Saturday's Storyteller: "Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just work out a certain way."
by Belinda Roddie
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just work out a certain way. In this case, Emily and I went our separate ways almost nonchalantly. It wasn't as if something was broken, or torn, like a china plate or a shirt. It simply ended - like a car being placed in park after a long drive, or the faucet turning off after streaming hot water and soaking into my hair. Six years went away like our lease on the townhouse, like our shared groceries, like the split utility bills. I was sent on my way, and Emily? Well, Natalie was waiting for her, nestled in the driver's seat of her van, being a good "friend."
I knew that people would view my reaction as cold-hearted, like I wanted this to happen. Of course I didn't want what I considered to be a solid relationship to wrap up, but really, that was the only adjective that could be used to describe our relationship: Solid. Like a big, bulky brick in a building. Solid, but cracked and gray and stained with the graffiti of delinquent daydreams and post-erotic nights in bed. The romance slipped out from between the sheets then, and we were left with heavy sleep but unsteady dreams. That was when I started traveling, to give myself space - and it simply placed the stamp on the envelope and mailed it to the dead zone.
Some asked if I would keep in touch. I wouldn't. I didn't want to. Emily didn't break my heart, but we grew tired. Not tired of each other, just tired. Tired of the same routine that didn't progress and didn't allow for us to grow as people. Tired of the nine to five behavioral shifts while Emily gained separate dimensions than I did. Made different friends. Tried different things. Changed into different people. And that was okay. Our personalities were not static. They were wobbly and shaky and overall sporadic, and they ultimately paved paths that went in opposite directions.
Naturally, after Emily and I broke up, I was drawn back to Little Man for some time, to be with my cousin Leslie. She encouraged me to travel further than the established safe havens, so I did. I found San Ignacio and the Mission, something so inherently contrasted with my own background and lifestyle. I wasn't used to the setting - the way the buildings lit up with youthful fire at night, the slurping of livelihood that could be heard everywhere. And across the streets, around the schools, there was a sense of exploration among those who had more gray than green in their pockets.
In my new job, crammed onto the top floor of the dilapidated office building where community outreach was brainstormed but little of it actually produced, I tried to make myself useful. My itinerary consisted of venturing to various urban schools, to see if there was anything I could do to improve the educational situation of the students. I found myself delving further into the lives of the teenagers within the beacon schools, and ultimately, I met one of the teachers there. The students knew me as Miss Kate, but her - she was "Hatters," or "Mad Hatter." Her real name was Hattie, but she liked Mad Hatter the most. She even doffed a top hat on some days to entertain the literacy class she taught during the afternoons. Of course, that was the class I was pushed into the most, to give support.
"Lucky for you, I like you," Hattie joked to me as we went into the staff lounge for cold coffee. "Other people they send from your job tend to be a hassle. They don't get the kids."
"I don't exactly understand the kids, either."
"I doubt that. You're young, aren't you?"
"Twenty-three in three weeks."
"Ain't that something," smiled Hattie over her styrofoam cup. "We'll have to have a party."
Needless to say, we hit it off fairly well, and she started forcing me out into the city more often when it got dark. It started with the karaoke nights, and it just kept going with the bar ventures. She sang only if others sang with her, drank anything with an umbrella in it, and loved to talk about guys. Almost excessively, really. I made friends with Hattie on the good old social networking sites, the habit-inducing pages upon pages of personal information divulging to way too many people, and on her news feed, she always mentioned some guy. Notably with very tight shorts or shirts that stuck to the skin. She knew I was gay, definitely - she had seen the old photos of Emily and me - but it didn't stop her from gushing about anyone with an extra appendage between his legs.
"I'd ask you to score guys' hotness with me," she'd joke, "but I guess you don't have much of an opinion."
"I can admire men's looks, too, you know," I'd scoff. "I just don't want to fuck them."
"More for me, then."
Hattie was also pretty close with another of my co-workers, who was a more managerial type sending out school supplies to the highest bidders. This was Brianna, and she was bold-faced bisexual. So she and the Mad Hatter would squabble about the male celebrities while I sucked whiskey through a straw like a newborn hogging breast milk. But it never exactly seemed authentic, at least to me. And this was coming from the woman who had slammed into her homosexuality like a confused cat running into a sliding glass doors. The conversations felt forced, cut and dried like overly processed meat or cheese. There was a whole lot of foam in the drink that was Hattie, and I wanted to see the suds die down and realize what kind of drink she really was. Or what kind of cocktail she truly preferred to guzzle down.
But I couldn't do that. I liked Hattie, admittedly. And I mean, I really liked her. She had the perfect smile, the softest complexion, the cutest dimple, and the deepest eyes. She was definitely a comfort to look at, but her "heterosexual agenda" was what stopped me dead against the constant barrage of "what-ifs." I never wanted to compromise our friendship over what I perceived to be petty urges. So she was hot. Didn't matter. No pressing the wrong buttons and causing an explosion of frustration and doubt. And besides, I was still pretty raw after leaving Emily.
So I didn't push it. Brianna didn't seem to, either. But that was before Brianna kept dropping questions about Hattie to me after our outings. And it was certainly before Hattie asked me into her apartment and then begged for me to kiss her.
***
"No."
Her hands were shaking against the frame of the dining room chair. She was pressing herself against the back of it, her shaggy brown hair falling in tangles across her reddened face.
"Please."
I shook my head. "I said no."
Hattie raised her head sharply in desperation. I had never seen her eyes look so, for lack of a better word, melted. Like candy was being held to an angry flame.
"Why not?" She was adamant. "You were okay with kissing your ex. Experimenting. Why is it different now?"
"It's different because I was seventeen when I did that. I'm not seventeen anymore."
"Why can't you just kiss me and get it the fuck over with?"
I sighed. "Because," I replied, "too many things could go wrong."
"Kate - "
"You told me yourself that you've never thought of another girl this way before," I snapped. "Like you said, this could just be a glitch."
"I never thought of another girl so deeply, is what I meant."
"Hatters." I threw up my hands in exasperation. "I can give you three scenarios, right off the top of my head, that could happen if I kiss you. And I guarantee you that one will occur."
"Fine. Name them."
I could barely breathe. I struggled to sit down on the couch. Hattie's apartment was pretty compact, so there was a pretty decent chance of suffocating from the sheer emotion of the situation. Her outburst wasn't exactly unexpected - Brianna had, all unfriend-like, spilled the beans that Hattie was "questioning."
"Well," I exhaled. "First, I kiss you, and you feel nothing. Things get awkward between us, and our friendship is over. Second, I kiss you, and you feel something, but I don't. And then where will you be?"
"That's all hypothesis."
"Hattie," I pleaded with her. "Listen to yourself. Look at the two of us. You never would have thought about this if I hadn't stumbled into your life. I'm not here to cause problems with you, and if my presence drives you this crazy, then maybe I should just leave you alone."
"No!" cried Hattie, wrenching herself off the chair and stumbling toward me. She was still in her hooded sweatshirt, with the beacon school's logo on it. She hadn't changed out of her work clothes yet. "I don't want that."
"But what you want is - "
"The third scenario. What's that?"
I swallowed hard. Ice grew in harsh follicles within my throat. Frozen up within a December apartment, I was finding it difficult to speak.
"Third," I rasped. Then hesitated. Then started again. "I kiss you. And I feel something. I feel this immense love for you. Love I haven't felt since kissing Emily that night in my bedroom, while I was writing that stupid essay. And you realize it was all a mind trick and back off. And there I am, fretting and wishing, only to be heartbroken. One of us is going to get hurt here, Hattie. I don't want it to be you, I don't want it to be me. So maybe we should just cool it, and I'll let you settle down."
That certainly didn't work. Hattie was crying. I hadn't seen her cry before. She pressed her hand against the side of her forehead, as if trying to stifle her own pulse, and hobbled back into the kitchen. She slumped against the table, attempting to hold herself upright.
"I have to go."
"I know," she sobbed.
I stood up from the couch.
"Let me know if you need anything."
She whipped around. "I need - "
"Not that." I felt my shoulders sag. "I'm sorry."
I hurried out of there as soon as I could. I didn't let the Mad Hatter see my frustrated tears.
***
Things worked out for me in a lot of ways. The job, the new apartment, the new friends. Hattie lay low for a while, and I didn't see her at school. I wanted things to work out for her as they did for me. I wasn't going to let some of the new facets of my life fall apart for another episode of lesbian angst. Enough TV shows did that already.
One afternoon, I found Hattie in the school cafeteria, picking at a bagged lunch. I sat down beside her. She didn't look at me at first, the slight shuffle of her feet occasionally creating the only sound in the echo-y space. The students were out in the yard, divided into soccer teams. The teachers were sorting parent letters.
I squirmed up beside her and put a hand against her back. She lifted a container of crackers out of her bag and offered me a wafer.
Even when things weren't sorted out, they worked out, in their own strange way. And the warmth I felt radiating against Hattie's jacket allowed me to calm down.
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just work out a certain way. In this case, Emily and I went our separate ways almost nonchalantly. It wasn't as if something was broken, or torn, like a china plate or a shirt. It simply ended - like a car being placed in park after a long drive, or the faucet turning off after streaming hot water and soaking into my hair. Six years went away like our lease on the townhouse, like our shared groceries, like the split utility bills. I was sent on my way, and Emily? Well, Natalie was waiting for her, nestled in the driver's seat of her van, being a good "friend."
I knew that people would view my reaction as cold-hearted, like I wanted this to happen. Of course I didn't want what I considered to be a solid relationship to wrap up, but really, that was the only adjective that could be used to describe our relationship: Solid. Like a big, bulky brick in a building. Solid, but cracked and gray and stained with the graffiti of delinquent daydreams and post-erotic nights in bed. The romance slipped out from between the sheets then, and we were left with heavy sleep but unsteady dreams. That was when I started traveling, to give myself space - and it simply placed the stamp on the envelope and mailed it to the dead zone.
Some asked if I would keep in touch. I wouldn't. I didn't want to. Emily didn't break my heart, but we grew tired. Not tired of each other, just tired. Tired of the same routine that didn't progress and didn't allow for us to grow as people. Tired of the nine to five behavioral shifts while Emily gained separate dimensions than I did. Made different friends. Tried different things. Changed into different people. And that was okay. Our personalities were not static. They were wobbly and shaky and overall sporadic, and they ultimately paved paths that went in opposite directions.
Naturally, after Emily and I broke up, I was drawn back to Little Man for some time, to be with my cousin Leslie. She encouraged me to travel further than the established safe havens, so I did. I found San Ignacio and the Mission, something so inherently contrasted with my own background and lifestyle. I wasn't used to the setting - the way the buildings lit up with youthful fire at night, the slurping of livelihood that could be heard everywhere. And across the streets, around the schools, there was a sense of exploration among those who had more gray than green in their pockets.
In my new job, crammed onto the top floor of the dilapidated office building where community outreach was brainstormed but little of it actually produced, I tried to make myself useful. My itinerary consisted of venturing to various urban schools, to see if there was anything I could do to improve the educational situation of the students. I found myself delving further into the lives of the teenagers within the beacon schools, and ultimately, I met one of the teachers there. The students knew me as Miss Kate, but her - she was "Hatters," or "Mad Hatter." Her real name was Hattie, but she liked Mad Hatter the most. She even doffed a top hat on some days to entertain the literacy class she taught during the afternoons. Of course, that was the class I was pushed into the most, to give support.
"Lucky for you, I like you," Hattie joked to me as we went into the staff lounge for cold coffee. "Other people they send from your job tend to be a hassle. They don't get the kids."
"I don't exactly understand the kids, either."
"I doubt that. You're young, aren't you?"
"Twenty-three in three weeks."
"Ain't that something," smiled Hattie over her styrofoam cup. "We'll have to have a party."
Needless to say, we hit it off fairly well, and she started forcing me out into the city more often when it got dark. It started with the karaoke nights, and it just kept going with the bar ventures. She sang only if others sang with her, drank anything with an umbrella in it, and loved to talk about guys. Almost excessively, really. I made friends with Hattie on the good old social networking sites, the habit-inducing pages upon pages of personal information divulging to way too many people, and on her news feed, she always mentioned some guy. Notably with very tight shorts or shirts that stuck to the skin. She knew I was gay, definitely - she had seen the old photos of Emily and me - but it didn't stop her from gushing about anyone with an extra appendage between his legs.
"I'd ask you to score guys' hotness with me," she'd joke, "but I guess you don't have much of an opinion."
"I can admire men's looks, too, you know," I'd scoff. "I just don't want to fuck them."
"More for me, then."
Hattie was also pretty close with another of my co-workers, who was a more managerial type sending out school supplies to the highest bidders. This was Brianna, and she was bold-faced bisexual. So she and the Mad Hatter would squabble about the male celebrities while I sucked whiskey through a straw like a newborn hogging breast milk. But it never exactly seemed authentic, at least to me. And this was coming from the woman who had slammed into her homosexuality like a confused cat running into a sliding glass doors. The conversations felt forced, cut and dried like overly processed meat or cheese. There was a whole lot of foam in the drink that was Hattie, and I wanted to see the suds die down and realize what kind of drink she really was. Or what kind of cocktail she truly preferred to guzzle down.
But I couldn't do that. I liked Hattie, admittedly. And I mean, I really liked her. She had the perfect smile, the softest complexion, the cutest dimple, and the deepest eyes. She was definitely a comfort to look at, but her "heterosexual agenda" was what stopped me dead against the constant barrage of "what-ifs." I never wanted to compromise our friendship over what I perceived to be petty urges. So she was hot. Didn't matter. No pressing the wrong buttons and causing an explosion of frustration and doubt. And besides, I was still pretty raw after leaving Emily.
So I didn't push it. Brianna didn't seem to, either. But that was before Brianna kept dropping questions about Hattie to me after our outings. And it was certainly before Hattie asked me into her apartment and then begged for me to kiss her.
***
"No."
Her hands were shaking against the frame of the dining room chair. She was pressing herself against the back of it, her shaggy brown hair falling in tangles across her reddened face.
"Please."
I shook my head. "I said no."
Hattie raised her head sharply in desperation. I had never seen her eyes look so, for lack of a better word, melted. Like candy was being held to an angry flame.
"Why not?" She was adamant. "You were okay with kissing your ex. Experimenting. Why is it different now?"
"It's different because I was seventeen when I did that. I'm not seventeen anymore."
"Why can't you just kiss me and get it the fuck over with?"
I sighed. "Because," I replied, "too many things could go wrong."
"Kate - "
"You told me yourself that you've never thought of another girl this way before," I snapped. "Like you said, this could just be a glitch."
"I never thought of another girl so deeply, is what I meant."
"Hatters." I threw up my hands in exasperation. "I can give you three scenarios, right off the top of my head, that could happen if I kiss you. And I guarantee you that one will occur."
"Fine. Name them."
I could barely breathe. I struggled to sit down on the couch. Hattie's apartment was pretty compact, so there was a pretty decent chance of suffocating from the sheer emotion of the situation. Her outburst wasn't exactly unexpected - Brianna had, all unfriend-like, spilled the beans that Hattie was "questioning."
"Well," I exhaled. "First, I kiss you, and you feel nothing. Things get awkward between us, and our friendship is over. Second, I kiss you, and you feel something, but I don't. And then where will you be?"
"That's all hypothesis."
"Hattie," I pleaded with her. "Listen to yourself. Look at the two of us. You never would have thought about this if I hadn't stumbled into your life. I'm not here to cause problems with you, and if my presence drives you this crazy, then maybe I should just leave you alone."
"No!" cried Hattie, wrenching herself off the chair and stumbling toward me. She was still in her hooded sweatshirt, with the beacon school's logo on it. She hadn't changed out of her work clothes yet. "I don't want that."
"But what you want is - "
"The third scenario. What's that?"
I swallowed hard. Ice grew in harsh follicles within my throat. Frozen up within a December apartment, I was finding it difficult to speak.
"Third," I rasped. Then hesitated. Then started again. "I kiss you. And I feel something. I feel this immense love for you. Love I haven't felt since kissing Emily that night in my bedroom, while I was writing that stupid essay. And you realize it was all a mind trick and back off. And there I am, fretting and wishing, only to be heartbroken. One of us is going to get hurt here, Hattie. I don't want it to be you, I don't want it to be me. So maybe we should just cool it, and I'll let you settle down."
That certainly didn't work. Hattie was crying. I hadn't seen her cry before. She pressed her hand against the side of her forehead, as if trying to stifle her own pulse, and hobbled back into the kitchen. She slumped against the table, attempting to hold herself upright.
"I have to go."
"I know," she sobbed.
I stood up from the couch.
"Let me know if you need anything."
She whipped around. "I need - "
"Not that." I felt my shoulders sag. "I'm sorry."
I hurried out of there as soon as I could. I didn't let the Mad Hatter see my frustrated tears.
***
Things worked out for me in a lot of ways. The job, the new apartment, the new friends. Hattie lay low for a while, and I didn't see her at school. I wanted things to work out for her as they did for me. I wasn't going to let some of the new facets of my life fall apart for another episode of lesbian angst. Enough TV shows did that already.
One afternoon, I found Hattie in the school cafeteria, picking at a bagged lunch. I sat down beside her. She didn't look at me at first, the slight shuffle of her feet occasionally creating the only sound in the echo-y space. The students were out in the yard, divided into soccer teams. The teachers were sorting parent letters.
I squirmed up beside her and put a hand against her back. She lifted a container of crackers out of her bag and offered me a wafer.
Even when things weren't sorted out, they worked out, in their own strange way. And the warmth I felt radiating against Hattie's jacket allowed me to calm down.
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.
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