asides [1]

Yes, please do smile at me like that when you see me in line. Makes me feel pretty--makes me feel known, drawn in. And it's doubleplusgood that not only are you a courteous and speedy postal clerk, you are also handsome.

Yes, please do smile at me like that when you ring up my groceries. You're sort of crunchy and you haven't shaved in a few days but you look so pleased that I'm buying my organic cottage cheese and a tomato and a roll from you and no one else. Also you are very cute. And you have a nice grin. And you are directing it straight at me, from the moment you open up your line for me until you accidentally print my receipt.

Yes, please do email me and tell me I've won a writing award. Then follow it up with another email telling me how much the judge liked the work. Yes, indeed. Especially after a gruelling night of speed-grading and a hazy morning.

[If they can, I hope
every person in the world will say yes]

dun. da dun ch.

Mungo Jerry: "In the Summertime"

We are riding our bikes down Riverside Avenue. It must be June or July; in any case it is before your accident, and we are fearless. The sun is beating on our black hair, turning mine reddish in places. Your freckles stand out against your pale skin.

The street is at a slight incline beginning at Cedar; the incline is long and gradual, running seven blocks, and ending at 26th Avenue. I'm standing up to pedal. I can feel the light breeze from cars going by.

Maybe we've just come from St. Martin's Table, where you would have made cracks about the vegetarian food and new-agey religious books. I have just graduated from high school; you are entering your junior year. We're goofy and annoying and full of inside jokes. The most inside of jokes is us. Sometimes we go driving in your car, playing the Beach Boys loud and singing along at the top of our lungs. Sometimes we meet in Longfellow Park and play on the playground. Sometimes we hold hands in the computer lab. Sometimes you are so nervous I can smell it.

But now we are just two kids biking, pumping our bikes until they sway. I'm whistling: In the summertime/ When the weather is hot/ You can stretch right up/ And touch the sky/ In the summertime/ You got women, you got women on your mind/ Go out and see what you can find. And you are behind me, going DUN. DA DUN. CH. DUN. DA DUN. CH. There is no other life.

enciende mi piel

Zacarias Ferreira: “Amiga Veneno”

It is summer. Make that the peak of July: hovering around 90 degrees every day, humid enough to wilt the concrete sculptures in the Sculpture Garden. Everything wet and sticky and slow-moving. And there is a boy.

There is always a boy.

This is a problem, or it is not a problem, in alternation. In this case, it is a stop-gap. An unfair measure. Because before summer is spring, and this spring a friend dies, a three-year relationship ends, and a promise is broken. And all through this there is this boy, who says, oh, no matter what, and you are so beautiful, and hyacinth girl.

I am sinking into unhappiness, discontent I can’t name. It permeates everything. Taking a shower is too hard. In the depths of spring, I sit in the back of a friend’s car and think about dying while the green is in its first force. I’m paranoid and anxious and frantic. The glow-in-the-dark star on my ceiling fan terrifies me.

And finally we watch The Virgin Suicides and Harold and Maude all in one night and it is too much, so I sleep in his room, while he sits in the chair and makes sure I don’t wake up crying, and plays music softly on his computer. I wake up over and over, see him slumping in the chair, hear the songs on repeat.

But it is stifling, and I want to flex and unfurl. He means need, and curfews, and phone calls, and responsibility, and debt, and no matter how much he says oh, no matter what, he means, how can you ask me to walk you to the busstop to meet another boy?

Then one night I go dancing.

It is a wonder of the body that after four months cocooning myself away, dancing woke me up. The dance club is a little smoky but mostly it is dark and there are blue spotlights and many, many young men and a live band. They are from Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and they teach me salsa, rhumba, bachata.

There is something about the way those men touch me that pulls me back into the world. They aren’t brothers, but they are safe. They watch for my feet. They hold me in the vortex of a twirl. There is tenderness in this anonymity. One song, a bachata, stands out. It is called “Amiga Veneno,” and I ask the DJ to play it again, one more time, please?, at the end of the night. Two a.m. Everyone wants to go home, but I just want to stay on the floor, in the blue light.

A boy I know from school offers me a ride. His car is cold, the air is cold; the summer is evaporating in the night. We go to his house and dance, alone in his bedroom. We lie and kiss each other for four hours. It is nothing. It is being awake in the first grey of humidity returning. He tells me, tu piel me encanta.

Later in the summer, I will leave my friend for the last time, tell him I could never be his girlfriend. It’s not only because of the dancing and the young men and their strong cologne. Or the way night skies in summer turn from purple to robin’s-egg. But while the catalpa trees bloom out my window, something begins to shift.

Amiga veneno, tu amor es el fuego enciende mi piel/ Y cada noche en mi cuarto, me dices ven, me dices ven, mi dices ven//Sus ojos verdes son espejos/Brillan para mi/Su cuerpo entero es un pleser/ de principio a fin//Dormiendo en mi cuarto/me despierto con su sed/Me veo hablando con paredes/Hasta el amanecer (forgive me for the lack of accents; I'm guessing, here).

so weird to be back here

Ben Folds: "Still Fighting It"

I didn't understand that the word "son" in the first line of this song was not "sun" for quite a while, but once I did it changed everything. What had been a sort of surreal love song--I imagined the speaker talking to his love--became something even more unusual: a love song for a child, telling him how much his parents are like him, how vulnerable they are, how they went through what he is going through.

It feels like the room I shared with my brothers in St. Paul. I remember light coming through the shades, gauzy curtains, the radiator where my parents set my cup of water. Feels robin's-egg blue, dotted swiss, brown. Feels like a windowseat in a warm room, a few hours in a bus speeding into summer, the last time I held your hand: a little bit lonely, a little bit lost.

Once, a boy told me when he heard this song it made him think of me and cry.

I listened to this song with my mom, driving down Hiawatha. She offered to bring me to my boyfriend's house, which was in another state. I can't remember whether I took her up on it. I think I must have; I think we met him just across state lines, split the trip in two.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up/ But everybody does/ So weird to be back here/ Let me tell you what:/ The years go on, and we're still fighting it/ We're still fighting it/ Oh, we're still fighting it/ We're still fighting it/ And you're/ So much/ Like me/ I'm sorry.