first “i love you”
In about fifteen minutes, I will have my hand held by a man who isn’t related to me for the very first time. In less time than that, he’ll say, “I love you.” We’re sitting in an empty restaurant like something out of Donald Trump’s penthouse—white marbled flooring, dainty chairs, chandeliers, a fountain.
I’d met Jim over a month ago at one of my jobs at the Water Tower Place Mall where the rich go to shop and people like me go to work. I was cleaning out the trash when a loud voice behind me asked my supervisor about what we do. He said he worked at Comcast SportsNet, that he’d hosted a TV show on there once, and wanted to feature us on a new “around town” type of show. He strolled over to me and asked if I worked there, if I was in school, and what I majored in. When I told him I was about to go into my senior year of college, he said, “Y’know there are paid internships at Comcast I can tell you’d be great for.” I could’ve sworn that gap in his teeth winked at me.
We traded phone calls for over a month because our schedules never coincided, me busy working two minimum wage barista jobs, and him doing… whatever. He’d say how I was perfect for this internship, and how he admired my work ethic, and when he’d say those things my left hand would flail while my right hand gripped the phone tighter because for once something was working out. He was so excited just to know me. I imagined a kind of Liz Lemon/Jack Donaghy 30 Rock kind of relationship—I’d be the off-kilter but competent intern and he’d be the eccentric boss with that weird gap in his teeth. We’d give each other indirect yet perfect advice and be inseparable.
We set up the interview once my schedule opened. He’d say how I was perfect, was a hard worker, but never talked about the internship itself. I began asking about hours, wages, duties, but he’d skirt around my questions every time. That was the first red flag. In later phone calls, he became more direct. “I’ll tell you, Lisa, you’re such a hard worker. You’re magnificent, Lisa. I swear. I wish I could adopt you.” That was the second red flag.
After we set up the interview and he’d chosen the place and time—Decabar at the Ritz Carlton, two o’clock—I tried asking about specifics again, but he directed the conversation yet again into how wonderful I was, and talked about his newfound dreams of adopting a 21-year-old disaffected barista. The more he spoke, the more my gut curled. For some reason, it had skipped my mind until then to Google him, possibly out of fear of what I’d find. I finally got the courage, Googled him, and the first result was his old Comcast show, but it wasn’t an actual TV show like he’d mentioned. It was a web series. A local web series. That was five years old. Third red flag. The next result was a seemingly innocuous website, something about “friends of Jim.” I clicked it. In a banner at the top of the page was his face next to a bundle of words that read, in all capital letters, “LET’S BUILD A REAL CHICAGO REPUBLICAN PARTY!” From there I clicked away and learned about his failed run at Illinois Comptroller, failed run for the U.S. Senate, failed run for Congress. I read his rants about the “liberal media.” There was even a “documentary” about him and I watched it—all twenty minutes. I hoped, prayed it was a joke, but there was his big stupid face at the top of every page with his stupid hair and his stupid smile with that stupid gap in his teeth.
And now, I’m sitting across from him, head hanging low, staring at a menu telling me that a bag of popcorn costs five bucks. He asks, “How’re you doin’, partner?” I guess I’m his partner now. Too tired to lift my head, I raise my eyes and say, “I’m feeling like these prices are way too high. The people who eat here don’t live in the real world.” He cackles. “Hahaha! Oh man, you’re great. I love you, Lisa.” It doesn’t initially sink in that it’s the first time a man has ever said that to me. I always dreamed I’d hear it while being held in my boyfriend’s arms with my eyes closed, completely safe, secure, and preferably nude. Not half-dead, being ogled by a man in his 40s. But within seconds my wrists lock and it feels as if my skin is being stretched over my face.
Somehow, we get on the topic of the time his mom had a stroke and ended up in a coma. What it has to do with my internship, I don’t know. “I went to grab her hand,” and he reaches over to my hands, which are sitting innocently on my lap. With his left, he grabs my right. It’s a soft hand, manicured nails, no calluses, not even around the finger tips. He hasn’t had a hard day’s work in a long time. “And when I held her hand, she squeezed it.” He squeezes my hand affectionately, and I finally realize that he’s holding my hand. I’d say it makes me want to vomit, but I’m already queasy. He sees my facial reaction and lets go, continues on about his mom.
first kiss
The night of my first kiss begins like any other—sober. It’s the summer before my junior year and after I walk into my friend’s birthday party some skinny boy in a Dead Kennedys tank, black-rimmed glasses, and cargo shorts lifts cupped hands to his mouth and shouts, “DUNKIN’ DONUTS.” Normally, this would annoy me, but he’s cute in a nerdy kind of way. When I approach him, he says that he works around the corner from the Dunkin’ Donuts I work at and goes in sometimes. I ask for his name and he says, “It’s Dick.”
“You willingly go by ‘Dick’? What’s your girlfriend think of that?”
He cooly sips from his cup. “She doesn’t exist.”
This is the only sober moment we have.
Vodka, peppermint Schnapps, and a low tolerance for alcohol later, I’m not drunk. I am drunk. I am a slurring whirlwind of social ineptitude. I find my friends in the kitchen and frantically yell past whatever Ke$ha song is playing, “I’VE NEVER BEEN THIS DRUNK BEFORE!” I laugh at everything, I keep dropping things like cups and bottles and dignity, and I can’t walk because my legs feel like slinkies, and whenever I cross paths with Dick, whether he’s talking about the superiority of the Packers in the NFL or how “punk rock” his one fifty dollar tattoo is—two wobbly bands that wrap around his forearm—I can’t help but gaze in wonderment and think, “He’s so cool.” Remember—black-rimmed glasses. Dead Kennedys tank. Cargo shorts.
We jibe each other all night about places we work, music we like, sports we watch. Then it’s two in the morning, he says he has to leave, and we trade numbers. I kiss him on the cheek. He utters a hushed, “Whoa.” I’m sure this sounds cute and innocent, but remember that parts of my face are numb, I can’t talk without spitting, and my toes feel like pencil erasers.
Before he opens the door, he says something about losing his roommates, and I say something about helping him find them. We leave the apartment, stumble down the hall, and out the glass doors to the rooftop park breathing in the humid August night air. There’s almost no light and ten feet in front of the door is nothing but shadows. The search is futile.
He smiles, bumbles toward me, and says in a hazy, thick blather, “Wanna make out?”
In the split second I have, I know I have to say something sexy and alluring in response, so I stumble toward him and say as seductively as a person can with vodka and spit in her hair, “Yeah.” We come closer until our lips touch, then our tongues, then stomachs. I try opening my eyes, but my face tells my brain, “I’m too drunk for that.” I’m barefoot, and the grass wets the soles of my feet, and I think, “It’s happening! It’s really happening! My first kiss!” and my self-esteem smiles and shines throughout me like a spotlight.
But then he shoves his hands down my jeans. And grabs my ass. Really grabs it, like he’s lifting weights. And he keeps using his goddamn teeth. Tongue. Scrape. Tongue. Scrape. When his mouth slides down to my neck I say, “Stop using your damn teeth,” and he muffles, “I’m not,” then cups my left boob like a desperate teenager. But I keep kissing him. He’s stopped using his teeth for the time being. And the more he grabs at me, the closer I’m pressed to him. But then he lets go a bit, still kissing, and it feels better. His hands go to my back, and mine to his, and it becomes almost playful. When we stop, we’re both smiling. I tell him to text me, and he promises, and I go back to the party thinking about what his bedroom looks like.
Four days with no contact, and I finally get the courage to text first, except he can’t “hang out,” like I suggested. His girlfriend wouldn’t approve.
first intimacy
We’ve just left a friend’s apartment in the South Loop for the Harrison Red Line. I could’ve taken the Blue Line, but it was past midnight and I didn’t want to go home alone. Plus, I like to imagine that he wanted the company, even if I wasn’t the exact company he wanted. His name’s Louis, and he’s one of my best friends, one of the only people who treats me like a normal human being, not something to be ogled or manhandled.
He’d asked to kiss me almost three months before. He said I was pretty, an okay compliment. Anything can be called pretty—a mountain, a dog, a screwdriver. What got me was the rest of the sentence. “You’re intriguing.” That has to do with allure, fascination, an attraction.
And I was those things to him and more. I was an “intrigue.” I’m thinking about it as we wait for our train. He’s a little drunk, I’m dead tired, and we sit in unified apathy serenaded by a group of drunk assholes singing and dancing the “Macarena” and getting the lyrics to “Call Me Maybe” wrong. Then our train comes and we get on, sitting together.
The car is mostly empty until it screeches into the Jackson stop, where gaggles of men and women of varying inebriation board our car and shout and over-enunciate everything they say so their best friends on the other side of the car can understand them. I ask if I can lay my head on him and he nods. As I take off my glasses, I expect to just angle my head on his pointy shoulder and get as comfortable as I can. Before I get the chance, his arm arches around my shoulders. I cushioned my head in the crook of his neck.
A group of people in the seats ahead throw around names of people we’ll never meet and clubs I can’t enter. Every time they mention a club, Louis says whether he’s been there, or if he likes it or not. I don’t think he’s talking to me.
“That place sucks.” My lids grow heavy. Maybe he’s talking to himself, or no one at all.
“Spin is okay.” They droop shut. Maybe he’s like me and wishes he can talk to others as easily as normal people.
“Trace is alright.” Maybe he is talking to me, because he knows I’ve never been to these places and wants me to know what they’re like, so I’m not left out of the conversation. He includes me.
“That club’s—” I nudge him lightly against the neck and he lays his head against mine. His thumb and fingers brush circles on my upper arm, rubbing the sleeve of my hoodie between his fingers as we fall asleep against the hum of conversation and the din of train wheels biting the rails.
Deep down I know we will never kiss, but I don’t mind. A closeness like this can’t be searched and found at internships or at parties, but they happen when you least expect it, with the people you’ve been close to all along. It’s a closeness you’re scared to reach with the right people, and one you won’t quite reach with those who are good enough, a crime by anyone’s standards.
I try memorizing the patterns his thumb and fingers draw in my arm, the pace of his breath, of mine. And we sleep like that, him holding me and me being held.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Mrock is a writer born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Lisa first realized she was good at writing when she was eleven years old and the life of a vampire slayer wasn’t cutting it. Armed with a B.A. in Creative Writing, Lisa interviews bands you might have heard of for Chicago Innerview Magazine, is a semi-regular staff writer/professional enigma at Chicago Literati, and performs at local live lit events and reading series. Her work has been published in the anthology Friend. Follow. Text. and volume 3 of the Flash Fiction World anthology. When she’s not writing, she is reading old Hunter S. Thompson articles and tweeting about sports.
BT #009 © 2014 Lisa Mrock. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, July 2014.
