The Album

(names changed and omitted to protect the innocent and the guilty)

Author’s Note: I'm sticking a literary finger down the throat of my heart. I think this makes me an emotional bulimic. Hopefully this story’s not as messy as that metaphor.

“If you told me about all this when I was fifteen, I never would have believed it.”

– Against Me!

If there are still CDs that you can’t listen to, then you’re not over it. When I thought about her, I used to dance to “Hello, Hello.” That song is almost dead to me now. I think this to myself when I park my car, scrolling through songs on my iPod. Of course, you don’t need music to troll around side streets, looking for a place to wedge your hand-me-down family car into, but it helps burn off the monotony.

It’s been almost five months, but I quickly scroll past “Give Up” on the album list, even though it’s perfect for the end of my long day. I deleted PJ Harvey’s “To Bring You My Love” album three weeks ago. Resolution through avoidance. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I activate my turn signal and it clicks in its predictable, comforting rhythm that says, “You’re a responsible driver.” I scan both sides of the street for parking. Nothing.

Even though I only dropped Annie, my co-director, off five minutes ago, the car’s dead silence grates on my nerves.

The last time I listened to “Give Up”, I was driving home through the silence of northwest New Jersey. The sparse, electronic sound kept my back abnormally straight, my arms stuck out at odd ninety degree angles, lightly holding the steering wheel. “Everything looks perfect from far away… come down now.” We were still together.

During the second track, I remember getting out of my car and just staring at the sky. The highway was abandoned, and the township hadn’t bothered to place streetlights along this stretch of lonely road. The sky was an infinite shade of black velvet with a fistful of diamonds scattered over it. Living so close to New York, you sometimes forget what the night sky is supposed to look like.

The night can just swallow you up out there. I leaned against my car, my neck craned up, just staring at a sky that felt like an open mouth, waiting to close around me, leaving me warm, separating me from the chaos and indecision that I was going through right then. She still wasn’t really able to say she liked me. She had a habit of “Han Solo-ing” me. This bears some explaining.

In one of the last scenes of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader is lowering Han Solo into a carbonite freezing chamber. This basically turns you into solid rock, and might kill you, drive you insane, and all sorts of terrible things. To make matters worse, Vader’s going to give Solo to Boba Fett to sell to Jabba the Hutt. Princess Leia is watching him get put in there. They might never see each other again. So she speaks from her heart! “I love you!” she says.

He looks back at her, the most desirable woman in the universe, and replies, “I know.”

Two week before, we were in bed together (leaping out of our clothes as usual). I looked into those big, beautiful light brown eyes and said, “I really like you.”

She said, “I know.”

And she wasn’t even about to be frozen into carbonite.

And I know I’m not exactly the most desirable guy in the universe, but I thought it was kind of rough. Of course, when I called her on it, I had to explain the reference to her, which I think just made me look like a geeky jackass.

I drive another few blocks down, continuously glancing left and right, searching for a spot. I wonder if I look like a stoned speed reader or a very tired squirrel, wondering what happened to his damn nuts. We’re in tech week, so that means late nights, shitty food, and not nearly enough sleep. It was one of the few times I could forget about everything and just be happy. Directing made me feel like benevolent god. There was a tiny little world denoted with spike tape that I was slowly making beautiful, with every lighting cue and piece of blocking. It was all going really well. Rina still had to learn some lines, and I needed to get a little more life out of Alan’s performance, but overall it was coming together. I wonder what I’m going to do with my life in two weeks.

I never really had the luxury of senioritis. The show was our senior thesis, and Annie kept reminding me of that whenever my priorities got skewed. Four years of college vanished like your favorite wallet left unattended on a dining hall table. Just when I was getting used to it, it’s gone. I want to make peace with her before we both go and vanish off into the real world, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean for a performance artist and a modern dancer.

She had the sexiest back I ever laid my hands on. She was still soft like a girl was supposed to be, but underneath you could feel vast plains of muscle. Almost twenty years of dance training will do that. I think giving her back massages turned me on even more than it relaxed her. One time, she showed me how to give a massage under the shoulder blade.

“Put my arm at a right angle to my body. Then put your hand over my shoulder.”

I did so, and couldn’t help but think about the fact that the most beautiful girl in the world was laying topless on my bed.

“Now slide your fingers under the shoulder blade and pull my shoulder down.”

To my surprise, the first segments of my fingers slid beneath the bone, her soft white skin stretching. I could feel the knots under there, and understood why she wanted to teach me this trick. I flexed my fingers and she let out a little closed-mouth moan.

After we hooked up that night, we fell asleep to PJ Harvey on repeat. I woke up at 4 AM, a little overheated, unused to having a sleeping partner, and shut off the stereo.

I have this theory about my music collection. It’s got so much variety that anyone will find at least ten albums that they love, fifteen that they like, and they’ll probably hate the rest. I liked putting on soft stuff when we were together – Joss Stone, the Cranberries, and PJ for her. God bless five disc changers. However, my stereo isn’t a tray, so you can’t see all the discs that’re in there at once. So it was a little awkward when Rage Against The Machine’s “The Renegades of Funk” came on in the middle of a tongue kiss.

I glanced down at my dashboard. The engine temperature needle hovered halfway between ice-cold and ready to explode, which meant that it was warm enough to turn on the heat. Right now, mid-April felt more like October. Derek died that month last year.

Derek was the kind of guy who was nice to everyone. I know it’s trite, and everyone says that about dead people, but it was true for him. I had known him since freshman year, where he earned the nickname “Dimples Derek” for his boyish smile. He was the kind of guy who would greet you with a “How are you doing?” and actually want an answer. We were never really close friends. He liked boys, but wasn’t my type, nor was I his. My last memory of him was a warm day in September, when he caught me by surprise as I hung out on the front stoop of my old dorm.

“How are you, Justin?” He sounded like a grade school teacher, with all the patronizing bullshit taken out, and all the wonderful sweetness left in. I don’t remember exactly what I said. If I knew it was the last time I was going to talk to him, I would’ve written it down, or tried to be more profound. Or maybe just told him to take Route 1 instead of the Turnpike home next month.

Derek’s funeral was two hours away in his parents’ home town, and I didn’t get back until ten that night. Funerals are really the only time I see all my friends in one place, and they’re the only time I don’t want to.

Back at the dorm, kids held a memorial service for him. We sat on that same stoop and sang songs for Derek. I felt like I had to do something. Like it was my responsibility to pull something out of this, and give my friends some kind of relief because I had more dead friends than I could count on one hand, and this was some of my friends’ first loss.

Standing about four feet away from where I sat when I last saw him, I sang Jimmy Eat World’s “Hear You Me.” Hardest goddamn thing I’ve ever had to do. I choked and cried through the last verse while Dave and Vinnie held me up. I wrapped my arms around them, feeling like the saddest motherfucker in the whole universe. Some people had brought out sidewalk chalk, and I wrote, “HOPE” on the concrete, in huge blue letters.

I called her, and she was there, and we were in bed again, our solution for everything. Clothes gone again, I faced away from her and she wrapped her arms around me. I wanted her to hear the song. I sang her that last verse and cried again.

“And if you were with me tonight, I’d sing to you just one more time. A song for a heart so big, God wouldn’t let it live.”

That night, we tore each other apart. It was like she was trying to blast all my pain out of the universe with her nails and teeth. It worked. All my sadness and pain, replaced by this incredible feeling for someone who was trying to make me just feel safe. Looking back, I fell in love with her that night. I didn’t tell her. It would’ve made things awkward.

The first time we kissed, she asked me if she should take me seriously. I told her yes. She was the first girl I really kissed that I really cared about. Admittedly, at twenty one, I was a little bit behind the curve. Okay, so maybe behind the curve isn’t quite the right phrase for it – I was sitting with the Down’s Syndrome kids in that little closet next to the boiler room. Anyway, I was a ball of nerves, and I shook like John Cusack in Say Anything. Then she told me about Mark.

She had traveled cross-country with him over the summer, and now he lives in Portland, Oregon. She said they, “explored together” with the implications you would expect, and my imagination was colorful enough to fill in the rest. She told me there was no commitment, but there were “feelings.”

We tried anyway – a relationship left open like words left unsaid. I was never really good at not saying things or even keeping my mouth shut, so you can imagine how it ended.

I was counting down the days til her fall concert – November 18^th. The day’s burned into my memory. You can only look forward to something so much before it’s placed into memory drawer marked ‘permanent’. I felt like if we could make it past that day, everything would work itself out – she’d have less stress, less rehearsal, less everything, and more time for me. She was pouring herself into what she loved, and it only made me fall harder and faster, like a parachute that refused to open.

And I knew I was freefalling, but, wind in my face or not, I refused to acknowledge it. We had lunch at the dining hall (mystery chicken and ancient french fries – the perfect romantic escape) and she took a styrofoam cup of tea with her. The days were just starting to get chilly, and a warm drink in your hands could do wonders for the spirit. She also had the particular zen that I had always associated with tea drinkers. We chatted on the way over.

When we got to the front steps of her class building, I said, “Hey, can we talk this week sometime?” My hand was on her arm, the same one connected to the hand holding the tea.

“About what?” – just stand-offish enough.

The last time she stayed over, I asked her to dig her nails into my back again – I loved it – like someone was trying to pull me apart. The spice with the sugar.

“If I scratch you, you’re going to scratch me, and I don’t want to get marked up.”

A little disappointed, I concurred, just glad to have that time with her. But I dug meaning out of every single one of her words. I put two and two together and got thirteen. She was going to see Mark in a week + she was staying over for a four day weekend = she didn’t want him to know about me. The math seemed painfully simple, but like the Gin Blossoms, I had to hear it from her.

“Just some stuff,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied, turning to leave, “See you then.”

I stood close, trying to maneuver myself into the best position for a little goodbye kiss. She turned away.

“Come here,” I said.

“No… let’s talk later.”

Speechless, she slid her arm through my hand til my fingers just barely touched the cup.

“Come on. Don’t spill my tea,” she scolded, then was gone.

I walked away, fear, anxiety, and disappointment making haggis out of my insides. What the hell? Was I some kind of leper? Why is it that I can sleep naked with this girl but she can’t kiss me in public? My guts went back to the middle school days when my only friend refused to say hello to me in the hallways. If someone is ashamed enough of you, you start to be ashamed of yourself.

And, sitting on my ragged couch in my too-small bedroom, we talked.

“Why is it that in my bed, we can tear each other to pieces, and it’s great, but you can’t even kiss me in public? I mean,” and I paused, afraid of the answer, “are you ashamed of me or something? Because that’s what it feels like.”

“I’m not ashamed of you. It’s just that PDA means commitment to me, and we’re not committed. It’s not what I want right now.”

I waited a few seconds, and related my thoughts on the other night.

“No, Mark knows about you. I just don’t like being marked up.”

“Oh.” It felt like the truth. “How was your trip out there?”
“Honestly?”

I nodded.

“If I could’ve stayed out there, I would’ve.”

Houston, we have entered stomach freefall. Pull it together, man, pull it together.

“He’s a really big part of your life, isn’t he?” I said. I tried to play it casual even though it felt like someone was pulling my shoulder blades togeher with a guitar string.

“Yeah.”

“What does he think about all this?”

“All what?”

“You and me.”

“He feels like he’s a variable and you’re a constant.”

“Funny, it feels the other way around a lot of the time.”

One deep sigh, and I run out of words. I placed my head on her chest, inhaling her sweet powdery scent.

“I can hear your heart beating,” I said.

“Of course you can. Your ear’s right over it,” she replied, all common sense, unwilling to let me run off with my stupid poetic self.

I waited a few seconds. Then I decided to look into her eyes and do a stupid thing.

“I want you to know,” I said, “that you’re someone I could fall in love with.” A silence. “That’s really scary, isn’t it?”

“Yeah it is.”

More silence.

“You’re someone I could fall in love with too.”

I pressed my cheek against her chest again, burying my face in her sweater. She said she could love me. I could be loved! Someone could want me! Me, the kid who never kissed anyone until he was 20. Me, the guy who knows rejection better than his multiplication tables, because 4 x 6 = 24 never kicked his ass all over town.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I would like a committed relationship. But all I really want is you, in my life, in my bed.” Maudlin, I know, but the truth.

“Then I have to make some decisions to make. I should go.”

“Come on, please stay.” I kissed those sweet lips that always dried out my mouth. She kissed me back and we stayed in that dance, back and forth, for a while, until she pulled away – she was always the first.

“Why do you pull back?”

“Because if I don’t, I’m afraid you never will.”

“I never would.”

“I know.” We kissed again and again. I pulled her close to me and whisepred in her ear, “Stay.”

She pulled back. “Justin, you’ve got to respect me.”

“I do respect you. I just want you to stay. Come on. Let’s live in the moment.” I kissed her lips, moved to her neck, then nibbled her ear, sucking the soft cartilage between my lips.

“You’re really good at being seductive. Stop that.”
“Seductive? That is the last word I would’ve used to describe myself. How do you mean?”

“’Let’s live in the moment. Let me kiss your ear.’”

We both laughed, the last one we would share. I stole more kisses – stealing is the only word for it.

“Come on, put your sweatshirt on. I’ve got to go,” she said, getting up.

“Okay, okay.”

She put on her rain jacket – a silly-looking sky blue one that had a rain hood with a visor. It simultaneously made her look like a duck and a little boy. I walked her to her car and stole a goodnight kiss.

Fast forward five days to the dance concert. I bought her flowers for opening night. The florist asked me what kind of flowers I wanted. I said, “All kinds. Everything but roses. She’s got a colorful personality. Give her colorful flowers.” Her dance, needless to say, was stunning. Her movement simultaneously froze and electrocuted me. I wish I had better words to describe it, but writing about dance is like singing about architecture. After the show, Angie, her housemate, mentioned her birthday party the next night and invited me. I tried to promise myself that I’d show up for Angie, sweet Angie, not for her.

And we can all imagine how well that worked out.

Through the night, she mostly hid upstairs in Angie’s room, barely saying two words to me. Under the pretense of going to the bathroom, I walked by her door. She was chatting and laughing with Saul, a mutual friend. I ground my teeth together and went downstairs.

People were hanging out on the back porch, next to the keg. I didn’t drink, so I just kind of slid through the party, from person to person, wondering what she was doing. I didn’t notice how rowdy the back was getting until the cops showed up, stormed through the party, dropped a noise violation on the house, and left.

I had a little experience in these things, and my “shining knight” complex kicked in. She descended the stairs and I followed her, explaining everything I knew.

“So I think the minimum for a noise violation is $250, and you got $350, so what you should probably do is go to court, show up, be all repentant. You know, ‘I swear it’ll never happen again.’ and then…” and my voice trailed off as she walked away without a word.

“Hey. Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah?” she said, looking at me.

“In here.” I gestured to her room. We entered and I closed the door.

“What’s the deal with you? I was trying to talk to you and you just walked off.”

“Look, I’m trying to just sit back and avoid all the drama right now, ok?”

“You’re making me feel invisible.”

“If you take a look around you,” each of her words were measured and precise like the edge of a straight razor at my throat, “I’m treating you just like everyone else at this party.”

Recalling what I had just saw upstairs, I replied, “Fine. It’s all me. I’m just imagining shit.” I couldn’t stand to be under that razor sharp stare, so I fixed my stare on the beige hardwood floor and walked away.

“Are we done?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She spent the rest of the evening talking to Saul, while I ground my teeth in the living room, watching Angie’s friends try to cheer her up while she stared at the bright yellow noise violation. Why did I do that? Why did I flip shit again? Why do you have such a shitty temper? Why are you such an attention whore? It’s appropriate that question marks look so much like clubs – they’re perfect for beating yourself up with.

Saul came down about a half an hour later.

“What’s up, man?” I asked, fighting that ‘guitar-string-holding-shoulder-blades” feeling.

“Not much.”

“Is she still up there?” I asked, barely letting him finish.

“Yeah, she went to bed.”

“Oh okay. I’ve gotta go say goodnight.” I ran up the stairs, ignoring Saul’s baffled look. Once at the door, I knocked and held my breath.

“Yes?” her voice came through the door, sounding confused.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah…”

I opened the door stared into pitch black.

“Can I flip on the light?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was flat and even.

I flipped the switch and she was sitting up, still wearing her ankle-length patchwork skirt and loose shirt.

“Can I sit down?”

“Yeah.” I’ve learned now always be worried when every question is answered with affirmatives.

“Look. I’m sorry I freaked out back there. I’m just-”

“It’s okay. You’re doing it to yourself, you know?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I paused. “Have you come to any conclusions?”

“Yeah. I have. But you’re not in the right mindset to really talk about this now, and I have to sleep. I have to be up at six tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I hugged her twice and went home, unable to find sleep, as my heart tried to dig itself out of my chest. More questions to beat myself up with. I sent her a text message at 4 AM.

“Still upset about last night. Need 2 talk but don’t want to wake u. Call me as soon as u get the chance. im a fuckin mess.”

Her response came a week before Thanksgiving in the form of a Dear John e-mail.

“Regardless of what you want, regardless of what Mark wants, I want to be living a nice, focused life on my own. And we both know that nothing will work if we don’t both want the same thing. Chemistry is only part of the equation, and it makes me struggle because I think you’regreat and I think our chemistry, or whatever you want to call it, is great---but we both know that right now we would be a disaster with a few great moments dispersed throughout and that’s about it. Good luck thinking out what you need to think tou and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I saved it, and buried it in my Gmail account, under a mountain of the bullshit day-to-day crap that we all sift through. Tom Wingfield said that “Time is the greatest distance between two places.” The hard thing about distance is not how it separates, but what it creates.

I remember when we ran errands at the Stop and Shop. When jetted around for an hour and a half looking for her brand of deodorant – something of Maine. It was organic, which was her thing. When we got out, the rain was pouring down.

“Ah shit. You stay here, and I can bring the car ar-” I was ready to sacrifice myself to the rain gods, but she was already walking off into the pouring rain, darkening her boyish brown hair.

“Or not.”

I remember the first time I saw her. She was asking one of my favorite professors if she could come to our lit theory class a little late, since she was taking the EE bus from another campus. From a dance class. Knowing that professor, and his deep hatred for all tardiness, I saw her and laughed inside a bit. “This girl isn’t going to last a week.”

Society trains us to think certain things. Absurdly pretty girl + high level theory class + dance major (at this point in my life, my only exposure to dance were the ditzes in my little sister’s ballet school) = Take a hike, sweetheart. But she stayed. And she got an A.

She always does just what she wants.

I stop my car, put it into reverse, signal, and pull into a spot. I get out, put on my headphones, and start to walk home.

“I'll write you a song and I hope that you won't mind
Because all the names and places I have taken from real life
So please don't be upset at this portrait that I paint
It may be a little biased, but at least I spelt your name right...”