If You Need Me, I’ll Be Over Here Marking My Life in Bob Seger Songs
On our way back to his apartment I think I’m supposed to feel too old for this, but I didn’t do it when I was young, and also one of the rewards of adulthood is that we can make choices without weighing them down with meaning.
Every block or two, he pulls me close under a streetlight and asks me to tell him things, his voice low against my ear. I ask what he wants to know or turn the question around on him or bite his bottom lip. I can’t tell if he wants to know what I’ve done or what I want done to me; one doesn’t matter and the other doesn’t need words.
Then, between the streetlights, he asks if I’ve ever been married. I start to laugh, but his face is earnest. Like he’s asking if I’ve ever been to California.
Like there must be a reason I was so willing to go home with a stranger.
Moments ago, when he suggested we leave our friends at the bar, I looked into his eyes and saw myself, brave and pretty and a little drunk, and I said yes. Now I tell him no, I’ve never been married. My fingers stay threaded through his, but I look elsewhere, not wanting to see what he’s seeing in me.
He’s not much younger than I am, but young enough to still believe in the second biggest lie: I’ll have my shit more together when I’m that age. He won’t, because none of us do, but, like Santa Claus, it’s a truth he has to discover on his own.
We reach his apartment, and I follow him into the darkness of the bedroom. He unzips my dress, lets it fall. Our eyes meet, then our selves. This is the biggest lie, and I never tire of telling it.
Amy Rossi’s work appears online in places such as Hobart, Ninth Letter, WhiskeyPaper, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. You can find her blogging about 80s metal music videos at amyrossi.com, tweeting at @mossyair, and in a room by quoting Road House.
(Next BAD SEX story: Kickin’ Bossa Nova by Beverly A. Jackson)
(Previous BAD SEX story: Hard Pressed From: Illusions Perdue by Honore de Balzac* Translated from the French by Louis Roddan Leggett)
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