Boys: An Inventory

M

At eighteen, I learned what falling in love meant with you. It meant bearing witness to each other. It meant not looking away. I loved how you looked at me. Like I was something worth looking at.

I would know you at innumerable distances for many years. When you first raised a fist to me, I finally saw you, an image I realized had been slightly out of focus all along. Before that moment, I don't know if I ever saw you fully at all.

You were the first boy I let inside of me. Once, you said, "You are the measuring stick for all others. No one else measures up." I thought I was in love with you, but now I wonder if I was only seeing myself through you, like I'd been taught.

It hurt more than I'd anticipated when you finally looked away from me. It was as if I no longer existed.

Thank you for turning away, for punching the typewriter in our apartment, instead of hitting me.

N

I don't remember your name and I don't want to. It was the summer of 2009. I was living in the Bronx near the second to last stop off the 1 train. I was twenty-two, a poorly paid intern in New York, making just enough money to pay rent and eat $1 donuts for two meals a day. I was also trying to outrun a broken heart.

My roommate was a drunk—I learned that quickly—but he was usually friendly. He was so skinny. He looked like a little boy who never grew up. I knew him from a summer I spent working as a camp counselor in Pittsburgh. He had a cheap open room that summer, which is why I was able to move there at all. He had a broken heart too. His girlfriend had cheated on him like M had cheated on me, so I took pity on him. You were his friend from back home. You both grew up in Pittsburgh like me, so I liked you a little for that.

You stayed with us for a long weekend, getting drunk while I avoided the apartment. The first day you stayed with us, I rode the train for over an hour so I could haunt Coney Island alone, stalking it with my anonymous unseen sadness.

Michael Jackson died that summer, so his music followed everywhere I went. The shrill of "Thriller" traveled through me as I walked the boardwalk in my bathing suit and a short skirt. The sun warmed my skin after a hard rain. There was a rainbow. For the first time that summer, it felt good to be inside myself.

You and my roommate had followed me to Coney Island without my knowing. My roommate texted me once you were both there. I was lonely that summer, so it was fine, even though I didn't particularly have much to say to either of you.

All day, I did that thing I didn't yet know I had been taught to do. The more uncomfortable I was, the more I smiled and laughed at every stupid, inconsequential thing you said. You both watched as I ran into the cold water in my bathing suit. I wished you would have looked away.

Back at the apartment, you continued to drink. I was sitting on the living room floor when you pulled my bra strap across my back so it snapped on my skin and hurt. You were on your way to the bathroom when you did it. I don't remember what I said to you, but I was upset enough to immediately leave the room and go to bed.

I didn't think to lock the door.

When the door opened, I asked awkwardly what you were doing. I smiled, laughed, left myself completely before it got any worse. You got on top of me, pulled down my underwear and slipped your fingers inside me before I had a chance to say anything.

The only time I went roller skating outside, the wheels...