June 2007, Lubbock, Texas

By C.P. McPherson

I think about her, about what happens when I think about her.

The bartender smiles at me, and I take a drink of my beer. It doesn’t solve or create problems; just helps them abide.

I don’t have what most people would call a problem, and maybe that’s what bothers me. I’ve got this mid-20s single mother ready at any point for me to call so she can put on a skirt and think up new ways to pleasure me. But what it really does is torture me.

Whenever I go over to see her, she greets me with a hug. She smells sweet like lavender, and when I ask her what kind of perfume or lotion she’s wearing, she says, “That’s just the way I am.” And it might be cute if it weren’t so damned depressing.

She kisses me after this, pulling me in close. She might moan if I rub my hands down her back the right way. She might say something like, “Oh, that’s real good. You’re a nice man,” but I probably wouldn’t be listening. Instead, I’d be listening for sounds of movement from the dark hallway, maybe for the click of a lightswitch.

No sound comes. It bothers me anyway.

Later in the night, after the deliberations on whether to fuck (I call it this because it’s mutual use without love, and to call it making love or sex would be a profanity) or to listen to music or watch a movie, we lay naked on the couch, floor, bed, table, wherever is new and can’t judge our past actions.

She assures me that what we’re doing is safe: my ass sticking out in the air pumping in and out with her saying things that make me blush and close my eyes to pretend I’m somewhere else. But last weekend, it was different.

We lay in bed, her looking at me and trying to cuddle, me parrying her efforts to get close with words and crossed arms. She asks me to tell her a terrible story, and I can’t think of a good one, so I make one up.

It’s about a friend’s foot falling off because he got bit by a garden snake, and I go into horrible detail. I fill the story with gore and blood because I think it’s somehow relative to me lying there naked. I hope she is not as aware of my words as I am. I hear a trill of notes, click flip crack knock.

“Oh shit, you might want to get into the bathroom,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. I go into her bathroom and try to shut the door but there is no door, so I get in the shower. It smells like oranges and roses but not like lavender. I hear a small voice, the voice of her young son. I pull the shower curtain closed, hoping it isn’t see-through.

“Mommy, I’m scared.”

“It’s all right honey, just a bad dream. Go on back to bed.”

“Can’t I sleep with you in your bed?”

“No, honey, not tonight. Go on back to sleep.” Another burst of notes: shuffle crack snap flick squoink. He is back on his bed, and she comes in the bathroom and tells me to get in hers, and I do. She looks at me naked, tells me I am nice to look at. I cross my arms tighter, studying patterns in her ceiling and hoping they assemble into something I want to see.

“You want to fuck me again?” she asks.

I say, “I don’t know. Are you sure it’s all right?” I can’t stop my curiosity from filtering through, and she can’t stop treating me like I’m an impersonal thing, a child looking for the only comfort she can give me.

“Yeah, he’ll go right back to sleep. He always does.” But this answer is not to the question I was asking. It only clarifies what she wanted to hear.

When I think about our nights of misguided passion and our needs to take our troubles out on each other, I try to think of other things. It doesn’t work.

I order another drink from the bar, a double-bourbon coke. I drink it, and it’s sweet. I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I smell the familiar scent of lavender in there someplace deep.

I consider ordering another drink to supplement my bourbon and remember that this is the first sign of alcoholism. I don’t order another one, but I want to. I know it will be there when I want it to hurt me, and there’s no conceding until I’m damned well ready.

I drink my double-bourbon coke and wait until it hits me, hoping that when I’m drunk enough to call her, I won’t remember it the next day.

C.P. McPherson is currently an MFA student at Emerson College. He enjoys living and tries to enjoy life. He is using a pseudonym.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 | Email This Post

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