i.

 

After we cleaned up the empty cups and broken glass from behind the football field, I watched the sun rise over Belvidere. We sat on the bleachers, cold metal making my bare thighs goosebump. The sun came up in silence, a yellowy light drenching the grass and astroturf before us. In my backpack I had the empty bottles and whatever else I could salvage from the night before, when we got wasted in the Dunes. The next morning, I could feel the grit of sand in between my toes and lining the bottom of my purse.

​

It was June. High school was over, but there wasn’t anything to take its place, not then. You and I would go for endless drives, my feet wearing grooves into the floormat, taking turns playing music. That summer, I spent most of the money I made helping you pay for gas. That summer, we draped our arms out the car windows until our tans grew uneven, we spent days at the beach.

​

I remember it was evening once and you told me the story of your first kiss, behind the baseball dugout in your neighborhood. It was with another girl. You were fourteen.

​

Have you, ever?  You asked.

​

Ever what?  I asked.

​

Have you ever kissed a girl?

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No, Never.

​

I once heard the quote: “There’s an inner truth and an outer truth. You owe everything to the inner, and nothing to the outer.” That summer, you were the inner truth. You wore a white slip dress and leather sandals. You talked like you weren’t a teenager, like you weren’t from here. In my memory, you always drove with a cigarette dangling from your lips, even though you barely smoked. In my memory, meeting you was a religion, a head rush, its own kind of poem.

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Do you want to?  You asked.

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And then, the energy between us a slow burn that finally seared through, we did.

 

​

ii.

 

The night of the election, we drove out to the reservoir and watched the city spread out underneath us. Headlights glimmered, houses and apartments burning like tiny yellow dots. You had the radio news report on and it felt strange, surreal, to hear the election reports coming through with radio static. There was no television, no image. Just our hometown spread before us. As the night wore on the landscape got darker and darker. The roads emptied out, windows went black.

​

    The whole time, you smoked with the window open just a crack. I could feel the cigarette stench burrowing into my hair and clothes. I felt nauseous, but I don’t think that was why. The radio report went on, states across the country being announced one and then the next. I kept waiting to hear Hillary Clinton’s name, to hear that she was pulling through. You smoked every cigarette all the way down to the filter. I don’t remember, but your fingertips probably were stained with nicotine. I probably came home reeking. But. What matters: the knot in my stomach. The image of our country red and inflamed. Time moved and we did not, my feet asleep beneath me, my back pressed into the leather of the passenger seat.

​

    We stayed awake in silence. Soon it was clear that she couldn’t win. The whole time a crater grew inside me, a coldness for which there are no words. What about us? You and me locked inside a car, fog blurring the windshield, our legs sore from working minimum wage, us, our girl bodies, our teenage selves, our no-money families, the things I still can’t say--a betrayal to all of it. Past three and she was conceding and this is when you started weeping. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound. You weeping, and then me, us together gutted, gnawed through.

 

We stayed in the car until dawn crept up from behind the city. The sun didn’t rise, not really. When you drove me home, your eyes red-rimmed and wet, hands chapped and trembling on the wheel, the sky was a cold gray. Foreign, unimaginable, the color of a bruise. I slept through class, I slept all day until I woke up and night had crawled back around me. Somehow, I felt better in the dark.

 

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iii.

 

We walked into the 7-11 together with a foot of space in between us, not holding hands. The neon signs announced lottery tickets, cigarettes sold for the state minimum price. We now accept EBT was printed on a piece of paper taped to the door. We bought two pints of ice cream without discussion. At the counter you paid, fluorescent light haloing above you, your hair glowing at the ends.

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Debit or credit?  The cashier asked.

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Debit, you said.

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You handed the card across the counter. Behind the cashier, cough medicine and cigarettes lined the wall. Smile, you’re on camera!  was hand-written on a piece of paper. The cashier handed your card back and you said thank you, slid the plastic square back into your wallet.

​

As we walked back to the car, two men crossed our path. They were tall and thin with hard, angular faces. They wore leather jackets and paint-splattered blue jeans. They saw me staring and looked back, hard. Fucking dykes, the taller one said, his voice rumbly and low. A hot mixture of shame and rage flowed through me. I wanted to say something back, to make this into a story I wouldn’t be ashamed of later. But I stayed quiet. I kept my eyes locked on the concrete. In the back of my mind, underneath everything, the question I didn’t want to ask: How did he know?

​

I revisited the night before and I revisited your car. I revisited my mouth on yours and the taste of spit and feeling something alive and tangible in me. And yet. There’s no language for me to exist in. I look what I am directly in the face and I say no. I don’t want to be gay. Not here, not now. Every city and every town has plenty of fenceposts to be strung up on. Every man laughs in the shape of a fist and it’s not here, not now; I don’t want it to be.

​

The almost-winter night air rips through me and I shiver on the way back to the car. You unlock it and without saying anything, we drive back to the reservoir. It’s our spot, I guess. The city glimmers underneath us. We sit in silence. You peel back the lid on the first pint of ice cream. I don’t want to eat, not anymore.

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Did you hear him?  I ask.

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Yeah, you go. I’m sorry.

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Me too.

​

You hand me a plastic spoon and I take one bite. It’s chocolate mint Ben and Jerry’s; it melts on my tongue. You switch the radio on. This time it’s just music, not election results. Don’t Think Twice, it’s All Right comes through, solemn and slow, surrounded by static. Light from the streetlamps outside the car glows on your face. Your eyes are bright and shiny, as if you’re tearing up. I think the interior of your car is like a haven where things maybe hurt less. I think you’re maybe the prettiest girl I know. I study the sheen of your hair, your long eyelashes, the slope of your nose. All I can do is watch.