The love object

27 September 2011 11:24 AM Categories: Fiction

I make a fetish of it, the preparation (the shower, the shampoo, the cool glide of the razor up my calf, the salves and creams I apply to glistening skin), the presentation (the right bra, underwear that is more prelude than afterthought, the shoes, the shoes!), our interaction (look and glance away, look and glance away, body mirroring body). I tap the cigarette against the side of the pack. My hand hovers over the miniature bottles of whiskey that have been in the cabinet for forever. Instead, I muddle mint with sugar and lime, top it off with rum and ice and sit on the porch in high heels, a cylinder of ash hanging from my mouth. My lips are red as a fresh cut, slapped with color and anticipation, the faked look of desire that hides the real feeling underneath.

It’s brutal, this game. I’ve dressed as if we are at war, at odds, and who is to say we aren’t?

My heels click click on the steps. The drink leaves a muddied circle on the concrete. I press the glass against my cheek before taking a sip.

Your car pulls up without a sound. I hear your skateboard hit the sidewalk in a sudden stop. I could tell your step and whistle anywhere. You are clean and fresh. You are musky with a day’s work. Your hair is curly. It is dark. No. Gray and straight. You have no hair. Your white shirt is still crisp at the cuffs. Your t-shirt is deep red, the color of passion. We kiss until I have to take a breath. I greet you with a stinging slap. You push me back. I see you and can’t stop crying. You never arrive.

(In the black and white movie, the woman waits all afternoon. She stubs cigarette after cigarette out on the steps as the shadows lengthen. She refills her drink until the mint runs out and her thoughts run together. No one is coming home. The house is an apartment, the skirt is borrowed. Her legs are nicked, her hair unwashed. A decoy without a mark, a lie within the fantasy.

He was tall with strong ankles. Small with thin wrists. His eyes were hazel. Brown. Blue. Brown again. She didn’t know how to characterize his eyes. His gestures swept the room. They swept her off her feet. He followed her for weeks until she finally turned around and said “So.” They had been friends since grade school. He had a British accent. His family was from Puerto Rico and he trilled his r's to make her laugh. He told lies that were more delicious than the truth. He prided himself on his directness. He led her down too many paths, all of them wrong.)

I created you in my mind, all of you, fantasies that I still return to. I conjure us up, how we would be now (the simple life in a small town, the one with fights that underwrite the passion, the lap of luxury, the comfort of small things, the sudden pull of little old me into the big wide world). But surely you did the same? I was the bad girl, the good girl, the available girl, the damsel in distress, the buddy, the relief pitcher. We create the love object in the hopes that it will stay unsullied, that our image is clear and shining and true. We are wrong.

I don’t know how to think of it anymore. Love. It exists and I have to give it credit, the eternal optimism, the quick attachment of the heart, the lack of logic, the call and response of bodies. But it does me no good. So I stop feeding it, I let it languish in a room with the shades drawn, knowing that resurrection in another time and place is possible.

My poor foolish heart.