Planes

I would lie in your bed all day and listen to the planes go by overhead.  I would roll around in the age worn sheets and the ghetto-plush tiger bedspread that had been around too long for its own good, that was too young for its owner’s age, and stare at my outstretched fingers as slats of Southern California sunlight danced across them through your cheap white plastic blinds.  I’d lie there and listen as the planes passed by, far too loud to be at a safe distance.

I remember the first time we kissed.  After two weeks of being smashed against each other and six other people in a van that was deemed unsafe from everyone from the SFPD to a drunken potbellied, knee sock wearing, Arizona gallery owner, defying death at the hands of winding mountain roads, alcohol poisoning, and the bar owners in San Diego whose lovely vinyl bar I’d taken a key to in some smiling fit of protest and robbed of at least thirty percent of its stuffing, we kissed.  We kissed after staying at the all white house in Las Vegas, in the all white planned community, filled with stuffed unicorns and fake ivy, The Princess Bride at the ready in both of the DVD players, and towers of dog food at the ready in the garage but no dog.  After hustling our way in and out of casinos and shot gunning beers in car chases.  After a noisy house show in a basement in Reno, where they told me Las Vegas carpets look the way they do to hide the vomit of drunken slot machine players.  When you dropped me off at the airport I felt like I was leaving one way I could have lived my life.

We had a country between us.  Our relationship waxed and waned depending upon who had another lover and if that person exhibited any potential to be loved nearly as much as the one who was too far away.   You wound your way east and we ordered every tiki drink on the menu.  We walked along the Hudson River.  We went to Coney Island and got horrible foot-long drinks served to us by a barefoot, pregnant teenager who looked pissed off to even exist in her swollen state in the July heat, who told us that she would put another shot in the drinks for a dollar.  We waded in the water at midnight and passed out on the subway.  We wound up at the end of the line in East New York, both of us soaking wet with leis on, remarkably unharmed.  We kissed goodbye again.

A few months later, I realized what a folly it was to think that whatever the madness between us was could survive on secondhand tales and sentiment.  I had an affair with a math professor; you burned through your usual LA rotation.  We were each too much of our locations to give them up for each other.

A year ago, you picked me up from the airport in LA.  Same beat up red car, same sweet willingness to help out, same highways and traffic and palm trees.  Except that it was pouring.  It had been pouring for the entire two weeks I’d been in California.

We stopped by your house, dropped off my bags and headed to the familiar strip of dive bars.  I was sad to hear that my old favorite had been overrun by hipsters in search of free tacos and no longer staffed by hookers on their last legs. We went to another and sat at a table in a room with a pool table and many buckets catching the leaks that kept sprouting from the grey ceiling.  Your friends came, my friends came; all our mutual friends had long since left LA.  At one point, you drunkenly turned to your friend in the plaid shirt with the silly soccer ball tattoo and put a hand on my shoulder: “This is the only girl I’ve never screwed around on or screwed over.”  It was true too.  We left and kissed on the corner.

You went to work the next day and I lay in bed listening to the planes.  Their sound was different in the unrelenting tiny thuds of the rain drops.  I left the bed and spent the day with your mother and your new nephew.  My friends picked me up since you got off work too late to get me to my show on time.  You were supposed to come that night.  You didn’t.

I got back to your house and climbed into your bed underneath the tiger comforter.

“Hey,” you said.

“Hey.”

“Look, there’s no easy way to say this.” The rhythm of the rain faded and was replaced by a cathedral of silence.  I could hear notes of your guilt bouncing off its cold stone interior, echoing between us.

“I find in these situations, the ‘this’ should be said as quickly as possible.”

“You can punch me if you want.  Remember that girl I was seeing?  The one I broke up with a while back?  We’re back together

“Oh.”

“Are you mad?”

I wasn’t.  I should have been mad, furious, but there was no love left to fuel such a reaction. I felt though, that on basic principles of self-respect, I should at least give punching you a try.  I weakly balled up my fist and touched it to your shoulder.  I could tell that actually delivering a blow was something you wanted much more than I did. I wasn’t mad.  Maybe I was disappointed that this was how we’d finally unraveled, in such an ordinary way.

“I’m not sleeping on the sofa,” I said.

We spent the night lying side by side in the cocoon of the rain’s noise.  My friends came by in the morning and gave you evil looks as I loaded my things into their van.  I listened to a plane pass by overhead, and I knew I’d never hear anything like it again.

Advertisement