The hour badly spent

The last time we met: one day before I left for Los Angeles. A spring afternoon, in her car. I reached over to hug her bye.

"Don’t try to cop a feel."

I wasn’t. Really. But I probably should have.

This may have been the last time we would ever see each other, and really this was all we had to say to each other?

Really?

When I first met her, it seemed as though I could tell her anything. Anything.

Months later, showing her my favorite movie, she buried her face under a blanket and started crying and we could barely talk about it.

After that, we only spoke to each other in this flat, burnt-out tone. Around her, conversation was weird, alien, like we were really only just gesturing to each other in a dark room. She told me I was always trying to figure her out. And she was right. I just wanted to reach her. Why was it so difficult?

One morning I woke up in her bed. Fully clothed.

I had drunk A LOT the night before and my head felt like someone parked an Oldsmobile inside it.

Right then, I had to go. I hadn’t meant to pass out there in the first place. I needed some water and I needed it to taste like aspirin and I needed to go, and I needed all this very badly. But her hair was also right there in my face. Smelling not like chemicals or cleanliness but like her, fresh and sweet. I couldn’t move. Not yet. Even though I had to go, even though I knew that everything would be spoiled when she woke up, and I knw that this was the best it would ever get, and for the rest of the day I would both just go back to being in pain all the time and talking to her like.

It struck me, that morning, that this feeling of unnamed, dreary, half-hidden pain, illuminated this morning by sunlight and hangover, is actually always there. That it might in fact be the reason this thing between me and her, whatever it is, always feels so difficult.

And if I was ever going to cop a feel, that would have been the moment.

Last night the Poetess observed that, though I visit fairly often, I have more or less been a "perfect gentleman" (I know, right?), having never once tried to "take advantage" of her.

I was kind of embarrassed, because I’ve been trying to cultivate the reputation of a lecherous, alcoholic geezer, and comments like that torpedo the effort of months of vodka and hard work (but mostly vodka). Nevertheless, I managed to think of two responses, both of which I believe were wholly appropriate and classy:

• "Poetess, I always think you are gorgeous, but especially tonight, with that red skirt and your hair slightly tangled and messy. And when you go without your glasses, like you are now, I could practically lose myself in your eyes."
• "I have nothing but the highest regard for your intelligence and wit. Frankly, your ability to pen verse makes me weep with envy. I believe with those things behind you, you will go far in life."

Unfortunately, since I actually tried to say them both at the same time, it came out sounding less like well-mannered verbal cunnilingus, and instead more like "Fuck off, Hippie."

In retrospect, "Fuck off Hippie" does not carry the nuance and depth of the sincere emotion I actually wished to convey regarding her sexiness; therefore, I am deeply sorry for any misunderstanding(s), and will be racking my brain thinking of how to make this up. Does anybody else have any ideas? Anything?

You somehow managed to hail mary right over my trenchant social analyses and hone in on the *other* posts. Those in which I invoke defense mechanisms and feed my delusions of grandeur with alcohol; the posts in which I am pompous, childish, desperate and whiney; petty, self-indulgent, shallow, obnoxious, and worst of all, too prolix (my bad). And in so doing you found that secret thing which unravelled me. Umm, sorry about that whole business, by the way.

And what, exactly, was it? That business?

Yes, there was a party, months ago.

She noticed me. Asked me questions. Got my jokes, even the sly, insiderey one I threw out just to see if anybody was listening. And yes, whatever, I know it was mind-numbingly awful, just like 95% of my "jokes."

Where’d my drink go?
Oh, was that yours, on the table? I finished it off. Forgive me. It was delicious; so sweet, and so cold.
I know what you’re talking about, she said, looking right at me.
Do you now? I tilted my head.

And then, another night, she visited. Said all the right things. The sort of things you secretly always wanted someone to say to you? Those. "But how did she know?" I wondered afterward, dazed and smiling idiotically.

We partied in Lawrence one night. She invited me over some more; parties, get-togethers, studying, until by and by she didn’t. Then it was all missed phone calls, all sorts of excuses not to make dates, and then all of nothing.

As time wore on and the thing ran its course, I grew more ashamed angrier and angrier still with myself. I withdrew, even despite your kind efforts. Yours too, Sexy Communist Spy. Again, my bad.

In hindsight, this experience has helped me decide on something of great social imprtance which I’ve been mulling over for some time; I will no longer hit on any women under 40.

Except Dessa, of course.

Over spring break, I drank at John’s house every night until Thursday. On Thursday Woody suggested we drink at the bars in downtown Long Beach, and I offered no protest.

Hours later, while Woody sat passed out, face down at a table in Dubliner’s Irish Pub, John and I scrutinized a nearby hipster.

“You don’t understand, John. That’s exactly my type. The dark-framed glasses; the no-nonsense bangs; the cherry-red lipstick; the heels; the arm tattoos; the leg tattoos; the skirt. Oh god, that skirt. On a related note, holy fuck, am I drunk, or is that is a nice pair of legs?”

“Yes to both of those, man.”

“Like, if she and I were to ever have sex, upon climax, the semen would stream out of me for hours and hours until finally there was nothing left of me.”

“I get the idea. Thanks for the visual. But what do you make of the unceasing swarm of dudes around her?”

“It does kind of take me back to a dark, lonely, miserable place. Remind me, what was that called?”

“Prom.”

“Right. I don’t think I like her so much any more.”

One day, the summer we
lived together, I found,
tucked like a whisper, between
pages one hundred thirty-eight,
and one hundred thirty-nine, of
“Handmaid of Desire,”
an old snapshot of you,
which you are never, ever
getting back.

I.
Late at night, you
used to take me
by the hand and,
voice like a halo,
say those three little words:
Come to bed.
How did you ever do that?
What kind of magic makes a whisper glow?

II.
The best part
about having a girl with glasses
always came
right before you took all your clothes off
slid into bed
draped your leg over my hip
and we’d made love;
right before that, when you’d
set your glasses on
the nightstand.

III.
That spring night, when you
wearing that nimbus-white nightgown,
fiddling with your fingers, sat up, because you
couldn’t sleep;
That was the night you told me you loved me for the first time.

That fire-red hoodie,
Those sparkly slippers;

Your virgin-white nightgown.

The cut-off denim miniskirt, on which,
while you drove, I liked to put my hand -
Not-so-secretly
loving
the pleasant resistance of your thigh
underneath the fabric;

Also, the longer one, the dark gypsy skirt, which, each time you put on,
you’d show off for me with a flourish
and a smile.

And that smile: it really went with the skirt.
Perfectly.