Girlfriends
My girlfriends aren’t exactly thrilled with him. They’ve met him a few times, but it’s always ended badly. When he ran into Emma at Bakkus, this dive bar downtown, he punched her in the kidney to show her how effective it was as a self-defense move. She said that she had to lie on the floor until it stopped hurting. When he came home late that night, he was inconsolable. It was supposed to be a joke; he hadn’t realized that she would double over like that. He didn’t mean to hurt her.
Another night, when he bumped into Sigrún at Sirkus, he ended up making her cry. She sent me a text that night, saying she never wanted to see him again and she missed me. But she didn’t tell me what happened between them. I felt really guilty. I’ve been with him so much lately that I’ve completely ignored my own friends. But there are so many things I can’t tell them. If you talk about what happens within a relationship, everything gets tangled, and it’s easy for an outsider to judge—I don’t want them to write him off completely. They don’t know what it’s like to be as in love as I am now.
Butthole
We were watching a film, cuddled up on the couch, when he first asked if he could—maybe, possibly, someday—fuck me in the ass. I thought at first that he was joking. Nobody wants to do that. Not really. I know that one of my friends did it, and she said it was disgusting. And I’ve heard that it’s pretty dangerous. Sigrún’s mom is a nurse, and she’s told her horror stories about teenage girls who come into the emergency room with torn sphincters because of rough anal. They have to wear diapers for the rest of their lives because they have no control over their bowel movements; the shit just spills out. I understand that gay men make do with their situation by penetrating each other, but straight men with healthy women in their beds—women who have vaginas, mouths, and hands—should really count their blessings.
Love
I love him, but I’m not going to tell him, not yet anyway. I don’t believe he loves me back, but we’re getting there. And I don’t care. It’s enough when he touches me, wraps his arms around me, fucks me. When he looks at me with his gray eyes, a wave of bliss surges over me, and he’s given me orgasms that make my toes tingle. Sometimes you don’t have to use words to voice every little thing. I can tell that he cares about me, too; I’m not going to scare him off by insisting. It’d be too pushy to tell him that I love him now. That sort of statement demands a reaction, and I don’t want a reaction, I just want him as he is, right now. Everything is empty and pointless compared with him. I feel like I could leave my self behind just to love this man.
The Suburbs
We went to dinner at my parents’ house. I was so proud to introduce them to the mysterious man I’ve been spending all my time with. They’d even baked vegetarian lasagna for us. But I was caught off guard by how small and strange he acted in front of my parents. He diverted his gaze, looking down at his shoes when he shook their hands, and the whole time, he never once looked them in the eyes. My sister gaped at him in astonishment when he took a book out in the middle of dinner. It was very strange. But as soon as he picked up on it, he put the book down. My mom and dad were sociable and tried to engage with him, asking him about his studies at university, his family, and things like that, but he responded by staring at his plate and mumbling inaudibly. I still haven’t mentioned his kids to them.
Privilege
I don’t have a real frame of reference for understanding him. My life’s been so comfortable. I have parents who love me, support me, and help me whenever I need it. He’s never had it as good as I have. Even though his mother does everything she can to help him now, it was a very different story when he was little. His real dad was a Norwegian soldier his mother met when she was working in Oslo. They were married for a little while, but they divorced when he was still a kid. His mom moved back to Selfoss, where she struggled with being poor, working two jobs to make ends meet. He went to stay with his father one summer, and his dad refused to give him back. He made him call his mom and tell her—in Norwegian—that he wanted to live with him. His dad convinced his mom that her child was better off in Norway, as he had a good salary from the military and a boy needed his father more than his mother in order to become a man. For years, he was at the mercy of a violent drunk, and the only moments of relief were when his father had girlfriends who he beat even more. A distraction. In the end, Child Protective Services got involved when one of his father’s exes reported him. So he was sent back home to his mom. They’ve never talked about what happened, but his mom tries to be good to him, maybe as a way of compensating for what happened to him as a kid. But it’s like he’s angrier with her than he is with his dad.
That’s why he was so weird when he met my parents; he’s not used to being around normal people, a typical family like us. I’m going to help him. I’ve always had it so good that it’s easy enough for me to shoulder a little of the pain he’s carried for so long. I’ll make it better.
The Game I
One night, we went out with one of his childhood friends for drinks downtown at Kaffibarinn. I got the impression that his friend was a very lonely guy. He’d never had a girlfriend, and it seemed like he couldn’t speak to women without making some sort of horrible blunder. He had recently gotten into a book called The Game about pickup artists who use a variety of tricks and techniques to bait women into hooking up. In the book, men are encouraged to toy with women’s insecurities. If the player is interested in a woman and she’s got a friend, for example, he’s supposed to shower her friend with praise and give the target the cold shoulder.
His childhood friend invites him out all the time to act as wingman because it can help, apparently, to have an attractive friend with you. This evening, I was going with them, to help his friend meet girls, and I thought it would show what a good girlfriend I’d make.
I met a girl at the bar and chatted with her a bit. She’d lost her friends, and I thought it was a golden opportunity to invite her to join us, so I introduced her to the boys. We were all standing around a high table, joking about the bright summer nights, and they seemed to hit it off. The friend had finally gotten his chance. But then he said out of nowhere, “Lilja thinks you’re ugly, but I don’t think that at all.”
The girl looked at me in bewilderment, and embarrassed, I mumbled, “I never said that. I think you’re awesome.”
But she disappeared into the crowd before I could get another word in. The friend said he didn’t understand why she was being so dramatic. She must be crazy.
As we walked home, just the two of us, I asked if his friend was on the spectrum. He shrugged his shoulders and said that that’s just the game.
The Game II
The next weekend, the boys went out again. I was invited along, but I had zero interest in hanging out with his childhood friend and taking part in that bullshit again. He told me that they’d just started to walk up the hill on Bankastræti when they met two good-looking girls. He felt bad for his friend because he had absolutely no luck with women, and at that moment, he realized that the time for talk was over. It was time for action.
The girls on Bankastræti were both nineteen, and one of them was a vegetarian. They chatted, and before he knew it, she’d invited him back to her place. They left his friend and the other girl behind and hopped into a taxi, on their way to the suburbs. They went in her hot tub, where she gave him a hand job, and later they had sex. The morning after, he took the bus home to Vesturbær, where I’d stayed all night, and told me about that night’s game. He thought it was impressive that he didn’t even need to go into a bar to pick up a girl; he was so attractive, he could do it on the way there. I started to cry, but in a way it was my own fault. If I’d have gone with them, this never would’ve happened. He was just trying to help his friend.
Prevention I
In Cuba, I smoked filterless cigarettes called Flor de Aroma. They’re the best cigarettes I think I’ve ever smoked, hand-rolled in the region. They smell
of tobacco flowers. They weren’t as strong as cigars, but they were still intense. I smoked up all of them right after I left the tropics.
He thinks smoking is ridiculous. Only idiots smoke, he says. I’ve really cut down on my smoking, and now I only do it when I’m out or if I’m at a café. But after I’ve smoked, he sniffs me, frowns, refuses to kiss me. He says that I stink. The other day, he took it to the next level—he wants me to quit smoking, and for every cigarette I smoke from now on, he’s going to fuck eight women. I don’t want him to sleep with more girls. He should only be with me. I’ll never smoke again.
Non Grata
He’ll never be my boyfriend. I don’t understand why I’m always with him. When we run into people he knows, he doesn’t introduce me, he talks to them as if I’m not there. He’s very private. He would be uncomfortable if everyone knew everything about him, but sometimes I feel like I’m disappearing. Especially when he doesn’t come back to his apartment, even though he knows I sleep there most nights. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The other day I stayed up all night watching DVDs, waiting for him to come home from the bar. He was surprised that I was still awake in his living room when he finally came home in the morning. He’d been with some redhead. She lives with her boyfriend, so they fucked on the old, crusty couch in the study hall at the university. I know that I have to end things, but I can’t tear myself away from him. If I were better, then I’d be enough.
Oral Sex
I’ve been working on my blow jobs. It’s not going very well. I always gag, sometimes loudly, and throw up in my mouth. But now I’ve started to swallow the puke and the bile and keep going instead of giving up right away, like I always did before. When I blow him, tears run down my cheeks, but I’m not crying, it’s just a reflex. I’m always surprised by how long it takes—I’m at it for half an hour or something before he cums, but in porn, it only takes about two minutes. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. But sometimes I can’t keep going, and it’s always right before he ejaculates, and then he gets pissed off and looks at my face, which is usually covered in tears, and says, “Wow, is being with me really that good?”
Plato’s Moon Child
It’s incredible to me that this big, strong man can also seem just like a fragile little boy. When we sleep together at night, he wraps himself around me, so peaceful and beautiful. We lie heavily against each other the entire night. Our bodies are two pieces of a puzzle. When we lie together, I feel like I’m finally complete. There’s neither too much nor too little; only a simple precision, just as it should be. Some mornings, when I wake up, he’s so hungry for me that he’s already pushed himself inside me. It’s almost automatic how he just slips in. Then he’s so gentle that I feel a sting of gratitude.
Vanity I
I really don’t own cosmetics; I’ve never been very good at dressing myself up. My makeup bag is so empty that when I unzip it, I expect moths to fly out. But instead, old mascara, half-empty powder, lipstick, and a Swiss Army knife clink around inside the bag. I bought the knife right before I traveled to Central America. I mainly used it to open beer, but I once used it to slice a mango on a beach on the way south, in Mexico.
It’s so wonderful how he likes me exactly as I am. He gets irritated, seems even hurt, if I put on makeup, and he asks accusingly, “Who are you doing that for?” I don’t understand why he gets so jealous; I would never want to be with anyone else. He’s so ethical, unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He just doesn’t want me to poison him with additives and preservatives. I don’t need to wear lipstick for him; he thinks my bare lips are perfectly kissable.
Internet Friends I
He’s always chatting on the internet. Sometimes it’s like he disappears into his laptop. When he’s off in his digital world, I can’t reach him. We first became friends on the internet. We got wrapped up in each other. When I was in Central America, I was often lonely, and the time difference didn’t seem to matter: he was always online when I needed somebody to talk to. Now we’re on the same continent, in the same country, in the same home, and he’s more distant than ever. He’s still on the computer, grinning, sniggering over some bit of cleverness while I’m hanging out, waiting for him to turn his attention to me.
The other day, when I was washing up after dinner, he sat down in the living room with his computer. “I thought we were going to watch a movie,” I said as I dried my hands on a dirty kitchen towel, but he didn’t reply. I made a few attempts to reach him, to lure him to me, to no avail. I went into his room, closed myself in, and half hoped he would chase me, but he never came. I took off my pants, lay in his bed, and masturbated. Serves him right, I thought, his loss. Still, it would’ve been even better if he’d walked in on me and realized that there was a person of flesh and blood in his apartment who wanted him here, now.
Bachelors II
I feel so sorry for his roommate. He recently had a birthday, and his family gave him a vacuum cleaner as some sort of half-serious joke. Three weeks later, it’s still in the box in the hallway. His roommate has continued to wear nothing but his perpetual bathrobe, and he’s continued to eat cheap burgers from the corner shop. When he doesn’t want a warm meal, he eats stuffed Oreos and slugs Diet Coke. I’ve never met such a Coke nut.
Nobody ever visits his roommate. If I lived alone, I’d always invite people to parties and dinner. He must be very lonely. A few days ago the strangeness of their living situation really hit me. The roommate had locked himself in his room and was listening to Damien Rice, the same CD, the volume cranked up, over and over and over and over. We were in the front room watching a film when we heard the music from his room, so we started laughing about the sad Saturday night sing-along alone in his room. By the time we went to bed, he’d turned it down a little. The same song on repeat, the singer meowing, “Cold, cold, water surrounds me now . . .”
As the night wore on, the music continued, and I began to feel really perturbed. Maybe he’d offed himself and we were just giggling on the other side of the wall. I asked him if he’d go and check on his roommate, to see if something was wrong. But he was tired, and he said, “No, no, he’ll be fine.” In the morning, we were sitting in the kitchen and eating our cereal when his roommate stepped out of his room, unkempt and ashen. He mumbled some sort of greeting, tightened the belt of his robe, grabbed a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke, retreated to his room, and put Damien Rice back on.
The Ex III
One evening, when we’d slipped into bed, his Ex-Girlfriend called him. The conversation was brief, and when he hung up, he leaped out of bed. “There’s a midnight launch at the bookstore, the seventh Harry Potter book is coming out,” he gasped.
“Why is your ex-girlfriend calling you about that? Can’t we just buy the book in the morning?” I tried to hide how bitter I felt, as I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of knowing I was jealous. He looked at me as he shoved his feet into his socks.
“She’s just a friend. We read all the other books together. I’m just going to run and grab this last one.” He pulled on his pants and ran out of the room.
The Ex IV
The next night, his Ex called him again. We were lying naked in bed, and he seemed surprised to see her name blinking on his screen so late at night. He answered, moving away so that I wouldn’t hear what they were saying. He listened for a long time before quickly turning to look at me. Finally he said, “Ya, I knew about that,” and hung up.
“What does she want now?” I asked, a deliberate frown crossing my face. He was flustered, evasive: “She said she’d heard a rumor about you . . . that you were raped and you blogged about it.”
The wind was knocked out of me, like I’d been punched in the stomach. Then I erupted.
“That’s such fucking bullshit. What business is it of hers? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you defend me? I deleted that entry a long time ago. Right after I wrote the damn thing. Do you think it’s okay for her to shoot her
mouth off like some vicious Mean Girl?” I started to wail, and he lay down beside me in bed, wrapping his arms around me.
“My ex has been through a lot; she’s very sensitive. I don’t know, maybe she’s a little jealous. I mean, look who’s in bed with me now.”
“What’s so fucking difficult for her? Just tell me, then we’re even.”
“I can’t talk about her secrets. I can’t break her trust. We hold each other’s confidence. Trust me, she’s damaged.”
That night I cried myself to sleep—not because I pitied myself because of the rape, but because I knew he’d never watch over me half as well as he watches over her.
Ephemera
I was raped this weekend. I swear I wasn’t trying to get with that guy, I didn’t even like him, but that’s how it goes. One way or another, we all lose our virginity somehow.
Magma Page 2
