I hated doing this, going to colleges to talk about myself and what I thought about my books. I didn't really think much about my books, I just wrote them for fuck's sake. I didn't care about feminism or platforms.
The class was hushed, quashed into submission by my presence and the professor's sudden appearance in the light-wooded auditorium. It was just like the rest of them, risers with long tables where the students arranged themselves amongst their own friends or their ownsomes.
The sharply greyed professor began to speak about me, and I couldn't stop myself from flying away while my face kept a stoic smile plastered. My head nodded in time to some secret beat, agreeing to whatever it was that the old man said about me.
I missed my cue. Silence hung.
In that moment, she burst in. She tried to sneak in, but there was something about her. Maybe it was her hair that stuck out in bold strokes of red lighting, or maybe it was that tangible feeling of scatter-brained stress, or the smell of her absent-mindedness, a dark cloying thing that weaved around the ankles and slunk into the nostrils.
She was disruptive, and there was something I couldn't shake from the moment she came.
It didn't disturb my presentation too much, these things were memorized. I could say what I always said but concentrate on her.
I stared, but she never noticed, her eyes stared at the board behind me but were glazed. She escaped from this place, and I worried for a moment if she were a writer too, but I didn't want to spoil her so soon.
I accidentally said something about a female character and became identified as feminist. The class ended before that identification solidified, and I felt myself waking up as most of the students left the place.
I wanted to tell them that I couldn't take questions, I never did before-but she was there and I just wanted to see- maybe break my own heart again- enjoy the ride for a short bit. I went through the motions of answering the other's questions, and then there she was, but some freak, the last one to have questions for me.
The professor was there still, frowning for the chance at asking his own questions and my throat began to tighten with too much attention.
"-just wanted to apologize for being late." Her voice was husky and nasally like she had a cold.
It should have been unattractive.
"It's ok, you didn't miss any of my speech." I hawed out, my voice low but somehow grating with that asanine observation.
The girl- no- woman fidgeted for a moment and looked akwardly at the glooming professor chaperoning us. So I did it.
"Would you like tea?" I asked.
I don't like tea.
Her face didn't brighten. She didn't look embarrassed. Or angry. She just nodded once, curtly, and left as the professor scuttled over to me, where I stood just below the stage where I had reeled off my memorized speech for the rest of the class. His eyebrows were knotted and his face, curiously free from wrinkles except for about the eyes.
"She's a very intelligent student." He said, examining my face.
"She's an interesting woman." I answered, timid about the insinuation towards my intent.
The professor's eyebrows crunched tighter and a deep frown pulled his features towards his slim nose.
"Well, I couldn't do it," he shrugged, his face relenting, "-did you get a tour of the campus?"
And we returned ot the usual talk, I made it short. Answering with only a few words, concentrating on her. My escape came quickly that way, and I found her waiting outside, near the entrance to the cafeteria where windows dropping from floor to ceiling gave students a fantastic view of the dying trees planted in neat parcels and surrounded by carefully planned shrubbery and perhaps a simple bulb-flower. It was raining lightly, the patter more audiable once it tapped against the concrete or asphault surrounding the college.
"Not here." Was all she said.
I followed her from the campus, down the street, past enough cafes and shops to know.
She took me to a place where lives stacked one on top of the other and balconies that fit only two chairs hung over us, empty in the cool air and rain.
Her apartment was small. Just right, with a bedroom, bathroom, and balcony. There weren't any decorations, no plants, nothing to mask the generic white wall-painting and deep gray carpet. It was just a barely lived sort of emptiness, the walls were trimmed with books, mostly textbooks in every subject, and piles of them were neatly arranged throughout the room, nudged up against the dilapidated couch, leaning against the half-wall which separated the kitchenette from the rest of the living room, scattered in neat piles to create a sort of maze leading towards what I assumed was the bedroom.
"You don't really want tea." She said, standing in the doorway to her kitchenette, arms crossed, but her face calm.
Just staring.
"No. I usually drink coffee. Reall, creamer." I said, standing in the middle of her living room, just watching her.
She nodded once.
I found I was having sex to forget. As I strove to lose myself in her skin, breasts, thighs, and sounds, I only saw that other being. I strove harder. She met me with everything; I realized she was trying to forget too. Her hips, her smoked voice almost cried a name, her hands reached eagerly but hesitated when she found me. Suprised. She tried to close her eyes, but I knew she saw the Other too. Likely the one who had taken the decoration away, the one who left dusty outlines on the walls.
I stopped.
"She broke my heart. Shattered it in the way you read in books and poems. I want it to stop, to use you to make it stop. But it's not working." I blurted.
I pulled away from her, but staid over her, looking down at that strange face that had lost the look of false pleasure.
"Yeah, me too. But I can use you. I'm young enough to forget. And you-" She looked up at the ceiling.
"I choose you." I finished her sentence.
She didn't look at me, her eyes blinked too fast.
"Listen, we both want the same thing-" I continued, "-just from different people."
"It isn't going to happen, just make do." She answered, trying to touch me.
I grabbed her hand and caressed the palm as she lay beneath me.
"Let's pretend," I suggested softly.
She still didn't look at me, but her hand gripped me tightly. She nodded once.
I became her Other, someone surprisingly similar to my own. I touched her as the Other, kissed her as the Other and fucked her as the Other, as The Ex. I understood this Other so well I forgot mine and myself.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes glowed softly. She curled around me, stroking my short black hair. After a while, she brought in water and we split a menthol cigarette since I had quit.
"You from around here?" She demanded after the glow faded.
"No-" I answered as I took a drag, "-I live an hour away. I don't care for places by colleges- too many people bug me, things are too fake and unexamined- progressive without thought. You know?"
She took a drag and made a smile.
"You are old."
I pressed my naked shoulder against her own. A light knock.
"I'm not stupid, is what you mean." I said, holding my hand out to smoke.
She took another drag, then passed it to me.
"You mean not hopeful, or not naive." She stated.
"I don't like college towns."
"Well, I don't have a car." She answered with some bite.
I looked over at her, one eyebrow raised, mocking that look the professor had given me.
"I like you," She continued, pulling the cigarette from me, "-I want to keep seeing you."
I tossed her words in my head, then shook it.
"You liked who I pretended to be, you want to keep seeing your ex." I said slowly.
She snorted.
"I'll take a bus to you. We'll go on a date. No sex. You'll see, I like you." She answered, crossing her arms and glancing at me from the side.
"We'll see." I answered, looking back towards her living room.
"Yeah, you'll see."
I finished the cigarette and tried to fight the sadness of this. Then I shrugged. Let the young believe what they will, I'll put no hope in it.
She came. Again. And again. And again.
