Fonder

For lunch I stop at the discount grocery, farther than I need to travel, but listening to a song about small towns reminds me of being that couple holding hands by the wine, whispering to each other before tentatively dropping a bottle of cheap champagne in next to discount cereal and bulk rice, putting it all on the credit card, betting everything on a future. I hate that I’m watching that couple, wanting to whisper words of encouragement and warning. I hate that it’s all catching up, because I’m slowing down, thinking the fear settles to the bottom when you leave it in the waves.

In ‘91 I live with a girl. “Girl? Do you still call women girls?” she asks. But I loved her in high school when she was a girl, and she doesn’t let on that she knows. I imagine living with her will make me a better man, and to be 19 and in search of self-improvement means something for the storybooks not borne by reality. It makes me worse. Panicked and careless, I find that the only way to deal with this longing to be near her is to drive her away. I spend late nights high in small towns nearby, wandering idly the tiled aisles of a gas station. I flip through fashion magazines and charge beer and cigarettes.

I skip my classes, except for one. An Intro to Short Stories, as I’m lucky enough to get into a section being taught by an O. Henry winner, the class a way to pay her bills while she works on her novel. But a real writer, and someone genuinely kind. She reads the introduction to New Path to the Waterfall, Tess. Tess. Tess. Tess. She shuts the book, and tells us, “That’s all you have to say.”

It makes me want to find a god’s honest girl, who’ll wrap herself around the crook of my arm as we search for a new apartment. When she sees the peeling paint, smells the water seeping through the tiles, hears neighbors through thin walls, she’ll say, ‘I’ll like it, if you like it.’ And this is what it’s like to be a man, the desires that whirl through our thoughts, to dream of congratulations even when we come through for the worse. For your wicked smile, in guilt as I suggest we buy the lamp we can’t afford but that I know you want. That simple $20 light that eats at my pride but casts such a lovely shadow across your eyes, drunk on sparkling wine.

I skip Sociology a day after answering a question about villages with high infant mortality. “Because they’re used to it,” I say. “It’s their reality.” And instead of being pointed out for a fool, I am informed that this is the correct answer. I repeated it from what I read in the book, but it doesn’t mean I believe it. “He’s a fucker,” I say to her, wrapped around the crook of my arm as we watch a movie by the lamplight. “Be rough with me,” she asks.

I’m not gonna cry about it. It’s the longing that spoils that moment of bliss, hand in hand, when you finally move beyond discount groceries. It’s not a crisis, but habit. Years practiced, wanting more. She shows me scratches when we meet.

I wrap these scratches of hers into my short story. I read it aloud. In the story, the abuse she suffered at the hands of her boyfriend is disguised as a set of golf clubs, abandoned in a small closet, passed down from father to son. The students think the story is about golf. I look to the teacher, and she talks about voice and tense and points out a line she thought could be very powerful but doesn’t quite come through.

If I can only make it to my feet, I think. Get back to standing, then I’ll be able to walk. But you don’t just grow out of this person, so much as push him off a ferry. You watch him float in the water, and until he’s out of view, hold tight to the railing ready to throw the life preserver. You regret his passing until he’s gone, but you cannot walk until the boat carries you all the way to shore. It’s a slow process, regret.

And this is how we separate, the one tossed overboard the slowly moving ferry. I could swim fast enough to catch it, but the water feels nice, and she looks more lovely the further she fades. Absence too long overstated as an aphrodisiac.