The Part That Hurts

It is winter and Elsie is on my couch because her grandmother is dead. I bring her a bag of tortilla chips, all that is left in the pantry, and she sadly scoops them into the glass bowl where I have folded half an avocado into the remainder of my sour cream. 

“Is this something you want to talk about?” I ask Elsie. She leans forward and hooks her hands under her toes.

“Not too worried about it.” 

I hum, then shift back to the black screen of the television. In its reflection, we sandwich the empty middle cushion of the couch. “I’m not in the mood to go home,” Elsie finally says. Her face points to the window. “All the snow.” 

The sun sets through the window slats and orange shadows wave a toxic exhaustion through my living room. Shadows that, after a mouthful of chips, have prompted Elsie’s request to sleep over. It has been three years since college, when we shared the off-campus condo and half bathroom. Some haphazard birthday calls in between. A lunch at the bistro around the corner when I first moved to the city. We bought nine dollar croissants that were also bagels and Elsie ate hers like a bird, most of the pastry dropping on her lap in big flakes. That afternoon I’d wondered if it weren’t for the proximity of the bakery to my apartment, if Elsie would have reached out to me at all.

She had been a good friend when she had to be, and somewhere in all of this time we’d forgotten how to speak to one another. Now, she has come to me in this early stage of grief. I wasn’t sure what she could possibly be looking for.

“You’re welcome to stay.” I pull myself up from the floor, then walk to the closet in the corner of the room. “I have an air mattress.”

“There’s a patch of dirt on your neck,” Elsie says.

My hand scratches under my chin.

“You can’t wipe it away. You’re going to have to scrub. With, like, an exfoliant or something.”

“Okay,” I smile. It’s a horrible dance.

“Like a loofah.”

“I use a loofah. Every morning.” I laugh to fill the room.

“That cannot be true,” she says. This time she laughs, a clipped hiccup, a popped bubble.

“It’s hard to wash around the neck. Sensitive area.”

Elsie’s back to the television. Her fingers pull at the space between her toes. She whistles out a long sigh, tucking her chin into the neck of her sweater. She seems perpetually blue, not just in attitude, but all in the face, a sort of sickly undertone to her skin. A younger version of myself tugs at her shadow, still wanting her to look at me. 

“I can sleep right here, no problem,” Elsie says. “It is a nice couch.” She pats it like a dog’s side.

I wonder if I should ask her about her grandmother again. Elsie folds her bare feet on my coffee table.

“How did she die?”

“Let me clean your neck.”

She stands, making her way down the hallway to my bathroom, motioning with the back of her hand for me to follow. Under the yellow bathroom light I straddle the toilet seat, scooching my butt to the tank.

I’m not concerned that she’s commandeered my space, somehow knowing exactly which magic door my bathroom is hiding behind. I’m relieved that she hasn’t changed, always pulling me through crowds with one hand, down into basements packed with sweaty and unfunny people. Elsie decided early on that she knew what was best for all of us that lived in that condo.

She runs hot water over a washcloth, then stretches one hand to the back of my head, pulling my eyes up into hers. Her palm is balmy, pressing skin to skin.

“My Nana had a heart attack,” she says, breathing into my face. She lowers the towel to the side of my neck before rubbing in abrasive circles, like she’s pulling a stain from a carpet. 

“I’m sorry,” I cough, bringing my other hand to slow hers. “Easy now.”

“Necks age first. I thought I told you that.”

“I don’t remember your Nana.”

“You never met her,” Elsie returns to rubbing. She pulls the towel away and brings it to my eyeline. The pink corner has greyed where towel fibers have taken on doughy grains of my skin. “Gross,” she says.

“Who sent that package for your birthday, the petit fours?”

“That was my auntie.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“Don’t ignore this.” Elsie presses the towel into my face, the heel of her hand bumping my nose. She blocks my vision, and the dark fibers smell of tap water and olive oil. I push her away with my feet, hearing her hiccup-laugh as she slaps the counter. When the towel slips to the floor, the bathroom is empty. Elsie is already back on the couch. 

A baby tumbleweed of dead hair rolls over my foot. I snatch it, twisting it between fingers before lifting the seat beneath my thighs and dropping the small nest into the toilet bowl. The room reveals itself: toothpaste smeared on the vanity, droppings of hair elastics, bobby pins, rubber earring backings. A used pad open-faced in the wastebasket. I’m living the same dirty life I did in college. Elsie is walking backwards, returning in time as some sort of creature comfort. There’s a cough in the living room.

“You fuck anyone yet?”

The distance between the bathroom and couch collapses. I turn on the sink. 

“Funny,” I call. 

“Not joking.” 

I sweep the items off the counter like breadcrumbs. In the mirror, I adjust my bra straps. Rolling over the band of my sweatpants, I hold the curves of my waist in between my hands.

Slowly, I step into the hallway, hoping I’ll have something to say by the time I reach the end of it. Elsie has my knit blanket bundled around her waist. The window is cracked, the city comes in. She is fumbling with a lighter, my big pomegranate candle in her open hand.

“I’m just trying to catch up,” she smiles. “Been a minute.”

I purse my lips. “What do you think?” I step into the kitchen, maintaining a casual tone.

“Let me see you,” she says. “Come here.”

I circle the counter and into the living room. Elsie twirls her finger and I follow, remembering all my tricks, my costume of sexual experience. I keep my hips swinging, bringing one hand to my hair. We are laughing now.

“Sit on the counter,” she says.

“What?”

“Go and sit on the counter.”

I’m careful, unsure what I even want her to believe. Then, I push myself up to the countertop like exiting the deep end of the pool. On the ledge, I consider my options before crossing my legs. Elsie watches carefully from the couch.

“Virgin,” she decides.

I slip back to the floor. 

“I’ve been close,” I say. I bring a hand up to the space between my nose and lip, picking it into folds. “It’s like you always said. Just don’t have it in me.”

“Please. Don’t make me out to be like that,” she says. “I’m a friend.”

“It’s been a while.”

Elsie pouts. “I’ve missed you.”

I don’t know what to do with her. How to fill the cold gaps in conversation, the misunderstandings of this relationship. 

“I’m going to shower,” I say defiantly.

I stand in the mirror, rotating to take it all in. The dark whir of the fan, the toss of the water, it fills the bathroom with so much noise and steam that I can pull myself far from everything, everyone beyond the door. My perfect ritual; my cave. I let my hair fall in a new way. I reach down to touch my toes, letting my breasts flip upwards and pull at themselves. I lunge forward, pointing a foot up to the vanity, cocking a hip out. This is something I might do on a magazine cover. One where the fried ends of my hair carefully cover my nipples, the turn of my palm over my pelvis.

Closing my eyes, I pull back the curtain and duck under the showerhead. Without a second to consider, I turn the knob to the hottest setting, letting the mess wash off of me, burning everything into the stream of water that falls down the drain between my toes. The water rushes so hot it becomes bitterly cold, becoming the deepest blues of a hot tub. My fingers trace down to the space between my legs.

It’s not like I haven’t considered just sticking something up there. In many years alone, I have taken control of a lot of things. Sex was really no different. I tilt my head back, the water streaming over my cheeks and into my open mouth. I bring a hand to where my neck is still pulsing from Elsie’s rub.

I have touched down there, after dark, kneeling on the floor of my cave. I understand everything intimacy is supposed to be. But if Elsie wants to be right about me then she can go ahead. I use my big toe to pull back the knot of hair in the drain, letting it all go. My head is under the current of a river, bobbing with logs and foliage and melted snow. The hot water slips into lukewarm. My hands wrap around the thick of my thighs. I let them become the hands of a stranger and I squeeze.

Once I shut off the water, I can hear Elsie messing with the television. I wrap my towel tightly like a dress.

Opening the door, the voices from the television fold into Elsie’s, and as I approach I find it isn’t the television at all, but a real-life man standing in my living room. His hat is packed with snow, the neon fibers cracking like winter skin. He’s got a dopey smile and a puffer jacket too big for his stature, bird legs sticking out the bottom in tight jeans. 

“This is Ron,” Elsie says. Ron pulls his hand up dumbly, like a toddler being instructed what to do.

“He’s here to help me with my grief,” she says, taking his coat and hanging it on the rack. 

“Hi, Ron.” I grip my towel and look at Elsie. She’s all caught up in his arrival.

“I brought pizza,” he says. He peels off his hat to reveal a shaggy head of hair, a half-grown-out bleach job and diamond studs tagged on each ear.

They look strange together, but all of Elsie’s boyfriends seem to complete a ragtag pair. He has dog eyes and looks like he has been dragged out of a skatepark by the neck of his sweater. Two bright orange socks on his feet that don’t match anything but each other. It isn’t often I have men in my apartment.

“You can change,” Elsie says. She mimes the slow, sensual opening of my towel. 

“I’m okay,” I say, though I don’t believe it. Elsie doesn’t get to anticipate my decisions tonight. The way she undressed the truth on the kitchen counter. That was enough. 

Elsie leaves to pee, and I’m left with Ron leaning on the counter. The silence between us doesn’t seem to bother him.

He finally asks me how long I have lived in the city. He asks what Elsie was like in school. Was she actually an art history student? She had surely made that up. “That’s something,” he says. “That’s something.” I have a feeling he would react this way to any field of study. They all would be a mystery to him. Ron speaks to me like we are old friends. Like we are due for a check-up.

He doesn’t ask how long it has been since I last spoke to Elsie. He doesn’t ask if our distancing was intentional, or rather just some natural yet unfortunate undoing with age. He does not seem concerned to be in this stranger’s house. It’s like I am in college again, bodies in and out of spaces with no belonging. It is a slow winter night and the future is far away.

“I have weed in my room,” I tell him.

The three of us take turns with the pre-roll, rotating positions every few minutes to swing up to the sill and smoke out of my window. Ron’s pizza is cold in the box. Elsie pulls old Caesar salad dressing from my fridge like she’s been waiting to use it. She shakes it over her shoulder before filling a shallow jar. Ron coughs out the window. I tap my hardened pizza crust on the counter. Elsie soaks her slice in white dressing, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. 

“I don’t know many dead people,” she says. “Ron knows loads.”

“Is that true?” I turn to the window, where Ron has just knocked a few books off of my side table. He fidgets with my lighter in his hand.

“He’s from a cop family,” Elsie says. “Lots of darkness.”

“Fuck the pigs,” Ron says. He gestures for the pizza.

“You know, we’re not exclusive,” Elsie continues. 

“No,” Ron says. “Your turn,” he waves the joint in my direction. 

As I go to grab it, I carefully position my fingers to avoid his. I swing up to the windowsill, holding my towel tight around my chest. The chatter is dumb and warm. Facing the open window, it is easier to say something I don’t mean.

“You know, I’m beginning to think you’ve just been feeling guilty,” I say. 

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t answer the phone. It’s catching up to you.”

“That’s not true,” Elsie rubs her nose.

“People don’t call up old friends until they lose someone. You seem to have won the rumination lottery. Dead grandma and the holidays.”

Elsie laughs, leaning over the counter. “She hasn’t changed a bit,” she declares. I drop my naked legs out the window, tracing the faraway line of the sidewalk with my toes.

“That’s not true,” I call. I feel a certain heaviness in my neck. I bring the joint to my lips, pulling in smoke.

“Sure.” Elsie is poking at the microwave. Ron’s shadow is over my shoulder, looking out the window.

Outside, the train pulls over the bridge. Under the streetlights, snow falls quietly, coating the recently plowed streets. Car headlights reflect off wet pavement. My vision crosses in a familiar way.

“I don’t think I’m any good,” I explain. Then we are all laughing because this sentiment is part of the script for when any high sets in. But I believe it. “I used to be good. I used to keep everything so far away from me that there was nothing I could damage.”

I turn over my shoulder and watch Ron fold a pizza slice in half before bringing it into his mouth. Orange oil runs down his hand and under his sleeve. “Me too,” he says, smiling a bit about this conundrum that we share.

“When did it change?” Elsie asks. Ron carefully looks between the two of us to see who she is asking. I look back out the window.

“I think when I got laid,” he says. “Unleashed like a chemical thing, probably.”

I cough.

“Oh, now that’s a good question,” Elsie brings herself over to the couch, and now the three of us are in one tight space, the light dim. “When’d you lose it?” She positions herself, lounging back onto a pillow. She is a teenager at a slumber party. I pull from the joint again.

“Senior year of high school,” Ron says. “Late.”

“Lucky girl?”

“My sister’s friend. Swim team.”

“Boring.”

“Classic,” I say, feeling Elsie’s eyes on my back. I laugh again to show that I understand. I understand the function of losing my virginity in high school, in the back of Ron’s car. Parking lot after practice. A rushed pull of bathing suits, her swimming singlet bunched at the ankles. Everything damp. A growling snow plow under heavy breath.

Elsie underestimates my ability to understand anything that I need to. I can be in that car. I can be anywhere.

There is a pull of silence, and it is clear that it is my turn to answer her question. Instead, I let her sit in it, all of it.

“I lost my virginity to a centipede,” she finally breaks. When no one laughs she adds, “In college.”

I kick the heels of my feet against the outside wall of my apartment.

“It literally crawled up there,” she says. “You wouldn’t believe. They were breeding in the toilet bowl and there were all these eggs we found later. Anyways, there was one right under the rim and I was sitting there real long and then I got up minding my business. Little did I know a centipede had infiltrated my body.”

Ron slinks to the counter to get another slice of pizza. 

“And I didn’t even realize until I was back on the toilet, maybe an hour later, and I was wiping. I hadn’t remembered putting a tampon in, but I pulled the long string and a whole bug came out. It was like a three-incher. It was dead by then. Death by pussy. But it was still in one piece.”

“Okay,” I say. “Alright,” and I leave the window and make my way to the hallway toward my room. I’ve heard Elsie’s story a hundred times. Every time a different bug, a different length. My feet leave a trail of damp footsteps. I need to lie down. Ron follows behind me. My apartment has taken on the staging of a house party.

“Where you going?” he says. He bobs back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“It’s an awful story,” I say.

“It’s bullshit,” he agrees.

“I’m too high.”

He smiles, then whispers, “Grow up.”

I look at him, and he is looking back, and I feel an uncontrollable pull. Smoke and static. The cave of the shower. I am not sure if I’m meant to smack him or laugh at him, but he has grabbed my face, so I let him kiss me. I kiss back. And when it is over, I spit up in my mouth a little because I can’t stop thinking about the centipede and the pizza oil. Everything orange and sour, like the trail of a dark wet bug. I pull tight on my towel.

“I’ve never done it,” I confess. I brace myself with the wall.

“I know.”

I bunch my face together.

“That’s why I’m here,” he says, plainly.

Elsie’s steps come down the hallway. After us. 

“You left me hanging,” she says. She seems out of breath. I point in her face.

“Your unsexy bug story is full of shit!” I am a caricature. I am high. Ron is laughing. 

Elsie looks at Ron. Ron looks at me. I look down to check that my towel has not slipped, it has not.

“What is happening?”

The two of them are wound up in some silence.

Elsie catches her breath, shaking her head in disbelief. “Go sober up and put on some pretty panties. Jesus.”

I wait until I am in my room to drop my towel, and then I am naked at the side of my bed, pulling the sheets up and tucking the sides under the mattress. I am a scattered bird stuck inside a shopping mall, flapping and chirping and positioning pillows and kicking dirty laundry into the corner because suddenly I understand exactly what is happening. Elsie wants to help, that is all. She has always wanted to help with everything. She has felt guilty for not calling after so much time, and she is here to help. And now she is at the bedroom door, painted in the familiar shadows of my hallway, and she is here to confirm it. She is a giver, and Ron is here to help. He is happy to help.

“He will just open it all up,” she says. She sits at the edge of my bed while I fish in my underwear drawer. “He will just open you. It won’t hurt. Then you won’t be scared anymore. It’s like a practice, a rehearsal.”

I stand hunched, naked in front of my old friend. I am a naked bird. No one has seen my body like this. It is revelatory, an undressing has already occurred and it has been so easy. I am no longer myself. Because of Elsie, there is now a shrinking gap between what I know and what I understand. Because she is a person looking at my body. Because she is not terrified of it, I am not terrified. And I am going to let her undress me again.

Elsie has me sit on the bed like a dog.

“Like this,” she says, pulling my arms forward with another hand running down my spine. Then she nods, “Good.”

Her hands are resting on each shoulder and she is right in front of me. She looks intently, adjusting my body. I stare right down the barrel. 

“Okay I changed my mind,” she says. I exhale pizza breath over her face.

She presses me onto my back and I find her hand in mine. Pulling herself off the bed she crouches down near my nightstand, her grip tightening. “Right here,” she says. “I’m not moving.” It is a flu shot at the doctor’s. She is my careful mother. I search my walls for a place to return to when the time comes. When they wipe my arm. When they tell me it will be quick.

Ron enters theatrically. I cock my head back onto a pillow, my pillow. I am in my room. Elsie continues to press her fingers to my knuckles. I squeeze back, gripping to try and fill the gap where even the most center of our palms won’t touch.

Ron above me, I bring my free hand to his face, brushing a crumb off his chin. The shadows of my room become a canopy. A series of images are presented: Ron’s nose, the space between his eyes, the dark circle cast by the ceiling fan. Ron’s face, the ceiling, his stomach resting lightly on mine. Ron’s face, twisting into a groan.

“This is the part that hurts,” he says plainly, digging in his briefs.

“She’s not ready, you dog,” Elsie laughs. “Warm her up.”

And so, Ron’s hand finds my abdomen, big palm to rising ribcage, all before diving below and bending, becoming an empty cup beneath me. I rock into it, pressing every part of my back into some surface, extending my legs, unmolding. A few rocks in and I decide that this is fine. We are all playing a game. I am learning the game and it is my turn: I lift a hand to my chest, pulling my breast out of my bra and picking at my nipple like a scab.

I almost miss it, Elsie’s hiccup. It is quiet and covered. I catch it, though. I catch it whole. I catch it because I know it has been there this entire time. It has been there since she knocked on the door. It has been there for years. I catch her face in the dark of my bedroom as she kneels beside my bed. I catch Elsie breaking into laughter. Same old, same old. Another laugh at me. 

“Fuck,” I pull myself up before my bile is on me, landing in a pool between my thighs. Ron leaps from the bed. Elsie releases her hand and slams into the wall. 

“Another,” I cry, choking. Another spill, this time cold and pink. All liquid. And it is just me on the bed, spinning. It is all over; it was all over me.

The bedroom door clicks closed and there is nothing left: the window wide open, the chains of the ceiling fan becoming a twisting ribbon. Waves of traffic and the train hustling over the bridge. It is so cold, my room. Hands to my chest, I am unbelievably cold in the dark of my room.

I let my hand reach between my legs and press faintly, then harshly, a hundred miles in one minute. I am pushing traffic on and over the bridge. I am poking a finger into my vagina to see how far it will go. Before it is out, I am off the bed and grabbing the towel hung on the door. I strip the bed with one hand, wadding up the sheets into a wrinkled grocery bag. Then, kneeling to the ground, I wince, pulling my finger out to tie the two flaps of the plastic bag into a firm knot. It doesn’t matter that I am breathing, it matters that I am done. I pull a t-shirt over my body, putting everything away.

There is a gentle knock at the door.

I open right to her face. “I’m so sorry,” Elsie says. Ron stands behind her, sheepish. 

But I am already past them, shoulders knocked and into the hallway.

“I thought you wanted this,” Elsie says, what feels like over and over until I am back in the kitchen with my face versus the open refrigerator. The blue light is still blinking on tomatoes and leftover alfredo and the dish of browning avocado spread. I am chewing air. My tongue is a truck in reverse.

“It might be time to go,” I hear him say behind her.

My body pulses under my t-shirt. There is a hum in my stomach. There is a flaring throat. And somewhere inside all of it, I have been opened.

“My Nana’s dead,” Elsie says. I look in her direction, silent. “I don’t know what to do about it. I thought you would know.”

“We gotta go,” Ron repeats. 

“I need your help,” she says, her face curls.

I let my friend try and read my expression, my still face. Since she knows me so well.

“I’ll walk you out,” I say, turning to them. I gently press the fridge door closed, the suction eating itself, the light turning off.

My lips pull into a smile, then I nod to confirm that this is a misunderstanding, a friendly bumbling that will make quite the laugh down the line. I will forget it, could forget it, if everyone needs me to. Whatever we need.

I grab my coat from the counter and throw it over my shoulder. I understand these actions, the actions of a casual person. I am a cosmopolitan. I am a hole of myself.

They follow me down the stairs, parading a few steps back. At one point I turn over to toss them a laugh.

At the door, Elsie slinks her arm around my back as she bends over to fasten her boots. Ron arches at the waist to bow, then proceeds into some distorted wink and face scrunch to both apologize and try to impress. The doorway, in its small stature, allows for the final tumble of our bodies.

“I hope to see you again,” I say to Ron. I say this because it might be what I’d say to a lover at the door.

I pull Elsie stiffly into my arms. She is still. They step out into the road, Elsie clutching Ron’s arm. The church across the street has its trees lit for Christmas. A small man stands on a ladder and waves a broom up into the sky, adjusting the wires that wrap the trunk.

“Merry Christmas,” Ron says over his shoulder. His face then turns to Elsie.

My hands are empty. I find my winter coat in a bundle at my feet. I pick it up and fold it under my arm.

I am not sure what I expected my brave self to do and am suddenly puzzled why I brought the coat at all. I stand on the stoop until the couple bends behind the traffic, Elsie’s face quickly flashing in the reds and whites of passing cars. 

I imagine the two of them pulling each other’s coats into a taxi, their faces never turning to look out the window because everything is right there between them, bright and whole. They will say something about my body or the smell of my bed. They will regret not bringing a bottle of wine. Wine makes me tired, would have made me tired, but they do not know that. I assure myself that they do not know much about me.

The man at the church waves his broom in my direction. It is grim. Even he, a benevolent God in this small man’s body, pities me. I wave back.

“Oh, sorry,” he calls. “Not waving. The wire’s stuck.”

I spin my body back toward my door, shrinking.

“Now I’m waving, Miss,” he says, lifting the broom higher. “Now I’m waving!”

I quickly lock the door behind me and put the door jam in since no one will be coming over ever again. I crack the ice cube tray onto the counter, and then remember the nature of the counter, the people who have been in my apartment and have sat there with their elbows and their pizza and their salad dressing and then my ass, legs crossed, mistaken, and I suddenly need to sweep the ice cubes into the garbage and drink the water straight from my sink. 

Hooking my face under the faucet I open my mouth, then close and let the stream split over the bridge of my nose. I count to five with no breath. Ron’s hand cupped under me for a five count. Everything around me, just a five count, forever. Endless countings of five. The light on the oven, the creak of the furnace. My face under the cold water with my eyes open, then closed, then wide. My pointer finger pushed deep inside, poking my walls, completely lost. 

Somewhere on the walk between the kitchen sink and my bedroom I bent to the floor and brought my face to the hardwood. I must have surrendered in the hallway. I must have made myself a tight ball on the ground, stretched my arms out in an attempt to anchor and said, “You’re good, you’re good, you’re good.”