Brautigan
You are naked, and when I met you, you didn’t drink so much. “Why are you always worrying about the future?” you ask. I can only assume you’re addressing me. I once grabbed your chin and pulled your face in the direction of mine, forcing eye contact, and you looked as though you might spit on my hand. I laughed at you. I couldn’t compare you to any great film director or philosopher in moments like those, though I know that’s what you’d want.
Waiting for my response is out of the question, and even in the dark, I can see you shaking your head like there’s something of great value waiting to come out, something that’s about to blow my mind, something of catastrophic importance. You need a haircut. There is incense burning on the night stand, also sprinkled with my cigarette ash and the surface has the stick of the Atlantic Ocean air in the evening. I want to rip your teeth out, one by one, and throw them in the fish tank. You may never want to speak again.
I rake my hands through my hair, and my fingers get stuck halfway through. Leaning my head back, arching my back to look inside the fish tank, neon and glowing as dull as the sex we just had, I look at the thing with the spikes, drifting across the blue pebbles, meandering through the fake sea tangles. The thing is black, and looks much like a porcupine, except spherical, without a head. I feel sorry that it has to listen to Dave Matthews Band.
“Tell me,” you say, “tell me why you can’t stop thinking about the future?”
“Does it have a name?” I ask. You sigh. I’ve learned that the sigh only means that I’ve said something juvenile, and my senses are surely clouded by meaningless bullshit. “The spiky thing,” I say, “Can it see us?”
When I met you, you followed me outside and said that a girl as pretty as myself should never stand outside alone. You thought I wanted you to follow me.
“The fucking spiky thing doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t even have eyes,” you say. “Besides, when you’re my age, you’ll understand that the future is irrelevant. You’re a god damn pessimist.”
I am sticky and uninvited, and this time, I don’t say anything to appease you. “Is this salt water?” I ask, running my hand along the outside of the tank. You take a furious swig of cheap whiskey, feigning class. I sleep on the couch that night.
- Angela Farrell
