Cigarette?

I’m getting better at telling stories, in part because he wants to hear me tell them. It’s funny, the memories that come back once you start to look. 

The mortifications come first–more specifically, the time I got so drunk in a Manhattan hotel that I invited an Australian couple back to my hotel room. It’s not nearly as sexy as it sounds–I just thought they might like to meet my friends. I then ate a family-sized bag of m&ms, and passed out in front of the toilet. I missed the first half of the show we were in the city to see. 

Looking back, it’s less of a mortification and more like a kind of innocent, tender stupidity. It’s funny the things you’re able to forgive when someone wants to know you, in earnest. 

After the mortifications come nostalgia. This one hurts the most.

Riding my bike with my parents to get ice cream on summer afternoons–my mom picking me up from school in her old, purple van. For some reason, childhood memories feel like guilt, and so nostalgia rips through me. I rush past this one.

After nostalgia, heartbreak. After heartbreak, moments of profound realization–life, death, etc. And after that, mundanity. 

I tell him about a bug I saw on the stoop of my apartment. I tell him about the kind of tea the coffee shop I work at sells. I tell him how I like to cook my eggs and how I like to season them. I tell him about the song I heard on the radio four times at work that day. I tell him that the smell of dryer sheets makes me gag. I tell him that it takes me a long time to wake up in the morning. I tell him to let me take my time. I tell him that my cat threw up. I tell him I’m depressed. I tell him that I went back to the place where I told a joke so funny he fell in love with me. I told him it wasn’t as good without him. I tell him this because it matters more than any of the rest of it. 

I tell him that asking someone to take a walk is the most romantic gesture I can think of. Wanting to be next to someone for an undetermined amount of time–asking someone to be next to you. To walk next to you. 

Mundanity is the peak of intimacy. I tell him this and he listens.