joints Melissa had perfectly rolled for me before we broke up. I grabbed a lighter and handed both to Justin. He smiled and lit the joint, inhaling slowly. We passed it between us for a while, smoking silently, becoming less tense as minutes passed.

“You’re a good girl, Anaïs,” he said, his face lit only by the dwindling joint. “She’s stupid.”

“I guess so.” I didn’t want to hear this then. “We should go to sleep.”

“Yeah, we should.” Justin put the joint out in a glass of water and rolled onto his back.

I rolled away on my side and stared at the shadows on the wall. I didn’t feel like a good girl, I didn’t feel like anything. If it wasn’t for the heavy sadness in the pit of my stomach, I probably would have floated away. I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for God knows what. I felt Justin roll towards me.

“Anaïs.”

“What?”

“I need to pee.”

“So go.”

“She’s out there, I can’t.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I sat up to look at him. “Just go, you’ll be fine.”

“I’m not going, she’s going to rape me. Don’t you have anything I can use?”

“No, that’s so gross, Justin.”

“How about this glass?” He was determined to piss in my bedroom.

“Definitely not, it’ll smell.” I turned my reading lamp on and looked around. I spotted an empty water bottle on the ground and leaned off the bed to pick it up. “Here. Use this. And please don’t piss on anything.”

“I’m not an idiot, Anaïs.” He took the bottle and went to the corner.

“Says the man pissing into a water bottle.” I got back under the covers.

He unzipped his pants and I heard the stream of piss hit the inside of the bottle. The instant that sound hit my ears, I felt myself laugh harder than I had in a while. Justin tried not to.

“Stop laughing unless you want me to mark your wall as mine.”

He finished and put the cap on the bottle, leaving it in the corner. He got back into bed and I looked at him, grinning. He looked back at me and started laughing.

“Let’s evaluate our lives. You’re crying over some lesbian who left you even though you keep telling me how much you miss cock and I just pissed into a water bottle because I’m scared of a bisexual goth girl who attempted to molest me without the promise of candy,” he said.

“We need hobbies or something.”

“Yeah. Or something.”

—

A few weeks later, we were still in my house and it was almost Christmas. My girlfriend had come back to me and I had stupidly taken her back. I was still doubting that decision, worrying whenever she wasn’t around. She was at work and I was sitting in my kitchen with Justin, listening to him talk about a guy he had gone to dinner with while I assembled a gingerbread house. Justin handed me the walls I had baked and I put it together with icing. I wiped my hands on my apron and got up to put on some music. I turned the volume on my PowerBook way up and put on a mix that seemed appropriate for a cold day in an emptying college town. Belle & Sebastian came on first.

“What is this song?” Justin asked, eating the candy that was supposed to go on the house.

“You know this, it’s Seeing Other People by Belle & Sebastian.” I smacked his hand away from the candy.

“I don’t. It sounds like the Charlie Brown music.” He stood up and began to dance like Snoopy in A Charlie Brown Christmas Special. “Come on.”

I rolled my eyes but I danced. We danced like teenagers at the hop, twisting and moving our shoulders to the music. The twinkly lights on the Christmas tree blazed as we turned and moved. The song ended and something quieter came on. We sat at the table and quietly began to put the house together once again. Justin knew me well even in silence.

“You’re not happy, Anaïs.” He separated gum drops by color, planning how the roof would look in his mind.

“Who is right now?” I let go of the walls I had frosted together, pleased that they were standing. “I don’t really know how to be happy anymore.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, listening to the music.

“I think I’m going to leave her, Justin.” I looked up at him.

“I really think you already have,” he said, looking thoughtfully at me.

“Me too.”

We finished the house and went to sit out in the backyard. It was so cold, and I pulled the collar of my dad’s old shirt up to my chin. Justin stretched his legs in front of him as I sat crisscross applesauce on the ground. In two weeks, I’d be twenty. I hoped things would magically make sense then. I sat on my hands and saw my breath in front of me as I exhaled. The air smelled like camping and the woods. I thought about driving north, setting up a tent somewhere secluded and sleeping for a year. Perhaps things would make more sense when I woke up. I doubted it but I hoped so.

“I’m not sure if I know how to live right now,” I said.

“It’s what we’re doing now, it just sucks sometimes. It’ll get easier. All we can do is do whatever it is we do and wait for things to make more sense.” He wasn’t looking at me.

I did what he said, I did the things I had to do. I left Melissa, I got unhappy and happy over and over again, I met new people, I drove off to places I didn’t know very well, I learned new things, I let myself heal old wounds, I waited. I grew, I could feel my bones stretching and expanding, growing stronger to make room and support all of the new things I was taking in and becoming as a result of living. He was absolutely right in a way. Living has gotten easier but it still makes very little sense sometimes. I’m still waiting for it to make sense. I think he is, too.

bibliotheque:

Tuesday afternoons are always the perfect mental health days and today was no exception. I settled into my new bed with a glass of orange juice and prepared myself for The Brothers Bloom. I had been told by several sources that I specifically more than most other people would be absolutely charmed by this movie and I can’t lie, I was. Although a fan of Rian Johnson’s debut Brick, I was hesitant about watching The Brothers Bloom as I am skeptical when many people tell me I’m going to like something. However, it seems that I’m keeping current company with people who do know me well.

The film centers around Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody), con-man brothers who have raised themselves and thrived through their system of conning, Stephen the brains behind the operation and Bloom the emotional connection to each mark. However, as time has gone by, Bloom feels unfulfilled by the roles he plays created for him by his brother and he hopes to live an “unwritten life” without a preconceived story. Bloom agrees to help his brother and their explosives expert associate, Bang Bang (played by a fantastic Rinko Kikuchi), with one final job. This time the mark is an awkward and beautiful heiress named Penelope (Rachel Weisz) who ends up an active and eager participant in the shenanigans to come.

It is a caper, a con-man movie in the truest sense. Bloom moves at a jaunty pace, clever and wacky at turns. You can see shades of the finest screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby here, Brody and Weisz modern replacements for Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn at their wittiest. This relationship between Bloom and Penelope is one of the hearts of the film, both of them concerned with their own “stories” and dealing with such a situation in different ways. Penelope has learned how to control her own story by playing the game herself, telling Bloom that “the trick to not feeling cheated is learn how to cheat”. Bloom, meanwhile, struggles with his own fears that prevent him from controlling his own destiny and writing his own story. This is more than a caper, it’s a postmodern yarn about the greater meaning of a story.

As the action builds and things become more dangerous on this job, Bloom and Penelope find themselves living in the reality of a story that isn’t necessarily in their control anymore. “This isn’t a story, this is real,” she tells Bloom, and indeed it is. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but needless to say, eventually Penelope finds out that she is being conned and it all falls apart, Stephen and Bloom parting on unhappy terms. After some time apart, Penelope comes to Bloom, hoping to join him in his life a a con artist herself; after finally admitting his feelings for Penelope, Bloom agrees to one more con (such a familiar phrase in this type of movie!) to get out and start his life with Penelope.

As is to be expected, the job goes awry, leaving Stephen seemingly injured. Unsure as to whether he is actually hurt or not, Bloom is horrified. Stephen reassures his brother by standing and asking him to choose a card from the deck, which turns out to be the Queen of Hearts. Stephen tells his brother to go with Penelope, assuring Bloom that they’d meet again. The viewer realizes what is happening before Bloom does, and once he does, that heartbreak is all too real. This exchange between the brothers is another crux of this film. Bloom can only see his brother as attempting to manipulate him for his own goals while Stephen is trying to give his brother as much as he can while protecting him. Bloom blames Stephen for controlling his story, and by extension his life, but Stephen reminds him that it’s his own fear that holds him back from the life he wants. “You’re scared to ride off into the sunset because sunsets are beautiful but they turn into dark,” says Stephen, in this instance understanding the fears that motivate and hinder Bloom from striking out on his own. It is Stephen in the end who urges his brother to go start a new life, happy to give his brother what he truly desired. Mark Ruffalo is tough and warm as Stephen, manipulative but only with good intentions; how this man is not more famous is beyond me.

With a quick glance, The Brothers Bloom could seem to be just what its detractors have claimed, overly stylish and charming, nothing more. I have heard it compared to Wes Anderson’s films which many believe to be pure aesthetic with little heart or humanity. The difference here is that The Brothers Bloom is successful on two levels: it is indeed charming and fun but it is truly an enjoyable two hours thanks to the warm relationships between its main characters. Both written and directed by Rian Johnson, the dialogue is subtle and interesting, delivered earnestly by the lead characters. Bloom works because it is thoughtful while being a beautiful, enjoyable experience to lose yourself in, a reflection on the stories we create to keep moving, keep living.

Penelope: You can make a pinhole camera out of anything hollow and dark.
Bloom: It’s gotta warp the image though, right?
Penelope: Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, that’s what’s good about it. I mean, you could point this baby at the most menial, everyday little thing, like the fabric or your…your face or anything, and depending on how the camera eats the light, it’s going to be warped and peculiar and imperfect and odd, and it’s not going to be reproduction. It’s storytelling.
Bloom: It’s a lie that tells the truth.

It’s Stephen’s final lie that gives Bloom the freedom to start something new with Penelope. When the truth is warped by perception and at times even reality, it’s the lies, the stories we create that become the truth. Intention becomes truer than fact and what we feel matters more than the black and white. We create stories in order to have our own truths, to create our own mythology. They aren’t written consciously but just through living daily, filling each page with memories changed by time. “We’re going to live like we’re telling the best story in the world, are you ready?” Penelope tells Bloom as the movie draws to an end and that is the question at the center of this all.

Are you ready?

youveescaped:

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 argues 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.

oledocweirdbeard:

toomanycooks:

Previously

Turning off the water, Alan stepped out of the shower and grabbed his towel. He dried the majority of his body before wrapping it around his waist and walking to his bedroom. He got dressed in a daze, pulling a pair of pants from the closet, a shirt from a drawer. He walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of orange juice. He didn’t really want it but he sipped it anyways. He poured more than half of it down the sink and grabbed his messenger bag and keys. He trudged down the stairs and hailed a cab. On the way to work, he fidgeted with his keys. He paid the cabbie and made his way into the building. He stepped into the elevator and listened to a song that could put anyone to sleep.