Polaroid, 2006
Part one of a longer running draft of a novella entitled SEVEN CITIES
New York, New York
Carole, 2006
It was my first time in New York. I was nineteen. My college roommate was rich. She paid for the roundtrip ticket from LAX to JFK. Skyline sunrises greeted us from my sister’s apartment window which was overlooking Central Park. We were on spring break. We finally had our fake IDs shipped from China. I was in heaven.
Instead of Tijuana, we sought after something a bit more sophisticated. What we got was something chilly. March on the east coast is still hell, somehow I forgot that quickly. The way it’s supposed to be spring but it never is. It’s either a perpetual winter with roads needing salt or eternal sunshine with those same roads under construction.
I was in a club in the Lower East Side when I was high on something I snorted, a tablet ingested, a pill swallowed, excessive liquor consumption. I was intoxicated in the LES when I thought of my father and Teddy. I couldn’t see my dad so I ran out of the club. Marilyn and our mutual friend were grabbing a round of shots. My sister was dancing with her friends. I had no choice. I Irish goodbye’d and fled to a yellow cab with very little money and minimal understanding of where I was going. I didn’t fully understand where Teddy lived. With my hands fidgeting in my purse, looking for an envelope to a Christmas Card he sent me this past year. “I miss you. I wish we could play in the snow like when we were kids.” I showed the cab driver the address written in his sloppy pen. I pointed to the address and said “here!” We were on our way. Heaven.
I was in the cab for 25 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic on a Saturday night. I was monstrously driven from within to reach this man who I hadn’t spoken to in two years. Only holiday cards exchanged and happy birthday text messages mindlessly shared. He didn’t know that I was in New York. I didn’t even know if he was in New York or home or had another girl over. I didn’t even know if he even thought of me, but I didn’t have cogent thoughts after the damage I had done to my brain that night. I threw a twenty and a ten through the little window and tripped getting out of the cab, causing a few sequins to fall from my mini dress.
I buzzed 4R and I heard his voice for the first time in two years.
“Hello?”
“Teddy, Teddy, is this Teddy?”
He laughed and said yeah. He asked who I was. His voice wrapped me up like a snug thick knit blanket. The depth and rasp kept me warm.
“It’s Carole.”
“What the fuck?” I heard the buzzer go and I ran through the door. I climbed four flights in strappy 6-inch heels. I got to the door and he was standing in the doorway. His arms were crossed while wearing a burgundy fisherman’s sweater and gym shorts. I wish he was holding a book, I pretend that he was holding a copy of Swann’s Way in my memory but the truth was that he was holding an XBOX controller. A backwards baseball cap firmly sat on his head, the hair sprouting beneath, curling over. In hindsight, I find romance in reality. The outfit made no sense, he looked like a boy living in the big city. I remember him differently.
I remember him looking me up and down. I was two or three years older, I was thinner, I had a different style, different than before. He had never seen me drunk before. He never saw me blonde. There we were standing in front of each other. Familiar face with uncertain spirit. Questions I wanted to ask him but I didn’t have the language at nineteen. Perhaps I still don’t.
“You’re blonde!”
“I am!”
“Since when?”
“Since last year.”
He wrapped his arms around me like it had all worked out. How did my presence not unnerve him? He was fervid and unwavering. He continued to inadvertently break my heart.
“How much have you had to drink?” He whispered while inhaling the fragrance of my hair.
“A bit.” I tried to hold my voice steady. Don’t let him see me sweat, I thought. Play it cool, I prayed.
“So does that mean you want a glass of water or a beer.”
“Maybe both?” I looked at him and duplicitously pouted my lips.
“Best of both worlds.” He led me in.
I stumbled through the living room and he asked me to take my shoes off. I could barely reach the straps without falling. Had he ever seen me in heels before that moment? I asked him for help and he lifted me out of the shoes. It unsettled me how we effortlessly fell into our roles from high school. I didn’t even know if he was single. He didn’t know if I was single. The way he lifted me reminded me of when we were running on the shoreline of the river, the way he carried me and then threw me in the water which caused me to get sick because it was too cold that day. He carried me to the sofa and walked into the kitchen. I lounged there and slid into the cushions like I was trying to disappear. I looked around the apartment. Technically, it was a stunning apartment, but it was clear a boy lived there. The remote controllers were all in a line and candles were lit to hide the smell, which it did poorly. A weed bowl and a pack of cigarettes sat at the edge of the table.
“When did you start smoking?”
“In college,” he said, “bad choice.”
“Whatever” I flashed my cigarette pack from my handbag.
He smoked Camel Crushes which I thought were a weird choice to the Marlboro lights that slid gently back toward the silk lining of my purse. Framed photos with friends sat on the side table with a little bowl that held his wallet and keys. A backpack with a work laptop leaned against the table leg. Teddy walked out with a beer can in the nook of his arm, a glass of water in one hand, and a reheated slice of pizza in the other.
“Here, you’re going to need this.”
“Thank you,” I was ashamed of how clearly intoxicated I was. I thought I was hiding it well.. He sat down next to me and watched me eat the slice of pizza. Tomato sauce fell on the sequins of my already damaged dress.
“Babe,” he laughed. Call me that name moved so swiftly from his mouth.
“I’ve clearly seen better days.” I laughed.
This was all too familiar. This was what I wanted but at the same time I knew that what I wanted was not necessarily common sense. We hadn’t spoken in years, we shouldn’t pick up where we left off so easily. The way I fell into being 16 with him made my skin prickle and crawl.
We were kids. We were children on our own.
He asked me how LA was treating me. I told him it was paradise. I loved the sunshine. It was true, but New York was so different. It was wild in comparison. I experienced the city as a pressure cooker while LA was an endless drive down strip malls of opportunity. It was comfortable and spacious. The only pressure I felt out there was trying to find parking. Being in this apartment with Teddy made me so aware that I was burning.
I asked him how New York was treating him. He shrugged his shoulders and told me his time was coming to a close. He was leaving in May, before the summer. He was moving to Shanghai for work. He told me what he did for work, but I couldn’t retain the information. It didn’t make sense to me. What finally made sense to me was his switch in attitude. He started to quiver in my presence, giving me his most authentic self.
“How’s your mom been?” he asked me, knowing the answer would be troubling.
“She’s better, she has seen better days, but she’s also been worse. We’re all doing well, considering.”
“Your sister?” He didn’t want to ask about her.
“She’s thriving in New York,” a sudden pause followed by “Do you miss her?”
“Not like I miss you.” I turned away, resisting a forbidden smile.
A sudden pause.
“You look great. You look so different.”
“It’s just the blonde. I’m still pretty the same.”
“Nah,” he said, “you’ve changed somewhat.”
I laughed without ease. “Maybe so.”
A sudden pause.
“How’re your folks?”
“They’re good, they ask about you.”
“What do you say?”
“I say you’re good.”
“How would you know?”
“If you weren’t fine you’d tell me, tonight I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“You drunkenly found yourself here. How did you get my address?”
“Your Christmas card is in my purse.”
“You carry it?”
“Yes.” I didn’t lie when I should have. Honesty was instinctual.
A long silence lingered from the admission, only one thing left to do.
We looked at each other for far too long. He asked if he could kiss me. I said yes with hesitation. I didn’t want him to think this was all I wanted. My impulse, my malaise, my ennui led me into the cab, but I wanted to see him more than I wanted to crawl into his bed.
Despite my internal battle, I allowed him to carry me to the bed. He took off my dress, more sequins fell from the hem. His touch forced me awake. It nearly made me cry. It was the comfort I needed. I was desperate for his touch. In college, when I had sex with guys it was this feeling I was chasing. I once called it love. Now I call it reverence.
Teddy, 2006
The first thing I saw was blonde hair flowing in slow motion. She wasn’t running up the stairs, she was hopping like an Easter bunny. Her arms were jutting as she bolted up the stairs. I could hear the clicking of heels, something she would have never worn three years ago. She turned and looked at me like a feverish animal. Her hair was messy, getting stuck in her red lipstick. A shade of red she would have never worn when we initially met in school.
All I could utter was “you’re blonde.” She was a completely different person. She was not where I left her. Los Angeles had digested her and turned her into something new. Not better, not worse - she was completely different. She was intoxicated and stared at me with intention. I liked this about her. She could not deny desire. I remember her shoplifting a tee shirt from Aeropostale when she was a freshman in high school. She needed it, she didn’t have the funds, she took it. She could not resist what she wanted and neither could I. However, I couldn’t tell what I wanted more. Did I want to rip off her clothes or did I want to hand her a video game controller like old times? I wondered if I still had Spyro.
She glistened under the fluorescent lights of the hallway. She smiled at me and I felt a lump in my throat that I could not swallow down. I didn’t want to swallow in fear that she would hear my fear and need. She could reject me at any moment. She ran into me with an embrace, as she got closer I noticed three things. One: her pupils were dilated. Two: her breath smelled like vodka. Three: her jacket smelled like cigarette smoke. Once again, she is not where I left her in 2004. She said hi to me like a cat purring. I gripped the remote controller tightly. I was short circuiting, trying to hold my composure. I hadn’t had sex in weeks. Work had taken over my life. My friends partied every night while I sat in an office like a prisoner.
My life at the time was hell. I was working hard for a promotion I didn’t deserve or want. I was dying to get out of New York and the time was getting closer and closer. New city and life away from the hell I had been living here. Michelle was gone. My mother was sick. I didn’t want to think about either situation anymore. I wanted to go to clubs in Shanghai at night and meet girls who didn’t speak English and take them home.
When I let her into my apartment I was nervous. I tried to remember how to talk to her. In this light, I tried to express aloofness. I abandoned our relationship in a certain light. It wasn’t that it stopped feeling important to me. It had just become too complicated to come with me into the next phase of my life. My focus had to remain in New York. I couldn’t worry about the girl back home. I didn’t worry because I always knew it would come to this. Not her at my doorstep, but her being blonde, her in sequins, her in college - inching closer and closer to forgetting.
Her coming to my doorstep wasn’t a sign to me that she missed me, it was a sign that soon she wouldn’t miss me at all. She wasn’t here to say hello to me. She wasn’t even here to say goodbye to me. She was toeing a line that she would soon cross. She was on her way to meeting new people, new men, new dreams. I was soon to be a chapter closed, as I had closed my chapter with her.
I couldn’t believe she even thought of me when she came all the way to Manhattan. She was so beautiful as she struggled to undo the straps of her heels. Her hair was falling over her face as she laughed fighting with her ankles while clinging to the wall. She didn’t drink when we were in school so this was a version of her I was not accustomed to. She seemed lighter. Renewed. A new human being.
I walked into the kitchen to grab a PBR, a glass of water, and a pepperoni slice sitting in a pizza box from Vicenzo’s. I could hear her long nails clicking on her phone. I turned and looked at her through the doorway and saw long red nails, clearly applied to her fingers at an Angeleno salon. She was a blonde, bubbly, LA girl. No longer the red-headed American girl I have committed to memory. She smiled as I walked out with the slice of pizza.
“I am so hungry, I haven’t eaten much since getting in.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a few days.”
She snatched the slice from my hand like a subway rat. I watched tomato sauce splotch the side of her dress. She laughed. A little sliver of the girl I knew I found in that smile. I don’t really remember what else we talked about that night, I can’t imagine much. That night seems to be intertwined with our beginning. How we first met in youth.
I didn’t even drink that night, but somehow I overcame my shyness. I carried her to bed and we had sex several times that night. I was hoping to show her new tricks, but she seemed to show me that I was not the last man that she was with. She did this thing with her legs that conveyed a new found flexibility. Heaven.
She cried after, something that made me nervous. I asked her if I did something wrong. She just said she was happy to see someone who knew her. I was relieved. She stopped crying and kissed me and then got on top of me and asked to go again. After the final time we fell asleep with the lights on. The video game on my television was on pause all night.
I woke up that morning to cars outside and the sun rising. There was lipstick on my pillow case. Carole’s mouth was agape, snoring, lipstick smeared on her face, drool pooling the indentation of the pillow. I moved from the bed slowly, I let her sleep. I made the coffee. I did the push ups. I called my mother from the fire escape. I came in and she was still asleep. I let her sleep.
I remembered thinking how quickly she fell asleep when we would watch movies at her parent’s house. I remembered how she would be out like a light before we were half way through the movie. Here she was. No movie. No parents. No Ohio. New York. We weren’t kids anymore.
I grabbed my mother’s polaroid camera she gave me. I went to snap a photo but my phone rang and I left the camera on the edge of the bed, I became distracted. I left a note for her with a key to lock up. Leave it under the mat I wrote. I told her to come see me before she flew back home. She never did.
When I came home the bed was made. The pillowcases were in the hamper. She left a note that apologized for the mess. She said she needed to learn to wash her face before going to bed. I went to the cupboard to grab a glass and found a polaroid three days later. A polaroid she had taken for me. Messy blonde hair. Covers down to her hips. Lipstick stained pillow case. Faceless with her tits greeting my eyes. I loved her body. I never thought I’d see her again.
Carole, 2006
Car alarms and sunlight disturbed me into existence. I remember that morning vividly. I called Marilyn and put her on speaker phone. She was worried about the disappearing act I pulled. I told her I was fine. I told her I met a guy at the bar and went home with him.
“We left you alone for a minute, Care. You left that quickly?”
“Yes, I told you I am easy and sloppy.”
“I know you’re easy and sloppy, but not that easy.”
Marilyn was suspicious of me, but didn’t have enough proof to interrogate me. I told her I would head out shortly and be back at my sister’s in under an hour. I got off the phone and walked into the kitchen and put two eggo waffles in the toaster. Standing naked while staring out the window and shoving warm waffles into my lipstick stained face. I thought this was the way life was supposed to be lived. I loved the way Teddy and I could have sex. It was both animal and ritual. Sex like that was rare. I looked at the same framed photos on the side table. The photos I saw the night before. I imagined myself in one. Maybe we could have something.
Then I remembered. Shanghai. I swallowed the last of the waffles and walked into the bedroom. I found my dress ripped up on the floor. Sequins scattered the carpet. The sequins led me up to the edge of the bed where the Polaroid camera sat. I got back in bed and took an erotic self-portrait of my tits against red stained sheets. I let the film develop while I washed my face and used his toothbrush on my teeth. The intimacy was stolen but it made me feel. I grabbed a pair of navy boxers and a white tank top. I put on my heels and threw my coat on. I put my hair in a ponytail and I walked out, but not before I put the polaroid in the cupboard next to the water glasses.
My friends were out for a walk to grab bagels when I walked through the apartment, but my sister was smoking a cigarette on her fire escape.
“Fun night?” she asked me through the open window. Her red hair flowed in the spring air.
“Fun night.” I confirmed in an exhausted tone. I threw the keys on the kitchen counter with acid and venom.
“Dress?”
“Destroyed.”
“Jesus.” She handed me a cigarette, and I sat on the fire escape with her. We sat in silence. I told her I loved New York. She told me I could come any time I wanted. She told me she loved me blonde, but she missed our matching red hair. I told her I missed it too. My friends were gone for thirty minutes. The best thirty minutes of the entire trip.
I went back to LA; I did my best not to look back.
Teddy, 2006
I took very little to Shanghai, but I took that fucking Polaroid.