Sweater

Yesterday I wore my favorite black sweater. The last person to wear it was my ex-boyfriend. It smelled like skin and spices, not exactly the way I remember him smelling, and definitely not the way I smell. For some reason I didn’t spray on cologne before I left for work.

All day I felt strangely disoriented, disconnected, like I was someone else. I’m a particularly olfactory person. I notice scents first and they leave very strong impressions on me, so it was odd having a different one. I felt like people wouldn’t recognize me. They would look at me distrustfully, like I was trying to fool them in some way. Dogs would bark and cats would hiss when I walked by. Friends would look at me and say, “There’s something different about you. Did you change your hair?”

I felt like I had license to do things I wouldn’t normally do, like go to a bar alone and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.

“I’m Simon,” I’d say. “I’m in town looking for my mom. She ran out on my dad and me when I was really little. She sent me a postcard a few years ago from an address in Brooklyn. I’m trying to track her down.”

People wouldn’t remember anything I did or said. They would see me the next day and say, “I think I dreamt about you last night.” Any interactions we had would be like afterimages, sunspots, things you can’t really grasp.

When I came home, I took off all of my clothes except the sweater and got into bed. I slid my hands down and started touching myself. But my skin felt strange, like it wasn’t mine. It was someone else, someone I wanted to be close to. I wanted to curl up next to myself and feel the warmth it gave off. I wanted to crawl inside where it was safe.

I fell asleep in that sweater.

Between The Lines

He's smaller than the other go-go boy dancing on the bar, and he moves a bit awkwardly, like it's his first time. I can tell that it's not by his lips; the slightly puckered smirk tells me this boy knows he's sexy. He doesn't have to try.

He has long black hair and looks like he might be part Asian or Native American. But then, maybe that's just the dark pointy eyeliner. He's smooth, virtually hairless except for the soft down that I can make out when he moves just so in the dim, reddish light. He's wearing a dark blue bandana tied around his forehead to keep the hair out of his eyes and his entire back is covered with one large tattoo. It's some sort of scene, the sort of thing you see on those Discovery Channel shows about the origins of tattooing. I imagine some stern faced old Samoan tapping ink into this boy's smooth virgin skin for hours at a time. And when it's over, he's no longer a boy, but a man, bearing his scars proudly. "This is what I have seen," they say for him, "This is the pain I can endure. This is who I am."

I move closer to the bar and stand beneath him, looking up. I stay there, drink in hand, sometimes watching him, sometimes leaning against the bar with my back to him. It's like I'm standing guard, and I feel annoyed when other people tip him and whisper into his ear. I wonder what they're saying and if they know him and how.

He has a beautiful pelt, I think, like a big game hunger looking at my next trophy. But I dont' want to skin him. I want to write things in between the lines on his back. Secrets and stories that he'll never see, in languages he can't read. I want to etch my story into his, like cavemen carved their stories into stone so the world would remember them. Except I don't need the world to remember me. Just one man. My story written between the lines of his.