Monday Shorts

Last fall, I was a student in Sena Jeter Naslund's (Ahab's Wife,The Four Spirits) Creative Writing class at University of Louisville. Here was the piece I wrote as my final reading:

INTRODUCTION
This was a rather controversial piece originally. And I’m sure some of what made the piece controversial remains here in what I’m about to read. I make no apologies for that.

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote that,

“…when a subject is highly controversial - and any question about sex is that - one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinions one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.”

As with most fiction, the truth here—what there may be of it—is drawn from some facts. As many readers of the original piece observed, it often reads like a love letter that says all the things that were never said and I fully admit and disclose that this is true. There were concerns, however, even from a member of the class who identified as “queer” that the piece was too political to be universal. I disagree. As the old feminist adage states: “The personal is political.” The two go hand in hand—or at least they should—and this does not—or should not—alter the universality of the piece, but rather should enhance it. At least that is my sincerest hope.

In the original piece there was a long mediation on the phrase, “I love you,” inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body. In it, Winterson defies cliché (“Curse you for teaching me your language,” she quotes Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest).

“It’s the clichés that cause the problems,”

Winterson warns. Perhaps she’s right. The section here from the original has been reduced to four lines. I worry about this; I worry what it says about us that the phrase, “I love you,” is a cliché. The ending of the story—much different than the original—is a reflection of that concern.

READING
Then one day you invited me to your house. “My parents are away for the weekend,” you explained, “They’re going to a family reunion.”
“You’re not going?”
“No. I have to stay with the dog. Oh, I should warn you about that.”
“What?”
“The dog. We can’t touch. He’ll bark. No one is allowed to touch in my house. It drives him crazy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’ll bark and growl. We’re only allowed to pet him. He’s spoiled. He’s the baby. We can’t even order Chinese.”
“Why not?”
“Because the dog won’t eat it.”

So I stayed with you at your parent’s house. We slept in your parent’s bed because your bed was too small to fit two grown men. I slept, you said, on your father’s side of the bed. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep. Instead I watched you sleeping and listened to the dog whimpering outside in the hall. Your parents were right to make him your chaperone. Every time we got close to each other he barked wildly or wedged himself between us as if to say, “All right boys. Stay six inches apart,” just like the nuns used to do at school dances.

I couldn’t sleep. So much suburban sprawl outside the window; rows and rows of identical houses silhouetted safely against the summer moon. And you, sleeping beside me, our reflection in the mirror and the dark glass of the windows. Shameless, there in your parent’s bed. I touched you as you lay sleeping. And the rain beating down hard and steady on the rooftop sounded like a train moving overhead which made it even harder to sleep. When I saw the light come sneaking into the room I finally gave up.

But it was glorious to watch you sleep beside me. To watch you waking; those dark brown eyes opening up to me, that smile creasing your lips, your black hair with a will of its own standing up in all directions.

The dog, that morning and the next, was easily appeased: scraps of the soufflé you made me for breakfast somehow found their way from my hand to his mouth. And he was further enticed by the massaging of his belly as he lay on the floor. “See,” I told you, “Nothing to it.”
“Oh now I see,” you teased him, “’You can pet him as long as you pet me too.’”
The dog lifted his head as if to say, “That’s right!” then looked at me as if to say, “Why is he always putting words in my mouth?”

At night we would lay in your bed and watch movies after walking the dog around the block. We would sit in the kitchen and play Scrabble, drinking the margaritas you made, each one better than the last. We ate ice cream that we shared with a kiss, letting it melt on our tangled tongues. I followed you upstairs to your mother’s bath where you lit candles and filled the tub with bubbly water. We slipped in next to each other, wet skin on wet skin, as I lay against your chest letting you wash me.
“I have no idea why she needs all this stuff,” you said as if to apologize. I lay back against you, sinking into the warm water, listening to you breathe, feeling the rise and fall of your chest against my cheek.
“I have to tell you something,” you whispered.
Please don’t, I thought. Not tonight. “What?” I asked against my better judgment. Please don’t tell me what I don’t want to know.
“I’m leaving in three weeks. I’m teaching overseas.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“For eight months.”
Then silence. What could I say? Just one of life’s little fuck-ups, I guess. It’s the story of my life: I’m always missing the most important part.
“On the night I leave,” you said, “I want you to go out and find someone. Find someone to help you forget.”
Typical, I thought, He can’t wait to make a memory out of me. “That’s exactly what I’ll do then,” I promised.
And that’s exactly what I did.

“It’s a job,” you said, “And the experience will be good for me. I can’t stand it here anymore. And I can’t live with my parents any longer.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t stand all this. The way people live here. All the same.”
“Yeah,” I tried to agree though I didn’t.
“I need an adventure,” you concluded.
A new place. A new job. Good for your career and everything that matters. Of course you’re leaving—this can’t last. Rare as it is, it would never be enough. I would never be enough: You can’t drop my name like a bomb and watch people get blown away by it. “We all want what we want, I guess,” I said, “When do you leave?”
“In September.”

In September the days are still hot—eighty-some-odd degrees in mid-day—but the nights are cold enough to require a warm blanket or the arms of a furtive lover.
But you’re gone.

“Are you all right,” my friends ask, “You gonna be ok?”
“They still make Jack Daniels in Lynchburg?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ll be just fine.”

I miss you most on Mondays. I miss the touch of your skin and the taste of your kiss. I miss the sound of your voice and the way your hair smells. I miss those dark brown eyes and those crazy boy thoughts.

There are mornings I wake up and I’m surprised you’re not beside me. There are days I’m driving in my car, listening to the radio, and I reach over to touch you but you’re not there. There are nights I can’t sleep and I pray for amnesia.
Would that it were so easy.

I’ll shake off the debris. I’ll wake in the morning and walk away. Head held high. Drive across the Ohio River and not look back. A new place. A new job. Good for your career and everything that matters. We all want what we want, I guess. Caution and care be damned.

I loved you.
Not that it matters.