Breadcrumb #352

LEZA CANTORAL

Addie is smiling but I see a raincloud over her head clear as day. She’s mad at me. She’s disappointed.

    It is so sunny out. I hate it. The sun makes it harder for me to see the things I see. I am so tired. I cannot localize the thing that drains me.

    She looks at me one last time before she leaves, like she is hoping I am gonna say something, but I can’t think of anything to say. She kisses me on the cheek & says she will be back later tonight & to not wait up. Her voice has that faraway sound I have grown used to.

    I walk back to our room. I don’t have any classes today so I might as well try to get some writing done.

    Spring is always hard for me. I stare at the blank page & it stares back at me, telling me what I already know but am too scared to admit.

    That I have nothing to say.

    All I think about is her & how at the beginning of this year it was so different between us. The school year is almost over. I probably won’t see her during the summer. All our nebulous plans have fallen through.

    I really think the Queen in Yellow is coming closer, though. She has her eyes on me. I have something she wants. I think it is Addie. She sees how happy she makes me & she wants her gone. She has been trying to destroy my world since I was three-years-old.

    I remember because it was the last day I breastfed. My mother was one of those hippie types so she did not believe in weaning me off, so I had to be the one to quit. Years later I realized it’s just that she was a narcissist. The idea of me not needing her for my sustenance was not something she could handle. Once I stopped it was like I did not exist. I was not her baby anymore. Like an animal in the wild, she moved on, always on the hunt for something new to get obsessed about, something new she could possess & devour & consume.

    My mother’s sad eyes shocked me. Saying, I quit.

    Like breaking up with a dealer.

“Once I stopped it was like I did not exist. I was not her baby anymore.”

    I went outside to the garden. The sun was bright. I found my way to the lemon tree. It was surrounded by a cool patch of clover that I loved to sit in & touch. Always dew kissed & cool even on hot sunny days. I noticed a few bees, but that was normal. Then I noticed a few more & then more. The few became a swarm that did not sting me, but gathered as one big black thing, buzzing at me & I heard her voice. She was calling me. I saw her eyes in the winged mass of velvet bodies, green like poison, glittering wet, so big, penetrating.

    I watched her & she watched me. I got the feeling that even though this was the first time I was seeing her this was not the first time she saw me. That scared me. Her singular focus on me that I could feel like a magnetic pull. An arm emerged from the buzz. A hand, towards me & finally I reacted like any baby would, with sudden wailing cries.

    My mother rushed out & scooped me up. She did not nurse me as she had done before when I was scared. She gave me a spoonful of honey with some lemon instead.

    Now there was hate in her touch.

    The queen returned to me every few years. Never coming as close as she did that first time. Sometimes I would faintly hear her voice calling me, telling me to do things or telling me bad things people were hiding from me. Sometimes it was just a smell. That faint smell of honey. The sweetest honey you ever smelled. Overpowering even in such small doses. The kind of sweetness that could make you hate sweetness forever.

    If she takes Addie from me I will come for her. She took my first cat & she took my baby brother.

    I know she is not done with me.

    Sometimes when I sleep deeply after taking whiteibis, which I am prescribed, but if I take more than the dosage along with my day meds, then I get weird dreams. Sometimes when I am sad I take more just so I can have something interesting to look forward to.

    I have really not been doing it as much since Addie moved into my dorm room. Even before we started becoming more than friends. The night she moved in I slept like a baby. I was able to cut my sleep dosage in half & my night terrors pretty much vanished.

    Lately though, I have noticed her looking at guys, which bothers me more than if she was looking at chicks, because then at least I know we have something they can’t touch. But a guy I cannot compete with. They have the one thing I definitely do not have & if that is the thing she wants then there is really nothing I can do. I have trouble talking about my feelings when I am scared so I have kind of clammed up. I want her to ask me what is wrong. I want her to reassure me that she loves me. I am scared that she is over me so I do not even ask. I just quietly recede, waiting for the bomb to go off like I know it will.

    When we first met, almost a year ago, it was one of those instant things. We did not even introduce ourselves to each other. We just started talking. There was a language already there, like we were simply picking up where a previous conversation had dropped off. By the second day of knowing each other we met for every meal of the day & when it was time for her to go back to her dorm room after we had been getting high all evening & watching I am Curious Yellow & Blue is the Warmest Color, she did not want to go & complained about how she hated her roommates.

    I hated her roommates too.

    She slept over in my bed. Nothing happened.

    About a week later, my roommate moved out on her own accord & Addie moved in. It was like a party 24/7. We smoked so much weed. That is probably the main thing we did. I found myself actually telling her about myself. And she did not hate me. I felt seen, understood. We talked about all the stupid things we had done in the past & were able to laugh about it. One night, while listening to the new Lana Del Rey album, Lust for Life, we ended up kissing & making out for hours. We started holding hands in public & the whole campus was buzzing with it.

    And now it is falling apart.

    The buzz is loud inside my head & she is fading away.

    I stop typing.

    I hear footsteps. Shit. Is she back?

    I jump in the closet because I hear a guy’s voice & I just don’t know how I would even deal with that right now.

    They burst in acting like they’ve been day drinking. Her hair is already all over the place. I recognize the guy. His name is Taylor & he is a photography student. Code for professional perv. She takes off her top & he takes out his camera, laughing.

    “How about some music?” he says, rubbing his camera lens with the edge of his flannel shirt.

    “Sure!” She is excited, bubbly. She walks over to the computer on the desk by the closet & I freeze. I can see the sweat hovering on her pores, her eyes unfocused, her eyeliner smeared. I don’t understand why she’s even doing this. But I feel like if I come out now, I will ruin whatever is left of what we have. I will look jealous & insane & then she will definitely leave me, probably for this asshole. Why do chicks always go for the assholes? Every time. It’s like the hotter & smarter they are, the more they crave that beast to degrade them & make them feel like some thing to be used. I have seen it so many times.

    Lost so many friends to their asshole boyfriends.

    She puts on The Weeknd.

    “Perrrfect,” he purrs, leaning against the wall, holding his camera like it is a beer bottle he is casually sipping.

    “Where do you want me?” she asks.

    “Why don’t you get on the bed. That way you can get into any position comfortably.”

    She walks over to the bed & flops down gracelessly. She leans back & tries to look seductive but she just looks drunk.

    “Yes, that’s good. Nice,” he says, clicking away from different angles & getting closer. “You are so beautiful, you know that?”

    “Oh stop,” she says. She smiles & obviously definitely does not want him to stop.

    “I’m serious! I’m an artist. I see faces. You have one of those…. classical faces. You know, very symmetrical.”

    She laughs & gets on all fours, like a cat. She leans forward, looking both sleepy & fierce, as her red hair cascades over her shoulders & down her arched back.

    “Very nice,” he says, getting closer. He strokes her back & smacks her ass. She laughs & sits up, startled. She just kind of sits there. He puts the camera down & sits down beside her on the bed.

    “I think I got a good batch right there. We can always do more later, you know, maybe outside or something.”

    She nods.

    They smile at each other. He playfully grabs her chin, shakes it side to side & kisses her on the lips & she sinks into it, like she was thirsty all her life for his kiss. She hops onto his lap, straddling him, grinding into him as he cups her ass cheeks.

    I can’t breathe. I am paralyzed by what I see.

    I had no idea she was even into guys.

    Through my tears & dripping mascara I see him peel off her blue jeans & white cotton briefs, undoing his own pants & getting on top of her. Her moans are like knives to me. His sounds, like a beast. Each thrust stabs me in the gut. I have lost my appetite again. There is a bottle of whiteibis with my name on it. I could really go for a nice, big….long….nap.

    The kind you don’t wake up from.

    And then I remember.

    It’s her birthday.

    Fuck.

• • •

Breadcrumb #351

KASIA MERRILL

At work I dispatch covetous Americans to pungent foreign countries.

    They come during their brief lunch breaks, beet and feta salads in their fishy pale palms as they exclaim on their blinking Bluetooth headsets. They point to the posters behind me. Chandelier waters and laughing white people beside a giraffe. That’s what they want, they say. They want an adventure, they say.

    We spend the next thirty minutes planning their wild, forward-thinking excursions. A cliff hotel pod in Peru. An elk sleigh ride in Finland. An underwater room in the Pemba Islands. I tell them these are must-have experiences, these $500/night stays in all-inclusive resorts where the Americans will drink blood-red margaritas and use their local guide books as foot props on their lounge chairs. They will snap photos of locals, whose faces will one day stare from strangers’ computer screens, trapped and unblinking.

    These Americans have such longing on their breath and restlessness beneath their nails, it’s like they’ve been scratching the Earth for evidence that they’re on it. Sometimes they ask me where I’m from and the question is so ravenous, I’m afraid to answer. I’m afraid they will steal home from me like a snack they’ve been craving.

    Avalea agrees. She is the booking agent at WorldAir and although we have never met, she is my closest companion. Her voice is as smooth and warm as an elephant’s ear, as melodic as an open jar of lightning bugs. She likes to calculate my customers based on their orders. She is superb at this game.

“Sometimes they ask me where I’m from and the question is so ravenous, I’m afraid to answer.”

    “Two business class tickets to Maldives for Arnold Denton.? Let me guess…single white male in his 30s, nice tie, conventionally handsome, kind of obnoxious?”

    “40s, I believe.”

    “Having an affair?”

    “You better not be seating me in the 40th fucking row. I’ll take my business elsewhere, I’ll do it right now.”

    I cover the phone with my hand. “I’m discussing something else, sir.”

    “God, he sounds like a tool,” Avalea hums in my ear. “Let me talk to him. I want to hear his ache.”

    I have my job because they say I’m good at dealing with people. That’s how they say it too, dealing with people. I thought it was a strange thing to say because back home, we call it “speaking” with people, but I am a fast learner. The covetous Americans, along with their wives and husbands and mistresses and misters and unaccountably young wealthy partners, were not the kinds of people we had back home. They ask questions like Where is the best country to hunt a rhino? and Can I take a tour of the slums?

    I don’t understand these people, but I can pretend I do. I can laugh at their jokes and log in their seSrvice animals and smile as I click my nails cross the plastic keyboard to log in Gertrude Swine for a ticket that costs more than my mother’s funeral. My mother used to say there is no greater skill in life than acting.

    Avalea is a superb actress. When my accountants speak to Avalea directly, their creased brows unfurl like a massaged muscle. Their eyes soften like a spring garden. I can understand these Americans then because I, too, possess this same landlocked expression. I have heard the sweet refrain of Jane’s purr and felt my cheeks dew.

    Sometimes I imagine adoring words spilling from Jane’s lips like soup too hot to swallow. I imagine us booking our own excursion, holding hands in first class as we fly over smoothing waters and sleep in underwater rooms. I imagine my fingers cupping her elastic cheek, suspended in a moment, frozen, around the shadowy outline of a woman I’ve never met.

    And I wonder if I’m acting so well, I’ve fooled myself into having wishes.

    The Americans are all wishes. I think that if I were to unbutton their suits and lift their skirts, I’d find wants instead of skin. This is what makes me call them the covetous Americans. You can understand now. They exist in two states: having and wanting. Sometimes they live in both states at once.

    Like the American woman with black nails filed into claws, hair pulled back so tightly her forehead is pinched and pink. She places a piece of paper on the surface between us. On the top is the name of my nation. She pronounces my home like she’s sucking on glass.

• • •

Breadcrumb #350

GABRIELA BASYUK

"I hate starting a notebook on the first page.
It’s kind of intimidating, you know.
Thinking about all the blank lines ahead of you and the thickness
left to be filled. I always turn the page over to relieve the anxiety,
tricking myself in a way,” he says.

I think about this for a while. Almost too long.
He looks for some kind of sign to make sure I’m alright. I am.

I glance back at him.
His rough hands, uneven facial hair and kind eyes.

There’s so much I want to say but
I divert my eyes and take a large swing of beer.
I hate beer.

I think about all the boys I’ve been with.
All the boys I thought I loved.

• • •

Breadcrumb #349

KRIZTILLE JUNIO & RYAN CRUZ

• • •

Breadcrumb #348

ANGELA DERECAS TAYLOR

I slept with Steven Tyler last night. That’s right. I had sex with the lead singer of Aerosmith, the same guy who was a judge on American Idol. And we did it right in my marital bed. I felt no guilt, only ecstasy as he raised and lowered himself upon my tired middle-aged body. Immersed in the throes of our mutual climax, I locked my arms around his neck, my fingers clutching his hair, and feathers. We were levitating, soaring above my bed, then out the window among the treetops hanging over my house and flying among the stars, far removed from my passionless marriage.  

    And then I woke up.

    It took several minutes to segue from the dream into the reality of my life. My breath was heavy. I pulled the pillow up from between my legs to absorb the sweat from the back of my neck. When I sat up in bed, the sticky moisture between my thighs made me a smile. I looked across the room at my reflection in the full-length mirror and had a burst of guilty laughter at the sight of my wild-tussled hair and nightgown twisted up around my hips. I do believe I was glowing, until the post-sex-dream bliss faded.

    I stood-up slowly, being careful not to shock my lower back into a spasm. Once on my feet, I straightened out my hair and my nightgown, hiding my in-REM indiscretion, and headed to the kitchen for the morning ritual.

    My husband was in his usual spot, seated at the table, one hand absent-mindedly fiddling in his undershorts, the other hand grasping the remote, flipping between channel 7 and CNN.

    “Must you?” I said. I took my gaze from his face to his groin while I waved my arm towards the other chairs around the table, where our two sons would soon be seated for breakfast. Unfazed, he took his crotch fiddling up a notch, to an aggressive wiggling of his member.

    “You want some?” he said with a smile.

    I ignored the invitation, defeated by his disregard for my disgust, and pained by my lack of desire for my own husband.

    “Good morning, Darling,” I mumbled to myself, pretending I was in the type of marriage where my spouse said those words to me. I stared out the window to my neatly mowed back yard while I poured my coffee, and succumbed to another mundane day.

    Cup in hand, I shuffled over to the table, sat in my regular spot and stared at the TV, unable to hear anything except his voice-over commentary.

    “What’s with these weather girls? Big boobs must be a requirement for the job.” Click.

    “Wonder what happened to that fat guy who used to give the traffic report.” Click.

    “Oh these pharmaceutical commercials drive me nuts. I mean really, an erection for more than four hours!”

    “Look at the time,” I said. “Don’t you have to get going?”

    He looked at me and smiled with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah. Guess so. But first I need to check on my four-hour erection.” We both laughed.

    “You do that,” I said, watching him retreat to the bathroom.

     I remained at the kitchen table. My mind heavy with images volleying between my fantasy sex-dream and the real life truth that my husband was no doubt standing in the shower, masturbating like the equally sexually frustrated man in the opening scene of American Beauty.

     I felt like a phony, hiding behind the façade of a clichéd perfect life - the happy wife and mom, in the big house with the granite counter tops and Andersen windows. Wasn’t this the life I dreamed of as a young girl? It surely was, right down to the sexless marriage.

    I blamed myself for the lack of passion in my relationship. I had never lost the baby fat after my two pregnancies; I had done nothing to minimize the puckering in my thighs, nor perk-up my sagging breasts. I thought maybe it was all a subconscious attempt to make myself undesirable to a man that I was not attracted to physically. I recognized the choices I made were the ones I had to live with, and on the day he proposed I contemplated those choices.

    No, the sex was not good, but of all those other men whom I had screwed over the years, had any of them ever bought me a gift I could even remember, let alone a GIA-certified-almost- perfect-solitaire-diamond engagement ring?

“I thought maybe it was all a subconscious attempt to make myself undesirable to a man that I was not attracted to physically.”

    Had any of them sent me CD’s of love songs?

    No one else had ever ignored his catatonic fear of flying to get on a plane, to come to Chicago, to bring me back to New York, to rescue me from my loneliness.

    He was the only one who did those things.

    So he lacked certain social graces and a college degree. So what if our conversations weren’t intellectually stimulating? At least he made me laugh.

    I wasn’t getting any younger at thirty-five and he offered what I had so desperately longed for, what no other man had ever offered. Marriage. Children. Family.

    So what if the sex wasn’t great? It wouldn’t matter. I could fake it.

    After all, nothing is perfect. Certainly not me, and he seemed to want spend the rest of his life with me anyway.

    I looked out now through the living room picture window that faced my front lawn and the street. The rising sun gently pressed it’s ochre rays through the naked tree limbs, casting a particle ridden light on Woody, our Jack Russell terrier. I envied that dog, hugging himself, all curled up in just the right spot to receive the blanket of warmth from the sun.

    It made me think of the day my husband had proposed, looking out at a sublime sunrise over Lake Michigan from a hotel room window, after a night of love. He held me in his arms that morning and despite my misgivings, I leaned into his chest and felt safe and adored, like everything was going to be okay; but also, like it was my last chance to have the life I wanted.

    So I said yes.

    That was more than twenty years ago. And, I got what I wanted – the nice home, the beautiful family, the upper middle class suburban life.

    So what was my freaking problem?

    “Bye,” he said, snapping me out of my trance as he walked out the front door.

    “Wait,” I said, sprinting to the door behind him. I wanted to recapture that Lake Michigan sunrise moment. I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me on the top of my head; to tell me everything was going to be okay.

    “I need a hug before you go,” I said. I leaned into him, my head to his chest, my arms wrapped around his back. Hoping. Waiting.

    “Wow! What’s this?” He said. “Does this mean I’ll get some tonight?”

    The sadness of being misunderstood tore through my heart; then came the bitterness and the screeching rush of Steven Tyler’s song blaring in my brain.

    “Dream on,” I said and pushed the door closed behind him.

    “Ah. Come on. I’m just kidding,” I heard him say behind that mahogany door.

    “Whatever,” I yelled back. “See you later.”

    I trudged down the two steps into my sunken living room where Woody was now up on all fours. He looked at me, with his doggy smile and tail wagging in anticipation of being fed.  

    “Come here,” I said. “I need a hug first.”

• • •