We waited forever to see each other that day. Every hour another phone call,
checking in, trapped by friends' schedules. "Hope to see you soon."
When we finally meet, you want to be alone, right away. I'm in my track suit
and glasses, in need of a shower. You're in jeans, casual and delicious to my
dirty and fabulous. "Get me out of here," you whisper.
In our room, we're kissing, embracing.
"Hello." "It's been awhile."
On the bed, catching up.
"How are you?" "It's good to see you."
You want to lie here, but there is still so much to do. Get ready, go to the
wedding, socialize for six hours. Oddly, to thank you for being my date, I give
you a pair of socks. Thomas Pink, upscale. They don't fit, but you don't tell.
You will wear them. Say they are comfortable.
Showers, grooming, preparation. You come out of the bathroom in a towel and
t-shirt. I am disappointed, hoping for some skin. We dress, I your Academy Award
in a gold sheath, you my handsome trophy date. I give you my things to hold.
The wedding is a blur. We cross paths, check in with one another, do a little
dancing, some talking. I am chattering on to girlfriends about a recent relationship
ending. Women eye you. I'm intrigued. I see every baseball-capped Boston boy
when I look at you. I like parading you around, but I prefer our intimate chats.
You are an okay date. I am glad I have a date.
The wedding ends. We are drunk, especially you. You're ready for dancing. Your
friends and I are having an optimistic heart to heart about you. I am warming
to your plans. As they say, you're working towards something. Me. The taxi ride
back, you lose my phone, we track it down. Lipstick is gone for good.
In the room, I mill about. You are lying on the bed, eyes closed. We are alone,
finally, for the night. I lie down beside you. Lights off but the bathroom;
I can still see you. I'm in my dress. We begin kissing. It's wonderful. Like
the first spark at my birthday two months ago. Lips take a moment to know each
other. A charge floods my body down to my thighs.
Your hand works its way up my thigh now, under my dress, satin sliding up.
No underwear.
"You weren't wearing any all night?" you ask.
I shake my head.
"That's so sexy," you sigh.
(Like when you discovered my knee-high boots at the bar in Brighton.)
The dress comes off quickly. With nothing underneath, and you not nearly naked,
I slip on underwear. Try to set the pace. We keep going. You pull me from the
bed, stand me in front of the mirror so we're both facing it. I love how we
look. I see what they see. Long and lean. Hot. Blue eyes obscured in the dark.
Over my shoulder, yours penetrate me in the glass.
I watch you pull off my bikinis. Turn me to you. Your clothes come off. You
throw me on the bed, roughly. Come after me. Six trim feet of you, with a sizable
tattoo encircling your left arm. It's inked on my brain now, recalled more easily
than your face.
The intimacy continues. Later, we're talking, laughing, sharing stories. Connecting.
You tell me of college and early friends. I tease you about your surreptitious
entry into my life, sneaking my number from your roommate's cell phone. Rolling
away, then reaching for one another across the bed. I don't remember falling
asleep; I barely slept. I am in love with this night.
You have my attention. For the last two months we've been ensconced on the
phone like giddy teenagers. We'd talk for hours from my pink bedroom in my dad's
house, after you'd pick up your sister from soccer practice. You took me to
dinner in your mom's minivan, and we made out in my driveway after wandering
around the bookstore where I worked in high school. It's been amusing, charming
and effortless. Also, a respite from the bed-breaking sex I've been having with
an old college friend. I want to fall for you, but I've been preoccupied. Because
this other lover has left me you are my "and guest" tonight. After
two months of chaste kissing and easy laughter, I discover that your tattoo
rivals his curls.
In the morning, it is okay at first. There is more intimacy,
a shower, but you're already slipping away. While you pack and I wash my hair.
By the time you deliver me to the train, you are anxious to leave. You will
stay away.
II. Divorce
Phones don't ring for four days. The Red Sox are battling back in the ALCS,
and I cautiously reason we're not jinxing their rebound. My father is demonstrating
batting swings in the living room, and I am distracted from the silence. You
phone briefly to celebrate their victory. By the time they win the World Series,
you no longer answer when I call.
Still, you halfheartedly keep us up. Whittle us down to weekly convesations,
Monday nights, 10 p.m. We talk for an hour, you sign off. I try to call you
out on the change in behavior. I'm straightforward, via e-mail, my only access.
You ring immediately, apologize, tell me "proximity is key", and resume
your scheduled check-ins. I feel like I'm in a bad marriage, I muse. I've never
been married.
Unexpectedly, geographic distance has become your asset, frees you. You're
at large in New York. But up here, I'm walled in by reminders of your sudden,
persistent courtship. I vote in the junior high where I parked for our first
marathon conversation. I drink at the bar where you told me about losing your
brother. I drive the highway that brought you to me. Great directions, you said.
Within a 20 mile radius we covered a lot of emotional ground.
I google you and come across your grandmother's obituary. A "vivacious
redhead", she shared an "unusually close relationship" with your
grandfather. There we are. Walking arm in arm in the South End. My legs in your
lap while we talk. Our conversations resume in my redhead. Now comfortably situated
in your family's history.
I escape, go on vacation. Drinking with my little sister, I am humiliated by
the unsullied confidence of her and her friends. Feisty twenty-five-year-olds.
I remember the feeling. At 25, I slept with a married client to check "Affair"
off my list of Life Experiences. Now, at 30, I find myself in a relationship
blissfully reminiscent of 16. When I first said I love you and took off all
my clothes for a guy. But as you cut me off, I feel how seasoned we are at abandonment.
I buy you a pair of socks that fit. I still have them.
I try to take charge. I want an answer, no more weekly updates – it's
your presence or please go. Our last call begins as a tense exchange about why
it won't work. So you say. You're done with me. But we're another fluid hour
on the phone. I feel closer to you as we argue about the relationship you're
dismantling. You're petulant and endearing as you struggle with missing me.
I enjoy it, tell you to settle down. "You're very dramatic," I chide.
You've neither the desire nor effort to be with me, but I don't hear it. The
message is garbled by our connection. I hang up relieved I'm emancipated with
my attachment to you renewed.
Leigh Graham is a PhD candidate
in Urban Sociology in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning at MIT.
A native New Englander, she lives in Cambridge, MA, where she is unofficially
drying out after seven hazy years in New York. She is best known for speeches
and toasts at graduations and weddings. This is her first story for Lime
Tea.
