ON MUSHROOMS, the twin baby tigers dancing in the corner of my mind’s eye felt like love. I was in a living room with a lover who often ignored me and I loved that for me. Before we ate the mushrooms, he prepared a simple salad of lettuce, salt and olive oil. I thought this culinary move was an act of genius.
Whenever we had sex, I felt his ex in the room, staring at us. He mentioned her often enough to cast her as a ghost actor in the short film of our affair. Her brother, a heroin addict, also hung around in our play, though I never met him, I blamed him for the bad behavior of these older influences in my life when I was in my late twenties.
We met at a corner bar, and that’s where I’d continue to meet this beautiful, lanky freak with his thick head of curly hair, gorgeous angular jawline, and gap-toothed grin. Standing in a sea of sweaty people, I looked up at him on stage—wailing into the microphone—and told my sister and her boyfriend I had to spend at least one night with him. I wrote him a note on napkin, tucked it into his pocket between sets, and pedaled home on my vintage red Schwinn, hoping he’d appear at my doorstep later that night.
And he did—arriving with his sour, hot breath and energy yet left to kiss in the tiny red room at the back of my flat by the kitchen, just under the train tracks. The two of us were tall enough that if we both stretched out, we could touch our feet and arms to the walls on either side, the room was that small. We made out like acrobats in a sad circus and after that first night, he gave me just enough attention to feel that a connection could happen again.
(I’d never be this bold again).
The problem with loving men like this is that they’re not lying when they say they love you—just that they forget when you’re no longer right in front of them. I’d stalk the perimeter of his existence, thinking we were friends that could slip in and out of romance with a few drinks and a twinkly night sky. He scratched out poems like prayers, he liked wearing funky thrift store ties, he plunged the depths of his sorrows and came up to the surface with beautiful songs—oh, and he had a divine British accent. Forever, far away from here.
I still have a few emails we exchanged. In one he thanks me for the Tolstoy book I gifted him, Resurrection, though I have zero recollection of that book or the gesture.
The night we ate mushrooms, I remained alone in his living room for hours, talking to the furniture as family members. I’d somehow assigned them archetypal roles and interviewed them, performing a witchy kind of self-therapy until the sun came up. And then I climbed into bed with the man who had promised to take me to see the swarm of cicadas and realized that the ghost of his ex would forever be staring at us every time we tangled up together like this, from the edge of the bed.
It stunned me the day he called from a therapist’s office to tell me that he was getting back together with his ex, that this call was on speaker phone with his ex present, that this call was a breakup call, that he could no longer speak to me, that this was over, the end. I complied, said goodbye. No tears, just a ton of underground confusion that pulsed like electromagnetic waves on the ocean of my directionless desire.
I ran into him once at the same corner bar where we’d met—he was drinking alone and his breath smelled like garbage in hell, his clothes soiled with the grease of grief. I gave him a hug and said it was nice to see him but the state he was in scared me and made me squeamish with embarrassment that he’d ever seen me naked.
I supposed it burned a bit to learn that this man later slept with a mutual friend long after I moved away. He never made it with his ex after all, instead fell in real love with a plump singer with bright eyes and bought a house for a dollar in a destroyed city and documented the renovations on social media.
It took me some time to make peace with the biggest truth—that he’d set me free with each ignored text or call—and I thank him now for allowing us both to disappear into a brand new day.
(Can you tell I’m reading “Famesick,” by Lena Dunham?)
Whenever we had sex, I felt his ex in the room, staring at us. He mentioned her often enough to cast her as a ghost actor in the short film of our affair. Her brother, a heroin addict, also hung around in our play, though I never met him, I blamed him for the bad behavior of these older influences in my life when I was in my late twenties.
We met at a corner bar, and that’s where I’d continue to meet this beautiful, lanky freak with his thick head of curly hair, gorgeous angular jawline, and gap-toothed grin. Standing in a sea of sweaty people, I looked up at him on stage—wailing into the microphone—and told my sister and her boyfriend I had to spend at least one night with him. I wrote him a note on napkin, tucked it into his pocket between sets, and pedaled home on my vintage red Schwinn, hoping he’d appear at my doorstep later that night.
And he did—arriving with his sour, hot breath and energy yet left to kiss in the tiny red room at the back of my flat by the kitchen, just under the train tracks. The two of us were tall enough that if we both stretched out, we could touch our feet and arms to the walls on either side, the room was that small. We made out like acrobats in a sad circus and after that first night, he gave me just enough attention to feel that a connection could happen again.
(I’d never be this bold again).
The problem with loving men like this is that they’re not lying when they say they love you—just that they forget when you’re no longer right in front of them. I’d stalk the perimeter of his existence, thinking we were friends that could slip in and out of romance with a few drinks and a twinkly night sky. He scratched out poems like prayers, he liked wearing funky thrift store ties, he plunged the depths of his sorrows and came up to the surface with beautiful songs—oh, and he had a divine British accent. Forever, far away from here.
I still have a few emails we exchanged. In one he thanks me for the Tolstoy book I gifted him, Resurrection, though I have zero recollection of that book or the gesture.
The night we ate mushrooms, I remained alone in his living room for hours, talking to the furniture as family members. I’d somehow assigned them archetypal roles and interviewed them, performing a witchy kind of self-therapy until the sun came up. And then I climbed into bed with the man who had promised to take me to see the swarm of cicadas and realized that the ghost of his ex would forever be staring at us every time we tangled up together like this, from the edge of the bed.
It stunned me the day he called from a therapist’s office to tell me that he was getting back together with his ex, that this call was on speaker phone with his ex present, that this call was a breakup call, that he could no longer speak to me, that this was over, the end. I complied, said goodbye. No tears, just a ton of underground confusion that pulsed like electromagnetic waves on the ocean of my directionless desire.
I ran into him once at the same corner bar where we’d met—he was drinking alone and his breath smelled like garbage in hell, his clothes soiled with the grease of grief. I gave him a hug and said it was nice to see him but the state he was in scared me and made me squeamish with embarrassment that he’d ever seen me naked.
I supposed it burned a bit to learn that this man later slept with a mutual friend long after I moved away. He never made it with his ex after all, instead fell in real love with a plump singer with bright eyes and bought a house for a dollar in a destroyed city and documented the renovations on social media.
It took me some time to make peace with the biggest truth—that he’d set me free with each ignored text or call—and I thank him now for allowing us both to disappear into a brand new day.
(Can you tell I’m reading “Famesick,” by Lena Dunham?)
