All I had to protect me was everything that was unknowable about myself

I always think back to you slicing up that orange after you coaxed its peel out for our negronis, two little spirals on your plastic chopping board. Things like that about you surprised me: you, too, had practical, plebeian things lying around, a bag of ugly Costco toothbrushes in your bathroom cabinet, a cheap, squeaky couch. The one you would’ve liked most must have been expensive, and you had just moved in to this little backyard apartment after a year of living between two cities, sometimes to faraway places on huge stages, sometimes on the sofas of friends who had roommates in their forties, all of your belongings crammed into two suitcases. I’m sure the expenses piled up. You had a lot on your plate. I remember clocking the dissonance, hearing the glass shatter—faint, but unmistakeable. You’re supposed to be immaculate, an inner voice protested, which I quickly hushed.

The first time we sat down in a place that wasn’t a ritzy restaurant, it was in that yard of yours, takeout burgers, extra pickles, me in a tight black tube and underwear, a leg up the way I would eat at home as an irreverent teenager with my mother, who would catch us both and admonish me. “Sit properly,” she would say. I’d thought it was quite fae, like I was a modern day pixie, or a heroine in an old Hong Kong movie. But then I became serious and revered and respected in my field, and once I saw what that could look like, I dropped those habits like a hot potato. When I learned that you used to play in a surf rock band and live in a Brooklyn loft when you weren’t on the road, I imagined exposed brick walls, hoodies and the smell of cannabis. I wanted to cleanse that image from my brain.

You? With your worldly diet of grilled mackerel and shishito peppers, your sophisticated, older ex-girlfriend with a gorgeous house Upstate, your fancy fountain pen? I wasn’t sure that kind of grubby past was what I had let you kiss me for.

“Let’s go outside,” you said, the two glasses in your hands. I smiled and followed. That was the beginning of the months I made myself ignore you, made you double text, triple text, wearing my nicest dresses in photos and acting like I had a wealth of options beyond you, if you ever dared drop the ball on me. I was a little younger and a lot more scared, looking back. The big city terrified me, and you seemed to know it like the back of your hand.

All I had to protect me was everything that was unknowable about myself: to flaunt, to hide behind, to shore up against. For that reason, I hated everything that came of me truly knowing you, and perhaps, more importantly, of you truly knowing me. For how things came to be, I know I had that part to play.

For what it’s worth, I take it back.

2.12 Take It Back (Unreleased)

Was I painting kind of blurry?
Was I being kind of rude?
What I said about the picture
Wasn’t what I was referring to

Is she your best friend?
God, I’m really on the floor
Asking these types of questions
Do I even know who I am anymore?

Don’t follow my lead
I know you’re probably being sweet
I hate it when I wallow, but please
Baby, please
I didn’t mean to make it this blurry

I take it back!
I take it back!
I mean, yeah I meant it
But I didn’t mean that!

Was I painting kind of blurry?
Did I make you feel ignored?
In the end, I did me dirty
I want to leave my clothes
Back at the foot of your door

Don’t follow my lead
I know you’re probably being sweet
I hate it when I wallow, but please
Baby, please
I didn’t mean to make it this blurry

I take it back!
I take it back!
I mean, yeah I meant it
But I didn’t mean that!

Didn’t anybody tell you that it’s not
The way to go to get ahead?
You’re missing out on true love
Tripping on the footwork
Maybe you should stay in bed

You want it to be over?
Come a little closer
Don’t just stay right there
Where I can’t see you
I want to see you

(Yippee, you)

Yours,

If you enjoyed this piece of weekend writing, my first book, ‘If I Looked My Lack In The Eye’, is a compilation of stories just like this one, something between a memoir and a travel log about my time spent on an island getting over heartbreak and writing the songs on my album, Swim, Swim. The sewn-binding, hardcover edition is now available for pre-order.