After two months things happen. You lose all confidence after two months, my brother warned. You'll want her back. Then you'll stay awake and figure out a way to get her back. Then you'll get her back and you'll hate yourself even more when you end it once again. He was right. I ignored him the first time around. I ignored his advice, the advice of a man old enough to know that getting the girl is easier than any of us had expected in high school. Ending it was the hard part. After two months I went back to Julie. I pray I don't this time—goddamn two months.
After I break up with someone I look back and romanticize my time with them. I forget all the reasons why I called things off in the first place. I forget how obnoxious they were. I forget how mediocre the sex was. I forget how saggy this or that was. I forget all things negative until all that remains are haloed memories revealed in soft focus.
The pictures tell only the good times. Cameras are never pulled from pockets to document that fight when she threw your shoes out the window of a moving cab. Photographs never document the guilt she made you feel. No amount of pixels can capture the way she disagreed with everything you said.
The picture of us, the only one I have, is hidden at the bottom of a cardboard box. Her mom made the frame. It meant so much to get it. It's made of wood from an old, green fence near their Montana cabin. I'd never received a homemade picture frame before. It was wrapped in bubble wrap, protected from the postman's calloused hands.
The card it came with is in the box too, buried under the bubble wrap. Not as a preventive measure, but as a way to block the image below. Bubble wrap is clear after all. I haven't taken it out since. I hope I can hold back. I don't want to ruin what I now have with Audrey.
We met a couple weeks ago. We shared silence without awkwardness faster than I'd expected. We have a good thing going.
Before it ended Julie and I planned a trip together. It would've happened a month ago. We were going skiing. Her aunt had a cabin in Big Bear. It was ours to have. Anytime, she said. She never rents it out. All I have to do is call a couple days before.
I saw a picture of Julie recently. Turns out she went anyway. I was glad. She went with a family—a husband, a wife, and their three-year-old red headed daughter. They were her besties. I hated that fucking term.
Their daughter was annoying and certainly not cute. If I had a baby with Julie, I thought, that's what it would look like—red and freckled. I couldn't handle that image. It was on the list of things that caused me to end the relationship.
I never showed anyone the list. If I had spoken to anyone about what was going on in my life, if I had not kept every feeling, emotion, and action to myself, they might have called me insane. You're breaking up with her because you think your kids would be redheaded? What're you fucking insane? Yes I am, but I promise there was more than just that. The truth is she is beautiful. The hypothetical baby would've probably been exhaustingly cute. I threw out the list after I left her apartment that last morning. The break up went through the night but I swear there was more on the list than that.
I didn't look at all the pictures from her ski trip; just a few and a short video she took. She was laughing in it. She was laughing loudly in it, a bit too loud. I could see she was compensating. It was supposed to be our trip after all. I closed the browser. I remembered the annoying times again. I was happy I didn't go. But that was just a month off from the break up. It was only a month since we'd seen or spoken a word to each other. Now it's been two months. The times don't seem so annoying anymore. My brother's wisdom has been re-worded to fit my frame of mind. You'll want her back. Then you'll stay awake and figure out a way to get her back. Then you'll get her back and you'll live happily ever after.
I hear about her from time to time. She and my roommate became good friends. She and my roommate's girlfriend became like best friends. They might move in together. There are pictures of them together. It annoys me to no end. There's a picture of them all eating ramen. The caption says, "We Love." A phrase she used in abundance. It annoys me seeing it written out like that. They're all smiling and happy.
My roommate and his girlfriend can't stand Audrey. They won't acknowledge her presence in the room. They'll leave the room. They'll take their names out of any plans involving her. It's spiteful and I want to spite them back. They want to ruin us and they might. I'll say again, two months is never easy. I should defend Audrey's honor. I should tell them to fuck off. But I can't stand up to them because I can't help but remember they were around first. They were with me long ago. They were with me for all the others that broke my heart, when I knew not how to break theirs.
Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. Everyone was wearing green. I took the day off. My email said I was Irish and Catholic. I was going to celebrate. The Jews on La Brea and Pico get days off all the time. Why shouldn't I?
I showed up at Casey's, an Irish pub down the street, at 11am and started the festivities. I told Audrey she was welcome to meet up after work. She said she'd be there around five. I hoped she wouldn't make it. I half expected, hoped, that Julie would be there. She lived close by after all. She loved drinking and partying after all. We'd been there together at one point after all.
The first time Julie and I kissed she was wearing a green dress. I saw her in each dress each girl wore. She looked better than every one of them.
I drank for hours by myself. The crowds grew and waned. Audrey called and said she could no longer stop by. I said I was probably heading home anyway. I was drunk and tired.
Julie never showed up. I needed to sleep before I woke up on the curb.
When I got home I checked online for recently uploaded photos to tell me where she might be. I checked her Twitter for any hints. There were new people in her life. All her updates were directed at them. I didn't understand any of it. She has a penchant for inside jokes. If you say one thing to her one time that's slightly funny about something slightly unfunny she'll repeat it ad nauseam. I loved that about her. We had hundreds of them. It depressed me thinking about them. It depressed me knowing there were so many I didn't understand anymore.
On Tuesdays we used to go to Redwood on 2nd Street and Hill. We listened to Mike Stinson. He sang about aching and drinking and the price of land and motor oil. The waitress' name was Lisa. She'd told us he'd written music for Willie Nelson. I thought of an old girlfriend from Texas. I thought of the time we drove out to the middle of nowhere listening to Pancho and Lefty, laughing and breaking down the lyrics. Near an abandoned railroad crossing she told me she loved me. I told her the same a week later. Six months after that we were no longer speaking to each other. Two months after that I drove past her apartment hoping to catch her outside. I never did and haven't seen her since. Mike Stinson never played any Willie Nelson.
After giving up on Julie's updates I found his web site. The recordings were terrible. They were bland and empty and produced. He sounded nothing like himself. He sounded nothing like the guy I remembered. I was convinced to go to Redwood and see for myself. But perhaps he sounded exactly right. Perhaps he sounded just like he did on Tuesdays with Julie. Perhaps it was all in my head. All the great times were all in my head. They were never as great as I wanted. They were only as great as I made myself believe they were.
The two-month cloud is ignoring how drunk she'd get on those nights. How she'd stumble home, crying endlessly about things I didn't care about or have sympathy for. How, back at her apartment, she'd approach me on the couch with her red teeth, stained from the wine, wanting to make out. It was sloppy and I'd force images into my mind to get aroused. When I did she'd take it in her hand. She'd tackle it with her mouth. She was so proud of her blowjob technique. I forced it in her. She was shaved and the razor stubble scratched my thighs. She'd ride me. That was her favorite way to do it. I'd last forever it seemed. I was a stallion it seemed—a sexual Adonis it seemed. In reality I just didn't enjoy it all that much. Afterwards she'd pass out with her red teeth and I'd quietly get up to brush.
But none of that's on my mind now. Two months blocks all that out. At two months I'm convinced I have to see her because each moment was a rare instance of divine relationship personified. We were a living hyperbole. We were the happiest couple ever. How and why would I end it? Not once, but twice? This second round meant as the final nail in the coffin. What was I thinking?
It was approaching eleven. I knew she was there. I didn't, but I did. My roommate, her friend, came home. I ignored him. I made an Irish car bomb, chugged it down, and left without a word. I stumbled down the street. I didn't want to take the subway. I didn't want to take the bus. It was nine blocks away. I'd get there in no time. I passed by the Golden Gopher on 8th as I received a text from Audrey. I just finished a new painting and want to show you!
I stopped walking. I felt sick to my stomach and it wasn't from the combination of Guinness, Jameson, and Baileys, which I rushed down my gullet before I rushed out the door. I stood motionless staring at the wheat paste movie posters on the boarded up base of the Hotel Bristol. Julie told me they shot some of Fight Club in the dilapidated building. It was one of the many things she told me that I didn't care about. I had felt bad for not caring. I didn't feel bad at that moment. I felt bad the first time I ended it. I felt bad the second time I ended. But I didn't feel bad at that moment. Not for her anyway.
I walked into the Golden Gopher to finish myself off. I told someone the story of the Hotel Bristol. I don't remember their reaction. I drank until the lights went on and I had to stumble over the broken sidewalks back to my apartment—back to my empty bed.
There are no pictures of us online anymore. She has taken them all down. I never took any photos. Mine are only from a long time ago when we were just friends. Those photos don't hit me as hard. They don't hit me at all. Even after two months I have no desire to look at them. It's the ones from that certain time period I want but the only one I have is in bubble wrap at the bottom of that cardboard box.
Audrey has a new painting she wants me to see. She just finished it last night. She was painting while I avoided her to find Julie. She can't wait for my opinion. She thinks I'm a great writer. She thinks I'm an artist. She respects everything I say. She likes so much of what I do. She wants me to judge her. She should be the one to judge.
"In early adolescence I believed that if I watched Christie Brinkley surface in the pool in Vacation enough, I'd finally catch a glimpse of her breasts. I never got to see them outside of my imagination, and years later, when trying to watch the movie with my parents on school break, the whole scene was scratchy and distorted. I acted shocked and took out the tape, remembering my childhood debauchery. And as I was talking about what we should watch instead, that old sexual guilt came racing back. Such guilt disappears when I write. My name is Tyke Johnson and I live in Los Angeles."