Indite: A Story About Pretending

Bjorn Borg.

That was the name that was scribbled on the cotton underwear that snuggly pressed against his body. In comparison to his usual boxers that hung from his hipbones, he now looked like a kid in Underoos. Part of me wished he had a cape to match. His left leg was straight, and his right knee slightly bent as he stood looking at me waiting for me to leave. And although my blood boiled and something inside me raged, I stared back at him as if penning every detail along the folds in my brain, the ones that waver, the ones that encompass my flawed limbic system. I had yet to find a cure for suppressing my memory.

I had not slept enough, and my veins were still full of alcohol. When I breathed out I could taste beer, and my throat, too parched to scream, seemed to be on its own mission to strangle me, but my mouth always won that race. He had a large bottle of whiskey in his hands, the one I had tried not once or twice, but three times to throw out the window. I was unsure of the point I was trying to make; I just knew I wanted to hear glass break. Christoffer held on to it for dear life, of course, as if it were a baby that he was saving for later, a prized possession he’d show off to his friends who would all swoon, pinch its cheeks and remark on how much it looked just like him: unwashed and bottled for further consumption.

Although I wanted to reach for the bottle again, and probably did in my absence of focus, I mostly thought of a photo on my father’s desk. It was a picture of my sister and I in our matching Underoos and wellies standing under a sprinkler in the backyard. It must have been 1984. I had stared at the photo so many times, I had thought I could remember that day, but the truth was I was mistaken. I could pretend I remembered the way the sun created a glare against the sprinkler that darted around in a circular motion, and I could pretend that was the day my sister stepped on a bee, but I’d be wrong. Just like I’d be wrong when I would later think back to him in his Bjorn Borg underwear. I’d choose to be wrong for the sake of self-preservation or literary license or simply because I could.

The weekend before we had wandered Brooklyn. I remember my shins began to sweat as they do on days that are achingly humid. It’s hard to imagine shins sweating, but there’s a breaking point for everything. We went from bar to bar, not on a mission, not with a purpose, but instead a slovenly attempt as soaking up the Saturday. We found ourselves in Greenpoint, we took a seat at one of those long communal tables, the sort you’d find in a German beer hall, or a bar in Brooklyn that likes to pretend it’s a German beer hall. It was supposed to have rained, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight. I reached down to touch my lower legs and pushed the beads of sweat toward my ankles as he opened his umbrella and looked toward the sky. He looked like a Disney character that an illustrator had forgotten to give song, but he twirled his umbrella over his shoulder anyway. I felt bad for not fearing he’d injury someone walking by us.

“If we sit here long enough like this, then those ugly people will go away,” was how he justified his decision. The people, whom he defined as ugly, those who were most likely not from the neighborhood, not from Brooklyn, and perhaps not even from Manhattan, looked at us with glances that could only be surmised as annoyance. But it didn’t matter, he explained, because we had been there first.

When he closed the umbrella to focus on his beer, he put his hands flat on the table and pointed at the white lines that ran from east to west across his nails. He told me that since he’d given up pushing his cuticles down, the lines had started to go away.

I rolled my eyes at what he thought was an epiphany in regards to nail aesthetics. I told him it was in his head. I tried to push at his overgrown cuticles, and he pulled away.

“But I can’t see the half moons,” I said. I looked at my own nails, covered in chipped mint green polish and realized he would have had to be a girl to understand my reference. His fingernails no longer showcased half moons.

A friend of mine and her fiancé came to join us, and less than 20 minutes in we knew that the social situation was failing. As we walked along behind them toward another bar, Christoffer grabbed my arm and whispered: “We need to go to Chinatown and find trouble. We need to shake them.” I looked at his smile, his widening eyes as if a revelation had set in and agreed to one more drink, then we’d head out. We were looking for scary things: opium dens and massage parlors that gave happy endings, maybe the Chinese mob, too. It’s easy to pretend you’re the star of your own film noir in Chinatown if the nighttime lighting is just right.

And when we left not much longer having feigned other social obligations, we hobbled along Bedford Avenue. I stopped to look at a menu at a bar, and he called out: “That’s how the story will start!” I stopped and turned around to face him. “We went to Chinatown looking for opium dens and massage parlors.”

I walked toward him and tucked my arm in his. “You can’t lock your arm in Jackson’s, can you?” he asked. It was true. Two-year-old nephews are too short for such things. The feel of his shirt in the crook of my inner elbow, and his quick pace made me rush to catch up. I remember thinking how my pen could never keep up with this. I remember thinking I should have just washed his dishes and left the towel on the floor. There should have been at least something for him to pick up; I shouldn’t have to be the only one with a reminder.

We found the cheesiest place in Chinatown we could for dinner: pink linens and matching cloth napkins. I put my chin in the fattest part of my palm and watched him order the creepiest thing on the menu. I opted for rice; it seemed safe. We both ordered a Chinese beer. We needed fuel for our adventure. When his fish arrived, the kind that still has its face intact, I watched him pull bones from his mouth with each bite, and I looked away. I feared I’d gag, I feared I’d throw up. But it wasn’t about the fish. I had ingested too much of something else.

I focused on the buttons of his shirt to stabilize myself; the way my hot pink watch he wore contrasted against his tan skin. I looked away again. I was stuck in repeat mode. I was a record that skipped. I had yet to find a cure for suppressing my memory.

We paid the check. We walked down a side street off Canal. We wanted to find something unnerving, a stairwell that headed into another world. Perhaps even with appropriate lighting a film noir is only relegated to Hollywood sets and Jack Nicholson pictures.

The karaoke bar was a bust. The alleys that reeked of fish and slippery with aquatic intestines came up empty. I rubbed my arm that was moist with humidity as he eyed a massage parlor and announced again: “That’s how the story will start!”

I looked up at the neon sign. I was exhausted, and although I should have been feeding off of his excitement, I just wanted to shower. I wanted to rest my body against my bed, or against him, or against anything that would provide a temporary spine for my back. I agreed to the massage knowing full well it would require some effort to stay awake.

There would be no happy ending to either of our massages. Instead, my slight dozing off abruptly came to an end when he called out my last name to see how I liked it. With a final push against my lower back that almost made me moan as if I were coming, I thanked the masseuse, and gathered my things. In the waiting area Christoffer stood, arms flailing as he tried to get directions to a bar where we’d find trouble. But we were in Chinatown, not Thailand and we didn’t have the energy to fight the Staten Island crowds at whatever the massage parlor owner deemed “hip.”

Instead we bought ingredients for omelets the next morning and headed to my apartment. My skin was still damp with humidity.

A week later, with Hurricane Irene having created a mass hysteria that New York hadn’t seen since the Christmas before, he stood before me in his Bjorn Borg underwear. My fingertips were slightly ripped from the ribbed cap of the whiskey bottle I had tried to destroy, the whiskey he bottle he clutched like a baby. I wanted to tell him I was scared to be alone, that I was scared to sit in the dark should the lights go out and my flashlight, the one I had had since college, failed me. It didn’t matter; he had made other plans and I was not part of them. I was not his concern.

Before I could leave I unleashed my fury; before I could smack myself into silence, I let the alcohol, the fucking alcohol that would eventually be the death of me, unravel like a torn ribbon that has no place in a performance, unwrap itself against him. In that moment, I loved him less.

As he opened the door, he tucked a jar in my bag and said “just in case.” I was not his concern.

I could have waited until I got outside to stand under the overcast skies to see what that jar was, or I could have, out of dramatic habit thrown it against the floor and made a run for it. Instead three stairs down, I saw it was almond butter and brought it back to him. I wasn’t sure how to word it, but I knew he needed it more than I did. I could pretend I never gave it back to him, I could pretend I never tried to throw the whiskey; I could pretend I couldn’t recall the way he looked in his underwear that morning, or the smell of Mott Street in August, or the comparison of his arm in mine to that of a child… I could pretend. Because as he told me himself, I’m far from stable and in some ways that saves me.