happy

I could hear his heartbeat, with my head on his chest, watching Veronica Mars. The gentle scents of fresh paint and reheated stewed okra mingled in the air. . . . Whose life is this? So far away from where I was a year ago. Everything is different from two years ago. But this is how we spent our Sunday-- one year and 363 days after the Sunday we first met-- after we painted our new bookcase.

For all my falling apart lately, some days our life feels like a movie montage or a commercial for a home improvement store. How do I look playing one half of a Young and Happy Couple? I've been experimenting with new ways to braid my hair.

~b

as far as i can tell, the good kind of what ifs

Maybe what I mean when we talk about the finances of it all and buying furniture and the groceries and if it will matter for seven months if there is no wall and how maybe a garage will be necessary because parking uptown is a nuisance. . . is that if I buy an immersion blender or a sofa I want it to be ours and not mine. . . and that I don’t really want to be your room mate, exactly. . . . Maybe I wouldn’t mind if our lives got jumbled up along with our things. . . . Maybe what I mean is that I might like to build my life with yours.

~beatrix

dressing

You should know that I will buy party dresses before I will buy furniture. I might buy party dresses before I will buy food, which is sort of a cyclical budget and a diet plan all in one. I know some girls like shoes to the point that it’s really just a cliché, and you know I like shoes fine because you’re always tripping over that pile of mine by my closet, but party dresses are like therapy and maybe you need to feel pretty while you check your email once in a while.

You like this one, I think. I’ll wear it to your friend’s wedding with these shoes, probably, because they are good for dancing a lot, but I’ll need another black accessory to help them make more sense. You probably don’t care about the details, but yeah, I’m pretty sure you really like it. . . . That’s another thing about party dresses: your boy hands have an easy time convincing me I’m sexy when they find my scrawny curves through a layer of tailored satin.

You can twirl me, tell me you’re lucky ’cause you like me every day in ponytails and jeans and boots that keep out rain and cold, but sometimes I’m extra show-off-able for your friends. You can keep touching me, baby, but let me take it off before we get too far. . . . I haven’t even worn it out of the house yet. . . .


~beatrix

how i spent my sunday or this isn't that couch

The bankers-- these guys who work for hedgefunds and in private equity and who do finance things that I don’t quite understand-- they all have the same sofa. It’s cold leather. Black, maybe very dark brown. And it’s huge-- I can stretch all the way out on it, and usually, so can they. It faces the flatscreen on the opposite off-white wall in a sparsely-decorated one-bedroom with granite counter tops in a newish building.

This? This isn’t that couch.

It’s just a little lumpy, but comfortable. Found on the street just in time to replace one that was seriously destroyed, he says, then assures me it’s clean. Burgundy with gold damask. Not in his own apartment, exactly, but upstairs where there’s another kitchen. It’s across from a flatscreen, set against a bright blue wall, cables taped to the ceiling. There’s stuff on every surface, detritus from a Saturday-afternoon barbeque: a bag of hot dog buns, Oreos, empty beer cans, not-empty beer cans, what I think can be described as drug paraphernalia, half a bottle of that wine with the kangaroo, a pile of lighters.

He’s not a banker. He’s a writer. And a writer seems like a good idea.

We bang teeth when a housemate walks in.

He was supposed to be at a Mets game. Reportedly.

It feels like college. But the kissing’s good, so I can’t say I mind. And I don’t mind the way he takes my hand on the way to the park, assuredly, no fumbling with finger placement. Or how he lets me lie on his arm in the grass or moves his cap out of the way to kiss me a little more. I don’t mind that, back at his place, he leads me to his bedroom. I don’t even mind, too much, that I end up spending ten hours with him, most of it touching.


I went home alone. It was still hot like summer at 10 o’clock. And I had the distinct print of a tank top and a locket sunburnt onto my skin.


~beatrix