i want to take a paring knife and skillfully exise out the soft part of my brain where the memory of them resides, like carving the rind off of a lemon. people are disappointing. i’m sitting on the couch, in between two…men? boys?, one is pulling on the right side of my dress and i don’t want him to stop. we have all drunk a bottle of bourbon, a seventy dollar bottle or a hundred and fifty dollar bottle of bourbon. we are dancing in the living room, alone, the song is so good but i feel stupid asking what band it is, he slips his arm around my waist. we are swaying, the muscles in my legs weaken with desire and i blurt out: what are you doing to me?
he doesn’t answer. he grins.
later i grab his face with both palms and plant an innocent peck on him, then he tugs on the hem and then i go home and wake up hours later and i can’t feel my arms because i forgot to drink water. later in los angeles i buy a copy of a record he once played for me, certain that i will never actually listen to it but rather to have it as a kind of sick reminder. a pinch of salt gently dusted between my thumb and forefinger onto this giant photo album of a healing wound: how was i to predict that i would never know how he wears his scarf over his winter coat, that we would never exchange christmas gifts, that the image of him wearily drinking whiskey, neat, would not be one i would bear witness to more than once?
people are disappointing- perhaps if you have never stood on the santa monica mountains, drinking in the smoggy vista of los angeles, in awe of what human hands and minds have built- they are disappointing. maybe if you have never walked the naves of foreign man-made cathedrals, centuries old, feeling like the resonance of your own breath could stop time- they are disappointing. probably if everywhere you go you never stop to really see what’s there- disappointing.
hey, i have been disappointed more times than i can count: when i said i love you and he said i know. when i failed to cook an omelet aux fines herbes and knew i had to give up on a dream i had never much believed in to begin with. when i watched him call a car and unceremoniously get inside and leave me again, for years. when i walked down grand street during san gennaro drunk on carpano antica, certain that i was the only person alone in the entire world. when high summer swallowed the whole year and i found out that i do not wear blonde as well as i previously thought. when. when. when. these men?, boys?, unrevealed hellions, were reliable as sleeping pills in that regard: disappointing. i have more faith in what people have made that i can see.
