1. Of course, no one thought it was very cool when you were a freshman and were dating that guy who was a senior. When you guys were both in high school.
2. Why yes, I looked it up. That’s statutory rape.
3. The same white pants you could see the electric green thong through.
4. Incidentally, my dad today remembered you and reiterated his offer from when you were in the fourth grade and he said he would buy you a new car if you married me. Yeah, he liked you a little bit.
5. That marked the third consecutive time you went for a scruffy guy who played guitar.
6. Your gaydar had always been much better than mine, after all. You saw it from a mile away. “No, no!” I said. “But…he’s…got…a…girlfriend!”
7. Do you remember Rowena, from Mr. Holland’s Opus? You guys sang the same role in our production of Crazy For You, whatever the name of that character was. You and Rowena were one and the same; there’s even that scene where Mr. Holland was watching her deliver the big aria (“Someone to Watch Over Me”) and it was very pretty and everything but then he said, Listen bitch, you’re not singing it like you mean it.
8. Well, they never gave me a romantic lead, did they?
9. You could have at least done him in a different room.
10. Yes, we both knew you were doing him right there. On the floor. Next to our beds. He was a prick before and a prick then and everyone knew that, too.
11. Your fiancé told me about the toothbrush. That’s disgusting. He also said he knew he was in love with you when he saw “those huge fuckin’ eyes staring at me.”
12. In retrospect, it was cheesy that half of our phone conversations at that point consisted of listening to each other's breathing since we couldn't really think of anything else to say but couldn't quite hang up either. I guess we really weren't too old for that kind of thing. Thank god.
13. How’s that children’s book coming?
14. The poem was called "The Bells." I had it written on a piece of notebook paper; there were scribbles and eraser smudges everywhere from trying to get the rhyme and meter right all week. I sat there in my car outside the church trying to copy it out on the card. I had the radio going. Mizzou was pounding Nebraska by a couple touchdowns at that point. A few people we both knew from high school were hanging around a van smoking weed and taking shots of tequila before going inside. It was clear I was going to be one of the best-dressed people there just because I was wearing slacks. At that point I still thought the poem was a good idea, not knowing it was already fucked, because I didn't know yet that your sprint down the rather undersized aisle would take only an Olympian three seconds (as opposed to the interminable march described in stanza 2) and, perhaps most dubiously, that you'd chosen to get married in a church that didn't have a single bell to its name.
15. "Amateur model?" you said, only sort of impressed. "She's not 'model' pretty, per se. Models are 'cute.' She's supermodel pretty, which is very different." Which was your way of saying that you didn't approve. You'd never approved.
16. Do you remember you broke up with me through a note in the third grade because I was wearing lime green snow pants? That was heartless. But since we only went out on dates in notes, I guess I already knew our relationship probably wasn’t working out for you in the long run since I'd never once actually talked to you yet.
17. I knew your husband was watching, but I didn’t care, and you didn't seem to either.
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2 comments:
The Bells? Were you going for that turning feeling deep in the pit of your stomach? The one that comes both when you fall in love and when you watch someone die? You were watching both........but you would not know that because you never asked. Did someone tell you it was because of lime green snow pants? Again, if you had asked, I would have told you the truth. I always told you the truth. And when I wrote that note to you...you know the one addressed to the Sex Tiger? I was telling the truth. And I waited for you to ask, and you never did..........footnotes are for great works of art and I consider my life to be a work far from completed. P.S. I still breathe heavily into phones, I try not to, but it's a bad habit. Usually happens when I'm waiting for the other person to say something. Fuck.
Fuck.Fuck.Fuck. Yeah, he was a prick, and that's why I don't speak to him or anyone in his family. You have no idea the wounds that you just opened up. You know what everyone else knew but me. But nobody else knows what I do about my past and if you did, you never would have written this. It's not all poetry and musicals and band trips. It's rape and drugs and death. A good writer always does his research. A great writer does research from the bed beside you, and follows up, instead of putting a pillow over his head.
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