The worst part about it all was that I never liked him, although I really wanted to. Maybe the worst part is I could’ve.
Eight drinks drowned my veins as I texted him back. I could read the pattern like a book; after weeks of ignoring my last text, he’d string together a few stale words and send them my way.
I don’t resent him for it; I’d always respond.
His magnetism wasn’t his looks or his words. As for the latter, it was his lack thereof that drew me in. With regard to the former, after my cousin saw a picture of him, she said, “Dude, if that guy walked up to me on the street and said ‘I hung out with Claire last night’ I would call the cops.”
No one’s ever been able to sum up “my type,” so well.
When I first met him, I felt an admiration for this guy. He boldly walked through doors I hesitated at the brim of. He committed to creativity enough to let go of the safety of a conventional day job. When I expressed interest in my own pursuits he said, “You just have to be delusional enough to believe it could work out.”
Whether is was a throwaway statement from him or not, it gave me the courage to try things and tap into parts of myself I’d never before dared dream of being.
That was before the connection dwindled, and I clung onto the one thing that remained. My attachment wasn’t to him, it was to the painful part of myself he held a mirror to.
You are nothing. Youare nothing. Youarenothing.
Wouldn’t you be afraid to jump into the depths of a pure oasis if your entire life you’d been rolling in shit?
Well, shit. I texted him back after 1am.
NY Times journalist David Carr once said, “If you hate him so much, then stop pulling your panties down for him.” I remember after reading Carr’s quote I shifted in my seat, as if to distance myself from an uncomfortable moment of self-recognition.
I voluntarily agreed every time this guy reached out to see him, and others like him. I sought out these phantoms that flicker and bring light to an old familiar room that holds an eerie resemblance to a rotted prison cell.
For this, fate must have a sense of humor, for it disposed upon me a karaoke Uber for my ride over.
“Do you like to sing?” The driver asked me. As soon as I buckled up, he handed me a pink glittery microphone.
“Uh, yuh,” I said, and accepted his offering with open arms.
The electronic opening of “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas washed over the car. The windows shuddered with every beat.
“This one is my FAVORITE!” He yelled into a microphone of his own as he stomped on the gas, and cranked the speaker volume to MAX. We hurdled south of center city, harmonizing every high “wooohooo!”
The chilly night air splashed through the window and doused my grinning face in silky spoon-fed moonlight.
I didn’t care, none of it mattered, how could it?
The roar of the engine stuttered to a halt as we arrived at his place. I stepped out onto the street and the karaoke car drove away.
It was suddenly very quiet.
I walked up three steps to his door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I walked down the steps and turned the nearest corner. My purse felt light.
Fuck, I’d left my phone behind.
I walked once more up the narrow steps, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door. I didn’t want it to open, but I wasn’t about to buy a new phone.
We went upstairs to find it and I gazed around his room. Under the TV there was a table, remotes, video game controllers and one of which looked like a small gun. I picked up the gun controller, and pointed it at the floor.
It was all a game; pew, pew, pew; it was all a game.
“Put that down, what’re you doing?! That’s a real gun.”
His voice sobered my drunken play.
I could’ve snapped back. I could’ve asked what a gun laying out in the open was hiding. But I didn’t. I swallowed my stammers as the sudden crash in my chest billowed smoke and clouded my cheeks in a ragged, desperate heat.
“You could’ve shot my neighbor… you gotta get out of here,” he said, his words extinguishing the flames in my face and freezing my lips tight with the frost of a futile apology.
I walked down his three front steps a final time.
—–Maybe I did care.
———–Maybe it all did matter.
———————How could it not?
At least I can laugh when I say we almost went out with a bang.
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