Chapter 31
Heaven is this bed. It’s a place on earth. You’re asleep and I’m awake. Buzzing. I’m too happy, too proud. I did it, Vail. I proved the cynics wrong and I saved us and I can’t sleep. I need to do a victory lap. Strut my stuff and mark your place with my scent.
Gingerly, in honor of our new best friends, I leave our nest to go into your shared “living” space.
Oof. You and Cynthia are effing slobs, but you always have good snacks in the fridge, even if I do have to check the expiration dates.
I wonder if I’ll move into your place or if you’ll move into mine, or if we’ll go and find a new place together.
What a thing it is, Vail. To plant my bare ass on your couch and eat the rest of your Tasti D-Lite with a melted, dented spatula.
Who does that? Who saves fake ice cream in the fridge?
Girls.
God, I love you. And it’s another first. No more Gently, Joseph.
Tonight, you wanted to be the big spoon—you really fucking love me—and I am buying you a new spatula tomorrow.
I don’t have to worry anymore. You needed to meet someone from my past who isn’t a dick like Mooney, and I gave that to you.
I’m still hungry so I get off your icky sofa and open the freezer.
It’s an igloo. You and Cynthia don’t fucking defrost it the way you need to with old appliances, and again I have to laugh.
Girls.
The Lean Cuisines are expired—that’s a long fucking time to hold on to powder-based Alfredo—but there’s a pint of Ben they can make a man explode. I am done. Dead.
I drop the pictures and they splatter all over your floor and my body sinks through the living room, crushing everyone below us.
My balls drop, my soul drops. Your living room isn’t sunken, but it’s getting there.
Is this just fucking life? Is it the way of all living rooms?
Relationships? I sit on the sofa and take in the evidence of the crime scene.
The pictures are all exposed and now they’re out of order, but the story is there.
You really did this to me, Vail. You traded your plastic birthday girl crown for Dick’s fucking dog tags.
You got down on your knees for him. You put him in your mouth.
You let him take pictures of you and no.
That’s not you. Not Miss Lonely sleeping in your bed fifteen feet away, dreaming of baguettes with me in France.
Okay. I gotta find the light, the space to breathe and go on.
There is context. It was your birthday. You were drunk.
I know Dick. Dick is a dick. And I may as well have set the two of you up by standing you up IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS.
Turning twenty-five made you crazy, and I’m crazy.
I never should’ve opened the fucking envelope.
You would die of a shame-induced heart attack if you knew I found the pictures.
You care about me. Now is now. Be here now.
But still my heart beats. The lion in the cage that won’t be tamed, can’t be tamed.
You can’t unsuck Dick’s dick, and I can’t unsee the Dick pics.
I could tear them up or dump them in the East Fucking River or shred them and eat them, but they would still be here.
Kinda like his dead brother’s dog tags. Some things just never disappear.
Think, Joe, think. I clean up. I gather the Dick pics and shove them back into the envelope, back under the sofa.
I close my eyes. Still I see them, you and him.
Pop Rocks. I want to scream but I can’t scream and I don’t scream for ice cream.
I’m a Talking Head; I Stop Making Sense.
There should be a way to get out of your own head, an escape hatch with a button that you push when you need to not be you for a few fucking minutes.
I pick up your little book of misunderstood song lyrics because something needs to take me away from all this, but “Bennie and the Jets” don’t do shit.
Nothing can help. U were a slave to Dick, and he betrayed me and you betrayed me and is it me? Am I just not a real fucking person to anyone in this real fucking world?
Here come the tears and no. Fuck that. I won’t play the victim.
I messed it up, Vail. I failed you when I followed Dick’s advice instead of my own fucking heart.
I know you’re not my boyfriend. You drove me nuts with that shit and then I drove you nuts.
I am the reason for the season. The blame is on me.
I slap my own face. Bad Joe. Dumb Joe. How could I do this to you?
I rejected you in slow motion in your colosseum at the peak of your crisis in front of all your jerk friends.
You were waiting for me to waltz in and take you away from semantics and tequila shots and theories on Jann Fucking Wenner.
You were hurt and half-dead. Too insecure to call me.
Too unsure of us to believe in us, to put yourself out there.
If I hadn’t been such a pussy, Dick wouldn’t have had a chance to be such a dick.
Do you ever do this, Vail? Am I weird? I put myself into your combat boots without even knowing what I am doing, but do you do that for me?
Do you put yourself in my shoes?
You murmur from the other side of the door, the place formerly known as heaven. “Joe?”
I am your dog. I come when called. I climb into the bed with you.
There is nothing for me to do or say. Talks like this can’t happen in the wee hours.
You roll over, and I comply. I am the big spoon again, the one that holds on to the little spoon because it just can’t fucking help it, because even after what the filthy, wounded selfish little spoon did—you cheated on me, you abandoned me—well, even after all that, the spoon still fits.
That’s love. It’s inevitable when it’s real and my sad arms are too limp to hold you properly tonight.
You wiggle. You squirm. “Babe,” you say. “Not so tight, okay?”