by J. R. Rogue
"Yeah, we didn't. But I see it now. We needed this. I was a shitty boyfriend. I've never been so lost.” His eyes went dark. “I didn't know I was the kind of guy who would cry that much. I've fallen apart in front of my sister, my mother, my father, the owner of the gym, and trust me, that was a low moment. But I'm not embarrassed. I don't care. I don't know why I let myself be that man before. The kind who doesn't feel. I feel everything now. You've done that to me, for me. And now, I’m doing this for you.”
“Doing what?” I tried not to roll my eyes.
"Showing you what it’s like to have someone love you no matter what. No matter how much they hurt you. This love I have for you, it’s unconditional.”
We gathered dishes in silence. I tried to figure out what to say next. I couldn’t reply. I had no words for him. What was unconditional love? It was a death trap. It made you stupid.
“I really think I want to move,” I said, reaching for a white plate with black edging. I pulled eight pieces from the rack and walked to a nearby register, starting a stack.
“Where to?” Connor reached for a bowl, turned it over.
“The Pacific Northwest.”
“Really? Is this something new? Or have you always wanted to live there?” There was an unspoken question there. He didn’t know what beach I had been on when he saw the picture of me and Logan. He was figuring it out.
“New I guess. I just want to get out of here.” A hint. A little barb. He needed to stop looking at me like that. He was brushing up against me too, as he carried dishes to his pile. It had been so long since he flirted with me. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“I understand. Sometimes, I want to leave, too. I love my family. But it was nice being away from the Midwest during college. I could move again.”
“You could?” I thought of his family, of the way he talked about them, the way he loved them. They were just words. He couldn’t leave them. And I couldn’t understand that. I could leave my family, my home, in a heartbeat.
“Yeah. If you wanted to go, I could go, too.” His words were warm, safe. I recoiled, then recovered.
“I’m not asking you to move with me. Or for me.” I’d never wanted someone to give anything up for me. I never wanted to be a regret.
“I know that. I’m just telling you that I would. I would, if you wanted that.”
“This is a dumb conversation. We need to stop.” I went to walk away but Connor raised his hands in the air. The overhead light above him reflected his new grey hairs.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It’s just, when I see you it’s hard to not think of you as my girlfriend. It just came out.”
I didn’t believe him. He was being deliberate. He was trying to plant seeds. “Okay. Let’s finish this set.” I grabbed a wide rimmed bowl. “This is nice.”
"But do you like them?" He raised an eyebrow, his dark eyes so large and beautiful.
"They're nice."
“Okay, good. I want something you’d like.”
I helped him pick his new dishes, and he left. I watched him go.
That night I matched with a younger guy on Tinder and invited him over when the weekend rolled around. His new face and new hands on my body erased, for a night, the stains Logan and Connor were leaving on me.
63
Spent Of Salt
It was a Tuesday night when I got the call. My mother was crying. She told me my stepfather was dead. That he had been dead for months. The funeral had passed and no one even told my brother. I knew why no one told me. We had been estranged for a while. But in his stubbornness, he had let his own son go without a chance to tell him goodbye. I had never known a man with more hate and ugliness in his heart.
I fell to my front steps after I hung up. I clutched my chest and I wept. Then I threw up in the rose bush under my window. No one tells you how it’ll feel, to mourn a monster. To still feel the well of tears and the wave of fire under your skin. The warring elation and the memories you stored deep in your chest, the good ones. The mourning of those of that person you built up, convinced yourself had a little bit of goodness still in them.
I thought about skinned knees and learning to ride my bike. I thought of my tiny hand in his as we crossed the street. I thought of the silver jewelry case he bought me and the time I ran away from home, trying to get to his house, when I was fighting with my mother after they split.
My mind had saved me then. It kept from me the truth of his violent hands and his terrible, disgusting heart in his chest. I wept for my mother, who didn't know she was crying for the man who had broken me. The same way she had been broken by a man.
So many sick patterns were being repeated.
I needed to call my brother. Find out how he was doing. I wouldn’t be upset with him if he was upset, even though he knew what was done to me. I had worked up the courage to tell him finally. And yes, if he was sad over this death, I would understand it. I would understand that there are things in life we cannot understand.
I called Logan when I made it inside. There was no answer. I stripped my clothes and ran a bath. It was there, that the floodgates opened. I was not spent of salt. There was more to come.
I watched my phone from the corner of my eye, it never lit up.
I didn't know who else to tell. They wouldn’t understand, wouldn't know what to say. They would say they were sorry. I had lost my stepfather, they didn’t know the complexities of it all.
I was sitting on my bed staring at the wall with my pen in my hand when Connor called. I answered, brought the phone to my face. A lifeless “hello” fell into the air.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? I felt like I needed to call you.”
“How did you know?”
“I don't know. It's weird. I could feel you.”
"Come over," I said, then hung up.
My depression got worse over the summer. My stepfather was finally dead and I punished myself when that brought me relief. I wrote more. When I wasn’t in my room, in bed, I was out drinking with Kate. She had moved back from Tennessee.
I bounced around between barely sleeping and sleeping away my days off.
Logan and I slipped into a friendship that I wrote into the grave. He spoke in vague wantings. He never brought up the option of me visiting again.
I had a work trip planned for Seattle in August and we pretended it was a ghost.
I didn’t tell him that Connor came to comfort me when he didn’t answer my phone calls about my stepfather’s death. I just let him comfort me the next day over the phone. I pretended I had been waiting for it. That he was the only one who would understand. It was a partial truth. Connor couldn’t understand the way Logan could, but he was there. He felt my pain and picked up the phone. He showed up, for once.
He was different, open and pouring his feelings at my feet, where once he was nothing but a tall wall.
It was unsettling, choking. Again I reached for a new face, something to get me away from the pull and push of my love for two flawed men. One I couldn’t have, one I wouldn’t let myself have.
64
In Some Way
Two weeks later Connor picked me up in his Range Rover and took me to the car wash where my car had died. The drive was slow, a torture I deserved. I thought of my last phone call with Logan. It was such a silly thing, to get so caught up in him. My theory was wrong. Younger men could hurt me the same way men my age could.
I was staring out the window when Connor spoke. He asked me what was wrong and I didn't speak. I kept my head away. My throat was on fire and I couldn’t let the man whose heart I had broken see me falling apart over the man I left him for.
"It’s nothing,” I said, finally. The inside of his vehicle was stifling.
“I know you probably think I want to see you sad. But I don’t. I don’t want you with that guy, but I don’t want to see you hurting. Is it your stepdad? Is that it?”
“No.” I wouldn’t forget the way Connor hugged me on my st
eps. It was the reason I was with him now; I had started to need him again. “And he and I aren't together, we never were. Besides, I can't talk to you about that.”
But who could I talk to? I was numbing myself. I was drinking a lot. Kate and I would go out on the weekends, weeknights, day drinking.
"You need to eat too," she would say.
"I know." I knew I knew I knew. But no one could know the ache of my body, the pressure in between my ears. I had found a likeness, someone as broken as I, and the drifting was all at once, all-encompassing.
"Why not?” Connor said, beside me. "Why can't you talk about him to me?"
I received little gifts in the mail, from time to time, from Logan. Books he had read, handwritten notes, dusted with sand, that he had written before surfing.
This past Tuesday, I saw an oversized envelope in my mailbox after work. They always brought a smile to my face. I never knew when one was coming, what it would bring. And I needed a smile, after everything with my stepfather. I liked that about Logan, that even though we talked on the phone, and texted, he liked to send me letters and gifts. I wondered if he had sent it specifically to cheer me up.
I was wrong. That day would bring a gift that was an omen I could not deny, one I would feel the echo of, for weeks, years.
I walked into my trailer, throwing my purse on the floor as I turned the package over. I ripped at the envelope as I called for Holly.
I fed my dog and sat down at my kitchen table. Logan sent me a copy of Go Ask Alice. Inside was a note, telling me why he thought I should read it.
I sent him a text and flipped through the worn paperback. My phone buzzed on the table, pulling my eyes from the dark cover.
Logan: I’m glad you got the book.
Logan: And I want you to know, I think you’re pretty amazing.
Me: I’m so glad I know you.
Logan had brought out a part of me I didn’t know existed. A hopeful heart, pulling healing from somewhere deep. I felt him drifting, and then moments like this brought back the blooming, the memories. Of nights spent on the phone with him. Confessions, and judgment never passed. My cheeks were warm as I flipped through the pages of the book again. My phone buzzed in my hand again.
Logan: I’m glad I know you, too. And I hope we always do know each other, in some way.
I stared at the screen. In some way. In some way. In some way. No. My gut clenched. I walked to my bathroom, in a trance. My hand moved on its own, turning the bathroom faucet on. I took a bath in steaming water. My flesh was red and blotchy when I got out.
When I made it back to my bed, I found my phone, clicked the side button, lighting it up. I saw another text from Logan.
Logan: Hey, you how that poet Mary? She is in town for work and she is going to come hang with me and the guys tonight. She knows you. She said she loves your work, and to say hello.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t sleep.
The next morning, I woke, from my fitful napping, to a text from Logan at 2 a.m. He wanted to know what I was doing.
It should have quelled the nagging, the dreaded anvil, the knowing animal eating me alive. He had been drifting slowly, he was like the waves. And a text at 2 a.m. meant he was thinking of me, right? And I shouldn’t worry? I couldn’t convince myself of that.
Over the next weeks, he would pull further and further away.
One’s intuition should never be ignored. I knew what happened. I knew it, and I pushed it down, let it become a seed.
And I became the wall I told him I would never be with him. No, I wouldn’t talk to Connor about this. “It's weird,” I said, pushing the melancholy away.
“It’s only weird if you think it is. I want to be your friend.”
“You can't be in a relationship with someone for five years and then suddenly be friends just months after you split up, or ever.”
“What rule book did you read that in? You’ve always done this. Said what we can or cannot do. You put that in your own head. You let other people convince you of that.”
“You’ll just be happy about anything I tell you. You won't be able to help it. And I’m not going to share any of it with you. Or anything.” Maybe I should have offered him that kindness, the when and why of my heartbreak over Logan. He deserved to know he was right, that he had gotten what he hoped for.
“Well, I’m here if you want to talk. Just always know that.”
“We couldn’t talk when we were together." I turned to him.
“Well, I’m a different person. I don’t know how to explain it." He put his vehicle in park, next to mine, broken down and dirty. It was a good thing we were at the car wash.
I didn't hear a lie in Connor’s voice. He genuinely didn't want to see me sad. I wish he had been more concerned about my mental well-being when we were together. Hindsight and all that.
Maybe he would be a better partner for the next woman he ended up in a relationship with. I couldn’t entertain the idea of us getting back together. I couldn’t face his family, his friends, after what I had done.
“I've been listening to some great music,” he said, changing the subject.
I finally looked ahead. My cheeks no longer tear stained. “Oh yeah?”
“I found this guy, Jason Isbell. I love him. I’ll send you some songs.”
“Okay,” I replied, not really wanting to look for hidden meaning in the songs he had been listening to alone in our home.
His therapy was music, mine was writing. I had recently landed an agent, a publishing deal. Things were looking up in my writing career. One I never thought I would have. It was the beginning of a life I had always dreamed about but never thought would become a reality.
Maybe one day I would escape. That's all I thought about. I was always wanting to escape to somewhere other than where I was.
65
Easy And Devastating
“What is sex to you? Fun? Necessary? Is it the escape you say you’re always looking for?”
“It’s a weapon,” I say. I pull my drink to my lips and sip. “I took what was used against me and made it my own. I use it. I’ve used it. It’s easy and devastating.”
“You seek to crave control above all else. And the younger men are an extension of that.”
“Yes. It took me years to figure out why I craved younger men. And it took one man to make me realize that younger men can break you the same way older men can. I just needed men in my bed that were as far removed from the image of my stepfather as I could manage. Toward the end of my relationship with Connor we barely touched each other, barely had sex. I had slipped into an existence that had no intimacy, no touch in it. So when I was free, I wanted to kiss as many beautiful men as I could. Convince myself I was invincible, that I couldn’t be touched.”
“But you were spending time with Connor again, right?”
“Yes. We would walk our dogs. I had taken mine and he kept his dog. We told each other, ourselves, that it was so we could make them happy.” I laugh, thinking of when Connor would tell me what a good mother I would be, if I just let myself try. That my love for animals convinced him of it.
“I didn’t tell Logan I was spending time with Connor. Connor knew I was still talking to Logan, but he knew it was falling apart, and he didn’t care to steal me from that. That was our way. When we were apart, we never cared to steal each other. When we wanted each other, nothing could stand in our way. But I didn’t want him again, not yet. I wanted to play more. To lick my wounds. To pretend Logan and I would see each other in Seattle and it wouldn’t hurt.”
66
Easy To Romanticize
I liked his voice and the way he looked at me with his brown eyes. From the stage, his guitarist yelled my way, "Hey, red pants!"
I had worn them to be seen, by the singer, by the crowd, by anyone who would drown my emptiness.
Connor texted me “Have fun down there” as I crossed the border out of Missouri with Kate. We were becoming friends, it was strange and he made m
e laugh. I didn’t know what to do with it. I should have been staying away from him, letting him move on. I wanted to feel guilty about the time spent with him and my trip down south, but we weren't together anymore. I shouldn't have been spending time with him again, but I missed him.
Five years together and I didn't know how to get on without him like I thought.
I knew how to do the simple things; get to work, make shitty TV dinners, fuck. That was about it.
There was a helplessness I felt without him, and an unhinged mania.
It was intoxicating. I wanted to run my train off the tracks. I wanted to hurt myself, to get in a bind so bad that someone would force me to face these demons.
One demon stared at me from the stage. He was tall, 6'2”, with a voice that should be on the radio. I'd never touched him but I knew that night I would. We'd started talking online, and we'd already agreed to it.
Two artists under city lights. I told myself maybe I could survive, be happy, with an artist. Connor always wanted to be practical.
I just wanted to write, to see where it led. It got me here, to Wade. I went to the bar and ordered a cape-codder.
When the bartender handed it to me I took a sip. It was all cranberry. I tasted no vodka. I asked her if she would make it stronger and Kate narrowed her eyes at me. She knew what I was doing. I just didn't want to pay for a downtown Nashville drink and be stiffed.
When she came back, she handed me a shot of vodka to put into the drink. I downed it instead and shivered as my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I saw Kate glance at the singer and back to me. I wouldn’t look his way again, not yet. I looked at my phone and saw Logan's name on it. I cursed him and showed Kate my phone.
"Don't talk to him. No wait, I'm texting him." I let her. It didn’t matter. No, loving artists wasn't the answer.