Fast Cars

Sep 01, 2008


I’ve slept in our sex sheets for six nights now, because you’re there, somewhere between them, a part of you, and that’s easier than sleeping alone. I would ask you to sleep with me, next to me, to stand still with me, to lie on your back next to me on my cold tiled kitchen floor, but I’m afraid I would be losing strength to do so. To need, that is. I’ve always been one for quick get-aways.

You told me something, one night, do you remember?
“Stop being so tough,” you said, and you pinned me against the wall.
Hands in surrender. Mine.
Fingers tangled in fingers, nails and teeth in skin. Yours.
“Have I ever surprised you?” You asked. And I bit my lips to keep the words behind my teeth, to feel them bleed back, down into my throat, because I was still waiting for you to prove me right, to give me my signal, my reason to run. Exit stage left. And that was the biggest surprise of all.

I doubt you sometimes. Mostly at night, and in the mornings, the loneliest parts of the day for me, and you’ve given me no reason, but I’m not sorry. Every day I see strangers pass on the street, in the grocery store, on my way to the gym. In a moment, I see you in a face, you in a body, you as a beautiful stranger. Hello, stranger. Until I realize I’ve imagined you in that moment, imagined you there, out of my new, strange desire to be connected to a world other than my own. Yours.

I used to write about me, but tonight I write for myself, about others, about you, and I’m wondering if that makes me selfish. To want to keep this on a page. I once overheard someone say that writers are terrified of the real world, so they spend all of their time on the outside of it all, trying to tame that which they don’t understand. I’ll spend the night trying to decide if that applies to me. Next to you, I’ll dream of the circus, of lions and lion tamers, and when I wake up, I’ll wonder who is who.

***

This happens sometimes. You say something and stop to wait for my words, but then I’m quiet, and I stand still to watch you. I breathe you in through your voice.
“Look at your little eyes.”
“I can’t see my little eyes,” you say. This makes you nervous.
And then you strike,
“You’re beautiful. You should know that.” This is your game. And you’re good.
Checkmate.

Together, this is our game: To make someone see through the eyes of another. Yours. Mine.

It’s seven in the morning and the power is out and we shower in the dark and we stand in front of the mirror and we’re beautiful together, and you know it, and you say so. Looking in a mirror is one thing, but looking at yourself through the eyes of another, well, that's completely different. You make me nervous when you tell me I’m beautiful, because on some mornings, I can’t see what you see, and there’s no power in that.

I don’t need you
to tell me what I am,
and I will ask you to
never make me any promises.
But you do. And then
there’s a chink in my armor, and
I’m wearing only the towel
you wrap around my body
with the Sunday morning air.

And I never watch television any more, and I never spend Sundays at home feeling gloriously useless, but we’re downstairs and Constantine is on channel 57 and it’s a little early for Keanu Reeves, but you’re making eggs and I’m burning your toast because you like it crunchy. You have the remote, so now the Red Sox are playing. It’s the bottom of the ninth, and they’re down two runs, and all my neighbors can tell. Two men on base, in scoring position, until Dustin Pedroia’s fly ball falls to Quentin’s glove in left field. Game over. And I’m still waiting for my queue.

***

I read somewhere once that we learn to keep a secret as early as five years old. And I wondered how old we are when we first learn how to doubt. There’s a moment. There’s always a moment. And I think I remember mine. And now I do it without thinking. Doubt. And it’s the sound of the zipper on a heavy suitcase and it’s the x-ray machine at the airport security checkpoint, and it’s the hands of a TSA agent fingering through my baggage, checking my shoes for explosives, feeling up my clothes, smelling your cologne on my lingerie.

***