Love Street
Page 4
STEP 9: Know that this will be the beginning of everything or the end of nothing and there’s only one way to find out.
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STEP 10: Dance like a fool and see if they’re watching.
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Would you maybe want to, like, hang out sometime? You know, like, outside of the office?”
I looked up and smiled at my coworker Emily.
“Sure. Just let me know when and where and I’ll be there.”
“When” was two weeks later, “where” was a dented Prius en route to Dollywood, and oh baby, was I ever there.
Turns out Emily, who previous to this trip was a basic stranger, shared a similar passion for road trips, Dolly Parton, and general self-sabotage. I noticed the same fuck-it glint in her eyes two weeks ago, when she stumbled out of HR looking like a kicked dog, wearing Zara’s sales rack. I told her that I had that dress, too, but that it looked way better on her. She told me she was sure that wasn’t true, before breaking out in tears and running to the bathroom. That was the extent of our interactions prior to the day we both impulsively left for our lunch breaks and never went back.
The job was shit, after all, and the joint we smoked with our mediocre turkey sandwiches was talking really loud. Life is short! What if we died in that office? What if we got electrocuted by the copy machine in a freak accident and the last image we saw before we died was of those soul-crushing corporate fluorescent lights?!
The weed was right. We had to run.
After devising a plan to get our shit together as soon as we came back, Emily and I loaded her banged-up Prius with loose clothes and fatty snacks and hit the road. Em had never been to Dollywood, but her grandma always talked about it and she had always wanted to go. We sang the songs “Islands in the Stream” and “Jolene” at the top of our lungs, and somewhere outside the Smoky Mountains I told her why I worshipped Dolly. By the time we got to Tennessee, I knew Em better than I knew some of my closest friends. Road trips will do that to you.
We talked about everything and anything with that slow, lazy ease that the open road inevitably brings. Nobody could touch us, and we were neither here nor there. Our messy lives were momentarily behind us, and we had a destination and, for once, an actual goal. Emily, like me, was a grown woman who was still trying to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up. She told me all about her father’s control issues and her mother’s pathological lies. About her ex-boyfriend and his aggressive board-game-playing habit. About how when she told HR about getting sexually harassed at our old office, HR replied, “You should be flattered. Take it as a compliment that he feels comfortable around you.” We screamed FUCK YOU into the thick southern sky and laughed like little girls at things that definitely weren’t funny. We flashed pastures of cows and shook our titties into the wind and adopted the phrase “Whatever! Dolly would!”
Our lives were equally messy, but we’d figure our shit out when we got back. I was good at letting things fall apart and then burying the evidence. All it ever takes is a well-ironed Zara dress, I tell you.
Almost 24 hours later, we eagerly arrived at Dollywood, shocked by the lack of traffic outside the theme park. When we pulled up to the visitor gates, a sign that looked like it was written by a drunk 4-year-old swung to and fro in the thick summer wind: “CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS.”
We said nothing for almost ten minutes, and then just turned the car around. Why didn’t we check ahead online? Why didn’t we do our research? Why were we in the middle of Tennessee with no jobs, no money, and no real future plans?
When we got back to the city, we made a new pact. Not to get our shit together like we had tried to a million times before. Not to get back on track just so we could tell Aunt Sally at Thanksgiving how well things were going. But to slow down and stop trying to put ourselves back together when we were clearly falling apart.
“Fuck it,” they declared. “Let’s just freeze our eggs and marry each other.”
I mean, shit, if the Queen could close down for renovations with no warning, then what the hell?
So could we.
I saw Emily only twice after that trip. She moved back home to Seattle, and I moved into my little brother’s studio apartment. Maybe we’ll cross paths again one day when we’re both ready to reopen.
Sometimes, friendships last a lifetime; other times, friendships last a weekend. But like Dolly always says, “Doesn’t matter how hard you try to outrun it—if that’s who you are, that’s who you are. It’ll show up once in a while.”
(Or was that my drunk grandmother?)
Young enough to still believe in strangers, old enough to stay away from their candy.
1.Speeches
2.Baking cookies
3.Moving in together
4.Job interviews
5.All interviews
6.Being an adult
7.Vacationing in a third-world country
8.Labor
9.Finding a cozy sushi place that’s super cheap but also really fucking fresh
10.Moving across the country
11.Consummating an affair
12.Finding a gas station in the middle of East Texas
13.Your entire college experience
14.Ecstasy with a group of people you like but don’t love
15.Russian massages
But the truth is, I haven’t felt all right in a really long time.
Image courtesy of Envato Elements
I don’t always get stood up, but when I do, it’s when I’m already in the midst of an emotional spiral.
* * *
7 a.m.—I am awake.
* * *
8 a.m.—I am immortal.
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9 a.m.—I am confident.
* * *
10 a.m.—I am searching.
* * *
11 a.m.—I am hungry.
* * *
12 p.m.—I am writing.
* * *
Why do my emotions make everyone so uncomfortable?
* * *
1 p.m.—I am planning.
* * *
2 p.m.—I am questioning.
* * *
3 p.m.—I am avoiding.
* * *
4 p.m.—I am moving.
* * *
5 p.m.—I am answering.
* * *
6 p.m.—I am doubting.
* * *
7 p.m.—I am hungry again.
* * *
8 p.m.—I am thirsty.
* * *
9 p.m.—I am smoking.
* * *
10 p.m.—I am talking.
* * *
11 p.m.—I am impulsive.
* * *
12 a.m.—I am regretful.
* * *
1 a.m.—I am thinking.
* * *
2 a.m.—I am still thinking.
* * *
3 a.m.—I am missing.
* * *
4 a.m.—I am mortal.
* * *
5 a.m.—I am anxious.
* * *
6 a.m.—I am tired.
* * *
But I did care . . .
Do u want to go with me?”
I stared at the folded note and took the words in one by one to make sure I was reading them correctly. DO. U. WANT. TO. GO. WITH. ME? But before I even had a chance to process the words, I was already writing my response: “YES!!!!!!” In hindsight, I probably should have laid off the exclamation marks. But whatevs. I was 12 years old and CHRIS GREENLY wanted to GO WITH ME! What a stupid term, I thought, but that’s what all the cool kids called it back then. I “went with” four boys in middle school. Chris, James, Dante, and Jack. With Chris we basically just ate lunch together and played basketball. With James we passed notes and held hands on field trips. With Dante we walked each other home and bought each other candy bars. With Jack we were best friends who also pretended to get into big fights about our “relationship” just to see what they felt like. We never had anythin
g to really fight about, though, and at the end of most fights, we burst out in wild fits of laughter. We “went together” all of eighth grade. We went together to his dad’s new apartment after his parents got divorced, we went together to my first funeral after my grandmother died, we went together to the movie theater, to the mall, to the store, to the creek . . . We went together anywhere and everywhere. Jack was my first kiss, and the summer before ninth grade, I bumped it up to second base and jacked Jack off. (Come on, I had to!) We stopped going with each other at the end of summer because Jack met another girl, at the pizza shop he was working at, and he just “wasn’t feeling it anymore.” Fair enough, Jacky boy, fair enough.
By high school the terminology changed. I didn’t go with anybody. I was the other woman, a position that I proudly kept for all four years. (And one after, if you want to count the time I almost pulled a Felicity and followed him to college.) His name was Jonny, and he was two years older than me. He was captain of the swim team and he smelled like CK One and chlorine. To this day I still get butterflies from the scent of overly antiseptic pools. I was obsessed with him my first day of high school, and by the end of the first semester he even knew my name. I drew maps through the hallways, tracking our classes so I could make sure I passed him multiple times throughout the day. Casually, of course. Until I rounded the corner and sprinted my bubbly ass to the opposite end of the school to avoid my fiftieth tardy. But the tardy-related detentions I endured were a small price to pay for that short moment of intoxication I may (or may not) have experienced when I felt the vibrations of Jonny’s glance each and every day. He was dating a beautiful, smart, Ivy League college–bound junior named Dessa, and I was a desperate, too-tan, belly ring–wearing freshman with no thoughts of college beyond “maybe somewhere by the beach.” I’m not totally sure when I started driving my mom’s conversion van over to his house in the middle of the night to suck his dick, but it was wonderful. (Don’t get me wrong, he fingered me, too. Or whatever you call it when teenage boys jam their finger in and out of you like a confused pubescent pogo stick.) We told each other we loved each other, but Jonny couldn’t go public with our “relationship” yet. He needed to wait a few weeks. A few months. A few years . . .
Image courtesy of Pexels
Love is just a requited crush you’ve had a million times before.
You had me at “emotionally unavailable Australian with no job who’s still completely in love with his ex.”
The time passed like lightning or quicksand. Depending on our status. Where we stood. How close he was coming to leaving Dessa and professing his feelings for me. And I believed him. I believed him. I believed him . . .
At the end of senior year, I was left with about 100 pages of poetry, a file folder filled with saved AIM conversations, and one hell of a broken heart. What was I to him, after all? Was I the Glenn Close to his Michael Douglas? The Monica Lewinsky to his Bill Clinton? The one who got away? The one he “loved too much to admit”? It was all so confusing. He said over and over that I was “his girl,” but was he ever “my boy”?
Post high school, I dated my first real man. All 21 years of him. He picked me up in his uncle’s Oldsmobile and took me on actual physical, we-went-somewhere-and-enjoyed-something-together dates. I loved telling everyone I was “dating someone.” It felt so mature. So solid. So legit. And yet, I didn’t know why, but I felt completely disconnected from him. We couldn’t enjoy each other unless we were experiencing some other form of pleasure. A movie. A meal. A concert. A bong. How could I have felt more connected to Jonny McFucknugget, who treated me like shit, than to Mr. Perfect, who picked me up and paraded me publicly? It was all very confusing. We dated for months and months. But he was never my boyfriend.
My first real boyfriend was next. And baby, oh baby, was I in love. Real, time-stops, colors-are-brighter, songs-sound-better l-o-v-e. I was 22 years old, and somehow calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend felt infantile and grown-up all at the same time. His name was Bobby, and he was so there, or so gone. He worked at night, and sometimes I wouldn’t see him for weeks. But that didn’t matter, right? We had labels, goddamnit! Didn’t that mean something? Of course it did.
Well, you know, until it didn’t.
Bobby first started cheating on me a few months into our relationship. But only after I cheated on him.
We were both schmucks, but somehow the push/pull, make-up/break-up nature of our “relationship” kept things exciting. It was obsessive and compulsive and addictive and dramatic. But loving someone should not feel like a bad habit. It should not be something that you impulsively pick at nor something you go out to get in the middle of the night because “I was so good all day!” It should not make you feel wonderful and then terrible. You should not shake and sweat without it.
“Girlfriend.” “Wife.” “Other woman.” “Booty call.” “Side girl.” “Soul mate.” The older I got, the more I realized Chris Greenly had the terminology right the first time. I didn’t want to be somebody’s secret. I didn’t want to be somebody’s drug. I didn’t want to be somebody’s prize. Hell, I didn’t even care about being someone’s girlfriend or even somebody’s wife. At the end of the day, I just wanted a boy who wanted to “go with” me.
Anywhere. Everywhere. Somewhere. Nowhere.
But there.
Always fucking there.
Jobless and single?
JUST DANCE.
Credit card maxed out and been eating most meals off a Starbucks gift card your creepy uncle Tony got you last Christmas?
JUST DANCE.
Called off work sick and then saw Becky (fuck Beckys) from HR at the Chinese foot-massage place?
JUST DANCE.
Driving aimlessly through the city streets, contemplating the pros and cons of giving this dream your all or saying fuck it and working on a weed farm somewhere up north?
JUST DANCE.
In love with an emotionally withholding Australian who ignores your texts and no longer attends that yoga class you used to always see him at?
JUST DANCE.
Loving your big titties one second and then hating them for not fitting into cute shirts the next?
JUST DANCE.
Wondering when karma’s finally gonna get ya for stealing that fancy candle from that expensive restaurant bathroom the other night?
JUST DANCE.
Image sourced from Unsplash
Girls alone change their tampons too often, girls in love bleed right through.
Choreography ruins dances, just like lines ruin paintings and readers ruin poetry.
(THE EX FILES)
I order a cappuccino, you order an iced tea, we spend 45 minutes pretending not to want to fuck and/or kill each other. I ask how your sister is; you ask about my mom. Your hair looks different, but you still smell the same. We hug and it’s so weird, our bodies pressing against each other for a little too long. I want to relapse. I’m never getting coffee with you ever again, because we used to be in love. The end.
Image sourced from Pixabay
What did you want to be when you were a little girl?
What did you become instead?
It’s all fun and games until a forgotten password sends you on an emotional spiral that makes you question every decision you’ve ever made in your entire life.
Where did you go the first time you flew on a plane?
New York City. I was 11 years old. Other than an Astro van family road trip to Niagara Falls, I had never been out of the Midwest. And that trip to New York fucked me up. Not because of the stinky streets or the irate cabdrivers but because it showed me there was MORE. It was like my childhood shattered, because the world was suddenly bigger. I never woke up with the same naive bliss again after getting back from that trip. So yes, I blame New York for being a tease. I blame New York for ending an era. I blame New York for making me feel like maybe, just maybe, I would fit in better somewhere else. Better than where I was. Better than where I would have to be
for the next seven years.
What is the name of the road you grew up on?
Conger Avenue. It was made of broken red bricks, and when we had rain, the entire street would flood. Kids from the neighborhood would flock to the nature-made river that had replaced our suburban street, and if you used your imagination hard enough, for a second it felt like you lived on the Venice canals. “CAR!” someone would yell as a car approached and tried to ford the flood. We’d scatter out of the boat-car’s way and laugh as the frustrated driver was inevitably forced to reverse back to where the water was shallower. We’d splash and splash like fish in a contaminated lake for as long as we could, until the sky sealed back up and the road-river slowly got sucked down the clogged city drains. The older I got, the more I realized that water must have been disgusting, but no pH-balanced salt water–purified soaking tub has ever made my soul glow quite as good as that street-water cesspool from 1989.