Fourth

In the dark, it's easy to see the thing about green-eyed men. It's like dewey spring foliage under those lids, when they lift and you can see the pupils tunneling through dreams and towards waking. In a three am bedroom cave, black and silent, the soft green light spread like butter over my naked body. I lightly pulled the blanket over myself, pretending to sleep. 

Finally, when you would close your eyes again, I'd fall back into my own brown-eyed haze. In the best mornings, I'd find your head on my belly, your arms clutching my torso with my hand in your hair. I'd lay still for as long as I could, until you turned on your side and I could slide away. I'd make you breakfast and kiss you until you woke up.

___________

But I could never describe a particular morning to you. My memory is an old sponge, waterlogged with vague traces of details. During the studies at my university's psychology department that I enrolled myself in to make extra cash, I'd draw a big fat zero in the spaces set aside for describing defining moments in my life. I made a bad intellectual because those floating metaphorical light bulbs that hung over smart people's heads avoided me like the plague. You were no different. I loved you within the first five minutes of meeting you, but I couldn't tell you exactly what did it. Maybe when you first focused your green eyes on me. Maybe when you laughed for the first time. Maybe when I saw the back of your head in the coffeeshop.

___________

Our first Valentine's Day. Stomping down the sidewalk in front of the theology school, screaming. Your eyes flashed with green anger, and you drove away in your red car. I dropped my bag and ran to catch up, but you had run the stop sign and were careening down the hill. There's nothing that makes you feel more wretched than the love of your life speeding away at forty miles an hour. You left a trail of green, floating freely in the air like a lightning bolt. I tried to follow it on my bike, but my legs burned and I started coughing after a few blocks.

You came back. You always did, and it made you bitter. I could taste it on your skin when I kissed your neck. I held your hand and I felt the acid force its way into my pores. It was too loud at the restaurant and we couldn't talk, we just pressed our cheeks against each other's. There was a couple at each corner of the communal table. Everyone was a hippie. The two lesbian girls next to me were humming to their food, and not even melodically. Is tofu really worth the effort? I asked you. You were too busy gorging on organic guacamole. When you looked up and grinned (you always grinned over a meal) all I could see was green. Still, what would it take to be the type of girl who hummed at her dinner? Would I have to like other girls? Would I have to have one on my arm to hum along with me?

_____________

Here's one memory that does happen to stand out: ten am Economics 1 lecture. A crash course in macro and micro, the most popular and crowded class in my entire university that was teeming with wannabe CEO's. I was probably drinking coffee and scrawling a diagram in my notebook, halfheartedly of course. A rustling, maybe a student walking in late. Then a whimper that made me look up, and then I ran. Later, all the news stations showed the same footage from the security camera: a skinny kid dressed in white standing behind the podium firing a gun in all directions. The bullets were brilliant jewels, even on the dormitory televisions. I didn't know, though. I ran because I could run. Because I had a seat right on the aisle and figured there must be a reason for groggy freshmen to move so fast. I ran all the way to my dormitory and locked all the doors and went online. It took about half an hour for the news sites to update. The headlines were the usual- Campus lockdown, dozens wounded, gunmen killed by his own hand, number dead uncertain. On the lounge television: sobbing classmates. They interviewed Sarah, the only person in that class whose name I knew. I also knew she was engaged, not for some uptight christian reason but because she loved this one guy a whole fucking lot. That's a quote. That's what she told me the first day we met. He was dead now, before he even got to the hospital. Before he even got to the ambulance, in fact. Before she could run to him and hold his hand. After those green eyes became black holes in a shattered skull. 

_______________

I didn't go to class for a few weeks. Nobody did, really. Not even the professors. When we tried, we could only  concentrate on the door and finding the nearest exist. We all wanted aisle seats and some people would arrive half an hour early to reserve them. So, in the end, all assignments were posted and handed in online. Thank god for the Internet. Nobody could shoot you over the Internet.

I made you move in with me. I know my roommates hated you being around because you spoke too loud and smoked too much pot. You were noisy and made the house stink. But exceptions were being made all over town, even in every dingy student dorm building. Drivers stopped yelling at bicyclists and followed patiently when they couldn't pass. We all got A's. Even the parking patrol gave us a break. You and I made love at least three times a day, out of gratitude for our beating hearts. I always kept my eyes closed, but the one time that I looked at you and those green eyes...well. 

I hated when you left. Sometimes you left me alone for the night, and I retched and cried and took sleeping pills. I hate seeing you walk out the door. 

____________

One time I enrolled you in a study with me, to be a research subject. It paid good money and you were always going on about how you wanted to buy some instrument or another, so I knew you would agree. Five undergraduates hooked us up to machines and videotaped us while we "interacted" and analyzed us from another room. You were supposed to tell me about a time when you felt a lot of love for me. You said that time when we went to that concert. That time you were tripping on shrooms? I asked. 

Yes.

You had made us miss the first act because you had to run back inside and ingest them. You insisted on wearing my sunglasses even though they were girly, and I could see spirals shining in the lenses when I looked at you. I missed your eyes. Between bands we lay on the grass and you held onto me for dear life. I hadn't told you about my love, yet. I was savoring the secret. Eventually I forced you into the middle of a crowd near the stage, and after the band was done playing you turned to me and said I bet you love me so much right now. I couldn't even tell if you were looking at me, but I nodded and squeezed your hand. In retrospect it was a strange thing for you to say, but you felt it and you felt right. 

Then it was my turn. I couldn't remember that defining moment, as usual, so I said Last night. Last night when we sat down with our guitars and you said I had a nice voice. Then we went upstairs and I held you in that peaceful room and my tears slipped into your hair. I held you like you were my shield and we were in the middle of a war. The army was marching towards the bedroom and we could hear their synchronized boots in the form of tiny tremors. You were calm. You didn't see a ghost in a white shirt aiming. You didn't see him shoot the professor in the neck. You just sighed and murmured in your sleep while I scratched your ear. I hoped you were dreaming about cats, or cheeseburgers, or Les Pauls. 

__________

(unfinished)

 

Third

How I deal with hating you: jerking violently into a crying heap  on the floor after hanging up, slandering you on the internet, taking mental photographs of your face when it looks the ugliest, making lists (1. he's broke 2. lives at his mother's 3. makes love to his Stratocaster better and more frequently than to me), laughing at your poetry, talking too much in your ear, sliding away at night when you reach for me, ignoring your lactose intolerance, folding you up in guilt when I don't care that much, handing you dirty tshirts to wear, spiking your coffee with acid.

How I deal with loving you: hating you. 

Second

We deserve one last summer before the world ends.

Don't think about how dizzily the walls are bending and hijacking your pupils. How your spine crunches with every movement. That hawk of a waiter. Listen to the same two songs over and over in the middle of rainy Paris and drink coffee and wish you had a smoke like the vapidly affectionate couples on either side of you. Think about how you only have five more nights in this place. Don't look at them. They're unhappy you swear to god. Your friends are coming soon. Soon you'll have company.

Delicacy. Everywhere you go there are lovers waiting for their lovers to return from transatlantic voyages, work, the bathroom. That look of serenity on their faces, knowing she'll be back flouncing in her miniskirt and stilettos and beret, raring to go. Take her back to your flat and fuck her but jesus, stop staring at me.

Nothing like sitting outside listening to Visions of Johanna while your stomach churns from that café au lait. And a man in a baseball cap stares from beyond the glass at their two obscene bodies rippling underneath their clothes and blocks the sidewalk. She bends over and kisses her man, doesn't let him get up, stalls. Licks her lips. Sits on his lap. And you're thinking of how you'd like to try out a French lover someday because even on the street, men kiss their women like nothing you've ever had. They slip arms around peacoats and huddle around two tiny cups of coffee and an ashtray.

You relocate two doors down to a crêperie where your green face shrieks against the yellow wallpaper as though somebody had vomited there. A tumorous decrepit mutt stumbles around and nestles at the customers' feet. Barks. The only person who feeds him is an old woman, a fixture in fur hat and collar. She gives him bits of galette off her fork, which he accepts daintily before falling asleep.

But this is good and necessary. This kind of existential feeling, when you are inundated by city and by that sense of yourself that howls so painfully and peculiarly in strange places. It blasts your ears with noise: there are five days like there are five years. There is an airplane coming for you that won't splinter or crack. That it's just the caffeine and tobacco swirling around in your arteries. That it is claiming this downpour and emptying this city.

First

Tizzesting.