« In Which You Want Something Because We Told You No »

Bit Decorations

by SARAH SALOVAARA

It’s like painting your nails once you’ve bitten all of them off. You end up with garish, colored skin, your brushstrokes overestimating. You’re decorating what isn’t there.

There was something hilarious about her ability to turn rejection into romance. We are not, you wanted to enunciate, in the 19th century. You would lean close, maybe take her by the shoulder, gently, and speak it. Your words are not traversing the Atlantic on an ocean liner, fueled by hundreds of men, shoveling, pulling, churning, turning. It is a click. Of your mouse. Or your finger. A tap to the enter key: nothing more. Inconsequential.

The mind, she will speak plainly, plays fantastic tricks. You want something because I’ve told you no, not because you want it.

photograph by abelardo morell

Then what about the start? Do we honestly pluck these things we call feelings from nowhere, out of sheer boredom, no mind for the outcome, one way or the other. Or do we allow ourselves to be tugged by some promise? Like a lobster pot, roped around a rudder, following its every move, yet never fraying: something to exist outside of a cartoon.

But you don’t say this. Instead, you blame her. You started it. Like you’re in pigtails on astroturf in middle school gym class. You thrust your juvenile finger back in her face. The ball zooms past and your classmate rounds second base. Pay attention, you lecture yourself, head tilted toward the fake grass.

(Right. Where was I?)

You heard from so and so that she felt this and that, and then, only then, you allowed yourself to consider, what you say, was out of the ordinary. Extra. You allowed yourself to fall in love, beyond your normal frame of reference. But it was all a misunderstanding, see. A bad game of telephone. She never felt this and that, maybe that and this, but that was it. She’s telling you the truth, maybe, but you continue to rationalize your way out of it.

She doesn’t budge. You torture yourself, little by little, everyday, your delusions like morphine. You wonder if maybe she is right. If she knows you better than you think. That it’s all a bit of meaningful pursuit. You spill your guts like clockwork. Still, nothing. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

photo by abelardo morell

She is moving back to France. You laugh as you say it aloud. Back to France. It’s great, for you, that I’m leaving, she will condescend. It will be good. You will forget about me. About this. But what is the subtext there?

You try again, unashamed, drunk, and she resists, again. We’ve reached double digits, I’m certain.

When you say goodbye, she hugs you second. It is quick and ephemeral; they are not the same thing. The first person she hugged has started down the block, and you too progress in that direction. You turn around, watching as her hair is consumed in the crowds, as she makes her way to the subway, to a cab, to the airport.

You feel sorry for yourself for five seconds, and then you get over it. She was right, and you are determined anew to prove her wrong.

Sarah Salovaara is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She blogs about film here, and you can find her twitter here. She last wrote in these pages about quitting New York.

photograph by abelardo morell

"Spitting Fire" - The Boxer Rebellion (mp3)

"Semi-Automatic" - The Boxer Rebellion (mp3)

photograph by abelardo morell