Future Ex Buys Pajamas
We begin our descent somewhere over Normandy when I read in Let’s Go! France that the Eiffel Tower is this beacon for suicide. Host to twelve successful attempts every year. Katja tells me the jumpers tend not to be locals. She says no Parisian would be caught dead anywhere near the Eiffel Tower, and by the...
Cathy or Katy
The rain fell through bus headlights, getting us ready for the big lie. We spent the weekend in New York City, my heart beating up through my neck in the gold glow and enormous doors of the Mayflower Hotel. Eric and I, when the urge to crawl out of myself toward her became no longer...
House in the Suburbs
Those coffee machines still exist—I saw one at an Interstate wayside in Iowa–the ones where the paper cup drops and dark brew follows, then liquid white, then clear to taste. I want to say marriage is like that machine. Like that hot water transfigured to coffee, pouring from on high. Or marriage is like the...
Dyad
The couple’s corners are worn and gray, like those of a favorite trinket carried around in a pocket for too long. They sit straight as royalty, gazing through the glass at a point somewhere over our heads, and are holding hands—or would be, if they had hands. Her right arm, broken off at the wrist,...
Enormous
I am in love with an enormous man. Though he is only two inches taller than me, his girth is twice my own, and his weight more than double. I look at these rail-thin men on the street and I wonder, how could I lay in bed next to something as small as that? How...
Something Once Learned
One year in my late twenties I lived for a time with a twenty-one year old drug-dealing stripper named Alexa. Being with her required constant restraint, but I was naive enough to mistake pity for love, and so, insomniac, I often walked the dark apartment while she slept, traced circles about the entry, living room,...
What We’re Good At
It is morning, winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, and you are lying with your boyfriend on his bed. You are from New Orleans, but you are now in Pittsburgh, where you came for a job and, where you fell in love a few months ago. There is snow on the ground and...
Loving Bald Men
Months since my nephew slid otter-slick into the doctor’s hands, I anoint his head with baby oil, brailling his fate: Is baldness in his future? The first time I touched a bald man’s head I was a grown woman, and I read in the elegant bones of his skull my future for the next few hours at...
Mask
Danny’s Camaro was primer-gray and had a broken window crank on the passenger side that I cut my leg on when he took a turn too fast. I still have the scar. It had sun-bleached burgundy seats, and the air inside smelled of too-sweet cherry licorice — a pot of air freshener under the seat...
Split
I could split my heart on the anvil and put her inside…” — Anne Carson My heart, these days, is much too dense to break. It would require a difficult configuration of tools — mallet, wedge, hatchet, and maul — to make this kind of severance possible. It’s tough as those deep knots in the...
Head-Turner
We’re walking to the Avis outlet on 12th Street when Kat makes me cry. We’ve just had dinner, and she’s asked me to walk with her to pick up her rental for the next day. She has errands to run that require lugging around large objects. Soon she’ll be gone for six months, to start a...
Dreams of Cats
Tonight I’m sitting here and it’s late and I’m lying about who I am but it’s not really lying, just heavy embellishment on the fabric of my life. So this guy (whose chat alias is Perseus) sends me a private message and says, “Do you want to talk?” Because I am difficult I say, “About...
A Brief History of Sex Education
In the summer of 1979, I was Mark Merlini’s girlfriend for four hours. He lived down the street and suddenly seemed cute, so we kissed for about a half-hour on the hill behind his house, facing the Route 11 bypass in Gilford, New Hampshire. He kissed with his mouth open so of course I opened...
Answering Personals
The one I don’t want has telephoned three times; the one I want has telephoned once. The one I don’t want will wear Bermuda shorts, a sleeveless tee, sneakers, and wait for me at South Station so I can buy coffee at one of the kiosks there. The one I want will wear a Brooks...
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