I’m standing on a rickety, rust-red balcony smoking a light green American Spirit, sweating, listening to a soundtrack of cicadas and orioles. It’s summertime in Savannah and I’m wearing only boxer shorts, staring down at my block but not really looking. The smell of barbecue from the restaurant next door hangs in the air like a weighted blanket. A complicated smell when you’re brutally hungover. I wish a breeze would appear and save me, but it never comes. The door to my bedroom creaks open and my boyfriend steps out. He helps himself to my cigarette—just plucks it from my hand as I’m raising it to take a drag. I don’t mind; it’s comforting to have him here. He turns so that his back faces the street and rests against the railing, smoking with aplomb, his Raybans shielding his eyes from me. We stand in silence as I count the beads of sweat appearing on his forehead and nose. He smiles. Flooded with anticipation for the night, I head back to my bedroom to get ready. As I open the door, remembering something, I say, “Hey babe, don’t forget to take a pic of me tonight, at the reading. My mom asked me to ask you to remember to get a photo.” I lied. Mom never asked for a photo. But I can’t tell Paul that. I can’t tell him tonight is the beginning of my future, and the picture will solidify everything I’ve worked so hard for: I’m going to be a famous writer.
“Yeah. You already asked me.” He says, sounding curt. As if he didn’t fly from Scottsdale for this exact reason: to be supportive; to take my photo; to be my dutiful, baby-faced boyfriend.
Paul flew out to Georgia to see me read. And for my birthday, but the reading was more important. I’d been voluntold by my professor. I pretended when he said I’d be reading my work that I wasn’t ecstatic, that this wasn’t why I’d spent a shitton of money to attend graduate school. The reading would be my first official foray into being a known writer, and—obviously—I needed a photo to commemorate such an occasion. It’d be used later, in magazines and online when people talked about me, I thought. I was asked to read a short story I’d written about rheumatoid arthritis. I’d been diagnosed when I was six or seven and was assured by doctors that I wouldn’t live past thirteen. It’s this whole thing. The story was about tee-ball and gymnastics and the Olympics and suffering. It’s really quite funny if you’re into sports, or disabled boys.
I met Paul earlier that year on a trip back home to Scottsdale for the holidays. We matched on Tinder because I’ve always been too scared to use Grindr for its intended purpose. We matched while I was driving through Gallup or Winslow or Payson—I always drove back home instead of flying, because of my dog, Moose, and because there is something blissfully numbing about being on the road for hours and hours. Alone and stoned. Hey. That was Paul’s opening message. Just hey, nothing else. But I responded. I have a demented affinity for men who give me a morsel of attention—always hoping naively they’ll be The One—and at twenty-five, I was starving. We agreed to meet up at some oyster bar in Tempe, off University. Paul was still in college at ASU. An undergrad. I tried to ignore the age gap, a four year difference is like a decade when you’re in your twenties, and just be excited for the date.
I got to Casey Moore’s Oyster House half an hour earlier than the date was scheduled for. “Where Are U Now” by Skrillex and Diplo played dimly from the speakers overhead. I’m always early or exactly on time due to my most annoying disability: Anxiety. I sat down at the bar and ordered whatever local IPA they had on tap, lit a cigarette and checked my phone. No service. I asked the bartender for the WiFi password while I ordered another drink. I began to feel nervous with anticipation. Just as I was about to order a fourth beer, I was pleased to see that Paul messaged me, so I closed my tab and found him quickly in the semi-crowded bar. Paul was cute. Very cute. He looked like Evan Peters—dishwater-blonde hair, sharp facial features, tall—but just a little ganglier; no star power. But he had a cute face like Evan Peters, which was enough for me. I was smitten with the way he smoked cigarettes. It was very sad, in an Elliott Smith sort of way. Like Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko: despondent, brooding, sexy. He exclusively shopped at Buffalo Exchange, which I found immature and pathetic, but adorable, and he “hated” pop music with an ironic passion, while simultaneously worshiping Marina and Charli. He was very gay.
On New Year’s Eve, Paul invited me to his friend’s houseparty. Our official coming-out-as-a-couple party. I wore cowboy boots and a beaded black gown, with quarter-length sleeves and a wavy hemline, that weighed a ton. He wore a frumpy purple suit that he paid too much for at Buffalo Exchange, with a leather bolo tie. I was unsure about his suit, but Paul loved it and therefore I did, too. As the clock neared midnight I searched for Paul at the house party we attended, for my New Year’s kiss. It would be my first. So when I didn’t find Paul until 12:01, I was disappointed. He kissed me, after I asked him to—to ring in the new year—but it felt empty. My infatuation with having a boyfriend, and his promise to make it up to me, let it slide.
On my drive back to Savannah after the break I felt lighter, happy possibly. My experience with Paul felt necessary, enough, but I missed him. “Froot” by Marina and the Diamonds—a song Paul added to the mixtape he made me as a going away present—played quietly in the car as I cruised east on I-40. The whole thing was meant to be a fling, a non-relationship, a holiday tryst. I texted Paul: I miss you. I took a swig of the bourbon that sat on my passenger seat, the bourbon I stole from under Paul’s bed while he was cleaning up in his bathroom after giving me a goodbye blowjob. I just stuck it in my bag and zipped it shut. I thought it was cute at the time. A souvenir. Something to laugh about later, when we were married. I lit a cigarette and glanced at my phone. Paul had texted me three times in response to my I miss you text. It’d only been four minutes since I’d texted him. He asked me why I didn’t ask him to be my boyfriend before I left town, told me that he knew he was just a one night stand and how could he have been so stupid, and then that he was sorry for getting angry. It made me feel important. Needed. I didn’t respond until I got to my hotel a few hours later, keeping the ball in my court. Plus, I wasn’t sure what to say. I hate being in the driver’s seat in relationships but love to feel needed. At the hotel I had four IPAs, showered, smoked a handful of cigarettes and ate a salad from the McDonald’s across the highway before I responded to Paul’s texts from earlier: So…do you want to be my boyfriend?
He said yes. I was relieved. We were long-distance. We said I love you whenever we hung up the phone with each other. We sent each other mixtapes we made on Apple Music, adding to them songs that reminded us of each other. I added “Somebody to Love Me” by Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. It felt appropriate, albeit embarrassing, but it was how I felt and I wanted Paul to know that. Sometimes I cried because he wasn’t there to give me a blowjob or tell me I looked nice, or give me reassurance when I thought the incompetent writer in my class would be asked to read instead of me. He never made me laugh but I pretended he did. I told my classmates about my boyfriend back in Scottsdale and showed them pictures of New Year’s Eve on my iPhone. He looks just like Evan Peters, they all said. Everyone thought the ordeal: the cross-country relationship, Paul’s face, my new air of confidence, was very chic. I ate it up. So I was moved that Paul was going to visit me for my birthday, and that he’d get to see me read. Paul fancied himself a writer as well, and I wanted to show off. I wanted him to be proud of me, or jealous. I yearned for the wholeness I was sure to feel with my adorable, movie-star-looking boyfriend attending my very first reading; the start of the new life I’d worked so hard to create for myself.
As we walk into The Book Lady on Liberty and Bull, a little bookstore with a shiny red door nested beneath historic apartments, I’m stoned, a little tipsy, and sweating profusely. I’m wearing a blazer I’d found at the Goodwill on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, near the cafe I love but doesn’t exist anymore. Paul is hanging from my arm, and as we walk through the door I give him a look that I hope reads as confident. He just smiles dumbly and kisses me on the cheek. I go out back into the courtyard to chain smoke menthols and reread my essay. I want my story to convey both a sadness and morbid hilarity about my crippled childhood and teenage years. I have everything choreographed to be the ideal scenario for my first reading in front of strangers. Of course I’d done many readings in classrooms and lecture halls, but these were people right off the street—tourists, maybe some locals. There are at least thirty-one people in attendance; a lot. I had Bryan, my roommate, sit to the right of the lectern, Paul right in the middle, my professor behind Paul, standing, Nitika to my far left by the door, and Anne, my other roommate, to the left-center. This way I always have someone familiar to look at while I’m reading, and don't need to look any street-people in the eye.
During the reading my eyes ping-pong from Anne to Nitika, Bryan to my professor. Each time they land on another set, looking directly back at mine. Their sympathetic looks are comforting, encouraging. When my eyes land on Paul he’s looking down at his iPhone. I almost miss his location in the crowd; with his head down he looks just like anybody else. Strange, I think, I wonder what he was looking at, who he’s texting. Is he looking at the pics I asked him to take? Maybe his mom is checking in, asking about me, about my night at The Book Lady. Why is he smirking?
My story’s done. It went well. An older lady stops me and tells me that I was her favorite essay of the evening, that she was simply bored to tears by my classmate’s essay titled Life as a Bipolar Twentysomething or whatever it was called. I half-smile, preoccupied with looking for Paul. She pats me on the back and coughs, then walks away. After a majority of the students and attendees have disappeared onto Broughton or Congress, I find Paul where I’d left him: in his seat, staring into his iPhone. I don’t ask him what he’d thought of the evening or my story. Even though I’m not totally sure, I already know. “I already heard it back at the apartment when you were practicing,” I imagine he’ll say. We find Bryan and Anne by the door and step out onto the windless street.
Copyright 2024 Cam K Johnson