Once, I Had Two Boyfriends

1/22/12

I thought Grandma Helen would still be alive this morning, but she died last night at 11:34PM two hours after I flew in from Denver and arrived at her bedside. I’d assumed that, at least once more, I’d get to hold her fat, soft hand with the fingernails still painted –– not by me as they always used to be. That was when she still knew me, and we’d sit on her couch watching I Love Lucy and sharing saltine crackers. I’d been away from home too long and had stopped visiting much when I returned. She was a Holocaust survivor. Was I one of the many people those fat, soft hands of hers had once held and then had to let go?  

I thought there would be more time.

And isn’t it always that we think there will be more time in the future to spend with friends and family? And aren’t we always startled when time runs out? Startled like the first September morning we leave the house without coats and gusts of cool air jab us between the ribs.

The memory of my last moment with Grandma is Uncle Bill complaining about Aunt Sarah bringing him chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla. He sat in a chair in Grandma’s hospital room and brooded. I never said goodbye for good to Grandma when I left last night; I thought I’d get to hold her fat, soft hand one more time.

4/18/12

Once, years ago, I had two boyfriends. In the dark, I’d forget which I was kissing. They found out about each other. That was the first and last time I had two boyfriends.

9/8/12

He wrote tragic songs about his ex-girlfriend Katherine and then, once it was over, about me. Only eighteen, what did he know about love and loss and their accessories that don’t fit in our pockets –– doubt, fear, anger?  And so our songs and poems and even fists must carry them.

He cried four times when we were together –– pulling his knees into his chest and rocking back and forth like he did while playing his accordion. They say it’s easy being young and American and to read the news to best appreciate the smooth texture of our lives. But then I think people like him and me love and lose as hard as the faceless, nameless Other in Syria. It might not seem this way because, in America, we play the game Who Can Love Less.

He and I? We didn’t know how to play that game. I miss him.

  

3/10/13

We met this morning trying to scrape ice off our cars. He used a credit card and I a composition notebook of lists about how to make life better. For example: quit eating dairy. None of it worked of course –– neither the notebook as an ice scraper nor the lists. So I asked if I could borrow his credit card and did. We joked about how ghetto our ice–scraping tactics were. Why is it so hard to drive myself to Target to buy an ice scraper? Maybe the Ice Scraping Boy and I will date, and he’ll be better than my last boyfriend. Although once I said this in reference to the last boyfriend about the previous boyfriend, and Daddy said 100X0 is still 0. I need to start reading the news.

5/21/13

I should have known it would never work when I learned he’s a stomach–sleeper. It has never worked between me and any stomach–sleeper. Then again, it hasn’t worked between me and any guy –– stomach-sleeper or not. But this one? He didn’t rub his feet against mine in bed not once. And, in the end, he never replied to my message about the hummus I’d brought him from Israel. When he broke up with me, he came with a set of dishes because he knew I needed them. As if the gift would make him feel less guilty about telling me I was “too nice” to keep treating me like shit. “Somebody will love you someday,” he said.

6/18/13

No one has ever taken me out for cake or written me a love letter. So I'm taking myself out for cake and writing myself a love letter in between bites. Here goes:

Dear Simone, I love how you can pee anywhere outdoors at any time: in a blizzard, on the edge of the highway, in an alley, off a cliff, or in a bush outside the first house you see where it doesn't look like anyone's home. I think it's pretty neat that you'd rather go bowling than to a bar. I appreciate that you find clean feet overrated.

4/1/14

I’m now living in Montana for some reason. April is here and I woke up at 4:45 AM reviewing conversations I’d had with him. Something about how he didn’t love me and wouldn’t be dating me if I wasn’t so damn pretty. I wish I could just hit the side of my head and knock his words out like you can drops of water when you’ve gone too deep. Instead I turned on my lamp and read for an hour and then checked my credit card statement and then meditated to flute music for three minutes before checking my statement again to see if anything had changed. 724.81? Happy April Fool’s Day?

4/17/14

I could write a whole book about the guys I’ve dated who didn’t break my heart –– like, for example, the Bread-Delivery Man and the ex-convict whose dread-locks I cut before kissing and even the two boys who, years later, committed suicide jumping off bridges. I didn’t care much for any of the dozens of such men I rejected –– never having given them enough of a chance to break my heart. But the musician and the soldier? I have more to say about the empire of wonderful and terrible stories –– both true and false –– that we built together in my heart.  I’m a pretty girl they all said, but none of it turned out pretty with any of them whether I loved them or not. So if you want all good news, read a school newsletter. That being said, I am mostly happy and laugh a lot.

4/21/14

I cry in the strangest places –– like on airplanes and at tollbooths. The past two months it’s been in Hot Yoga during the spine strengthening series, and good thing it’s so sweaty because no one can tell. I cried like this in yoga even before we broke up because the proximity to his growing indifference was unbearable. Now, with tears forking down my cheeks, I sit on a park bench watching a Chinese man feed peanut shells to the ducks. He’s wearing white sneakers it looks like he got on a TJ-max sale rack. They have holes, and I wonder if he’s thinking about getting new ones or if he’s even thought about it at all. I’m crying not because of anything to do with the sneakers, but because Grandma used to feed the ducks and will never feed the ducks again and I miss her even worse than I miss him.

4/24/14

I felt like the doors to being with him were closing and I had to squeeze myself in before they were shut tight. What was so good or bad about being on one side or the other? Why was I so desperate? Why did I need him to love me?

4/25/14

In March, while he slept, I cried in bed finishing this tragic book by Kent Haruf about a man dying of lung cancer. The author takes the reader through every step of the loss until the last breath, when his wife gets into bed next to him and whispers about how handsome he looked at prom. 

I cried even though I promised him I wouldn’t cry until April.

5/20

I just wasted three minutes of my life inside Walmart paying for an oil change. Now I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot in the rain wasting some more –– trying to remember the combination of the last four digits of his number, which I deleted. I want to call him to say I want my Christmas lights back but also that I really am sorry for punching his truck and for other things and that I hope he doesn’t die in the Middle East someday. If I found out about that, I’d be sad. 

You can’t kill numbers because you can neither see nor touch them. So you just have wait for them to disappear on their own  –– to evaporate like a puddle when the sun finally stays long enough.

0591? 0195? 0951? 0000 (I wish). 

9/1/14

I’ve been happy for a while now. I teach yoga all over town and help make people stronger in the mind and body. This one student says he lost 300 pounds within ten years and my classes are helping him lose more. I still don’t read the news. I do know about that terrorist group Isis and that we might go to war again. If things get bad, I’ll end up wearing a Burka. That’s what my mom says anyhow. I just hope to do something really, really positive for the world before I have to wear the Burka. Is any of what I just wrote offensive? My new boyfriend says I should be a fitness model, but I’m not the sort of girl who goes tanning.