True story

It's 3am in the summer of your nineteenth year.

You hear the apartment, your apartment, creak as the old door shuts tightly, just beyond the hall.

You've been staring for some time out the window of your little white room, at the yellow orb just beyond the screen, the dull light making its way through dusted panes to rest in angles on the mattress, all the rest of the little room dark as night.

You hear her footfalls making little waves in the carpet on the floor. She's in the kitchen, or at the tv. The clatter of things hitting things. A little fist punches out through the cavity in your chest, and you think how long have you been staring, quiet. How long and how many nights the same, keeping numb and neutral, trying hard not to move.

The bedroom door opens without a sound, with just the outrush of pent-up air. She switches the light as you turn slowly around. She's at the closet, placing things inside of things, shopping bags and clutches with zippers, all laid out symmetric and neat. She turns and smiles, not a word, and walks out the door.

All the time spent there, on that bed, feigning interest in the normal life, in the chasing of teenage girls, the downing of drinks, the festival of nightly carnage happening all around, the powder flying up through noses and the sallowed joys of normalcy, the naked fury of lust.

All the time spent fleeing from reaction, from excitement, from the dangers of being and the pain of letting go, all the time spent wanting it, but trying hard not to move.

She had been there for some time, all awash in other problems, in other mysteries, some shared and some kept buried. She had been there and after some time you had put your arms around her nightly and held her close, fingers dancing along arms, around wrists, through the fingers of the other. She had shared with you secrets, she had given of herself, and you had kept quiet throughout. And then you told her of being young and afraid, of losing faith in God and family, of keeping tight and closed off, of the friends you had who were drifting, of all the sorry people in your life who weren't worth a second glance. Of all the pretty girls you might've fucked if you could stand to hear them talk. Of the long hard nights with the devil on your back, the thick dark cloud over everything that seeps in and stays long, of the worst nights and the thought of guns to temples, the thought of leaping from buildings and the last seconds of a young life. Of the desire to start writing and to make something grand, to make something that could outlive you, something someone somewhere would care about, would hear and know.

She tells you things about children, about her daughter and her son, both around your age. About her husband long ago. About her life at fifteen, at twenty, at thirty, and her now at fourty-six. She tells you about having cancer and how she made it through the whole thing without a word, without telling a soul, no soul but you, now. She tells you of a long and distraught life, of things you'll never know, could never know at nineteen. And you sit there and think how you got into this mess, with a woman you could never love, a woman all too in love with you.

It's a few months earlier and you're lighting a cigarette.

'If you had a girl... a girlfriend, what would you do? What would you do with her?' She asks, cross-legged on the couch, sipping something warm.

You take a firm drag from a dried-out Pall Mall, near the door, blowing out puffs and surveying the complex at night.

'I don't know... I'd give her the world.' You say.

She's silent, staring straight ahead.

'That's a good answer.' She says, dabbing something salty from the corner of her eye.

You look at her and then back out the window, the stiff breeze tackling the fronds of store-bought palms.

'What is it?' you say, avoiding her eyes.

'Nothing.'

You thimble with the doorknob as you try to say something, anything. A touch of uncold rain starts to drizzle in from the clouds, pattering the walkways and the cheaply painted rails. You run a fevered hand through the curls in your hair and you think of what it is to feel. Of what it is to feel and say nothing.

It's 3am in the summer of your nineteenth year.

The shower turns to silence with the turning of a knob. The lights throughout the place are steady dark, all the hue of night but the angled pattern streaming from the dull orb beyond the window. You hear the footfalls, light and intentioned, making their way to the room. She steps inside and places her things down gently. You're lying there, a hand resting crooked beneath your head, the other arm outstretched. She takes her hair and ties it up loose and wet. You move slightly as she lies beside you.

'Hey,' She says.

You're lying there thinking of numbers and age and the absurdity of it all.

'Harold and Maude. Have you seen it?' she asks.

'No, I don't think so.'

'It's great. It's so you and me.'

'Oh?'

'It's about a boy and a woman. About them finding each other.'

You think of what it is to to be a boy. To be a man. What it is to be a woman. What it is to find something.

'We should watch it sometime.'

'Yeah, maybe.' I say. 'Maybe sometime.'

She grabs the blanket, pulls it up around her waist, and looks up at the ceiling. She looks at you and drags a finger across your shoulder, playfully.

'You know, the first time I saw you,' she says, 'I couldn't really look away.'

Drops of sweat leak unwilling from the valleys in your palms. You think of booze and saturdays and everything that might have been. Of the life you thought you couldn't stand.

She smiles and pulls away the blankets. She puts her hands on your chest and, moving gracefully, straddles you, keeping her dark eyes locked on yours. Your hands move to her waist and you're holding her, unmoving, unthinking, unfeeling. She's frozen there in time, your heart racing, half the world screaming take her and the other half silent. Every fourteen year old male's fantasy, all the tired quips about Mothers I'd Like to Fuck come rushing at you humorlessly, the flesh there in your hands, the reality grim and confusing and she a mother of two and you the teenager raised to believe in God, you just sitting there wondering what the fuck will happen next. Take her, screams the night. And you think of what it is to be unable to move.

It's a few months earlier and you light another smoke in bed.

'How do you smoke those things?' she asks, not impolitely.

'One at a time.' I say.

She's there in the shadows and you're thinking up a storm.

'What do you think of all of this?' she asks.

'Of what?'

'Of me, and you. Of whatever this is.'

A spot of ash sneaks from the lit ember to the carpet below. You thumb it into sightlessness.

'I don't know... I...'

The sun rounds the outer edge of earth, the darkest part of night looms up.

'There's something in me that wishes you were twenty years younger.' I say.

Silence for a moment.

'Why?' She says.

'I don't know. I don't know a fucking thing about any of this.' I say.

She turns from gazing and sets her eyes on a thousand stars glimmering.

You think of life and the mystery, of the callousness you handle it with, of everything you don't know and all the things you wish you could say, even now, in the openness.

'We could be,' she says. 'What's stopping us.'

'Everything,' I say.

'More than everything.'

You think of holding someone and what it is to not feel a thing. To be loveless, to not want to know more, to be lashed to the kitestring you weaved yourself, tethered to a reckless forty-six year old woman who managed to share a bit of herself with you. Of all the fibers shooting out from the spool, the kite dancing further and further from reach, out of your arms and into the the world, maybe caught up by some southern wind and ferried out to heaven on a longshot.

It's near to midnight at the tail end of your twenty-first year, and you're thinking of this somehow.

Of the years of indecision, the years of worry, the years behind you chock full of the empty sheltered hope that things would change sometime.

You think of now, and all the time passing, all the smoking and the weed and the guitars and the laptops with keyboards, about being miserable, about being happy, about being confused and excited and leaping into the mess of it all, pecker to the wind, assailed on all fronts by the simple joys of being. Of letting oneself go. You think of what is and what will be. What might've been and what could've been. Of what it is to be a man. To be a woman. What it is to find something.

You think of a girl you're getting to know and how frightening it is to be honest. You think of walkways and apartment complexes. Of all the time spent running away, of how good it feels to let someone in, at least a little bit, of what it is to breathe. All the time in the past years you've spent worrying about rejecting others, about them rejecting you. Of how you still feel this way. Of how you feel just the opposite.

You think of something to do with the gathering of angels, with the seeing them there, with the hoping. You think of something to do with kitestrings, with the worry that just maybe you've got something. That just maybe it could slip away, borne on the wind and flying out ungraced by the tips of fingers.