Meliorism

Uneasy

He’s lighting a cigarette, his pale eyes glowing under the moonlight. We’re sitting on the sidewalk—actually, no; he is sitting on the sidewalk. I’m just here to look at him flick off the ashes. That’s what I am—the observer, the onlooker, and, most times, the perpetrator.

“Why are you not saying anything, baby?” he asks me, halfway through his fourth stick. We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour now and I’m getting real cold and he’s getting real quiet—at least until he asks that question, the same kind of question he always asks: Why are you not talking? Am I boring you? Is anything wrong? Do you want to go somewhere?

In my mind I just want to thank him—for considering my presence, my existence, and, perhaps, my willingness to spend the night with him. I want to talk to him and hold him in my arms while he was inhaling what he loved. I hope that inhaling doesn’t have to mean something.

I decide to just shake my head. He’s had enough of my gratitude; it’s time he realize that I need his. I’m always the one to thank him. I’m always the one to tell him I appreciate his love. I need to know that I’m actually doing something to help strengthen our relationship. I want this—to sit under the moonlight, to have cigarettes in hand, to smell the distant and ephemeral boulevards.

“You sure look cold,” he says with that Southern accent of his. When he told me he was from Alabama, I looked at him in disbelief and maybe a little bit of indifference. People from Alabama don’t just fly to Long Island. It never really happens, and when it does, it doesn’t work out. I knew it wouldn’t work out—small town, one new introvert. All the others thought so, too.

But he proved me wrong. He proved all of us wrong.

It could be right.

The first few months I was so confused, but then he gave me that kiss and I realized what he really is—the pale Alabama boy who came with all the right devices, the pale Alabama boy who’ll love me eternally, the pale Alabama boy whom I’ll love eternally.

Our first date happened near the beach. It was cold and there was smoke coming from the city. We talked for a few hours, the only cordiality coming from the fire and the stars and the skies and the steady rhythm of the water crashing to the shore. But as the time went by, so did the proximity between us. Cold bodies made warm—not by the fire, but by what’s found amidst it all.

He was wearing a sweatshirt then, and he is wearing the same sweatshirt now. I hope this doesn’t have to mean something.

“I’m okay with this,” I reply when the silence gets unbearable.

He takes a drag, and out comes another stick. He looks at me and tells me to light it. I reach for the lighter sitting beside him and wonder why he can’t light it himself. Maybe he’s trying to prove something. Maybe this is all some part of a little game. Maybe he’s tired.

The noises from the boulevards become even more distant. The stars, a reminder of what we’re missing. The moonlight’s become something more of a thing that’s just there, not a thing that we really need. His warm breath’s the only thing I have right now.

“Will all this add up to anything at all?” I finally decide to ask him. He looks at me, his expression blank. “I want something to happen. Please make something happen.”

So he lights a stick and hands it to me, and I see a worried look on his face, and I realize that he has that worried look because he can see a worried look on mine, too. He’s worried that I’m worried. He’s abstract because I’m abstract. He’s cold because I’m cold.

“I love you,” he says. He reaches up for my face and kisses me on the lips. “This is happening.”

Please let this mean something, I think to myself when he has finally let go.