Huevos Divorciados

 

I've decided to leave him today. I'm in front of the shelves in our bedroom, looking at the third shelf from the bottom. It's at stomach level and I'm just rummaging through the disarray of it, one last time. There's so much shit on this shelf and I know I should just throw most of this junk away, but this is my way of keeping track of things that have happened in the past year. I don't keep diaries or journals anymore. Lots of old movie tickets and tattered concert stubs from the spring and summer. The ink is almost faded on these things and you can hardly tell which concert or what movie we were at, but I remember each one if I look hard enough. Thin plastic guitar picks I find in the street, an unused address book I got from his mother, a German ATM receipt that says I have 15.000 bucks in checking, some old Band-Aids, crushed sticks of spearmint gum, hair ties (even though my hair is too short to tie back). Coins. Just shit you'd find in my pockets. I really don’t think about putting these things here -- I just throw them down at the end of the day.

            I want to take some of these things with me when I go, 'cos they mean something to me. Even though he tells me it's useless junk, and I know it's junk, I'm not ready to throw it away myself. Let him do it when I'm gone. Right now I'm just gonna take what I need and get out of here. No fights. No crying. No breakfast. It's 9am.

            We're a couple. We go to work during the week, meet up at the coffee shop near the apartment afterward, buy groceries on Tuesday, eat out or order pizza on Fridays. We're the pair you see holding hands through Battery Park, who lay in the grass during sunset if the weather's good, who shop for linens n' things. We cuddle. We don't have many friends, and those friends we do have are either married or gay. A couple of Christmas cards that don't say anything more than "Happy Holidays," waxy credit card receipts from gift shops and restaurants, a dusty watch with a broken strap. Everyone's got memories and everyday junk in a shelf like this. Or a drawer. Or a box. Or a basement. This room is too small for a box. Old magazines with water damaged pages are piled in a corner of the room. We've been meaning to tie them up and throw them away. There's a basket of laundry by the bed. Clean, mind you. Full of underwear and socks. The shelf used to be for this stuff, but it's more accessible this way. I'm accepting that we can keep every room clean except this one. He doesn't let the cleaning lady in here. I'm fine with it; I was getting protective of the shelf.

            I'm a pack rat -- it would kill me to throw some of these things away. There's a leather booklet that says "KITTY" on it. It's a blank book that Aaron made for me when he was in art school. I was meaning to use it for special things, but I'm afraid I'd mess up the drawing I'd make, or maybe my handwriting will come out crooked. So it's been unused for years, making its way to the shelf the last time I wanted to write in it.

            Coins. Lots of coins. There're some from Germany, Canada, and Mexico. Mostly, they're American, and I ought to take them to the CoinStar machine, but I use them every once in a while when money's tight and I need subway fare. If you look long enough through this mess (no one ever does), you'll find two coins from Peep Land. On one side of each coin is a woman's bare chest that reads GOOD FOR ONE PLAY, and on the other side is her ass, reading NOT REFUNDABLE. I ought to throw them away, 'cos I got them about 2 months ago when I took my old room mate to a peep show for his birthday. Aaron would kill me if he knew; he thought we were at a bar all night. That's not the bad part. The bad part is, we went to a booth at Peep Land for a strip show and fooled around. PeepLand is nasty. I had never been there before, it smelled swampy, and every strip show booth was cold and cocksucker red. When we inserted our coins for a live show, the curtain came up at the window this woman was sitting on a stool, smoking. She walked over and looked us in the eyes and said, "Y'all want a show?" in the same way someone would say, "May I take your order?" We nodded, like naughty schoolkids, and she snapped, "Well where's mah tip!" We handed her two shaky dollars and she began to touch her breasts while Whitney Houston sang "I'm Every Woman" through the speakers behind her. After the curtain closed, I just remember kissing and wetness, getting hot on my neck, and wanting whatever was happening to be over. There were dried dribbles of white shit by the window, and I felt so dirty, and I remember thinking about Aaron, and how I threw a chunk of stale bread at his head when I found a charge for internet porn on my credit card.

            Couples should not give each other stuffed animals. They end up thrown away after the break up, or given to someone's little cousin. My best friend got a stuffed kitten from a guy she dated about 3 years ago. After the relationship was over, he came to her apartment asking for the kitten back. What the fuck, right? Anyway, on the shelf are Cow and Deer -- a small floppy cow named Daisy and a stuffed deer named Patches. They're actually Beanie Babies. We called them Cow and Deer, 'cos the name-tags they had were lame. When we first got them, we'd play with them. I would be Cow and Aaron would be Deer and we'd be cute and do embarrassing things only kids and cheeky couples do with them, like sing and dance with them. We'd have them kiss and then we'd kiss. Sometimes I would see him sleeping in the afternoon with Cow, and I'd bring over Deer and take a nap with him. About six months ago, we had a nasty fight over something I don't remember, and I threw Cow at him. He didn't speak to me for hours until I took Cow and Deer and placed them side by side on the edge of the shelf and cried. I told him we should be together like that. So we sat by the bed and held hands quietly for a couple of minutes. Cow and Deer have been together ever since.

            I've thought of breaking up before. Sometimes I feel really suffocated in this apartment. Not that it's small, I just don't want to see his face sometimes. He'll ask me what's wrong and I'll just go take a walk for a while. I usually come back feeling a little better, and I'll bring him back some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. His eyes widen when he eats these; he looks so happy when he eats candy. Every time, I just reason it out. We've lived here for a while, and made so many purchases together. We've amassed a pretty decent record collection together, as well as the complete Love & Rockets comics, the good Batman novels, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books in English and Spanish. I'll walk around and think about how we'd divide this stuff up and there's no practical way of doing that without one of us missing something, wanting a certain chair, or all of the Belle & Sebastian singles from Tigermilk or whatever. Besides, I don't think there's anyone else out there who'd appreciate any of this shit.

            You're probably thinking, "What's wrong with you? He's a good man, he doesn't do drugs, he doesn't have another woman, and you're not getting any younger, honey." Actually, that would be my mother. But I've thought of it myself. Why the hell do I want to get out so bad? I think of all the shit that annoys me about him, like asking me what "pontificate" means, or what was "Reaganomics" and why was it so bad. There's also that tendency for him to wear a brand new shirt and find a way to spill something on it. Last week I got him a white shirt at Barney's, and he spilled dry-erase marker ink on it. I mean, how stain-prone can one person be? He insists on using chopsticks when we go to my Chinese grandmother's, which would be OK if he didn't fumble with his meal and stab the meat with them. He gets food everywhere when we eat out. But you know, everyone's got quirks, and I'm sure I piss him off with my neuroses. That's not the point. It's that he's so callous. I sat with him one evening a year ago, reading out of my journals just before I moved in. I told him everything, about the drugs, how I lost my baby, my nervous breakdown, the shit I took from my step-dad, and you know what? He said my writing was weird and that the stories freaked him out. We had just moved in together, and all that shit I wrote over five years meant nothing to him. I guess that's a good thing, but I wish he had said something other than "Weird…you write like that? Shit…" It just plain hurt. I think it's great that he doesn't judge me or anything…but for him to be so insensitive about that nearly killed me. And he's never apologized about it, or asked me anything about that stuff. I got rid the diaries before I moved all my stuff over, and never mentioned it again. But it still fucking hurts.

            That's it. I'm going to take a shower, put on some clothes, get a few things together, and leave before he wakes up. He sleeps in on Saturday. I'm thinking of things to write in the note he will read when he wakes up. I will use my pink stationery paper, the kind I used when I'd send him letters. I will write something like, "Dear Aaron, I just don't think it's working out between us." I will take it from there. I'll be good about it. I know he'll understand when he realizes how I feel. I will take Cow with me.

I'm going to shower. I take off my shirt, and I hear the sheets rustle through the strained mumbling coming from his mouth. He's still asleep. I walk to the bed, watching him stir a little bit.

I stand over him. He looks like an 8-year old kid, legs curled onto the pillow where my body was. He moves like a little boy. He is a little boy. He turns his head to reveal a spot of drool on the pillow where his mouth was. He opens his eyes wide; they're glassy from sleep. "Hey pretty," he says, looking up. He squints at me with his crusted eyes and he raises his chest, stretching his thin arms over the blue checkered sheets. There's a spot of sunshine coming through the window and shining onto his big toe. It looks warm, made of gold. He closes his eyes and with his head facing my pillow he says, "Come back to bed, Kitty, it's Saburday…we'll go to Cafe Havana later and get some breakfast…wayvoz rancheros and…cafay con lachay…"

I don't bother to put my shirt back on and I get into bed. I touch that warm spot of sunshine on his toe and kiss it. He looks at me and says, "Why you always stand over by the shelves on Saturday, I'll never know. You look like a kid going through a treasure chest. I love it." He kisses me on my hand two or three times. When I lay down he will move close to me, hug me by the stomach and I will kiss him on the arm. I will fall asleep for another hour. We'll get Mexican for breakfast. This is our Saturday morning routine.

     

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