He was in Chicago for Christmas; he lives in L.A. His brother thought we’d get along, never mind that the only night we could coordinate, I was sick and blissed-out on cold-med quaaludes and anti-anxiety pills, already relegated to movies on the couch by myself. Never mind that he had a girlfriend.
Have you ever met someone you knew would be significant? Ever met someone you want to stand so close to it’s never close enough?
We drank bourbon in a loud bar, he talked a lot, we hit it off. It started snowing. I was oblivious, chatty, staring down, and he kissed me like we were in a movie, in the street, in the snow.
“Do you want to come over to my place?”
This man took off four layers of clothes, bra through sweater, with two fingers, in five seconds. And then the fucking. The sex. The all of it. “You can’t leave this apartment until you come in my mouth.” Fucking him the first time was like being in love. Fucking him the second time transcended even that. We couldn’t stop. I made pierogi from scratch for him, just to keep him as long as I could. It felt like our bodies were teaching us a lesson. He was in town for six nights. He stayed with me for three. We never slept, and he almost missed the plane.
So, I pined. We pined. He vacillated—stay safe with her, suss this one out with me—and I hated him a little. His presence in my life was so much defined by how I felt when he was gone, how disproportionate the strength of that feeling was to the time we’d had together. I flew to L.A. We fucked four straight days. I wanted his dick in every part of my body. We hurt, and we did it again. I didn’t ask what he told his girlfriend, but we played house and ate cheese and watched movies half-naked and he showed me California. It felt like love. It felt like I was in a movie. It felt like I was overreacting.
Returning to Chicago was bleak, subdued, cold. Every poem I read was him, overhearing the boring sex of my neighbors made me scoff—why are they able to do this so poorly and so often? Why, when we fucked so loudly, with such fervor, we got threatened with police? I’ve been shaken up before. Sex with anyone should be a tremendous memory at least, but this was different, this was like remembering your first orgasm, your best dream.
And why is he not here? Or better still, why am I not there? We made decisions, big, weighty ones. We’ve displeased a handful of people. We talk every day and send smutty photos and go through a lot of yearning. And it’s worth it, because even thinking about him is gratifying, even remembering the completely mundane bits.
He didn’t break up with his girlfriend for me, except he did.
I’m not moving to L.A. next month for him, but I am.
