shoot the lights out

Clearly we both knew it wasn't a forever deal, or even an all-year deal, maybe a coupla-months deal, if that. He was too cool, in the deliberate scrutinizing indifferent way, while I was bouncing around the kitchen offering him jello and telling him to pick out my clothes for the party. At first he was amused because I seemed so married to the idea of fun and I guess it brought him down from the mountain he was looking at everyone from, for a little while he was kissing and dancing with an ant. When he was through with me, I cried about two tears and then listened to Nina Simone and laughed a bit. At the Halloween party, I stood outside carelessly smoking cigarettes in my bright red wig with the new girls and had the girly, "I don't need him anyway," conversation and the new girls said, "I don't get him," "You don't need him anyway," "He's really weird," and yeah, they were right but not quite.

The only pang is remembering how taken aback I was when he laughed because I thought I wasn't pretty, as if it was a given, how he kissed me on the street outside the doctor's, where anyone could see and I told him that was the first time anyone had kissed me out-of-doors (those words, also made him laugh). Being so delighted and feeling so undeserving when he brought me a dry sweater when I was shivering and wet and realizing that people who go through boyfriends like tissues actually expect this kind of stuff from them. Other times he rolled me careful little filtered joints that I smoked down 3rd avenue or browsed the pulp noir section of the library with me, cooked black olive omlets and I considered myself a happy lucky girl.

Once, after the hundredth time I begged him to speak Chinese to me, he said in a jokey-serious voice, "I'm not a novelty!" and I felt bad, but he sort of was, and I was a novelty to him, too. I remember one time being drowsy and half-napped, asking him what he saw in me (I really didn't, don't know) and he thought a moment and said my innocence, which was sweet but really no different, but fine. So when we were together, I only played music that I liked, never music that I loved because I knew that I couldn't reserve those songs in my heart for a coupla-months kind of guy, knowing that any sanctity of my body is worth less than the sanctity of a song.

I let him keep one song, even though he wasn't around to hear it with me. He went outside for a cigarette and I put on thin white clothes and my headphones until he came back up. The lyrics ran: "i'm not the mystery that you hope to find, but i'm here now and i'm willing to play the part anyway," and I was aware and resigned to the bittersweet, even at the sweetest part of it all. I expect self-fooling romance and low expectations, indifference and novelty, never trying to hold on too hard to anything I don't want for keeps.