My Luckless Romance
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
― Jim Morrison
To: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
From: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
Subject: plans?
You me inebriation?
I’m back in good old Tulsa for at least a week. What say we get intoxicated together? Or we could just hang out and philosophize. Better yet, drunken philosophizing.
It’s your call.
Adelaide
To: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
From: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
Subject: Re: plans?
any damn time this week. Please.
I’m sitting here talking to walls about how I’m trying to be a robot these days. i need to be brought down to earth, drowned in alcohol, or high enough to see the big picture.
what day ma’am?
To: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
From: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
Subject: Re: Re: plans?
Well I’m tempted to say tomorrow, but I’ve got a metric fuck ton of cleaning to do around this place. I may be a slob, but even I’m uncomfortable with the grossness dad has let accumulate here.
I’m thinking… Wednesday? I just picked that at random. And I’m resisting the urge to make any “hump day” jokes… oh wait. That didn’t really work, did it?
Adelaide
To: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
From: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
Subject: Re: Re: Re: plans?
let’s make it wednesday. haha. ‘make it’. that’s a bad joke too. it’ll be a night in if that’s fine with you.
It was amazing how easily I could fake happiness when Taylor and I talked. I hadn’t expected us to talk much at all after he left for tour and began dating someone else, but we still emailed from time to time. My emails to him were full of lies. I faked happiness, pretended all was well this semester and lied by omission about my hospital stay. When we talked about drinking together, it made me nervous. I still smoked, because that seemed safer somehow, but I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol all semester.
The one thing I didn’t lie about was how much I wanted to see Taylor. It hurt to think about, after he’d rejected me, but maybe he’d come to his senses. I knew he’d recently broken up with Samantha. That had to be a good sign. As for me… I hadn’t stuck to my plan of celibacy, but I also hadn’t developed any feelings at all for the boy I’d spent a few nights with that fall. When he decided to end it, I didn’t feel any remorse at all. But that, too, I lied to Taylor about; he knew I was seeing someone, and that was all. If it made him a little jealous, I figured that was the least he deserved.
Dad was out when Taylor came to pick me up, and that was fine by me. I scribbled a short note on a scrap of paper I found on the kitchen counter and hoped he’d see it and be sober enough to read it whenever he stumbled in that night. If not, he’d surely find it in the morning before I got home. Taylor didn’t come inside; he sat in his car and watched me walk down the driveway. I could feel his eyes on me the entire time, and as always, it made me nervous.
“I figured we could pick up some booze and some snacks before we head back to my place. There’s a liquor store… somewhere around here…” Taylor said as he drove down the street.
He drove fast. Too fast. Morbidly, I thought it was no surprise that he’d had a car accident; it was more of a surprise that he’d only had the one. He wove in and out of traffic as Ben Kweller sang to us on the stereo, and minutes later, we’d found our way to a liquor store just as he said.
I still didn’t want to drink, but I didn’t tell him that. We compromised and he bought something for each of us – a big bottle of green apple vodka for him and a case of wine coolers for me. I could sip on those, I figured. That would be safe.
Taylor shifted to a classic rock station we we hit the highway, and I let Jim Morrison’s voice wash over me. It was already late, the first few stars just starting to pop up in the sky and I stared at them through the window. Moments later, Taylor took an unexpected exit and steered into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart.
“For the munchies,” he said, adjusting his hat before stepping out of the car.
I had to roll my eyes at that. Taylor was so unexpectedly innocent when it came to certain things, things I would have expected him to have been exposed to somewhere along the way in his career. He’d lived in much more of a bubble than I’d realized, and wasn’t nearly the dangerous risk that I remembered categorizing him as when we were younger. Now I was the bad influence, and it was a roll I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
We made our way to the grocery section and picked out a variety of chips and snack cakes. It all felt so cheesy, but there was a reason that stereotype was associated with stoners. Living in the apartments on campus, with a full kitchen, I was more likely to cook a full meal when I was stoned, but if Taylor wanted the typical cheetos and twinkies, I wasn’t going to tell him no.
Our arms loaded down with snack foods, we made our way back to the front of the store. We hadn’t made it far when two girls veered toward us with smiles on their faces. For a moment, I wondered if they were fans, but I’d seen Taylor greeting fans. This was different. These girls – Shana and Lauren, apparently – were friends of his. Shana eyed me critically when Taylor introduced me, and I could see that she was sizing him up.
In an instant, I realized that they had slept together, and it made me want to claw her eyes out. She wasn’t pretty enough for me, and she was definitely too young for him. But more than that, she wasn’t me. I didn’t want her anywhere near him.
To my utter embarrassment, Taylor told her about our plans for the night. She told him we should bring our stuff over to her house, since she was having a party. I was surprised and relieved when he gave her a noncommittal answer. I had no doubt that we wouldn’t be going to her party. It would be just me and him.
A few minutes later, we were back at Taylor’s house. Like underage kids, we stuffed the alcohol under our coats and scurried into the pool house. While I put my wine coolers in the refrigerator, he searched for an ash tray. I was pleased, at least, that it took him a while to locate him; apparently actually getting cancer was what it took to make him give up that habit.
Callie said I should feel bad for encouraging Taylor to pick up a drug habit. I had simply reminded her that other states gave pot to cancer patients. I was helping him. It was the least I could do.
“Okay, so how does this work?” He asked, turning the joint I’d pulled out of my purse over in his hand and squinting at it.
“Well, first you light it,” I replied, handing him the little purple lighter I’d bought on the drive home. “It’s sort of like smoking a cigarette, but you’re wait for it to really start to burn. It’ll ease off, but don’t exhale. Hold your breath until it starts to burn again or you just really can’t breath. You will cough. Everyone does at first.”
Taylor nodded, but I wasn’t entirely sure that he’d digested everything I’d said. Still, he lit the joint and carefully pulled it to his lips, looking like he’d never held a cigarette before in his life. If I hadn’t known better, I wouldn’t have ever believed he was the boy who’d accidentally blown his smoke in my face outside a concert just three years ago. But he was… somewhere deep inside, he was. I had to believe that, or it wasn’t worth fighting to be with him at all.
We passed the joint back and forth until it was nothing but a tiny stub that neither of us could hold without burning our fingers. Taylor flicked it into the ashtray, then walked to the kitchen to retrieve our drinks. He drank straight from his bottle, while I sipped daintily on a wine cooler. I’d gotten three joints from Marcus, without telling him about my plan to smoke with Taylor, so we smoked the second in between drinks.
“Well? Do you feel it?” I asked.
Taylor stared off into the distance for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. What am I supposed to feel?”
“Kind of… fuzzy around the edges. Slower. Some things will feel way more in focus than other things. It’s hard to explain.”
“I don’t feel any different,” he replied. “Maybe a little buzzed, but that’s not the same thing, is it?”
I shook my head. “No, but not everyone really feels it the first time. Mixing it with alcohol probably isn’t helping.”
“Too late,” he said, picking up his bottle and taking another swig.
I made it through only three wine coolers before I decided to call it quits. I could tell Taylor was farther gone than he wanted to let on, so I told him he could keep the lighter and the third joint for himself. A Christmas gift.
Setting his vodka bottle down safely in the floor, he laid back on the bed and finally took off his hat. He had hair again; I’d been able to see a few wisps of it peeking out earlier. It was darker than I remembered and it didn’t seem to curl as much. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but I didn’t think he would like that. Instead, I just laid down beside him, close but not quite cuddling.
“How much college do you have left?” Taylor asked suddenly. It was random, but random wasn’t surprising coming from him.
“A year and a half, I hope,” I replied. “I really didn’t do so well the first year or so… but I may be able to finish on time.”
“What will you do after you graduate?”
“I don’t know. Teach? That’s what I’m studying to do, but god knows if I’ll pass all the classes and the exams and… I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“A normal life,” Taylor remarked. “I can see you as a teacher, actually. A sexy teacher, but… a teacher.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know that I would ever call myself normal.”
“More normal than me.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Normal’s overrated, though.”
“Even before… everything… I don’t think I ever saw myself having a normal life. I mean, I always wanted to be in the spotlight. Not famous just for being famous, but I wanted to be somebody. Those kind of people don’t have normal lives. They don’t settle down, get married, have the kids and the house with the picket fence.”
“So if that’s not what people like you do, why not buck the trend and do it? Be different by being normal.”
Taylor smirked. “You’re a clever one, Lady. I like you.”
I didn’t reply. Somehow, those words were like a knife to my heart.
“So, what about you, then?” He asked. “What’s in your future? Settling down with that guy you were seeing?”
“I’m not seeing anyone,” I replied. “It wasn’t… anything serious. And he knew that, but he still felt the need to ‘let me down gently’ a few days ago. As though I was in love with him and he was breaking my heart. I wasn’t, and he wasn’t.”
Taylor nodded slowly. “So, not with him. But can you see it?”
“I’d like to. I can’t, though. I thought I did once… with someone. But only because he was what I was supposed to want. It would have been the perfect little life, you know? Money, a nice house, a nice looking husband. But it just… I don’t know, I think I did love him, but not enough. Not the way you need to love someone to spend your life with them.”
Taylor chuckled. “You’re a romantic, Lady. I wouldn’t have expected that.”
“I don’t think I am,” I replied. “But I guess… being in love is nice. I want that. More than the normal two point five kids and a picket fence thing, I just want love. So maybe I am a romantic.”
“Love isn’t what makes a marriage work anyway,” Taylor said. “I suppose it helps, but… you have to be good partners, you know? More than anything else. It’s a business deal. Find someone you can live with, someone you can put up with day in and day out, someone you can see eye to eye with and raise kids together.”
“That’s pretty cynical. Where’s the guy who used to write all those love songs?”
Taylor looked away from me and chewed on his lip for a moment. “I told you. He died.”
Not wanting to go down that road, I grasped the first different subject that came to mind. “What about that girl you were seeing?”
“She just started college,” he replied. “Didn’t want anything serious anymore. Neither did I, and I think we both went into it knowing it wasn’t going to be serious, but… well, we both had to get out before it got serious without our consent.”
“So you still don’t want anything serious?”
“Not right now,” he said. “Someday… maybe. But by then, I’ll be looking for a partner. Not just a fling, not some romantic ideal I don’t believe in. Just someone to live my life with.”
I nodded. I could feel my bottom lip quivering and tears pooling in my eyes. I didn’t even know why I was tearing up. He hadn’t said that I wasn’t that partner, but how long would I have to wait to know?
“Hey, lady,” Taylor said, sitting up suddenly and staring me down.
“Yeah?”
He stared at me a moment longer, and I was surprised that the emotion in his eyes was easy to identify. Lust. In seconds, his hands were on either side of my face and his lips were pressed firmly against mine. I was certain that he’d said something earlier about being too tired to fuck, but evidently he’d changed his mind. Maybe he just wanted to kiss, though. I didn’t know, but the way he was pushing me backward said that wasn’t the case. He only relented when I crashed into the headboard, and even then, he only pulled back to start taking off his own clothes.
Something about the whole thing felt a little wrong, but I couldn’t tell Taylor no. I pulled my clothes off quickly while he wandered off, presumably in search of a condom. When he returned, he was almost predatory in the way he climbed across the bed toward me. Was this what drunk Taylor was like? I wasn’t sure I liked him, but I wasn’t sure I liked anything about who Taylor was now.
Still, I wanted to commit everything about this moment to memory. I had no clue when I would even see Taylor again and if he would want to have sex then. His eyes were squeezed shut, making it that much easier to blatantly stare at him. There was a thin, pale blonde patch of hair on his chest, and trailing down his stomach. I’d never really thought about a how nice a happy trail could look, but Taylor’s… maybe it was just because it was new, at least to me. He was changing before my very eyes, it seemed. I wondered if I would even recognize him the next time I saw him.
The sex didn’t last long, and he apologized profusely for that, blaming it on the alcohol. He took another swig of said alcohol before collapsing face down onto the bed next to me, still completely naked.
“You and me, Lady,” he said, “we make good partners.”
Partners. He’d used that word to describe the sort of relationship he wanted. Was he trying to tell me something? I wanted to ask, but I was scared. It didn’t matter, anyway. His eyes were closed and his breathing steady. He’d fallen asleep or passed out – either way, the result was the same.
I carefully pulled my underwear back on and pulled his blanket over our bodies. We’d only had a small lamp on to light the room, and I didn’t bother turning that off before curling up next to him. When I saw that none of my movements had disturbed him, I took a risk and reached out to touch him. He didn’t flinch. I let my hand run up and down his smooth back, then across his head, touching his soft, thin hair. There was a small bald patch over his surgery scar, and I supposed it would always stay that way.
How had I never noticed how beautiful he was? It almost felt as though it had taken the cancer to reveal his beauty to me. He was puffy, he claimed, thanks to the steroids, but all I saw was pale skin and hard angles. That was all he was, I supposed. Hard angles. There was nothing soft and forgiving in him anymore. Like he kept trying to tell me, that guy was dead.
I didn’t know if I loved the boy he used to be or the man he was now, but it didn’t really make a difference. I’d still never felt a pain as bad as lying next to him and knowing that he wasn’t mine. While he slept peacefully, I buried my face in the pillow and cried.
Tell me where I begin
You can’t deny what’s already been
I won’t break but I can bend
Shaping the scars that I can’t mendFeel your fingers around my throat
There’s nothing but bones beneath my skin
Somebody break my fall
I’m slipping on down all over again