Let's call it love. Let's call it a dump.

2 years ago

I was looking forward to seeing her again after what were months of strained emails, IMs and fleeting phone calls. These weren't regular phone calls. They weren't angry, sad, hopeful or, at times, even informative, at least from her end. They were phone calls that filled a purpose: a complaint, a soundboard, a way to pass the time until the next time a phone call was required. I was just happy to receive a phone call. I did my best to leave messages every other day to make the distance seem shorter, all 430 miles of gnarled roads and roadkill-festooned highways. I'd imagined myself the innocent, with seemingly innocuous attempts at keeping a kindling going between us, but there are times when you need to face the facts that the fire is out. And there's a bear waiting to eat your stomach, as soon as it's done taking a dump on your camp counselor's body.

The very last time she came up to visit was a strange day. I greeted her in Boston and she immediately commented on my coffee breath. I admittedly had been staying up all night with excitement and was a little droopy by the time I got off the train, so I chugged a medium regular and waited with bated, horrible breath. Nice to see her too, I said. She gave me some action figures for my birthday, which came with a free accompanying graphic novel, so I clapped my hands and laughed with joy. Steely silence as we rode the T into the city, conversation maintained in profile, mouth turned away, until I could buy a mint.

I bought her expensive lunch which she barely touched. We had a long, super serious talk about what was becoming of us in the park, only to have the terse standoff interrupted by a vociferous bum who claimed to know what really happened to JFK's brain. He looked like he was ready to fling feces in support of his claim. We prudently thought it best to continue the conversation while walking away.

She'd flown in because it was a little faster and apparently cheaper; the deal was that if she took the plane tickets, she'd get a hotel room as well. We took the train back from Boston to the city and I asked her why she'd bother to stay at the hotel since my apartment was, you know, there. I was all for a good heated argument but make-up sex on a moving train with no private compartments is typically frowned upon, no matter how "cleverly" you position a blanket or Snuggie.

It wasn't like we were at each others' throats the entire time. Glimmers of what used to be a terrific relationship would poke through now and then, and those were blessed moments. However, the day had that nagging feeling that you get when you watch a prequel or historical epic. You're fairly certain how everything turns out and are more interested in how it's presented to you, hoping your intelligence won't be insulted (it will be). We stopped by my apartment first and watched a little TV, talked about what we wanted to do for dinner. I suggested the place we always got falafel from, but she preferred to have them deliver to the hotel instead. I warned that the hotel might be out of their delivery radius, but she no listen, no listen.

We get to the hotel room - a superfluous hotel room, I make no bones of reminding her of this - she unpacks a bit and I look online for places we could get dinner from. We call the falafel place and they don't deliver to the hotel. I almost laugh, but instead the entire weight of the day - the short jabbing arguments, her predominantly icy demeanor, staying at a hotel, insistence that she spend time with friends who didn't even deign to come pick her up from her hotel - it all came screeching to my feet like a cat on fire, and all I could think of saying were the words no woman ever wants to hear, but won't hesitate to tell you any chance they get:

"I told you so!"

She almost threw a remote at me in this weird moment of rage, where she was contemplating either staying her hand and just yelling at me for being a jerk (I was being a jerk, but I gotta work with what I got) or just nail me on the head and tell the neighbors I fell while adjusting the TV. Thus ensued ye olde argument - you know the kind, where you're arguing about A, but it's really about B, so you do your best to really emphasize A so that he/she'll get the hint that B is really, really getting to you and you don't know how to get the stains out.

"I just don't understand why you can't just come stay with me at my apartment!"
"Why the hell would I want to stay in that dump! I came up to see you, not my friends, you're being a jackass! I want to hang out with my friends tonight and see you later!"

I'm glad my head didn't literally explode upon hearing this, because housekeeping would have been pissed. I had been quite transition-minded while living in that apartment - always felt that it was only a temporary home while I planned to hopefully move closer to her. She had actually been the one to stress that I make my apartment into more of a home than just a place to store my boxes and bed. Even when I admitted it was a bit of a dumphole of a place, she stressed that I try and be comfortable in it, and be proud of where I lay my head. Good advice, really.

But now, this. The truth came out in a torrent of bile and frustration at not eating fresh delivered falafel. Was it possible she thought the apartment was a dump all along? Is that why she didn't come over to stay with me? Was the apartment a metaphor for me or the relationship? Was the relationship a horrible dump she didn't want to be involved with any longer? Was the relationship too conveniently located, with all utilities paid and a strict "no pets" rule? Was there only room for one person in this relationship, with plenty of closet space?

I walked out. I knew she was only in town for about two and a half days, but I was done for the night. I went home, ordered pizza, ate and ignored phone calls. I hung out with her the next day, which was halfway decent if it weren't for the shitty, shitty rain that prevented us from taking a walk. We got mexican food and it was almost like old times. She stayed with me that night, at my apartment. We had another argument. There was so much damage being created here with no one owning up and taking some blame, you'd think we were matched up by FEMA.

Then the morning she was going to leave, she spent 2 hours having breakfast with a friend who wouldn't go out of her way to make time for her, much less drive her to the airport that day after being asked nicely. She left about an hour later, and that was the last time I saw her.

Which led me to take a good look around the apartment - it was a dump! Holy shit! And it wasn't even because of the lack of accouterments strewn across the apartment in that joyless way some people effort to convey their (lack of) personality, or the curved walls, or cracking paint/spackle, or the fact that it was located in a section of the city that residents of Compton would refer to as possessing a "rustic, quaint charm".

No. It was the mice. It had to be. We never saw a single one, but I'm sure they were having dialogues while I was either in the bathroom or out buying soda/praying for a relationship miracle. Somewhere at the back, tucked away behind my stove, was a family of mice, laughing it up while they planned the evening's activities of shitting in my frying pan and leaving freaky shreds of paper in random places - like an even lamer Blair Witch, if that was even possible.

The mice were to blame. THEY'VE RUINED EVERYTHING.

We broke up a few months later and I redecorated the apartment. It's a much nicer looking dump and occasionally I buy nice candles that make it smell like a Layne Bryant. Or like Layne Bryant, who I'm sure is a jovial rotund lady not unlike a hormonally imbalanced Santa Claus and smells like a morning primrose fucking a basket of fresh laundry. I think we're both better off. I still think we should have just ordered wings that night. Maybe that was the one flap of butterfly wings that could have saved our relationship; nothing like the smell of honey barbecue and reconciliatory sex in the morning after.