Who doesn’t lock their phone anymore?
I want to say I picked it up to check the time, while he was in the shower, because there weren’t any clocks on the wall, but I didn’t. I picked it up to read his messages, to look at his pictures, to snoop. He jumped up right after he came and started rolling a joint on the bar. It might be insecurity; he seems so god damn guarded. Or maybe he’s just a spaz; cuming can be like a shot of adrenaline.
He walked into the shower with the joint. I walked to the bar with an e-cigarette.
"It's a disgusting breach of privacy. I know it, but excuse it because I'm too cool of a chick to say anything. But it's embarrassing that it's a thought I indulge, which is really the only reason I'm putting it here.
It’s a habit of my life with a sociopath.
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Everyone has their defense mechanisms. I’ll tell a man anything. I’ll be completely open and pretend as if nothing really matters. And then they think I’m tough.
Do I care that my dad was an alcoholic and I never let my mother take me to a hotel those nights? Or is that my favorite color is turquoise have more meaning?
“U don’t wear the badge u wear the bruises.”
I’ve over-analyzed that text he sent after I left El Paso without a kiss. But if I ask him what it means, he’ll say, “i dont kno,” because his defense is feigning ignorance.
And it’s infuriating, like his misspelled, poorly formulated text messages.
“Ok well im where u met me chomping at the bit.”
“Im sweet and ……… u r the boss”
“Calm. Down not a creepee”
Why is there a god damn period after calm but not one at the end of the sentence?!
My sex drive got the best of me.
"Let me show u the west texas u r awesome i love ur face”
“So glad i met u i wanna live your life again”
Going through the messages now at the bar covered in dust and 22 rounds I can’t help but laugh. Why am I looking through his phone at our text messages? It’s like I’m reading someone else’s words. That’s not him; that’s not me.
“I only knew i loved her when i let her go. ..”
That should have been a clue that he’d get out of the shower, sit down with a guitar and only play sad, country songs. I couldn’t let him see me cry; he would have thought I was reminiscing over some other man. But I wasn’t.
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I’m laying in my 10-year-old cousin’s top bunk in central Texas while they’re out of town, staring at the ceiling while Bella chews on her leg and Boco licks the carpet.
“Bella!!! For fuck’s sake.”
It wouldn’t matter though. I’ve been talking to a guy friend of a friend in Colorado because I need a goddamn rebound from a four-day fling. Why the fuck does he spell jealous with a G?! And why did I think it was adorable?
I think it better to tell people how you feel, whether they accept it or not. At least I’ll know I said what I wanted to say and gave what I wanted to give. But then you feel like a fucking idiot for giving to someone that doesn’t even have the backbone to reciprocate or put it to rest.
I know there are plenty of people that think they’re a fucking idiot for giving me any kind of attention.
“Xoxo wish u wer here in puddle in my bed”
“Puddle?”
“Of your cum” “Oh jesus that sounds bad i suck at dirty talk” “Oh jesus that sounds bad i suck at dirty talk” “Lol”
“No. You don’t… I’m totally into it. But there’s a stipulation, if you’re going to talk dirty to me you have to use complete sentences with correctly spelled words and punctuation. And then and only then will I respond… dirty.”
“I love your unrealistic expectations.” “You are so fucking sexy.”
That’s the guy I’m looking for with some sort of respect for the English language. Sitting at a bar in Boise, Idaho, I tell him I’m in a Super 8 bed with only leopard print panties on.
“Im hard already!”
“I would really like to tell you more but I can’t find the apostrophe in that contraction of I am.”
“I couldn.t find the apostrophe dammit. I am trying over here!!!!!! Love and kisses on all your pink parts.”
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He’s recently started messaging someone under the name Psycho. The gist is that she wants to come back… when she gets what she wants… wherever she is...
Psycho asks for money; the way he’s talked about his ex-wife makes me think she was a money-
grubbing cunt.
There’s hey’s and good morning’s, all the pleasantries. And the cadence suggests he loves her.
Or maybe he just thinks he loves her. He’s been taught to be in a love like that from 80s TV and sad country songs. He’ll drink himself into a stupor until she comes back, not because they’ll actually work, but because he’s supposed to.
We must always think about the things that work against us. Who or what has manipulated me into living like I do? My horoscope? An ex? My parents? I worry we are never anything except fully authentic and absolutely inauthentic.
I love him.
I put the phone down after that... because to see that dumb bitch lead him on makes me livid. He’s like the first crack of thunder in Oregon before it starts to pour when you need the melancholy it brings but wish it would hold off one more day because the only person around to fuck you out of it is his best friend.
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I had followed him through a 10,000 acre ranch in Montana to a gigantic house and a row of cabins. We had brought his deaf cousin a couple packs of cigarettes and he warned me she was pissed. She opened the door, grabbed the cigarettes and immediately slammed it as I was extending my hand to say hello.
“She wants to fuck me.”
Said so blasé.
“Are you fucking her?”
“Well no.”
I wondered if that was actually his ex-wife and later in the night when he had his head between my legs if I’d catch her looking in the cabin window sobbing.
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He steps out of the shower.
Wait, wait, wait. Is Psycho is cousin? They are fucking.
“I’m pretty high. I was trying to get a spider high in the shower.”
He sits down with a guitar.
“I tell you
The high cost of livin’
Ain't nothing like the cost of livin’ high.
My whole life went through my head
Layin' in the hotel bed
Watchin’ as the cops kicked in my door.
“I had a job and a piece of land
My sweet wife was my best friend
But I traded that for cocaine and a whore.”
My hair covers the tear on my cheek. I don’t mind being his fix or his floozy.
And that… that moment when you let go of the things you want to the submission of another’s desires, that is love. Right?
You’re nothing but a heartbreak waiting to happen, and I’ll take it whenever and however you want to give it.
"I've got so much to give for my heart ain't so broke."
"Isn't that the other song he played that I should have been singing?
