The Way Girls Feel About Boys

Puddle

Here’s how I want it to be:

He comes back to town in a few weeks- just long enough to bring me to the breaking point of yearning but not so long that I forget the desire. Then, without speaking a word to one another, he grabs me by the waist and kisses me. Movie kiss. It’s a slow, long, passionate kiss and I’m so taken aback by it that at first my arms hang limp at my sides. Maybe I drop the pen that I was holding in my hand. No. Maybe I drop the glass of juice that I was holding in my hand and it spills, puddling red liquid at our feet. We assume this warm wetness is something we’ve created with our bodies; Something internal rising up from our toes. My back bends back slightly as I breathe him in. I bite his bottom lip. “I’ve been thinking about that for a long time,” he says. “Really?” I question. “Yeah. Oh yeah.”

Here’s how it will be:

I will never see him again.

Scent

Would you turn down an inconvenient job in a time of recession? Well, most people wouldn’t have the option to say no….

Not too long ago, I left for five weeks to work in Michigan. But this job came at a very inconvenient time- right when me and my friend and I were discovering that our late-night conversations, our ability to create art together, and the way we both felt after I spent the night with another boy, all meant we were perhaps more than just friends.

Would you be jealous if I said my job was to shop? Well, some girls would be…

So there I was in the Gap, and upon my exit, I recognize the cologne bottle on the display table.

Would you think me creepy if I said I knew it was his scent because I’d peeked into his medicine cabinet, sniffed bottles, examined prescriptions, and made assumptions about him based on the current condition of his toothbrush? Well, some people would…

I spritzed it on myself. And then proceeded to float around the mall the rest of the afternoon, like I was wrapped in the sun’s corona. At night, I laid the shirt next to me, settled into the unfamiliar sheets on the unfamiliar bed, feeling warm and at home.

Would you feel empathy for me if I said I had to go into the Gap several times over the duration of my trip? Well, some people would…

Every time I excited the store, I sprayed myself with longer, more drawn out spritzes of the Eau De My Man. But slowly, after a while, the scent started to become a bit overwhelming. It eventually started turn my stomach. The more I sprayed, the less time I could spend in the clothes. I would have to return to my temporary apartment and strip off the shirt his scent was so deeply embedded in. Eventually, he made me sick.

Would I be lying if I claimed this wasn’t a metaphor? Well, probably…

To the Boy I Have Yet to Know

To the boy I have yet to know:

I’m most excited about the mornings. The mornings we wake up to the sun, and no matter what a lovely night we’ve had previous, the anticipation of another day makes our chests nearly rupture. And you pull me into you so we adjust, my head buried in your beard, my hand stroking the curls on your body, our legs entwined, and we fall back asleep.

Ps: (I promise to do my best to always smell like coconut.)

Signed,

Yours already

Sleeping Arrangements

The lights are off. I lay in my bed and she lays on my couch, only ten feet from one another. The skylights cast rectangular cutouts of moonlight in a ladder-pattern down the length of the studio.

“Oh my gosh. He was so cute. No. He wasn’t even cute. He was, like sexy.”

“Yeah. He was definitely what you’d call sexy.”

“He was, like, rugged sexy.”

“Yeah. He was like rugged sexy but also gentle sexy.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. For sure.”

The two of us fall asleep on different pieces of furniture, with our separate bodies and our separate minds, our opposite shades of hair, our toenails painted two different colors, our contrary interests and opinions on movies, books, lifestyles, and often even boys, and my hopes which equal her fears, and her hopes which translate into my fears, but somehow we fall asleep, thinking the same thoughts, hugging our pillows in the same manner, wishing for the same dreams that night…

Jealousy

There was a boy I used to be involved with. (And when I speak of jealousy, please keep in mind it’s not the kind of jealousy which is tinted red and green but instead the kind of jealousy which is sepia toned; the color of memories stored in worn out photographs and old slides that don’t belong to you but to your aunt or your friends parents and have been stored, untouched, in a closet for twenty years…) This boy found another girl to love. Sometimes he speaks of their sex. Sometimes he speaks of the way in which, when they’re in bed together, he looks into her eyes and feels both physically and mentally a part of her. He speaks of collision and combination and combustion. And that makes me feel jealous.

…And Counting

There are eight boys on my list. Some girls have fifteen. Some have more. Some guys have many many more. And some guys only have one. But these names are only the tiles, and what this list leaves out is the grout.