10.5b

[if you're reading this, go to the sidebar and read the series from 9.27 on--they're all labeled "thomas." To Janelle, thanks for talking about the characters with me. To Kyle, thanks for being a moral compass that always points north even when my prevarication drags me down. To Lyssa, I'm sorry I ruined a good story. Just read the happy ones again and never read the sad. To Christen, Katy, Mum, and anyone else, who, I am sure, will find this, don't think less of me for it. To myself, stop writing such incredibly depressing things for a while. To God, this is yours now. Do with it as you must. To my inspiration for this long extended epic, forever is shorter than I wish it was. I'll see you on the other side of it.
To all, I give my joy with life. If the shells were in the same place as the gun, they would have a layer of dust thick enough to choke a cat. I'm fine. Please enjoy what I hope to be the last part of this depression. God bless.]

I pulled her in for a closer hug and whispered through her hair. I said forever and she said "for all time, Sam" and giggled soft and low. She was a thing of beauty, you know, all happiness and light and vibrancy and joy. And hot, you know. All curves and thin and smooth and just perfectly proportioned and short enough to be right for me but tall enough to be completely irrepressibly languid and flowing like the feel of watching a cheetah in slow motion flowing and pouncing and striking. Let me tell you, she's a killer.
Forever is a long time.

We weren't cute together like those couples on tv and we weren't incredibly mushy like those couples on tv but we were right together. You know that? That unshakably perfect feeling like the end of the world could come and you would last right through it because nothing wrong can destroy the right. And we were together for just long enough for me to say forever and for her to say "for all time" and to really really mean it.

I had to overcome my fear, you know. The last relationship I was in was pretty o.k. too but there wasn't that unshakable rightness about it. We just kind of hung out and made out and went out and things were good and then that was when this girl she said she--well you know how it is, you never really notice your potential feelings for someone until they admit their feelings for you? Like there's someone you've never even thought about particularly and then their friend comes up and says hey my friend likes you and you're all like well that's awesome and then you think about it and the more you think about it the more attracted you are--well anyway this girl I dated and who dated me, she said she loved me. Well. It shook me down to my toes let me tell you and I didn't know what to say, but I thought about it and I thought about it and I kind of realized I could love her back, you know, given enough time. Well it was about that time that we started getting really serious and she started saying things about how her love for me would mean things that were exactly what I wanted and so I asked her to love me that way, and just so, and really love me, and I got just to that day of everything was just right and I found out she was also sleeping with my best friend (I mean I'm sixteen at the time you can't take everything so seriously but she was still sleeping with my best friend and I at the same time and it destroyed everything she meant with me). And she left me and yelled all sorts of profanities and told me she hoped I died of syphilis and that she never really loved me and looking back on it now I think it all makes a lot more sense in the context of this story she told me one time about how her uncle used to look at her and it gave her the shivers I mean he was effed up but he effed her up and then she effed me and that effed me up. The whole thing wasn't very fair. And I was very afraid of this happening again and so it took time. It took ages. I mean a whole six months and she and I never so much as made out really and we just took our time and really got to know each other and you know I'm about to turn seventeen and she's about to turn fourteen and we finally got to this point that we were able to say forever and it meant so much to me to know she wouldn't ever leave.

She knew my whole story, you know, all about the hurt and the pain from the last girl, and she was still able to look past it and see me inside it and it was all so unshakably right. That was when school started and she said she would still see me around, but my job and her school and time, you know? Time was so short. So I told her she wasn't mine and she could do whatever she wanted and so she did.

Time got apart from us being away and it was a whole year later and she was about to turn fifteen and I was about to turn eighteen, and I had a better job and I wanted to find out if for all time for her was the same forever for me and I found her at school and asked, low and soft in her ear, but she didn't really respond right away and she looked weird at this kid across the hall, so I grabbed her waist like I used to like we did when forever and she just stared at this kid and I looked at him and he looked at me and I didn't know what was going on I just wanted to yell forever at this kid and at her and at the paint on the walls and the florescent lights that hummed just at the same frequency as my brain as I just wanted her to say "for all time" just like she used to, but she didn't. All she said was "I'll explain it later" and I left just as scared as before.

She never did say for all time but she said it with her eyes and that was enough for me, you know. She said it with her eyes and she never really did say anything else but I knew she knew the story about the girl from before and she didn't want me to hurt and she had promised for all time. She didn't have for all time to offer anymore, but she had that night and if it was all I she had, it was all she could give me. I felt so horrible afterward I left her house and I cried for the first time since that girl had left me years before and I cried so hard my face hurt because if forever didn't mean for all time I guess there wasn't anything left for me.

I didn't kill myself after that because I'm here talking to you today, but if my father kept his shells in the same place as the gun I don't suppose I would be. I would be gone forever, and let me tell you, forever is a long time.

Forever is a very long time.

9.30

I didn't stop him. Let me put that right there for you to see. But

I'm not quite sure how to begin the story of an end. Of course up until now it has been love and happiness and joy and light, but the story of an end is like describing the inside of a cave when your last light goes out, or an overcast night in the woods, or the inside of a closet when your father is drunk. I might try to use traditional phrases like I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, but see the problem is that when the blackness is so dark you're swimming through it and your eyes invent lights for you to see and you've been blind for so long that it feels like you'll be blind when you see light too, well that's what it's like describing the story of an end. I can't really bring myself to do it.
So I'll do it anyway.

After the hallway, things weren't quite right for us. We tried to talk about what happened because that's what you do, you know, make stumbling apologies and try to explain what you felt and somehow nothing helped. She never told me why she didn't push him away. I asked if she still had feelings for him, but she said "no, he's I've hated him but no that's not right I never want to hate" and all of her shuddered as her emotion passed out of her like the last breath of a dying man who says to his friend that he should go to his house do you remember where it is of course you do you used to come over during the summer and go to his house and tell his mother about this and how beautiful it was and how he didn't regret anything and then he says that he doesn't regret and he rattles and shakes and can't talk anymore and his friend just holds him as his life drains away and his breath passes out of him like the last emotion of a dying girl, sitting in one corner of a cafeteria looking at a wall and trying to explain to me what she felt. And so I just looked at my hands (gosh I was angry) and I said how sad I was (gosh I was angry) and how much I wished I could have done (and I was angry then, too) and how I wanted to help (she doesn't want to know how angry I was) and I couldn't because I just couldn't, can't you see? It didn't seem like my place, and I didn't look up for a very long time.

We went through a tough period when we knew we wanted it to work, and we tried to make it work. You know how some boys try to take the legs off of spiders and the spiders don't get it and they don't give up, they just keep walking? Well that was us I guess, just a spider with one leg walking and finally the history teacher found a seating chart that worked (we were four seats away, I mean I could still see her but it wasn't the same) (I could see her ear poke out from under her hair as she listened to the lecture and read her book and I cried almost every day in history class so much that the teacher actually asked me what was wrong once and the whole class turned and looked at me and I just sniffed really loudly and said that everything was and why didn't he just mind his own business and ran out I ran out of that room and just kept running until there wasn't any more hallway and I sat down and cried for an hour. She found me then, because she left choir to find me and found me at the end of a hallway and we sat there against the wall and cried together and tried to hold hands but it didn't work (maybe you've not done that, you know, the trying to hold hands and failing because you have to let go every four seconds to wipe your eyes). She asked what I was crying about and I said you dummy and she laughed but not enough and there were no bells in it anyway.

That weekend Sam showed up at her house.

She's never told me what happened then but her mother likes Sam and didn't know about Sam and let Sam into the house and let Sam into her room and that's about all I know now. That's more than I knew then. I blame her mother. She blames herself. It's stupid that neither of us blame Sam. Sam probably blames Sam but that's more humanity than I'm willing to give him.

I kept trying to be the man I was, and she stopped even pretending that she was the woman I knew. It just felt like everything deflated, like all the air in a balloon that you find two weeks after the party, and it's wrinkled and sad and all the good air is gone, replaced with bad air, and the whole thing smells like sadness that's sat in the sun too long. I told her things, and she nodded. I asked her things and she smiled. I took her hand and she found reasons to need it back. I'm not stupid. I knew how things were.

One day in the middle of winter we cut history class and went out to walk in the snow. It wasn't falling any more, but there was enough of it to cover most of the grass and part of the buildings and things looked white and still. The wind cut straight through me and out the other side. I tried not to shiver. She said things were different since and I said things were strange. She said she loved me and I said I love you and she said she loved me and I kind of figured out that we weren't talking about the same thing at all. Her cheeks were bright pink and her lips looked soft and warm and I could tell by the way she walked that she still was there under her coat and I knew I was about to lose that. And she said she wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be happy and I was the best guy she'd ever known and I knew I was about to lose that. And I told her that she should go on and be a pediatrician and help people and save children and run her foster home and do all the things she wanted and loved and I knew I was about to lose that. The snow screamed under our feet because it was so dry and so cold, every step made me scream inside because I still had time but couldn't do anything and we couldn't stop walking because it was going to be the last time we were an us. I said she was the best girl I had ever known and she said I was the best guy she'd ever known and she was lucky to have known me, Tom and she said Tom and I knew it was over I mean I stopped there even though I should have kept walking and I didn't move my feet any more and I cried like something broke inside and I cried so hard my face hurt and she cried with me but we were crying about totally different things.


The only time I regret that I cried was about twelve years ago, you know, during that age of innocence when your hormones kick in and anything that happens is a disaster so great and so tragic you know someone will have to write a book about it. You know what I'm talking about.

I'm sure you were fourteen at some point. Everybody was, but only some of us were ever in love.

9.29b

It must have been three weeks into the school year when I called her and she didn't call back for three days. I knew what caused it. I saw what caused it. And the worst part is that I was responsible, you know? No. That's not right. I'm not responsible, but I sure felt that way.

Anyway, we were in the same history class (I stink at history) and we always tried to sit together. The teacher didn't get it I don't think and he always tried to impose seating charts but we never actually sat in our seats. People would get upset at first when we took their seats but them some of the adventurous guys would sit in other people's seats and we destroyed whole seating charts I would say maybe five times? Five sounds about right. Five is just past four and the first three times the teacher was full of optimism that he could corral his rowdy class and the fourth one he was just angry and the fifth one he really was depressed (I mean really depressed), but I don't suppose he said to himself just one more try but it certainly seemed like that because he stopped trying. He never knew it was us, either. We just sat next to each other regardless. It's not like I ever cheated, but she always told me the right questions to ask in class (she knew which facts I would miss when we read the book) and it always looked to the teacher for all the world that I was the best student ever. That is, until I flunked his first quiz because he asked us for the names of the first great philosophers and I put Jimi Hendrix as a joke (not like I knew and like I said, I stink at history).

She always ate lunch with her back to a window. I didn't get it then because I always did like the clouds better than the roof. So I asked her one time and she said "the people" and I don't think she knew what I was asking, specifically, so I asked again. I didn't know the words to ask, really, so I just repeated what I asked and she said "there's so much more happening in here" but I didn't see it. People eating lunch just don't fascinate me as much as the clouds' shadows chasing each other across the quad and I said so and she said "maybe do you give the clouds names?" I said I didn't know anything about that, and besides they would die too quickly to be good friends, so she laughed and said "then there's more happening in here. People are alive in here" but I had to disagree. Not about the alive, you know, but the more.
One time, I sat with my back to the window because I got there first. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked at me funny and then sat with her back to the crowd. I saw two girls ganging up on a boyfriend they accidentally shared. I saw a guy almost put his hand up a girl's shirt but she didn't really want to in the cafeteria so she stood up so quickly he put his other hand in his mashed potatoes trying to grab her arm. I saw two sets of twins sitting together doing their homework and I know that if I had a twin we would try to sit as far away from each other as possible because it just looks creepy. I wondered if those twins were dating each other. I saw the gay kid singing a song from something I didn't recognize and somebody threw a bottle at him, but he dodged it and yelled something in a sing-song voice that I did recognize and it made me laugh to see the bully turn red. I saw a drug user (I don't say that to be mean but really he did offer me some once and I told him I'd think about it) pile his tray completely full of apples and sit down and peel them one by one with one of the meanest-looking knives I've ever seen. I would have never thought he ate apples. His girlfriend didn't eat anything. I asked why did she always want to watch such sad people doing such sad things. She said "I don't know but . . . I feel sad for a reason afterward" and I said that she didn't have to and she said "clouds help" but the next day I sat facing the clouds and she sat facing the building. It was too sunny for clouds much anyway.
I felt a shadow anyway that day. I mean it wasn't really a shadow but more like a darkness over top of me and I turned around to see what it was and my nose was almost inside the shirt of the guy standing behind me. I craned up to see him and I felt really way too small like I was the last old maid in the pan and all the popcorn had been taken out I mean the old maid is all alone and it skitters along the bottom of the pan full of heat and steam until finally it pops or burns. She looked up at him and said "what, Sam?" he didn't really reply but just kind of looked at her and then walked away. The whole time, he never looked at me even once I mean not just eye contact but the whole thing he didn't even give me a once over to see what or who I was. I asked who it was because I didn't know. She said "Sam" but you know that wasn't good enough. I tried asking more questions but it got awkward fast after she said he was her ex and probably not a nice guy and it was terrible that he had transferred to our school and we should probably avoid him. I didn't really like the idea of another guy liking her and getting her goodbye kiss and maybe more than that because with him maybe goodbye meant hello I mean it certainly meant goodbye for me and I had more than once wondered why goodbye had to mean goodbye. But then, I didn't really have to wonder I mean time isn't infinite.

Her locker was closer to all of our classes than mine was, and so I left my books in her locker. I always got to see what she taped on the door that way. I thought girls in movies did that until I got to high school for real and all the girls do it like it's something fashionable or somehow a good idea. She kept lines from her favorite songs and a picture of her dog and her and the picture from last year's soccer team and one of me, small and in the corner and surrounded by hearts and hidden from everybody else but right there at her eye level when she tried to get her books. I thought it was a good locker because it smelled like her and when I forgot my books there overnight once my books smelled like her for days. I didn't really read quickly because I kept lifting the book to my face and pulling it all in. Then one day Sam tracked us down or something because he was standing there next to her locker. I stood on the other side of the hallway and just watched them. He talked to her a bit and then he stopped talking and kind of backed her into the locker wall as the hallway cleared out. The bell rang, and everything got silent. He turned a bit and looked me straight in the eye for the first time with a stare that felt like he was measuring me with his mind. I must have looked sorry I mean I have always heard how men are supposed to get narrower near the hip but was shaped like the men they draw in cartoons the men who are always tired of their job or their wife or their sandwiches and they're just so tired all their shoulders go to their hips and everything evens out and the cartoonist just has to draw parallel lines from their head down to their feet and bang done. Not Sam. He looked like he could intimidate bears. But I held his stare and didn't let it get to me, at least I didn't let it get to me until he (still looking at me, you know) put his hand on her waist and inside her shirt but he didn't stop looking at me, of course, like he was daring me to do something. I lived in that moment for what seemed like ages. I couldn't see anything but his face and grimace and sneer and derision and his dare to me. Wasn't he too big to be in our class? Wasn't he too big to be in high school? I didn't really feel anything at first but then the fear took me and I could feel a lump in the back of my throat, cold and hard like an ice cube trying to fight its way past my muscles to kill me and that moment wasn't it over yet? No, no I was still living it and it felt like forever. Trapped. I kept staring at him and he kept daring me to do something and
I looked away and down at the ground and not at him or at her
you know thinking back to it she didn't say

anything

9.29

I can still remember the way her hair curled down into my face. We sat on a blanket in the middle of summer in the dead heat and the shade and tried to escape the terrible consequences of living in the wrong part of the country. I hardly ever sat up. I loved looking up at the way the tree moved through the clouds, as if I could choose which was stationary and which ambient just by looking at it the wrong way. She sat up or laid on her stomach all the time. I asked her once why she didn't watch the sky and she said "it's not worth it. There's so much more to see down here." I said like what and she said "Like you for starters" and leaned in and kissed me and I can still remember the way her hair curled down into my face. She said she watched ants trying to find their way around the jungle of grass and she looked for intersections in their roads: places where ants met to say hello. She said she looked at the weave of the blanket and tried to figure out how it was made so closely knit and if she could do the same thing with her hands. She said she looked at me and she never did explain why. I still don't know if she found me attractive or fascinating or both, so I just figure she must have had her reasons. She was so sensible in other parts of her life, she must not have just looked at me just because.

She was so sensible. I mean really sensible. She finally convinced her parents to buy her a car because it would be cheaper for them in the long run if she drove. The best part is she was right. She saved them more on gas money by not having so many trips back and forth than they had to spend on her insurance. And she helped pay for the car because (sensible) she had saved. I never got a car. So sometimes, when we were feeling too followed and crowded, we would sit in her car with the windows down and the radio off and the seats all the way back and just listen to the sounds of the summer pass us by. Once the security guard at the mall came to try to see what we were doing and he just found us holding hands, so he asked us to not do that anymore. She said "what hold hands? Come on, Thomas. Let's make love on the hood" and the officer looked shocked and she said "would that be better?" and I laughed so hard I almost choked on my own tongue. I mean that phrase is silly how could you choke on something that's been in your mouth for as long as you've been breathing but somehow I almost managed to swallow the whole thing, that's how hard I was laughing. You should have seen the look on that security guard's face. Well anyway he never bothered us again.

Once, she wore a dress. It was the only dress I had ever seen her wear.
If they ever give a medal for clothing design, it should go to the man who thought of dresses.

We never went swimming because she was ashamed of the scar from her appendectomy. Whenever I see a bikini I still think it's a betrayal. Once I saw a woman at the beach who had a scar there and I almost vomited. You know, it's funny how the mind creates these values for itself. I knew a man once who couldn't stand to be around collies just because it made him sad. Well that's what stomachs do for me. Public stomachs. Why would a woman be okay with showing everyone what she's timid about showing one person? Why would something so special to two people be okay to share with the world? So I don't like bikinis. They make me so mad I usually just try to not swim. I haven't been to a pool in years. My cousin got married on a beach. I went to the reception but I had to tell her I couldn't make it to the wedding because I would just think about that appendectomy scar. Life's funny, you know?
Once, I saw the scar. She meant for me to, I think. We were gardening for my mom because you know how moms are and we started throwing dirt at each other because you know how we were (I've told you enough about me you'd think you'd start to get it) and we got so dirty mom almost didn't let us into the house. She asked for a shirt and I said hold on which one and she said "any shirt that smells like you" and I laughed because mom had just done the wash and there weren't any more so I took off my shirt and then took off my undershirt and handed her that and she didn't smile but her eyes did, so I turned around and I noticed I could still see her in the mirror on the door and she could see me in the mirror in front of the sink and she looked at me and I looked at her and well. She lifted her shirt right over her head and if I didn't turn red I mean her bra was pink and she was skin but that one strip of white where the knife had cut right through her and down and into her and all I could think was nothing my mind was full of it and it pressed on my ears and my heart and I couldn't feel anything anymore and I tried to wonder if other guys were this lucky or if it was just me and she lifted my undershirt up over her head and pulled it down and it was ribbed and cotton and it fit me just right but it hung a bit on her and if she didn't look amazing the way the cloth sort of fell loose over her waist and pulled taut near her breasts and swooped down in between and it was a good day to be tall and in that bathroom with her. She put her hands on my stomach and ran them up over my shoulders and sort of looked at me with a face that was utterly incomprehensible and said "thanks for the shirt, Thomas" but I couldn't say anything. We just kind of stood there and hugged each other for a while and when mom came in she didn't say anything but she arched an eyebrow.
That night mom came into my room and said she wished dad were there but he wasn't. So she talked to me about sex and how it can hurt more than it helps, but I knew all about sex so I told her that we hadn't and we weren't planning on it because we knew it changed things and everything was fine the way it was. She said that was good but she knew how boys were. I didn't want to know that I knew what that meant. Mom was only ever with dad and that's all I care to know thanks.

Summer was probably the best time for us. We were happy. We let go of school and worry and we tried to find out how close two people can be without actually being the same person. We came within inches, I'd say because once we had an entire conversation of inside jokes. The lady at the movie theater didn't get it because she turned around and told us to shut up. I said that the movie was worth about four fifty and I had overpaid by about five bucks by my estimation so please stop telling me I can't spend my five wasted dollars how I want but boy the lady didn't like that I mean she really tried to stand up to yell at me but about three-quarters of the way out of her seat I guess she thought better of it and went to sit down. Then I heard a whisper in my ear and she said "she's not got the balls to stand up to you but she's called her doctor and she's considering a lifestyle change" and I wanted to laugh but I just ended up choking on popcorn.
What I'm trying to say is that she and I weren't any better than you at being in love. I know for a fact. I've seen people in love who you would have never guessed could have and I mean really stony people without any luminance in their soul. But what I am saying is that we certainly didn't care if we were good or not, and that made what would have been emotional and scary that made what could have been complicated and wrong that made the bad into incredible. And if I ever find that again I'm never letting go.

9.28b

She glided, you know, like she didn't actually interact with the ground when she was walking on it. I always had to picture her running through a field of grass because otherwise she didn't make any sense walking the way she did. That is, until she played soccer. It was her favorite sport and I swear I could have said anything and gotten away with it, when she was playing soccer. She never ever heard anything but whistles and calls and never saw anything but jerseys, hexagons, and pentagons when she was playing soccer. And her playing soccer was my favorite sport because I got to sit on the bleacher and when she ran by I could see her jersey flow around her body's curves like a river through the holes it carved in a rock and you can tell that the curves took time and there has to be a creator because something that beautiful doesn't happen by chance.
I wasn't nearly so poetic when I was with her, of course. I sounded much more common and base. I said things like "you're so pretty" and "I'm the luckiest man in the world" and other stupidity. I looked at her breasts and I thought about sliding my hand up her thigh and watching the heat rise in her cheeks and feeling my own short breath as my chest rose and fell against her chest and fire and friction and light, but somehow whenever I tried to say it in words to her she just put her hand against my chest and grabbed my shirt and pulled me in for a kiss and said "not yet, Thomas" with the softest whisper the world has ever known. I couldn't argue with her. She effectively invalidated my rebuttals like a wall stops an egg.
That fire stayed with me all day and sometimes I had to try to forget so I could focus on school.

Once, she laughed at me when I kissed her goodbye. She said I did it funny. So I asked how because I don't want to do it wrong. "Not wrong, stupid. You. Funny." I was not convinced. She said "Here, I'll show you how you do it." She wrapped her arms around my back and kissed me so lightly I couldn't hardly feel it except for her breath hot on my lips and then she pulled back and closed her eyes and kissed me good and hard, and you know I swear it was the best kiss I'd ever had and when she pulled away she looked embarrassed (somehow I get the feeling like she had betrayed her emotion) and I laughed and I said if I got a goodbye like that, I'd never leave. She laughed and waved to me as I walked back to my room.

Two weeks later we got in a food fight in the cafeteria. I swear we won, but the principal showed up and pretty much determined that we lost. She and I had to go to the office and sit, food-crusted, outside the door until Carter was ready to see us. A great deal of nothing went through my head. Sure, I mean I guess I was afraid, but she held my hand, and the jelly between them made our hands slick and sticky and it was like we could forever move our hands but never apart. I whispered to her that we won and she laughed. Her laugh tinkled like bells being broken (I know people whose laugh sounds like bells and I know everyone says that, but hers sounded like bells being broken--I mean really split apart like they've given their last ring and it filled them up and they never did need to ring again after that because really once you've reached the zenith there's nowhere to go) and I loved it. Carter called us in and we tried to get up and her pants stuck to the chair a little and when she finally stood the chair fell away the four inches to the ground and fell down. We laughed so hard Carter had to call us back after classes and even then, we saw the food stain on her chair and couldn't keep our faces serious during the session. I gave her a present and all it had in it was one of those serving-size packages of jelly. She asked me what it was and I said that if she was ever afraid I would leave all she had to do was take out the jelly and smear it on me and I could move around forever but never away, so she laughed and kissed my cheek. She said it was the best present she'd ever had and I tried to kiss her again but she broke more bells with her laugh as she pushed me away. "I know you, Thomas. If I give you a goodbye you'll never leave."

Do you know what it's like to lose what you love? I mean really, damn it.
I guess I should ask before I start my story, instead of halfway through. Now you're in it, you're in it to finish. You're invested in us and you want to hear to the end, good or bad, and to hell with the consequences. That's the problem with all the best stories. You never know you didn't actually want to hear the story until the end. You never know that the story hurts until you've gotten to the end and been hurt by it.

But you're never hurt by the things you hate. It's only the things you love.

9.28

[I'm glad you all read the first thought first. When I published it I still wanted to keep going but it didn't feel right to do it]

She and I fell in love. Sure, I know what you're saying to yourself, that fourteen-year olds don't really fall in love. Sure. Sure. Go huff yourself. I was in love, sure as I'm standing here.

I can't remember much of the first of our relationship other than the smell of her. You know I walked past a woman the other day who smelled like her and it took me back to that first smell every day when we saw each other for the first time and her hair was still damp from the shower and I would lean in and smell her and she would whisper "Thomas" in my ear with breath that fluttered like it was afraid of itself. she was the only person who ever called me Thomas and knew me. Even teachers called me Tom, not that I would mind exactly but when she called me Thomas I felt more like a man. But of course I didn't stop that woman on the street to ask who she was because well that wouldn't make much sense would it?

I remember - I wish I could forget - how clumsy I was as a lover. We hadn't really gone out yet and I looked straight at her and leaned in like they do in the movies and stopped to see if she would lean in (it was a tense moment made worse by the fact that I felt like I hadn't breathed in years and the old air was scratching at the back of my brain and the pain of it was enough to keep me alive) and of course she did and so I leaned a bit more and she stopped and said "not yet, Thomas" like a promise of something more. I think I would have died if there hadn't been that promise. And then, of course, I breathed like an air mortician letting the old decrepit breath die away and be lost to history.
Two weeks later we were sitting on a bench talking and I stopped and said "Look, do you really like me?" and she said "Yes" of course and I stopped a bit and she stopped more and we just looked at the ground and I said "I wish I could be more decisive" and she said "what's that mean" and I said "well" and I reached out and I recognized my hand was cupping her cheekbone (perfectly like a matched set now tell me that isn't weird. I mean, I haven't been around the block but I've never fit my hand so well as to her cheek). She kind of stopped and neither of us blinked but I reached into my soul and found the last dregs of courage and leaned in and kissed her. I pulled away a bit to see what would happen but she followed and I didn't stop kissing her until I was sitting all the way up again and I said "hang on what happened to that?" She called me stupid and threw her arms around my neck.

I know we were in love because I hurt like hell for years after. I think sometimes that's how you learn what love is: by losing it once. If you've never had it before, you'll think every time is love like a girl who isn't quite sure that she's really climaxed and some promiscuous experienced friend (usually easy but neither says it though everyone thinks it) tells her that it's not something that you guess you've had I mean once it happens you'll never be confused again about what it is and I suppose that's what happened to me and love. I would be married to that girl if fate had a different sense of humor. I don't suppose it's fair to fate, but when I think of her, she's always a woman and she's always beautiful because she knows everyone wants her but nobody can have her unless she says so. Fate is a bit of a prissy little fff--well. Words like that aren't why I'm here.

I'm here because I thought you should know that I fell in love at fourteen and three quarters to a girl who shared a birthday with two famous people and a relatively unknown classical pianist from Rome. I fell in love with a girl who hated math but always told me it was her favorite class and I knew she wanted me to think it was because of me and it was wonderful because it was because of me. I fell in love with a girl who didn't have a middle name because her parents didn't want to insult a grandmother so they insulted both. I fell in love with a girl, and she loved me back, and if anyone says we didn't, well. I'm not a violent man but I can make exceptions.

Love. Silly, isn't it? Rhetorical. Don't answer that.

9.27

The only time I was happy I cried was about twelve years ago, you know, during that age of innocence when your hormones kick in and any attention from a girl is a five-ton truck of portent barreling down on you. You know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you were fourteen at some point. Everybody was, but only some of us were fourteen year old boys.

Anyway I was walking through a clothing store and I was hellishly thin at the time so nothing fit but everything was my size. I had an armful of clothes to "at least try on, dear" that my mother collected from somewhere. You will have to believe that this woman was able to find the only unfashionable clothing in a brand-name store, so my armful of rugby shirts and bright madras shorts were piled up to my nose and things were horrible.
Of course I had angst outside of my mother's style failings. High school, you know, kills the confidence and joy of even a steely, tough teen. I was a lily-livered, twitchy brat. School was not easy. And then there was, of course, a girl. I mean it sounds so passé, but what can I say? If it's true it's true. I was charged like a cannon full of horrible, dripping poetry. I wrote dark, meaningful songs that had twelve verses and a (proposed) guitar solo. If I could apologize for those times, I would. But I'm afraid I would have to write a letter to humanity itself. But really, you never saw this girl. She was just on the cusp of real womanhood. You know the type: full-bodied, lithe, curvaceous, with a figure that you could ski on. The kind of girl that older men hope is legal. Full of confidence because she hasn't realized why she shouldn't.

No. Let me not be so crude. She had long brown hair that hung into her face when she was working at the desk in front of me and if I looked up (I always looked up) I could see her ear peek through her hair so delicately it was foreign and mystical. Her hair formed walls to the world so only I could see her face so I felt like she really was for me even though it was just chance that we were seated together. Her grip on her pencils (always pencils, and always the old-fashioned twist mechanicals) was so delicate I knew she was afraid of breaking her lead and I knew she was a careful woman. When she moved her hair out of her eyes her smell would waft over to me. She thought I had a cold because I was sniffing so often, and when I had sniffed one too many times I guess she thought I was really sick and she gave me some tissues but I never used them just smelled them when I woke up and the house was still and I was tired. My legs were already long, but sometimes I would push myself against the desk so our knees would brush underneath and I could feel my arousal burn up from the top bit of my jeans and fill my chest cavity until it was so difficult to breathe I had to go to the bathroom to get away but it didn't help, obviously because she was in my head still and I felt so awkward walking around so hot and bothered. And despite all the trouble she caused me I never asked to be moved (my English teacher said poetry had something to do with it) but I don't know anything about that.
My life was hell and she filled my head and tortured my every living moment with such a sweet smell that I started justifying all my decisions based on what she would think. I ate corn at lunch instead of broccoli because she hated the word broccoli. I wore my shoelaces untied because the boys she liked wore their laces undone. I talked about music even though I didn't like it because I knew she loved music in general and never cared who was singing as long as someone was.
But I'm being boring and obtuse, by which I mean to say that when I was standing there in that store with my mother's horrid turtlenecks and corduroy pants I saw my girl the one I've just gushed about for an uncomfortable amount of time the girl of my dreams and aspirations.
And I saw her and didn't stop seeing her and forgot to start seeing where I was going or to stop walking or anything so I fell down and couldn't have just fallen on the clothes. I twisted as I fell and all the horrible clothing poured on top of me.
I just laid there and hoped for death. None came to join the tears who apparently had their phone on I mean seriously the number of times I have called death in my life you would think he would get his phone serviced or at least stop shoving all his chores off on lesser men. I felt hands shuffling the clothes off of me and I prepared to deal with my mother but instead I smelled it through the wide-striped polo wrapped around my face--the smell of the tissues I keep in my backpack with my ipod.

I could see her face through the clothes and I could smell her through my tears and I could feel her hands on me just the way I think a woman touches a man as she picked me up and whispered.
"Tom, don't cry. If you cry, I can't laugh."
She said it and I wanted to recognize how funny the situation must have seemed to anyone who wasn't me. so I failed at that and did one of those unattractive hiccoughs that everyone seems to do when they cry really really hard. She hugged me and whispered again, just for me to hear and us to know and it was the only time I've been glad I cried in twelve years.
"I think you're pretty cute."