There’s no more Elf Bars. First my 7-Eleven stopped stocking them, then everywhere else. This is not easy for me to accept. The minty clear flavor became a part of the routine—the White Claws, the cigarettes, the bar-hopping. Without it everything is off.
He has big brown eyes and watches me feed money into the jukebox. I ask him what his favorite band is. He says Silver Jews. I say it would be ridiculous to put on a Silver Jews song at the lively bar. Then I put on “Random Rules.” He’s here with a girl and I figure I might have to give up. But when I invite him to our table in the corner he comes by himself. He says his name is Chris.
The bartender I haven’t seen in months looks at me and says, “White Claw, baby?” When I sit back down, I catch a bit of the conversation, something him being engaged. “You’re engaged?” I say. “No,” he says. “It was a joke.” “That was a test,” Colette says. “You have to stop trusting men.” This is a recent development—my friends and I have agreed that I put too much trust in men too quickly. I never stop to think whether they have a façade, if they’re lying. The bartender Mace finishes their shift and I get them to sit with us. I blabber about the 21-year-old line cook who frequents this bar and broke my heart after we hooked up twice. They assure me I don’t want him because he’s a serious alcoholic; I say that’s why I want him, he gets me.
When Greta goes out to smoke, I steal the seat next to Chris. I rest my legs in his lap and my head on his shoulder. He says he’s from New Jersey and I say I’m from Long Island which is like the New Jersey of New York. But maybe that’s Staten Island. I’m drunk enough to feel unburdened for the first time this week. The songs I queued on the jukebox are echoes underneath the wall of chatter at the bar. Whenever I get up I have to squeeze through groups of people. “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” by Of Montreal seems to play forever. I want to sing along but I can’t hear what part it’s at. I play The Strokes, The Smiths, Yung Lean, 2hollis.
Soon Mace leaves, then Greta and Colette. I stay curled up beside Chris. We make out in our little corner. When I have to go to the bathroom, I drag him inside the small space with me to pee together. But then I get too nervous, nothing comes out. We’re in there for like five minutes; girls are slamming on the door now. Their jaws drop when we walk out together even though all we did was urinate. It doesn’t occur to me in the moment that we could’ve been doing anything else.
We pick up a pack of White Claws and get an Uber to Crown Heights. The driver leaves the windows half rolled down and lets me have the aux and I blast 2hollis and Radiohead. The entire ride we talk about how amazing The Bends is. He thinks Kid A is better but I haven’t listened. We sing along to the words and the guitar riffs. I stick my head out the window as we glide over the bridge.
Third floor. He has one roommate who’s asleep. The sink is full of dirty dishes, the entire place is kind of disorganized in a way I’m too drunk to fully make sense of. His room is empty aside from the bed. He turns off the light and for a second everything’s black. But then the dark sky and a dimly lit apartment in the distance come into focus through the naked window. I say I’m a bit nervous to have sex because the last time it resulted in a yeast infection and BV. I had to spread my legs at eight p.m. for the gynecologist while All-American Rejects’ “Move Along” was blasting in another room for some reason. Then the medicine I took for it gave me acid reflux, an ailment I find absolutely unbearable; it can feel like being stabbed in the throat. Because I had acid reflux I couldn’t smoke cigarettes for three days and I had nicotine withdrawal. Things weren’t so great as of late.
I offer to give him head and he accepts, taking his pants and boxers off. I take him in my mouth almost completely to the point where I can feel the echo of a gag reflex, but I can control it and I do. Giving head is not a chore to a girl with oral fixation. It’s as satisfying as hitting my vape or biting my lip, it’s like a game for my mouth to play and I’m determined to win. I climb on top of him and ride him with enough passion to probably burn a good amount of calories. I take his hand and wrap it around my throat. In missionary, I dirty-talk in a way I can only do while drunk, what I say is something my sober self would probably feel too repressed to verbalize, but the truth is I love being degraded. It is a risk to love being degraded during sex because if you ever end up hating the person (which is often likely) then you feel even more like an idiot, like not only did that person fuck you over but they also called you a stupid slut cum whore. But in the moment you wanted it, you asked for it, you took pleasure in it.
He fucks me from behind, my face in the pillow until he comes on my back and wipes me up. We lie awake talking. He says I’m hot, he says he likes what I say while I’m being fucked, which is a relief because there’s always a deep fear of being judged. As the White Claw wears off, my mind wanders back to what a fucking shitshow this month has been, I still haven’t wrapped my head around it all, how the 26-year-old boy I was infatuated with for three weeks was not at all who I thought he was, he was a liar and a fraud, a person who presented himself in a certain light to women to get them in bed, he was the type of person to hang around terrible people and convince women that he was nothing like those terrible people and he actually hated them and wasn’t involved with them anymore, it’s hard to tell whether it’s a deliberate lie or if he’s just really too stupid to realize what he’s doing. Before I know it I’m crying and I don’t want to stop because I haven’t been able to cry at all. The pain is an echo thanks to Lexapro. I know I wouldn’t be able to handle it otherwise, but I’m also unsure of how to navigate emotions at all anymore, I don’t know what to do with my sadness, it’s covered in a bunch of blankets, smothered but still there, deep and heavy.
Chris holds me until I’m done crying. To try to make me feel better he says he moved to New York for his girlfriend and she dumped him shortly after he arrived. I’m endeared by his vulnerability but I also become more aware of the chasm between us, between our experiences and our understandings, I’m so submerged in my specific chaos it’s like I’m all alone in it and no one can save me. I’m just waiting for it all to collapse in on itself.
But still he has a fragile look in his eyes, in his face, an innocence that makes me trust him, that makes me fail the test, because I can’t help it, my default is to trust. If there were to be more than this night, I would hand him all the necessary tools to hurt me, I would guide his hand toward the spot on me that would cause the most pain.
Intermittent sex and talking continue until we fall asleep at an unknown hour. When we wake up it’s eight and I have work at ten. I hate seeing the White Claws on the nightstand knowing I can’t take a sip; the sun is a cop. Today’s hangover will be a rough one I can already tell. He walks me to the door and I don’t look at him while we say bye. In the Uber I look in my phone and realize I don’t have any trace of him—no phone number, no last name, nothing.