caocoa

you’re so sexy he says you must know how sexy you arei have no idea, this concept is abstract to me i sayhe doesn’t hear me or he pretends not toand goes down there

the sex wasn’t goodwe weren’t right for each otherhe was lamei was crazy

but i think it was love

Suddenly sad in my small bedAnd always salvagingwhat’s worth it and how do you know

The picture had a girlwith a blue headbandBeing prettier than herdoesn’t make me feel better

The pain dulls with time butnot reallyit’s still there under those ickylayers you dont want to peelit sits and stinksi dont know how to get rid of it

There are a few things I know to be true about my boyfriend, the one I am living with this summer. It is 2019, a weird nothing-year that feels as if it is just waiting to see what happens in 2020—like the numbers even matter. The years move past, it feels to me, like the hand that ticks the seconds on a watch: ineffectual, in a circle, slipping by sometimes too quickly, or sometimes not quickly enough.

I have procured a set-up this morning; it’s 7:45 am on a Tuesday. I haven’t had sex with my boyfriend for four days and I have begun to feel like a sterile and zen monk with hipster propensities—sipping on chamomile tea out of a transparent mason jar, hungry from the self-starvation I’ve been leaning into as a cope, sitting cross-legged on a couch under a trendy charcoal grey Crate and Barrel throw I brought from Toronto as a housewarming gift for Dan. I light a tea candle and drop it into a fancy votive I bought on discount at my summer retail job. I don’t understand my job—my job is to sell glass votives. They’re hand blown and pretty colours with cute names like Purr and Awesome Ain’t Easy. The store is very cozy, with them all lined up in rows like colourful little bubbles. Each one is $50 USD plus. I just don’t get it. But the votive I have—it’s a grey white gradient colour with sand grain in it—is nice to look at in the doom glow of being up too early on a weekday.

I figure this set-up of the book, the tea, the candle, will make me wholesome. It plays into ideas that I want to play into. I want to be seen as introspective and classic, a smart girl who can read quietly on her own. I figure Dan can come across me in this state when he emerges from the bedroom we share, bleary-eyed and tired, and I’ll be caught.

In all honesty, I think he would like to think of me as this tea drinking monk.

I don’t know what he would like to think of me as.

But it feels natural enough to play into this ideal—I want to be this way.

I think.

However, I am also topless. I am 23 in 2019, and I am horny.

It all started two years ago. I turned 21 and decided to begin having sex. It did not start off very bad and quickly became very good. I do not know what changed. It became something I thought about constantly. I developed a porn addiction. My hormones felt personified as a Young Fit 18 Year Old Blonde from TINDER who SWALLOWS Hot Cum, Click Here to Find Out. God, I wanted to find out. I wanted to find out something about me and sex felt like a good lead.

Of course, when I was 18, I was ugly. I really was. I once found my old school IDs. There were a lot of them because I was constantly losing them and finding them after I had already applied for replacements.

On the IDs, my face looks squashed. There is no fat in my face in my Grade 10 ID. There simply isn’t. My nose is so pointy, it looks photoshopped and my eyes are squinty and clouded, like I can’t see out of them. I probably couldn’t. I was in the throes of an Anorexic relapse. At my worst, I was just 94 lbs. I was sick, yes, but also just generally ugly. In the later IDs I have gained weight, and while I look slightly less horrendous, there is nothing very beautiful about me. I had a fondness for headbands. The type that are stiff and go around your head, nestled on top of your hair. I did not use the headbands to hold my hair back. They looked sad, weird, unnecessary, like a kid wearing a fedora or an animal tail. I just wanted something to hide behind.

There are some things my boyfriend has said to me that I simply can’t ignore. He has called me a “beautiful, soft thing”. He said it in the context of a fight, in which he had felt he had lost me. “I feel like I have lost this beautiful, soft thing in my life,” choking back sobs. I think my favourite word in that sentence was ‘thing’. Go figure.

Another one was, “A series of very particular events has happened to you and made you into the person you are, and I want you.”

I liked that one because it suggested he really did want me—rocket science.

Some very strange things have happened to me. Hurtful, strange things. As a child, I was in foster care for what felt like a lifetime. In reality, I don’t think it was very long. A couple of months. Maybe half a year. I also battled profusely with anxiety and an attention deficit disorder. I felt as though I was reasonably smart—a professional IQ test claimed I was “above average”. But it was hard to focus and therefore, difficult to deliver results in school.

“our bathroom” he corrects,

our kitchen

our living space

yours i say without thinking

well

i think it and

i say it

“our relationship”

god he fucking loves

navy blue

i read his diary after

a month and a half

he’s written in it so much, i think,

so much it hurts. he’s written a lot

about how good the cheap-o

fountain pen i bought him

feels in his hand

“it’s made for me”

he’s said the same thing

about my

body

and i start to believe him

the things that happen happen

because i look for them

the things that tear down the whole

‘i believe him’ sentiment

like pulling plastic cartons off

a homemade shrine,

throwing dead flowers in

the garbage

the image

isn’t easy, but

the act itself

is

images fade

anyway

in the diary he writes he doesnt understand me

in one instance i’m going out

drinking

during finals

and he writes

“is she stupid,

i hope she makes

right choice”

fair enough

i made the wrong choice

he wrote that if i made the

wrong choice

he’d consider ending it

these things don’t bother me

that much

first of all

i made the wrong choice

and we’re still

together

but also

i suppose i understand it

the wrong choice

could end it

eventually

it’s the small useless things—

you know, like the things at the bottom

of the shrine

pennies

rocks

a tube of nail polish

these dumb small things

these dumb small things i notice

i say i have doubts

and he cries tears

of joy

“this means that we have a real relationship,

we’re not just living in some fantasy world”

no duh

i know the things it would take for him

to end it

me not graduating

or living up to my potential

it would drive him mad

and that makes me almost

want to do it

so i take the little things

and i catalogue them

but one day

i might just smash

the picture

at the top of the shrine

with a goddamn

hammer

Be real

There’s more than your wants

Be real about the wants

But be real that they can

Wait

Be nice and kind

And happy and content

Be those things if

You can

But also

Be real

A sentiment I’m afraid to share:

I want to be a thing

A thing doesn’t need thoughts

It can have them if it wants

The thoughts of a tree,

for instance

Are talked about

But nobody puts any real

stake in them

They’re left to fairytales

And the crazy people who

Believe in

Fairytales

Beautiful.

That’s what I think of

When I think of a tree

Or a daffodil

Or a navy blue

Plate from a

Fancy furniture

Store

I think,

Pretty

I think,

That’s all

It is

A thing

Being a

Thing

I just want to be

A thing

Being a

Thing

And for

People to

Think,

Pretty

And be done

With it

I dream of

That day

It means

Actually work

Do antidepressents

Does adderall

Does therapy

Am i

Fixed

Yet

I feel

Like

The fixing

Has broken

A pipe

Coloured pegs falling into slats

You want them to fit

To be the right shapes

and when

They dont

You feel dumb

Have you ever loved

Someone so

Much you

Hated them

There is a serious

Rawness

I need to smooth

It hurts too much

Have you ever been

So happy

Youve been sad

I become obsessed with classical music. This one concerto in particular. Concerto no. 2 by Rachmaninoff. Moderato. Then it becomes Liebesträume by Liszt. By the time I start watching a Youtube video titled “Liszt La Campanella played by 18 pianists,” I know I’m in too deep.

When I was little, all I listened to was classical music. My dad, a music theory professor with tenure, exclusively listened to classical. I was surrounded by the stuff. He was a big a fan of Schenkerian Analysis and had a portrait of Schenker on his wall. All of his passwords were Schenker221 or Sche18nker. We would listen to a lot of it in the car; he’d blast The Magic Flute and Peter and the Wolf. You can look up the composers of those. I don’t remember.

When I was 14 I discovered kiss.fm. It was a radio station that played top charters, and there was a point where I realized that if I continuously listened to kiss.fm, I would be the first to know about popular new music. This was around the time I won an iPod nano from my school in a raffle and I really hadn’t thought about what music I liked until then. My friend gave me all of her mp3 files, and it was mostly ABBA and Boys Like Girls. So I started listening to Kiss that summer and suddenly, whilst my friends and I were on a motorboat at my friend Rachel’s cottage, this song I was just telling them about came on the radio (I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry) and they were like wow, you know all the good songs. So I got way into music. Throughout high school, all I listened to was indie. I had a huge crush on Andrew Vanwyngarden, the lead singer of this American “rock band” from Connecticut (the state I was born in) and my crush on him basically coincided with my hormonal teen years and I didn’t have any sex but I did listen to a lot of very experimental beats and my music taste just blossomed from there. It became very eclectic, and I got into these obsessive funks, and now, age 23 after a college semester of first year courses I should have passed two years ago, I suddenly turn my attention back to classical.

It’s just another notch on my reversion journey; after a year of not writing I begin again. I used to write constantly from age fourteen through whatever, twenty, maybe. I also used to play piano, and after my shift at work I decide to go to a practice room in the basement of the arts building at the university. I can still play a few songs. Midnight Sonata’s First Movement by Beethoven. Victor’s Piano Solo by Danny Elfman from the film, The Corpse Bride. A few songs I practiced for the piano exam I never took. Basically, just muscle memory pieces. The practice rooms are deserted because it’s the end of the semester and I bang out the pieces, mistakes and all. I mutilate them. I just play. It sounds awful, and I do it for a while, goofing off. I try to play Concerto no. 2 but my hands are too small to reach all the notes, a problem I used to have a lot and I guess I still do. I’m still the same piano player I was in high school.

On the walk home, I’m gasping for breath. I pass by a family with kids and I think they’re scared of me in my black oversized rain jacket and gasping noises. They make a wide arc on the sidewalk, letting me pass. When I reach my house, the gasping turns into crying — a common occurrence of the last two weeks.

I sit in the living room for a while and occasionally look into the eyes of one of my cats who’s perched himself across from me on the couch. My eyes and head hurt from crying. I sometimes wonder if my head hurts because the tears are forced. Half the time I don’t even know what I’m crying about, but it feels important. It also feels like I should know, considering I’m 23. It feels like I should know a lot more than I do, and that makes me cry harder.

does this happen to you

remember that song about

raindrops on roses

whiskers on

kittens

the things you love

are supposed to

make you happy

but everything i love

makes me feel sad

i play the piano and i feel sad

i write poetry and i feel sad

i’ve always done 

these things better

when I’m

sad

sometimes i think about my

mom

that’s all i do

i just think about her

and i cry

just about her

just about her

i cry because i love

her so

much

and i feel

fucking terrible

just… i…  this…

I’m down by the waterfront, the sun splitting all over the water, going completely crazy, and the water’s more blue than I ever remember it being. It’s been this dull muddy grey-blue for ages and suddenly it’s beautiful and stark, the wind coming up off of it and I’ve forgotten a jacket, I’m just wearing a sweater a friend I don’t talk to anymore gave me, ill-fitting jeans, Adidas all-stars, I really only came down here to buy things to make myself feel better, overpriced K-beauty supplies from Moon Moon Cosmetics and… something else I forget, dry-cleaning or something, but the water’s so beautiful and I’m alone and I can’t help it, I start crying.

Not for the sake of it, like the time last winter I was bored and wandering the city and it was windy, cold, frosty out, it was really bad, I actually think it was a full-on snowstorm but I was underdressed again, and I remember stumbling across the benches facing the water. These benches are always taken, usually by one person, but if you try to share a bench with a stranger they think you’re crazy, but no one was out because it was so miserable. The sea felt melancholy that day, but I didn’t really feel anything. I was bored and I thought it’d be interesting to sit on a bench. So I sat there for a while. A few people in heavy raincoats walked by while I sat there, and I amused myself by thinking about what they must be thinking about a lone girl sitting on a bench near the ocean in the rain. I used to do stuff like that to try to make myself feel better. I’d think that at least I was making other people’s lives interesting, or I’d make them stop and think. Like when I used to cry on the subway trains, on the ride home from school. I felt better about it because at least it was interesting, a girl crying on a train.

But today I actually feel something. Not that I didn’t feel anything those other times. But I haven’t felt anything in a long time this... feelable. I’ve actually been feeling it for two whole weeks. After I break up with my boyfriend I got with over the summer, I suddenly don’t know what to do. And it just builds; he doesn’t talk to me at all afterwards, even though we were friends for almost two years beforehand, and he really tried to convince me that he cared about me. But after the break up, radio silence. At first, I think, yeah, maybe it’s normal not to talk. To ‘give it time’, to get over something. But what the fuck is normal? It was three months of seeing each other nonstop. I think part of it is because we never really clicked, and that’s where it gets iffy — I suddenly think he knew that from the beginning, that we didn’t click. His words when we broke up echo in my head:

“So… do you want to call this off?”

“… Yes, I think so.”

“Me too.”

“Wait, really? Why you too?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about the stuff you said before and I think you’re right. I noticed the things you said, but I just wrote them off because I thought we were early in our relationship.”

I’m understanding of this. I tried to break up with him before this conversation, said things like, ‘I still don’t know if I like you.’ I asked him if he felt a spark, and he took a long time before saying, ‘… Yes? I like you and I like hanging out with you.’

Just thinking about it makes me feel like a kid watching an adult film: I feel uneasy and I start to cry but I don’t know why.

So I think I understand, like maybe he didn’t realize we didn’t track exceptionally well, but, after thinking about it, maybe he did realize, deep down. And I start to think, what the fuck. What a fucking waste of time. I honestly get embarrassed; that like, I was a weird fuck-up, but he kept giving me the benefit of the doubt because I was into him. The thing is, during the summer, I was practically manic, whatever that means — more guys had been hitting on me than ever before, I’d been crushing on Chris for a year and he left his girlfriend of five years and we hooked up the next night. I felt funnier and prettier than most of the people around me, like I’d never looked or sounded this good. And suddenly, summer’s over, and I feel like I’m waking up. I’m like, maybe my personality is actually shit. All that cockiness for nothing. Chris has these friends who all have 200 likes on their Facebook profiles, 1,500 Facebook friends, real career jobs, hot girlfriends and boyfriends, and I’m lucky if I get 30 likes and I don’t talk to half of the people I used to. So many people leave; I’m just not that… ‘quality’. I don’t quite think he’s embarrassed he dated me, objectively, but inside his head, I suddenly wonder if he really ever liked me in the first place. I don’t even know.

On top of that, all of my friends are his friends. And none of them have talked to me in a while. They all wanted to date, at one point. I’m that girl. I’m just a dumb girl.

So everything comes crashing down. It’s been two weeks. I walk by the water, and I feel so hopelessly… bad. About myself. I look at the water for so long, thinking it’ll be refreshing, I’ll clear my head, but then the breeze hits and I feel something drop, and I’m on the dock and it’s so sunny, and my eyes are watering, and I dial my mom. She’s worried, tells me it’ll all be okay, that I’m amazing. I’m Serena. She tells me to buy a nice bottle of wine, go home and make myself dinner, have some chocolate. I’m sobbing on the phone near the dock, and not because I want to. I can’t help it — it feels involuntary. Real. Like I did nothing to move it into being. I just existed.

That’s what I imagine love to feel like. Like it happens to you. So this is happening to me. I hang up, and a homeless man comes up to me, starts telling me his story.

“My name is Tim,” he says, after a while, we shake hands. “I’m going home soon, visiting my mom soon, she’s 87. It’s the right thing to do. I’m not going home just to get a warm bed out of it, or anything. But my husband’s sister is a real bitch,” he turns away from me, swearing. “She wants the whole fucking thing, all of it.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He tells me he’s a drunk and a druggie, something about losing his son and in the car on the way home, his wife looks at him the same way I’m looking at hime (with teary eyes) and she says, “You know, I chose you over him.”

I never hear what happened to his son because he changes it up with a more lighthearted story about this girl named Kimberly, his girlfriend at the time, who took too many shrooms on Halloween.

“How many did you take, I say,” he says, “and she goes, oh I don’t know, 75. So I’m starting to get it. Me and my buddy, we can take up to 100, but it was her first time taking shrooms. So I turn to my buddy and I say, we wait for a bit, as soon as she starts to turn,” he points his thumb over his shoulder, “we high tail it out of there. Because, you know, you never know how somebody is gonna get. I know how I get.” And then he tells me he’ll answer the Big Question, he doesn’t want to, but he will. “Who did I love more, Kimberly or Denise? Denise, who had it all, the money, the nice house, everything? I’ll say I loved Kimberly more, because she… had… heart.”

He offers me a joint. Later he asks me if I smoke. I almost died, he says. We make jokes about his dad building a boat, him working on a shipyard, how the boats today... don’t function? I don’t really get it. “I wish I had that boat,” he points to a boat with people on it docked a few feet away from us. “Even though it’s shittier than the ones we used to build.” “You should just tell them to get off,” I tell him. “Yeah,” he laughs at the image, I laugh at it too. Then he gets all serious again. He almost died from an aneurysm when he was working behind a bar, and he says that’s when it all started falling apart. It’s not my fucking fault, he says, when can I catch a fucking break. I tell him it’s not your fault, meaning it.

“You’re an angel,” he says. “I know it when I see it. I’ll probably see you in heaven.” “I dont really believe in heaven,” I tell him, not to be a smart ass. I tell him that because I want him to convince me it’s real.

“Yeah.” he says. “I wish I could get a sign. I mean, any fucking sign will do. Anything.” He looks up at the sky. But tell me, seriously,” He looks at me. “Why are you so scared?”

“I’m not scared.” I tell him.

He looks at me for a while, then says, “You’re tired. You’re tired of being scared.” He looks at me some more. “But you don’t even know what you’re scared of, do you?”

I start to cry again, but no one around can see my eyes behind the sunglasses I’ve been wearing this whole time. He can though, he’s close enough. He looks at me through the dark lenses.

“It’s okay,” He says. “You’re an angel, I know it. You’re like Pamela Cooper (or some actress, I didn’t get his references. He called me Corey Hart earlier because of the sunglasses). You really are. I was young once. Life is so hard.”

“I have to go home to do an assignment,” I say.

“When are we gonna meet again?”

I give a big shrug, letting my hands drop so they slap my knees. “Around?” I guess.

“We’ll meet in heaven, he says. Because you’re an angel. I know it.”

big, long, ragged fucking breath that lump is so back so back there so far back back there

why face why body

why does no one ever say the right thing are they scared

me too me fucking too

the day after my break up i feel a big something i don’t know what it is, but it feels big

not bad; i’m just resigned

i keep accepting everything

i miss my bus and i’m late for an appointment a guy whistles at me from his truck i kind of look like shit

but i don’t feel mad or anxious

after my appointment i just wander around the city it’s grey windy but bright the middle of a weekday and, predictably no one is around the city feels foreign, like i’ve never seen it before, and maybe i haven’t for a long time

why did i move here i think where was i trying to go

and how am i back where i started

knowing no one not liking people feeling not a whole lot just here, going in circles like one of those infinity tattoos normal girls get

i still think this city is beautiful

Are you bad at communication?

No, she says.

Good. I smile neatly. At least that’s out of the way. I hear bad communication is a leading cause in relationship issues.

At least, I’m not horrible at it, she says. I never said I was great.

Oh yeah? I say. I look at her. She has a pretty face and a good body, but not great.

Well, I mean, I make mistakes. I don’t say enough or I say too much?

I overshare too sometimes, I tell her. Fuck, when I drink, whoever’s around to listen is in serious trouble.

Why? She says, smiling politely. But there’s a glint there, in her eye.

Ehhh, I say, looking into her eyes. They end up hearing way too much about my simple existence.

She laughs. Simple?

Yeah. I chuckle, sip my coffee. School, life, gym, … mom. There’s only so much you can tell people about typical life things before they get sick of hearing it. I cringe inwardly. Too much self-deprecation. Gotta ease up.

She laughs genuinely. Well, hey, I find those things pretty interesting.

bare big boned houses and accent walls with photos on them you can tell when a home is a family home and not lived in by Two Female Roommates Quiet Nonsmoking No Parties