3:AM Magazine

By Zachary German.

I.
She’s waiting for me at and she’s on a pair of jeans and is smiling at me. She reaches out a hand and I set down my suitcase. Her skin against my lips. We’re in a taxi. She’s mad at me. Her nose fogs the window. Through it I see my friend Jesse and I tell the cab driver, “I’ll get out here.” I hand her a fifty dollar bill and walk the block and a half back to where he had been standing. I don’t see him and I go inside a dance club. I’m dancing. Someone I know is here, and different people I sort of know. They buy me drinks. I think, “I hope Lisa doesn’t take this the wrong way.” I had just really wanted to see him in fact I had called to have him pick me up but I don’t know, sometimes he doesn’t pick up when I call. I go outside. Jesse is there and asks if I have an extra cigarette, I start to shake out an apology when I see his face and I am calm, I finish saying “This is my only one.” I smoke a cigarette and say “Where have you been?”, my arms around him. We talk about college. He’s the same. We take a cab uptown. I ask him “Do you remember how I used to have one hand on my stomach and the other hand scratching my head, all the time, like I was sick and lousy?” He smiles and my head is coming to a point an inch away from his heart. My cheeks are wet. Something happens and later we’re in Jesse’s friends’ car. “This… shit has been eating away at us, at our… us,” I think is how I said it. An unlit cigarette is dangling from Jesse’s friend’s mouth. We go over a lot of bridges. My mind is racing. I wonder if I’m gay. We’re on Long Island, whatever town this is. I can see it now. We listen to David Bowie and pull the curtains and use a really dim light. Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me is playing. I’m thinking of how I sometimes get stuck with people I don’t care about. I know right now that Jesse is going to try to help me and I’m going to let him even though I know nothing good will come of this. His friend takes off. We fall asleep and we wake up. Something happens in the morning and Jesse gets to know that I’m in trouble.

II.
We’ve been doing this for hours, different tears and now we’re drinking tap water. I think of how I used to think that if I was ever going to kill myself there would probably be a lot of things I’d want to do first, such that killing myself would take a backseat to a different way of life, so first we go to a diner and order grapefruit and mixed drinks, and then we speed for a while, and no, at the diner we try to talk to a couple girls our age, maybe a little younger, high school I guess and they don’t look like Laura Dern in Blue Velvet, and I’m unhappy about that but am saying, “That’s okay, they shouldn’t” but they don’t really want to talk to us. I’m going to be honest and say I’d rather they look like Laura Dern in Smooth Talk. We speed in Jesse’s sports car. I’m running on dry leaves, a dried up stream, dry branches that break into dust under my brown shoes. He’s smoking a cigarette, he hasn’t taken off his seatbelt, I don’t know why he does what he does I never have. Honestly I can’t believe I’ve spent this much time with him. I get tired of freaking out and try to relate to him a thought I’ve had for a little while, that we’re all so new at everything, we don’t have the capacity to repeat an experience so we never really learn, can in any valuable way relate one experience to another. Can’t whatever. Jesse listens, I say “Or like, how can we be so intimate with someone? When does that person become like, as close to us as we are to us? Do you know what I mean? How can that happen?” and things like that. He’s been really sweet, with this and everything, I’m kind of questioning why, like I get back to New York and see him for the first time in a year and now we’re inseparable. Like he calls me. “Lets get out of here,” he tells me, like “Lets just pay the bill and leave, I don’t want to be here anymore.” We get back in the car and check that we have everything for a little while. I drive five miles below the speed limit to his house and he says, “This is where we’re going?” and I say, “I don’t know. Where is there?” because I’m really struggling or something.

III.
We get somewhere and there is a Main Street. I ask him, before I take off my seatbelt, “Are you going to call Olivia?” and he says that he did earlier when I was asleep and I think about how much better everyone else lives their lives than I live my own. We ask if she knows of anything cool happening, like if there is anything cool we could do because we’re traveling by car looking for anything to do “because this guy has a feeling there’s nothing in the world,” quietly, gesturing towards me. “I don’t know,” I trail off. She doesn’t really look like the kind of girl I’d think much about, her glasses are thin and plastic and red, her hair is a dirty blonde ponytail and she’s reading The Paris Review. We’re at an organic market. She gets off at four and we can drink beer at her apartment. We go to Home Depot. Her apartment is above a video store which is pretty much a front for the manager’s pot selling business, I ask if she smokes pot and she says sometimes. She says the manager is a faggot and kind of a pervert and that we shouldn’t talk to him. I look at Jesse when she says faggot but he kind of acts like that’s a word he just hears all the time. I think that’s good, that words shouldn’t have any kind of stigma or something. Her apartment is beautiful, the walls are white and there is one painting. It’s kind of stupid. It’s a blank canvas with the sentence Everything I do is totally fake. seemingly stenciled onto the bottom right. Jesse says “Nice place” and she says “Yeah”, she’s nodding and sort of puffing out her cheeks. I say “I’ll get the ­– I’ll go get the rice from the car.” Jesse acts like I shouldn’t have said that, which like fine, I don’t need to bring everything up but isn’t he doing everything to try to get me to feel better about myself, I don’t really need to whatever. King’s Lead Hat by Brian Eno is playing and that’s okay. How old am I to be having the thoughts I’m having. I really admire her right away because she doesn’t have anything in her apartment there isn’t even any food I blurt out “What if you get hungry?” and she says “I don’t know.” I make her cry and she says “It would be better if you both left” and we leave the rice there and are walk slowly to the car. There’s something bad behind us but hurrying won’t make it any less. “That was something,” he says. I’m glad he isn’t mad about what I did. I couldn’t see him with her, I tell him “She really did mean something to me, I was just being too proud earlier.” He says, “I understand… I actually thought that, already” and he’s reminding me of something Sarah said and I fucking hate it when people act like they know me better than, than whatever. I text Lisa. “No, that’s okay.” We’re not going to stop again for a long time, I hope, because that wasn’t very good and I want to get good and far from here before we try again. We sing along to the radio. I can’t believe how many new experiences we take on. “Have you gathered that life’s worth living?” We stop at another town and Jesse gets us a motel room. It’s a historic town, battles. Our motel is a short walk from downtown where there’s a oh there’s a college here, a Barnes and Noble and a nice Italian restaurant. This is as close as we’ve come so far. I say “I know we can’t do this right now, but maybe this makes me think there’s something, god I’m so depressed. This makes me think I should you know whatever.” The college is beautiful and we can find people that look like us, we sit under a tree. It’s the next day, and we’re reading the Paris Review and a couple girls ask us if we have a minute. We sign a petition or something. “We’re depressed,” I say. “We’re sorry to hear that,” she says. They walk away and I say, “We need to go even further this time.” No, we don’t need to go any further. In the motel room we watch TV and order Chinese food. Jesse asks the guy at the counter if he knows where to get pot. We look at cannons. Jesse lets me know that he misses his girlfriend. We get some beer Friday night and some kids ask if they can have some beer and we say sure, why don’t you stick around. We’re listening to Broken Social Scene. One girl is singing along to “Anthem for a 17 Year Old Girl” and I say “I remember… before I was 17, listening to that song and hoping someday I’d know anybody, or like uh care about anything. I don’t know. I could make up whatever about songs or something, uh.” She’s interested, she remembers listening to that song before she was 17 and how she had a boyfriend already and a bunch of friends and a cell phone and whatever. We talk about the evolution of peer-to-peer file sharing. She asks if I want to get high and I say okay. Its just weed and her name is Sonja and I think this is going to be alright, I don’t really want to but I look for Jesse talking with a boy who I guess is his type. Just about everything about this girl is about me too, but she’s a lot better looking. We get drunk and lie on our backs. Broken Social Scene have enough music that it can be midnight and we pull the blanket tight around our forms, this is the most comfortable I’ve ever been, laying here with you. Your head is coming to a point in my chest and okay, it cuts me. This is what I wanted I won’t be unappreciative. She is going to have to tell me about everything, I can see myself sitting through her phone calls with whatever and everything that’s ever happened in my other relationship. I ask her if she’s ever been in a relationship and she says yeah. “You wouldn’t happen to” I start, as I do sometimes, and she wants to know what I’m asking but there isn’t anything. We’re in her room, it looks, well it reminds me of something. We’re just lying in her bed feeling kind of sick, and she has PBR in the mini-fridge and that keeps us from feeling much, and she has well no, I won’t take pills. God I wonder where Jesse is, where my cell phone is no that’s in my coat, so’s my iPod. Okay, so that’s a plus. No, this is going to be the kind of day where you don’t lose anything but you drink and you meet a girl. We’re not going to have to get real far away from this place. I kiss her on the forehead, and nothing will bring me down. She’s asleep and so am I. I wake up and I call Jesse, I say “I think we can go home.” He asks, “Is she coming?” and I don’t wait for her to wake up to ask her, I say “I don’t think she’s quite ready” and leave a note with my number and like generic terms of gratitude.

IV.
He’s beaming, and I am too. “What could go wrong now?” Our blood boils – this fucking organic market these girls these drugs. I won’t deny I’m feeling nonplussed about this, I feel I’m picking up stoicism, nobody’s making a pass at me but whatever, what’d I want? We’re back in the car and the traffic’s still there, “the… of our lives.” Traffic is terrible but within 48 hours you’re going to be through it, honestly like if that happened most people would go crazy but for me and Jesse that’s okay. He’s apologizing noncommittally, like that we’re not at a better location or something. We’re looking at the Mississippi River and he says, “At some points, its really breathtaking.” Nothing new, I remember a year or two ago I would have loved this Chinese restaurant at this time of day but as it is we ride by. Wouldn’t we love to pick up the new issue of Vice magazine. The car next to us says “What are your names” and Jesse says “Jesse” and I say “Alan.” She says, “I’m Sonja” and her friend says “I’m Sonja’s friend.” I look at Jesse. He says something to try to impress them. She asks if we want to get in her car and Jesse says, “Sure, if that’s okay with you” and I nod and he pulls his car over to the shoulder, we get out and it sort of explodes. The girls’ car is the same car as the one engulfed in flames. We watch TV and I ask her if she feels awful lonely and she says “Yeah, Sonja gets me through the day she’s my best friend is that how it is with you and Jesse” and I say “Yeah I haven’t known him for that long but since I have it seems I had nothing before and now he is my everything.” I wonder and I hope that he feels the same way about me, I know and I know that he doesn’t. I could fall, I tell her “I feel like” [sob] “if this bed wasn’t here I would just fall” [sob] “you know” [sob] “I don’t think I can support myself” [sob] “like even my legs, you know?” She nods, she’s sobbing a little too. Her head is in my chest but it doesn’t hurt, I don’t mean she’s soft like too-ripe fruit, I mean she is firm and good. I embrace her and I think this is the one, but I don’t want the world to know. Everything seems like a good sign. “Do you think… anything would make us happy?” My hand’s on her stomach and she plays a mix she made of Iggy Pop Lou Reed David Bowie and Roxy Music songs that are okay to listen to when you go to sleep, including I think just the second part of Mother of Pearl which is smart. I kiss her on the ear when I hear that. This kind of love just makes me an idiot, I just want to say anything. We wake up and are riding bikes to the organic market, we get a pear and carrots and celery and spinach and ginger and a red pepper and apples and walnuts. I kiss her ear. I kiss her hand. I ask her to dance with me, we’re listening to Sugar Magnolia by the Grateful Dead and holding each other’s wrists and jumping around in circles. “This isn’t what I wanted!” I think to myself. I push her away, literally pushing her down. “She’s going to follow me,” I think, because she’s not in school and because we haven’t made love. I get Jesse. We buy another sports car and he tells me that he got insurance but like I guess I’m not sure if that’s true, like either he’s lying to make me feel better or he wouldn’t do that or he would do that but like, he actually did get insurance. We’re driving back to Long Island. He asks, “Have you found anything?” and I say, “I’ve found a few things.” I say “Just stop here” I get out and I get sick. Sonja shows up and I pull her into the swamp and am holding her head under. Something happens and I help her up. She sort of cleans herself up. We’re back in the car. I put my hand on her firm leg. She’s wearing I don’t know what she’s wearing, its dark brown and is shiny in some parts. I put The Cure’s Just Like Heaven single into the tape deck and we listen quietly to the most erotic song ever. We get to her place and we watch TV and I ask if I can stay, she says I can do anything I want and I believe it. We ride bikes to the organic market and get organic corn chips and organic salsa, we ride back and now we’re eating snacks in front of the TV. We fall asleep in the same sleeping bag. Getting used to someone being dedicated to me. I put on her bathrobe and go to the front porch and sit on the porch swing and smoke a cigarette, its dark and Sonja’s friend is sitting on the rocking chair next to me and you know, startles me a little bit. She offers me a sip from her flask before starting “I know what you’re doing with her.” I like can’t help but think of my first girlfriend’s parents’ lectures about sex. That was you know a hard time. Sex was kind of important to us at that time. She talks to me for a long time and I get really unhappy. I call Jesse. I know again that there’s no way to avoid what’s happening but I’m still running over cracking branches. “It was weird without you” he tells me like this has been his first whatever, maybe he means without me without anybody, you know? Like, without me, without an iPod or like you know. I don’t feel bad, I don’t anything. I mean I don’t feel like he undervalues or whatever our friendship. He tells me that Olivia broke up with him. I feel really horrible now, like this is mostly my fault, and also you know, reminding me of girls that’ve been breaking up with me lately. The Steve Miller Band plays Take The Money and Run and like we wouldn’t, but if we didn’t have a ton of money we would.

V.
We stop in a town and put down some money for a two-bedroom house with a backyard and a front yard and a porch, I apply at an organic market and he applies at a bookstore and at the library. I think we’re going to be happy, we ditch the car outside city limits. It’s an okay town it has coffee shops and whatever. There aren’t any colleges in this town or nearby, which is great with me. I tell him, “This is a town where we’re going to do great things.” I start writing and he starts reading voraciously, we both eat great, make a lot of friends, we have performances in our back yard which has a fence and a stage and flowers. Our friends are great, people bring wine. The liquor store is open until 2AM and you can get good beer and good wine and good liquor and it does cost a little bit. We make enough money working 40 hours a week that we can do alright. We sit down for dinner. I put my hands on his. He says “Can we talk about this later?” He kisses me on the lips and I’m running over dry branches again. He says “Come back, I’m sorry we can talk about it.” I tell him that I love him. I tell him he needs to be done with Olivia. I’m totally being a hypocrite. He tells me that she killed herself which I guess isn’t surprising. I tell him Lisa killed herself too and he sort of kisses me, which is to say he doesn’t say anything, turns to walk inside, turns to look at me, doesn’t say anything, turns to walk inside, walks inside and locks the door. I go around the front and I guess he went to bed. I do the same.

VI.
I’m not going to bed, I sit in the basement and pour some white vinegar on the dirty floor and push the hard bristles on the soft dirt or something, if we weren’t so concerned about like the environment wouldn’t the bleach pass me out. I think there are enough levels in which this is a positive activity that he won’t really be able to do anything, be mad at me or anything, when he wakes up. I make a pact with myself that this will be (and everything will be, from now on) positive which is something I’ve said to myself just once before like I guess another I guess low-point in my life. I don’t know, but our future looks kind of bright, whatever we’re doing here is working fairly well. Okay? He does wake up and I am aware that he is sitting at the kitchen table and I do walk upstairs and I do ask “Would you like a cup of coffee?” and he does come downstairs and he does sit down and I do pour him a cup of coffee and I do place the cup of coffee and the rice milk and the agave nectar in front of him, and I do slap him in the face as hard as I can. He spits blood. That wasn’t because I slapped him and I ask him “Why did you have blood in your mouth?” This turns out to be a positive event, why okay why is something that brings two people closer together always a positive event? He cuts his mouth so that when I slap him it’ll be – his shoulder is cut too. I keep talking but I’m walking out the front door and he listens, keeping following me. We’re in the car by the time I say “I never knew what I wanted” and he’s turning the key. We drive for a long time. At a gas station I say “It hasn’t been so long.” We drive the speed limit back to Long Island. Jesse’s parents are dead, Olivia and her parents are dead, Lisa is still whatever and so are her parents, my parents are dead. We’re eating someplace. Jesse asks me what I want to do now. I say “I’m sorry for how this all affected you.” He doesn’t mind. “I’m sure you know a lot of this was me wanting to find something. You didn’t know?” I say “I guess I knew that.” He sort of looks off into the distance. “Anyway, what’d I lose anyway?” I don’t answer him. His gaze takes me in once more. “I lost a lot.” “But that’s alright.” “I’m going to go take a pill.” I ask the waiter for the check. Jesse doesn’t come back. The waitress ages. Every time I slapped Jesse he became more and more this however old Long Island diner waitress, and now the place is empty and I look at him for a while. This is the story of how my boyfriend broke up with me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zachary German lives in Philadelphia. He has been published in Dennis Cooper’s Userlands anthology (Akashik, 2006). He has a blog. His interests include current events, sustainable agriculture, transgressive literature, feminism and water-skiing.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, July 10th, 2007.