This man is telling me he learned about the Beatles when the song “Come Together” was used in a commercial for batteries, and I am getting belligerent towards him. I know exactly what he thinks.  He thinks this fact makes him an endearing oaf.  But his suit is too neatly tailored, and his speech is sowing seeds of hatred in me, and this gin and tonic is making me grow larger and larger.  I am a giant.  I am saying crushing things.

“You know, I discovered War and Peace because someone left some Tolstoy fanfiction on the shitter,” I say.

He says “Oh really?” or some other muttering, and doesn’t laugh or act offended which means he is either an idiot or wasn’t listening.  It’s easy to be skeptical of men because I am small and mousy.  When you are beautiful you can expect much more of them.

A woman who used to be my best friend is here, my ex-best friend.  This is her new apartment we are warming.  She is beautiful and she is walking towards us.  Her beauty has always been difficult, partly because I was in love with her, and partly because it is incredibly trying to be the best friend of a beautiful woman.  When you go out together, men and women alike are just falling all over her.  You can’t blame them really, because physicality is demanding.  Because it’s here now!  There is an obscenity in it.  

She gently takes the oaf’s forearm. “Nik,” she says, “this is Rebecca,” pointing to her roommate.  They shake hands, and this man Nik is suddenly less aloof.  His eyes go from some unfocused spot on the wall straight to their shiny profiles.  Erin knows that alcohol gives me an anti-social obtuseness mixed with delusions of grandeur.  She is here to save this man.

“I told Rebecca,” she says, “that we would make such a great trio, because we’re all just a little, you know, crazy!” She tells some story, and they’re laughing, and she is winning hearts and minds.  Oh I’m sure you’re all crazy, I’m thinking, absolutely crazy.

Her over-effusiveness might make me feel good too, except that it’s poison.  Erin has a way of pulling you towards her, making you her ally.  She’s generous, and she wants you close.  It’s not until after the party’s over, when all the lights are on and everything has a grotesque tinge that you realize you don’t know anything about her.

I pull away, head for the door.  Around me voices–little droplets of inanities–are growing into a tidal wave, and I am drowning in them.

Outside, men just a bit unkempt are smoking cigarettes on the steps, and I prod them for one.

“Thanks buddy,” I say.  I light the cigarette, a small and dependable ritual for whenever I feel a panic setting in.  “I have been quit for two months,” I say.  “I will probably quit and I will probably not quit.”

The cement step is cold under me, and the cigarette makes my head loose and light.  I am ruminating, drunk-dredging.  A night when we used to live together, stumbling home, laughing.  She asking and telling me things mildly illicit, coaxed on by drunkenness – “Is he good at going down on you?” and “He’s great for me but…” – tingling my spine because usually she was reserved and queasy about the smallest honesty, even at our closest.  This made every truth like getting off for me.  A shared secret gave me a heartbeat between my legs.  I wanted her (to tell me things).  It was all one and the same, with her, all mixed up.

I swill the end of my drink, gargle it in my throat for a second just for effect and to see what kind of scene I can drum up here on the stoop.  I move past thoughts, lyricizing instead, sad not enough trying want to be, train home in morning not staying, and I am not a poet, just a drunk person who has lost syntax.

There are flowers in little ceramic pots lining the steps outside her apartment.  I know they belong to her.  I pull a flower and its attached clump of soil out, overturn the pot, and place the clump on top.  I make my way up the steps, turning each into a piece of modern art.

“Why are you doing that?” asks one of the men.  He’s standing behind me, and when I turn away from the pot I’m working on my face is a few inches from his ass.  The back pocket of his jeans has more intricate stitching than anything I’ve ever worn.

“Why are you doing that?”  I say, pointing to the pocket.  “Why, huh?” I say again more emphatically.  He shakes his head and squints while flicking his cigarette onto the cement.  His confusion feels satisfactory.

———

I wake up early because Erin’s cat is kneading my chest.  It’s trying to suckle me.  “I’m not your mother,” I tell it, but it doesn’t seem to mind.  I sit up. I’m the only body strewn about the wreckage of cups and little plates and streamers.  There is the intense quality of a sleeping house, and little gray bits of San Francisco morning light leaking in.  I pad around, examining everything bluntly.  I read the spines of books on the shelf.  I open the freezer and look around for her secrets in there.

I sit and sip water, examining the view out of the back window.  I feel empty and slightly ashamed, as I always do after I get drunk and allow myself to think and say pointless things.  I feel like my mouth, sour and stale.

The view out of Erin’s back window is everyone else’s back window.  All the houses are in a circle, and they are facing one another’s ass.  My cat friend runs in psychotically, jumps on my lap again.  It’s kneading me, it wants more invisible milk.  “OK,” I tell it, “have some more,” because what is it hurting me?

There was never a falling out really, just a slow retreat.  Friendship is the social contract with the most loopholes, the most easy outs.  She was busy, a very busy person.  She was not home when I was home.  Or, when she was there, someone else was too, a girl who dressed well and was friendly enough to me. My voice would trail off when I would repeat, “Let’s get coffee,” or “Come out with me,” my little bit of pride shriveling up.

And what to do then?  Ask, Please spend time with me, Please be my friend, or a million other humiliations?  After a certain age, you shouldn’t need anyone to say to you, You’re okay.  That’s a private matter, the world says, don’t go around asking for it with every word you speak and every carefully crafted thing you do.  The only appropriate time to say I want you is during sex.

And so I imagined having sex with her.  At night, when we were both trying to fall asleep, I would see her opening my door and crawling into my bed.  She’d start undressing me and I would smile and think, the way you treat me, it doesn’t matter, because we have this secret.

I push the cat off my lap, slightly disgusted at the recollection.  In the bathroom, I rub toothpaste on my teeth with the tip of my finger, look at my face in the mirror.  I think up vaguely satisfying retaliation schemes, plans confusing and absurd that will trick her into saying something genuine.  Waking her up with a prolonged kiss on her neck.  Holding a plastic gun to her head and saying, “Tell me something important to you.”

I grab my bag and look out the window at the street, the betters of society, sweaty people jogging and dogs sniffing patches of grass. I scribble a note on a paper towel, leave it on the table. Thanks for the party, and letting me crash on the couch! I left you a present on the front steps.