Stretching to Understand
You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I
got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was
aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your
eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I
got in the car. I thought we would ride through quiet streets, smoking
too many cigarettes, trying to find things to talk about but falling
into sullen silence instead. Eventually we would have sex in the back
seat of your car, never getting all our clothes off, my skirt around
my middle, your pants around your knees.
The regret would linger much longer than the act.
Instead you took me to the top of the water tower and you wrapped a
blanket around my shoulders and told me that you were sorry about not
being able to hurt me, that you didn't have it in you to fuck me
carelessly. You talked like you were thinking out loud. I felt like I
was walking with you in a dream and I never wanted either of us to
wake up again.
You looked like someone I could never know, you were dark and
beautiful and quiet. In time I told you all my secrets and you told me
all of yours. We had such happy childhoods, everything almost perfect.
The almost perfect perfection of middle-class American life. Our happy
child memories blurred in places here and there by the occasional
incident of alcoholic rage or night-covered sodomy (your father loved
you too hard we thought). Our lives were full of the furry edged
expressions of twisted love. All our old scars we showed each other
and I kissed yours and you kissed mine.
You just wanted to be understood, you said, as you pulled that long,
black hair away from your lovely square jaw. I understood you didn't
I? How I stretched myself to understand you!
All my understanding didn't help a bit.
You looked like someone that could never do a thing
like that, but I had been wrong about this before. When I realized
that you had your father's curse I tried to stretch my love for you
right on over into understanding and I did. You already had all my
secrets and I was trying, trying so hard to hold on to all of yours.
You looked like someone I didn't want to know. It's damn hard sitting
here looking at you through this glass. I loved you so fucking much
and I love you still. You looked like someone that could hurt me but I
didn't stop to think that it was someone else you were hurting all
the while. Hush now love, I know that you really were wanting to be
better than all that and that you never meant that boy any harm. I'm
stretching still to understand you and I forgive you even if no one
else can.
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Author's Note
People don't like this story much and I can understand why... I don't even know where I could submit something like this, it is perhaps unpublishable.
Other stories by Siolo Thompson
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this one is in the department of the difficult, a place i often shop for stories. it has a straight up honesty and deals with the attraction-repulsion mechanism that gets activated frequently in abusive relationships. there is an obsessiveness about the language, a compulsion to understand that is not driven by rationality but by desire. unpublishable stories are what some writers aspire to--not sure this is one. derrida believed that the meaning of "forgiveness," like "terrorism," remains enigmatic, a secret: we cannot reduce it to a simple or univocal definition. and yet it "arrives," totally unexpected and a surprise, upsetting all of our categories.
thanks for sharing this story--
"You talked like you were thinking out loud."
good stuff.
I love it that this story attempts to bring compassion to an area where few dare to bring it.
Siolo, I really like this. A lot.
I think this a story with a lot of passion, told simply, told straight forwardly. Who knows why so many find it unpublishable? Editors can be quirky. Sometimes you just have to find the one who shares your quirks. I recently had a piece accepted I'd been shopping for fifteen years.
I love your work, Ms. S! :) All of it. More, please. xoxoxoxl, H
lovely work, love the self destruction and never quite understanding x
Wow!
This is a powerful story that scores its impact in its present length. At times it seems to dodge around its darker elements, phrase things obliquely. At other times it speaks bluntly. Perhaps the trend toward telling stories cinematically, with long shots and close-ups and dialogue does not apply to what you are trying to do here. However, I can feel certain unspoken images just out of focus that I wouldn't mind seeing more clearly. I want to hear voices, hear the evasions that lead to the confessions. The indirect dialogue tends to mask rather than reveal the pain. This could be a bigger story.