Can't Stop Remembering

by Alithea Howes

I’m back in San Francisco, the city of my birth, and I’m really not sure why. I was first dragged here naked and screaming, why should I return any other way?

I came here of my own accord though. I thought it would be fun. I’d see some old friends, fuck some old flames, what’s not to love? I’ll tell you what’s not to love: My friends are all busy, my flames all have girlfriends and my goddamn cell phone’s dead. So all there is to do is wander around this tired out city and marvel at it’s fuckshop of a subway system. This city feels haunted to me. But the person who haunts it is still very much alive.

Dylan Fox with his gasflame eyes, greaser hair and indelible smoking habit. He’s around here somewhere.
And he never wants to see me again. It hardly seems fair. I see him everywhere, in every boy I date. His eyes in this one, his smoking in that one, his rampant workaholism in each and every one of them. The problem with a sixteen year old dating a 23 year old isn’t that he’s taking advantage of her, it’s that he’s creating a sexual archetype in her mind and she doesn’t get to return the favor. It’s just not fair.

Don’t look at me like that. He wasn’t taking advantage of me. He moved to New York for me I think it’s fair to assume his intentions were honorable. If only mine had been. That’s not fair, my intentions were honorable, I wanted to marry him. At some point.
 But not when I was 22 and not after I realized that I’d never be happy only loving one person for the rest of my life. I loved him deeply and I still do but not so much that I would trade it for all the other loves I’ve had because we broke up.

Of course, the way this trip is going I’m certain I’m going to run into him. I’ll walk into a comic book store or, sit down to lunch, or crash into him while walking from one place to the other. And as I’m about to start screaming at a BART subway map I’ll see him and involuntarily exclaim “Oh give me a break!”
“Althea?” He’ll say. He never could say my name right.
“Yep.” I’ll reply. “I told you, I fucking told you!
You can’t cut me out of your life because we are destined to run into each other. Our paths do not part, not really. We’re always in the same place, running into the same people. Two guys I had a threesome with bumped into each other in YOUR favorite bar ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY for christsakes!
This is how shit goes down in our crazy little world.
So did you do what I told you to? Did you make your life so good that it took the sting out of losing me?
Because that’s what I did and though I still miss you and love you I’m able to move on with my life and still speak to you without breaking down and questioning my whole existence. So, did you do that?
Dylan: Yes. In fact,this is my fiancee.
Alithea: Well fuck, I didn’t mean do THAT!

Or maybe it’ll be more bittersweet and he won’t have gotten his life together or he will have just enough to not, like, run when he sees me and he’ll be all.
Dylan: Althea? What are you doing here?
Alithea: Umm... shopping?
Dylan: No, I mean, what are you doing HERE?!
Alithea: Um, well, I wanted to come out for the week and, like, catch up and see old friends and stuff.
Dylan: and you can afford this?
Alithea: Yeah, um, my financial situation has changed a lot since I last saw you. I’m a dominatrix now and the money isn’t amazing but it’s pretty good. I’m getting by and I still have time to do art and perform and stuff.
Dylan: Really? Wow. So you’ve been in plays and stuff?
Alithea: Well, no, burlesque mostly, and I read my stuff at an erotica night.
Dylan: Oh, but you’re getting your stuff into galleries?
Alithea: Well... you know bars mostly. But it’s a start.
Dylan: Oh, well, that’s good.
Alithea: Yeah. And what about you? What have you been up to?
Erik: I’m about to have a baby actually.
Alithea: Oh fuck!

These meetings never really go well in my head.
Something horrible and depressing always happens. I still want it to happen though. I want to know he still exists. I want him to know I still exist.
There’s something bizarre about being this close to him but not close at all. To be two ghosts moving in the same space almost but but never meeting.

I should know where he is. I can almost smell him. I should be able to just sniff him out the way a displaced junkie sniffs out heroin. Because when you love someone, when you fuck them, your body tracks their movements. When they walk into a room you’re already in your eyes involuntarily dart to them and you don’t just know, you feel where they are in the room. And having loved and fucked him so much and so long that I feel like I should feel him somewhere in this city and he should feel me. So I look for him.
I court this collision. I go to places he might be or frequent and every time he’s not there I want to leave some unmistakable and irrefutable proof that I was there. I want to leave some thing, a note, a
scent, a ghost. Some kind of communion with him.
The same way you feel that chill in a historic building as you think “100 years ago someone touched this very window sill before they jumped to escape the shirtwaist fire.” I want him to touch a book or a bar top and know “Alithea was here. I missed her by a day, an hour, 10 minutes.” but even if he did I’d never know.

Everything in my life now that I love he would hate.
He would hate the fact that I’m a dominatrix. He would hate the fact that I have a burlesque show where I poledance and flirt with EVERYONE till all hours and he would hate the people I’ve loved by virtue of the fact that I loved them. He would hate this show if I ever wrote about someone other than him. And I totally have.
 
He would think all these things were awesome if someone else did them, but not his girlfriend. Not the little girl he loved and that’s what I was when he loved me. A little girl.
Some part of me is still his little girl though and that part of me want his approval. I want to hold up the finger-painting of my life and say.
“Daddy, isn’t it pretty?!” and I want him to say yes.
 Instead he says “You ruined my life, never speak to me again!”

 There’s one scenario in my mind that doesn’t go wrong. I mean, in my head it doesn’t go wrong. I’m sure it would if there was some bizarre world in which it actually happened. And in this scenario he sees me and I see him and we cant help but walk towards each other and both of us are too flabbergasted to speak, all we do is kiss. Instantly, irrevocably, as though we have absolutely no say in the matter. And it kind of seems like we don’t. He pushed me against whatever we’re up against a building, a bookshelf, a picnic table in his favorite beergarden. I feel his permanent erection through his tight blue jeans and feel his teeth scraping my tongue. And it’s sad and comfortable and angry and hot as all fuck and things are knocked over in the process and we’re suddenly fucking on a table or desk or stack of comic books.

And just like when I was sixteen I suck his cock better than anyone else and just like the first time we kissed he holds me tighter than I’ve ever felt.
There is no sound in the world but the ones we make, kicking things over, knocking into walls, moaning, screaming, pounding and crying. and I taste his tobacco smoke breath and feel at home against his skinny ribs and bay blue eyes. He is buried in my hair, I am locked around his waist. It’s hard and harsh, it’s new york city fucking, it’s gritty and hungry, hot and cold. And it feels so goddamned good I think I might die.

When he comes it’s like a punch in the gut. He makes a short hurt sound like a sob. My orgasm is clenching and tearstained, his is more a loss than a release.
His teeth are like rusty blades in my skin as he shutters against me sobbing aftershocks rocking his body, tears collecting in my hair.

I light a cigarette for him and wait for him to take it. I am both lonely and at home in his arms. I am familiar in the loss and longing I’ve always felt with him or at least whenever things were good which I suppose is a relatively loose term in this situation.
My love for him has always hurt in some way and the cure was always in his poison. And it’s a poison I find I still crave. He takes the cigarette and sucks it quickly, brushing tears away from his stubbled cheek. I envy the tar in his lungs. They will never be parted.

I guess that’s not really a good way for that scenario to go. My fantasy got a little... realistic there.
It was as big a surprise for me as it was for you, trust me. But, strangely that’s what I want. I want him back in my life, painful though it may be. It seems preferable to pretending he doesn’t exist. It’s like pretending part of me doesn’t exist. I feel like his cells are still inside me and they’re knocking around in my veins like ghosts in an abandoned house.
I want him to remember me. Because I physically can’t stop remembering him.

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