Wanting you

September 01, 2009

It's strange the way things work out. There was always something about you, something so magnetic it hurt, something that pulled me to you from somewhere deep inside, threatening to turn me inside out with pain and anxiety. I'd never followed people before, I swear. I couldn't help myself though. I had to know everything about you. There was this shimmering smile that danced all over you all the time, an animal like grace in everything you did. When you moved to America, I was on the same plane. I pretended to read my book, but really, really I was listening; listening to you singing along with the music, watching you tap your fingers.

I fell in love with your American girlfriend. I actually thought I loved her more than you did. And I saw you with those other girls, never as pretty as her, but then no one was. She deserved better, but at the same time, who could be better than you? Who could leave you for someone, anyone else? It seemed impossible, simply. Everyone fell in love with you. Just seeing you or hearing you; even hearing about you - and I couldn't fault you for that. And still, she loved you more than anything, more than was fair to make me watch. It was unbearable, with her laughing eyes and her perfect body, her shimmering hair and her blind eye to your careless lovers, and that noble, resigned dedication in the way she kissed you smilingly when you came home.

I followed you to Texas when you left her, and it was easier than I thought leaving her behind. You were so impervious to shame, so stunningly careless that I found myself wondering if she'd ever existed. I lived in a tiny, dark apartment, envious of your tan skin in that blistering desert sun, envious of your handsome sweat so unlike my own. I followed you at night, too, watching the way you imbued class into those wretched little sweaty nightclubs. I used to watch you dance with the girls there, standing alone in the corner by an arcade machine and yearning to be closer to you. I watched your smile, watched the girl's bodies melt next to yours; I studied your clothes, read them jealously like a book I wished I'd written.

I was scared to follow you to Korea, because I didn't know a soul there and couldn't speak the language. You would be alone there, too, I could only assume, but you had that magic that followed you everywhere, that winning hand that wouldn't quit, that damned beautiful success that whispered in your ears things I could only imagine. The girls there loved you, too. You never saw how many of them stared at you smiling and laughing to each other in your wake. You could have had any of them and you did, loving them one night and moving on the next, leaving them happy just to have been so close to you, guarding the memory covetously, leaving your apartment nervous and unkempt like they'd stolen something from you and were worried that you'd suddenly realize it and come bounding out after them. I learned Korean, a little, feeling bitter that you somehow transmuted your cultural ignorance into an endearing, even irresistible quality. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, and you, you just strutted around knowing just how much the world owed you and expecting payment without delay.

When you moved to Salt Lake City, I was only four blocks away in a little apartment with hardwood floors and a Nigerian family living downstairs. I rode the same train as you in the morning, and I started to wonder how close I could get to you without you ever seeing me, without you ever knowing me. I stopped hiding behind newspapers on that train, started looking intently at your reflection in the train window, and then later, square into your face. I watched you meet her, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in that city. She was wearing a green sweater and a white skirt, with her tan legs coming down long and her dark hair lustrous and thick, straight and perfect and bringing out those tiny freckles on her face. I saw you own her, the moment she stepped on the train. You told her she was beautiful and she said "Thank you" the same way she would of said it to me. But that's where I would have stopped, feeling tense and childish, and that's where you just pressed right on, getting what you already knew you had, talking to a girl that was going to be in love with you. When she moved in with you I was jealous, but then, I've always been jealous of you. Every tiny little thing about you. She loved you so much that it ached to be around the two of you. It's not that you were unloving, it was something different, something so indescribable. You were so cool, so incredibly slick that things just slid right off you. Everyone's affection lay in a little puddle at your feet, exposed and embarrassed and anxious, waiting for some tiny sign of approval. Somehow you were always shining a light into peoples insecurities, peeling them apart effortlessly, and then looking away nonchalant, leaving them unscathed and let down. Giving a damn about anything was just too hard for you. Even giving a damn about her was too hard, not that she needed you to, she just had to be close to you like everyone else.

I followed the two of you to Johnny's on second, sat in a corner booth and sipped a whiskey soda. I watched you kiss her while you were talking to her, watched you look at the other girls, talk to them and touch them in a way that never made them uncomfortable, in a way that made your beautiful girlfriend jealous without any tangible provocation. That magic hung around the air you breathed, something so real you could watch people walk into it, watch them walk into it and smile their surprise, feeling some new, shining quality. I watched everyone around you admiring you; admiring you or sulking because being you was simply impossible. I was sulking.

When you left with her you got hit by a car, right out front of Johnny's so that everyone gasped. I'd never seen anyone get hit by a car before, and I was surprised, no, shocked at how far you flew back. Suddenly you were laying on your back with that perfect smile seeping right through your wincing pain. Your breath came short and shallow, more like crying than breathing really. She was a mess. Wailing. Screaming. Her face melting right off in her terrible grief, her unspeakable panic. People must have thought I was a doctor the way I rushed in, rushed right in and kneeled beside you. But I'm no doctor, and I couldn't save you. You were in shock I guess, you stared right into my eyes but you probably weren't even conscious, you probably never really saw me, not once in your whole life. When you stopped breathing she was absolutely beside herself, shuddering and muttering with the makeup running in tragic, purple rivulets from the corners of her eyes. There was another girl, a stranger no doubt, holding onto her while she rocked back and forth sitting next to you. Just hugging her knees and rocking, with those terrible noises bubbling up from her throat with the spit and the fragments of words. Why do people always keep the woman away from the body? I don't know. I closed your gleaming, blue eyes softly, and then I wished I was dead.

The sirens were quiet somehow, quiet and dreamy. Someone pushed me out of the way to get to your body, to lay it flat on a stretcher while I stood up, backed away, and looked on. Some men were talking to your girlfriend, beautiful even through a whole gray world of unbearable grief, and utter, stupefying shock. I felt entirely hollow. I watched the back of the ambulance, wide and clumsy, make it's way down the street, and then I looked from face to face, studying all the people that were still standing outside. I felt an empty, wordless buzz echoing around in my head that made its way into my arms and then my stomach. I wanted my whiskey soda, which I'd left inside. I wanted so desperately to have lived your life, and died your death.

Tags for this piece: fiction story slc city travel strange relationships friends aging korea

Show & add comments (2)