You're Dumbstruck, Baby

Remember when we were first making out and you pulled back suddenly and said, "You're really cute, do you know that?" You tried to look in my eyes and I swallowed and smirked and said, "No, you're really cute." Then you sighed and looked into the distance, so happy, saying "You're just saying that because I'm here..." And I mumbled something that sounded like "no of course not" and reached for the beer on the nightstand and swigged from it, chuckling, then reached for you again...the beer then dangling in my fingers behind your back...

Remember when you said, "Why do you think I dress this way? Why do you think I wear these expensive dresses? Everyone at work is like, 'Wow, you look amazing.' And when I come over you don't say anything. Do you even notice? I mean, what do I have to do to get you to notice me? Or compliment me?....Yea, saying it now won't do you any good. What the fuck?" And then I continued to lay there quietly before you asked, "I'm sorry. Do you feel ok?"

Remember when your friend pulled me aside and said, "She really likes you, you know?" And I turned my baseball hat to the side and sipped my beer, deciding what would be the correct thing to say, deciding on something stupid, but truthful, like "I know." And without a pause, she said, "So, you're a teacher...." I gave her a sidelong glance then returned to watching you dance on the bar...

Remember when we were at the back room of the bar and I entertained your table of friends with stories about how you dumped me in college. "Yea, but she still calls me though..." I said. Your head was on my shoulder with your natty hair almost in my mouth. I was drinking from the pitcher and talking and talking. As your friends burst into laughter, your arm curled around my thigh under the table....When we got back to your apartment, I leaned against the kitchen counter, complimenting your new place. You came out of your room in pajamas and turned on the tv. Then you asked me if I was hungry...

Remember when you pushed me off and said, "God, i can't believe we're hooking up again..." and I rolled over on the futon bed, saying, "Why?" Then you covered yourself with your arms and said frantically "You're really good at it. You're a slut..." I acted innocent and pretended like I didn't hear you. You said, "I can tell, Charles..."

Remember when you got a boyfriend, and you started calling again...

Remember when you texted, "Come play with me." and I wrote back, "Bring condoms." and you immediately called, yelling over the din of the crowded bar, "What am I supposed to just bring the sex?..." And I explained I was staying home this Saturday night because I didn't want to spend Sunday hungover because Sunday was the day of planning and the dreads. Monday is back to the sixth grade in the Bronx and the resumed feelings of so much despair and so much responsibility that I cannot even begin to explain...but the line was already dead...

So now you contact me again, years later. You call and you email. You ask about my new teaching job in DC, how I'm doing away from NY, and if I'm seeing anyone. You have a serious boyfriend, but you never explicitly say so. I am eloquent and charming and reveal as little as you do. I am alarmed by my emotional response to you. The intensity comes from nowhere and feels like it can be renewed.

But I tamper down my feelings and talk (or write) broadly about classroom mishaps and DC posers. In return, you flirt a little because you know you are in control. You can feel it. You try to elicit the passionate echo of those old phone messages and naive nights arguing outside of bars, with me saying yes, I was wrong. Yes, I miss you. Yes, I fucked up all those times and I wish things were different. I wish I didn't have to live alone and for so long, where now the pain is so intense I go between mania and catatonia. I'm a mess. School is still hell. You could have saved me...

But I'm not lost. I am still the same - broken and charming and heroic and drunk. Those incidences above, whichever one you and I shared, that were so right and wrong at the same time, keep happening to me. Perhaps you know that, but I know you don't want to. So I will never tell. So as you call out to me from your safer place, your boyfriend somewhere in the other room, I will act dumb and lonely, letting you believe I was just your sacred, dysfunctional tryst. And allow both of us believe that it was eternal...