Starting

It’s summer. Mosquito bites cover my thighs below the tan line. I fall into a routine: sleep on couches and play music and pretend to have passion for something.1

“The BBQ’s on Sunday,” says the person I am dating, at sunset. It is so beautiful outside and I can hear the crickets. 2

“Oh?”3

“Did you still want to go?”4

“Yeah.”5

“Ok.”6

I know he wants me to look up, but I don’t. I am feeling stoic; half-hearted smiles do more harm than good.7

“Sunday,” I say, sigh-like, and I glance up at him when I know his eyes are in a different place. The breeze shifts his hair a bit. I feel a twinge.8

He reaches over and touches my ear. Smiles. “Hmm.”9

I don’t smile well. Even when I was in school, passing friendly people in the halls, I couldn’t muster enough strength; I would freeze. 10

“God I’m tired,” I say.11

“Yeah?” (He asks this all the time, rhetorically.) 12

“Mmmmhmm,” I say, drowsily.13

He considers. “Do you want to go lie down for awhile?”14

“Yeah, I do.”15

We’re lying on his bed, legs entwined, noses touching. My eyes are closed; I meant it when I said I was tired. It’s so comfortable like this.16

My brain sifts through images. I’m feeling too soft to think. Driving down I5 in the summertime backseat... and: My eyes open involuntarily, and I see that he’s been looking at me- eyes half-closed, soft, drowsy. The corners of his mouth lift and I kiss his smile.17

I’ve been desperate to camp for weeks now, overcome with childhood nostalgia every time I step in a car. Finally, here we are, sitting on the splintered seat of a faraway picnic table, watching the fire. The silent darkness is broken sporadically by the glow of other campfires and snatches of conversation, which is comforting- I feel less alone.18

“We should go on a hike tomorrow,” he says hopefully.19

“We could follow the train tracks for awhile, see where they go.”20

“Mmmm.” He exhales on my forehead, rustling my hair.21

I am the first one awake in the tent. The air is filled with his breathing, the little gasps and snorts. I know these patterns. I can guage what stage of sleep he’s in at any particular time, especially the moment he falls- he twitches in the first few minutes of sleep, wakes himself up with the convulsing; then drops off again.22

Right now he’s near the end of it all, only a few moments from waking. I know what he will do when this happens: turn to me, look at my face to gauge my consciousness, then kiss me lightly on the head. Then he will drape his arm about my waist and promptly start snoring again.23

Sure enough, seconds later I hear his breathing change and the sleeping bag rustle, feel his lips on my forehead.24

This is what I love about you. 25

1. The way your eyes squeeze shut and your body convulses when my hands brush your ticklish sides. 26

2. The impossible helpless lift of your eyebrows when you open your eyes after kissing me.27

3. The strange noises your cats make when you abuse them to make me laugh.28

4. The stamped-down groove in the headrest of your passenger seat, which is so perfectly shaped for summer midnights.29

“What do we feel like eating?” I say. I notice, now, how I have started to replace ‘you’ or ‘I’ with ‘we’ in these sorts of questions. This observation makes me feel strange, but comfortable.30

“Mmmm,” he says. “I don’t know. We could make a pizza again.”31

We always end up half-dressed in his kitchen, arms brushing waists as things defrost in the microwave. I don’t think he’s ever cooked a meal; I’ve put on weight since I’ve known him, with all that frozen food and deli chicken. Sometimes I want to sit him down and make him something real: pasta with meat sauce, home-made; pot roast; a lovely beef stew. I could make it for him and serve it on a beautiful cloth with blinding silverware and roses in the center of the table.32

I worry about how he will make it alone. I remember he made cookies for us once, and he burned them. It was in an unfamiliar oven, to give him credit- an ancient oven in a friend’s empty house, a sickly Seventies brown, manufactured by JC Penney.33

“Look, you,” he said, pointing at the company logo- my company logo, if I chose to be loyal to a minimum wage job. He raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly.34

“I’m so proud,” I said, and looked at him, and looked at him.35

The air conditioning has faltered; I feel sweat gathering under my folded knees. I’m sitting on the ground behind a table of Okie Dokie toddler separates in my place of business. No one has noticed my absence at the register; they never do. Just in case, though, a pile of pink baby clothes sits in my lap as an excuse.36

“I’m sizing the shirts,” I’ll say. “God, the skorts looked disastrous.”37

Really I am trying for solitude, a chance to daydream, to mull. I watch the legs of customers pass through the gaps in the table and try to match them to snatches of conversation. The lightly accented voice murmuring to her screeching baby belongs to the pair of thick thighs to my left- and abruptly I see her arms descend to the floor, the baby’s shoes, then its chunky waist and shoulders, a mass of curly blonde hair. 38

“Eet’s ohkay, honey,” she whispers; “Eet’s ohkay,” before straightening. Slowly her knees and the baby’s hair descend from my view.39

“Are you doing ok?” he kept asking yesterday, against my silence. I fall into certain moods sometimes, and find it impossible to resurrect myself.40

“I’m good,” I say softly. “I’m so good.”41