16 August 2017 "On Bob's Last Day"

 blue skies against white mountains, evergreen trees coated with snow, crystallized. smiling, the easy way, the kind that makes your eyes crinkle, small gazes of curiosity, searching eyes, the party trick I do whenever I'm in a body of water, collecting water in between the suction-y parts of my palms and shooting it in a small but pointed stream. Singing in the car at the top of my lungs songs I had forgotten I knew the words to, my voice going hoarse next to two friends I hadn't understood until now are already intimately connected to me, far past the point of abandoning me as quickly as they found me, accepted me. and Bickering, teasing, being obvious enough to the point that the words "now kiss..." seem more than just a little appropriate. 

How do I feel? am i feeling? am i ignoring signs of danger, or am I just having fun? Seems like everyone in this group is running from something with their eyes closed. is it any wonder that I feel right at home? Wasting time doesn't feel that way when you are drinking on a mountain, when you slide from a ski lift without falling, when you watch the sky turn pink, purple, dark, from a hot tub on the balcony of an airbnb you had no trouble renting with your credit card. 

in a gas station bathroom, the lights flicker and I feel the warmth of water from the tap in the sink as it coats over my scalp. when you have throw up in your hair, it dries quickly, crusts itself over the strands until separating the two feels difficult, complex, mixing things from the inside of you with things on the outside of you. Someone knocks on the door; I haven't yet figured out how I will dry my soaking head so I can exit into the snowy air outside, so I say nothing. The knocking stops. when smells mix together, sometimes it all seems acidic, strong, thickening as you breathe it in again to make sure you haven't imagined it. Evidence of the puke from my hair goes right down the drain. When I leave the bathroom the attendant behind the plexiglass tells me to have a good day. I smell like leave-in conditioner, can feel the way my hair will crust over with ice as soon as I get outside, as soon as we get to the top of the mountain. I feel bad for not buying anything, but cannot think of eating, even hot cheetos. 

When i throw up from drinking, I told everyone the next day, it always happens this way: I am far past the point of controlling my actions, of being aware of the timing and the place, of being contained, appearing composed. so I throw up all over myself, in the car, on the floor, against the walls of a friend of a friend's apartment. How much did I drink this time? I don't know. Was it because I mixed alcohol, because I drank beer first, because I drank too fast, too soon, too much? Kiki said she helped Dylan throw up by forcing her hand down his throat, that she got puke all over her arm. And yet knowing that they heard me burping as I tried hard to keep myself from throwing up in the backseat makes me feel impossibly gross, embarrassed, burnt straight down to the quick. i've never tried to stop myself from throwing up before, so keeping it down as long as I did must be progress in some way or another. But still the entire experience sits in my memory as if I experienced it from the end of a tunnel in the back of my consciousness. I was there and not there at the same time; I thought of nothing at all and nothing other than the act of throwing up, how inevitable it was, how inevitable it always is when you have passed into the point of no return. 

I used to be able to count the times I have thrown up from drinking, used to be able to catalogue them in my memory, easy, like the way I used to be able to think in one sitting of all the guys I've fucked. It's not the same anymore, because now memories blur together a little and I can't remember everything in terms of months the way I used to. 

some more fragments: cans on the side of the hot tub, fog that clears and then reasserts itself, spinning quickly in circles and finally resting on the side of a snowbank, only to pull forward easily without getting stuck, and back to driving carefully, my heart racing, my hands shaking, my nerves unfazed. my snowboarding boots fit absolutely perfectly, the ones you bought for me, the ones we bought together, although the jacket, goggles, and snowpants lost to time, probably during one of the three moves i've done since i moved here. 

We rode the same gondola that you and I did, what seems like an impossibly long time ago. Why didn't I take more pictures of you? Why didn't you take more pictures of me? We raced in the hotel pool, I beat you but you weren't mad. You were mad the next day when I was confused about why we were leaving without even trying to go snowboarding the second day. Was this weekend the first time I went to Tahoe without you? It wasn't, but it is the first time I went back to Northstar, that place where we got breakfast burritos early in the morning, ate them on a bench next to the ice skating rink, snowboarded with our stomachs full of eggs and cheese and tortilla and beer at 9am. 

Sometimes different memories mix together in a confusing way, blending times, places, images. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes memories appear as singular, with clarity, their own and independent. We had sex in the bathroom of the bar at the top of the mountain. But as I passed by the same bar yesterday morning, I didn't remember the sex, I remembered how it felt to get on the lift with you after, to take a couple last runs down the mountain before the day had ended. I think even then I understood the way that things already felt like the were ending, how this would be the last time we would go snowboarding together. But I held onto you the way we hold onto anything we can sense the end of: tightly. 

On the ride home we fought. I can't remember how it started, just that you asked me, accusingly, how I knew one of the songs I played, the aux cord frayed, barely connected anymore so that you had to hold it together a special way to make music come out of the stereo the right way. It was too black a song, I think, and we had already established that you were going to be the black one in our relationship, not me. We fought on the way home from the other Tahoe trip, the race in the hotel pool one, but it was one of those silent fights, the kind that makes you want to cry, but the tears don't come, so you keep swallowing, lean your legs against the passenger side door, compete for who will break first. Me, always me. 

When I met you, I was looking for someone to tell me who to be, what to do, where to go. I was happy, I was open, I was impossibly young, spread my arms wide with the confidence that the world was inclined to accept me, that I was ready to be changed into something new. I had a boyfriend, had made it through three guys who wanted to fuck me without letting things get messy or messing up our long distance relationship. We had a good thing, but then I got bored of him, met you. I slept over your house, kept myself to the side of your bed, didn't let you touch me, and you didn't even try.  It couldn't have been the first time that had happened, but I was impressed. Whenever somebody doesn't slip their fingers all over and through me the first time we go home together, whenever they follow my lead and keep respectful, I start falling into trusting them. And so it was with you. I fell the way I always do, but what I didn't expect was to feel so helplessly attached to you, so panicked when you weren't by my side, when we weren't on the same page. But it was okay for a while, because you seemed helplessly attached to me too. The first time we broke up you told me you couldn't sleep in your room for the whole week we weren't talking because it hurt too much, it smelled like me, my stuff was still there, you couldn't stand the thought of being there without me. You were surprised, you said, at how much you missed me. I should've bristled at that, but I didn't. I loved you. 

It's been almost two years since we had that first real break-up conversation. The one two nights after you told me you didn't want to have sex when I tried, for the first time ever in our relationship. You, the one who called me after one of the times we got back from Tahoe, angry and insecure because you thought I had lost interest in you, thought I wasn't attracted to you anymore, sexually frustrated because we hadn't had sex in three days. Why am I still processing things? Why am I still finding things to write about you, about me, about us? 

Does he remind me of you? He certainly knows that I am still hung up on you, and he is not regular enough, not mature enough, not reliable enough to distract me from memories of you, not fully. But him, them, this group, it's the first time in a long time that I have felt both confident in myself, and not numb to feelings, the first time in a while I am having fun, that I have time, space, energy to be reckless again. What am I looking for? Am I looking for anything? I don't know. But I like the challenge, am stimulated by the confusion, like the way I feel when I am around them: a little fluttery, entirely at ease, the girl I always wished I could be when I was shy, when I was afraid to speak unless I had been directly spoken to. 

When i met them I was jaded, confident less in the benefit of the world's changing me, but confident more in my ability to change the world, to interpret it and things around me as I watched them unfold. how can the person I am and the person I was be so different in just three years? 

This isn't permanent. You weren't permanent. They aren't permanent. I guess I am not permanent either. 

This weekend I snowboarded better than I ever have before. I caught a jump at the park yesterday, kept up speed good enough to get compliments from both Berto and Dylan, successfully did a turn on my toes the first time when Taylor asked me to. It felt better than all the times I went snowboarding with my ex combined, felt independent, felt fast, I felt connected, like the pieces of me had been put together to make being whole feel simple and natural. In my head, I replay again and again Dylan's words after my last run: that I did really good that time, that I really kept up. I picture Berto's face at the very end of the last run that second day in Northstar, impressed at the ease with which I swerved, came to a stop in front of him and Taylor.