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You were the first one and now I have the history of the open.
excerpt from all the places I have woken

Elena Botts

    We met at Union station, I feel like. We did not meet in Union Station. It was Dupont. I’m sorry, I get the series of events all wrong. I go through them in my mind and simply. All the places we went to, we went to at least twice, and then it was over.
    You were looking for your backpack because you had left it on the metro, you said. This was the first thing you said to me. Before I was walking with you, you were another stranger standing outside the station. “I lost my backpack,” you said again, “Do you think there’s a number?”
    “Like Lost and Found? Yeah, you should call.”
    I told you I had poor vision, so I might not see you, and that you would have to come to me. I had a John Ashbery poem “stuck in my head”: so I thought, ‘You must come to me all golden and pale. Like the dew or the air...’ You thought I was blind. I thought nothing of meeting you, I was merely. I was trying to get home. But there you were, small against the escalator, among the people who together made real the word “among”.
    I was exhausted then and am exhausted now. You and I went to the station. No, see, I am getting it all wrong. We went to my friends, a private party in the Organization of American States, but the smaller building next to it where they pack and transport the artworks. There, my friends and their skateboards. There, we unwrapped the CDs and with that easy familiarity, which somehow you also became ingratiated in, we put the CDs in their wrappings, their cases. I might’ve said aloud that this album was written in March after a February that tore at my heart. It was about blood, and horses, and all-consuming guilt, sins that even the Madonna could not endure. I had watched Andrei Rublev too many times, and I felt like him in that way, I felt that each person I knew in some intimate way would become burdened by me, and that in the end each relationship was a dead horse, a stallion I had recklessly slaughtered. I would watch the blood from the neck. A clean cut like in that movie, which movie? The other one, with the butcher and his daughter. Blood from the neck, and the sound as the neck falls empty, and the blood falls away, to the floor. You look like the one who made me feel this way, guilty. You also are small and a few years younger than I, but you are not mean as they were, unsure of themself to the point of cruelty. They were named C., and went to school in Massachusetts and I had spent few February days with them, cold and without appetite, in appreciation of their form, but feeling missing, as though I were not wanted there after all, and did not mind leaving, only minded being wrongly invited at all. I had felt, with them, I had opened something unopenable, and suffered as I was meant to, for this reason, with someone who could not reckon with vulnerability. I had overstepped, and now was stained with the force of my own small invasion. I felt ungentle, terrible. I had wished then never to be born, or at least to no longer trip over certain contexts. These days, I remembered this mark but still intended to give, more carefully. I was easy with my friends.
    My friends and I after went to sleep on my mother’s floor. I had stopped paying rent at my old flat and then I was kicked out of my father’s as well. He had abusive tendencies, I told him. He was a sweet man, bearded and blue-eyed, and full of hesitations, and yet he could not handle himself. He controlled the world around him to the extent he could, until the world shrank to a few cabinets, some vegetables, and the half in, half out of this world girlfriend of his, shivering away and forever weakened, at a loss, following her brain surgery. Though I had never felt at home. I was tired too of living anywhere. I ached for the hills, for solace and a respite from the living world. I was glad to see my friends. D. eyed me over breakfast, talking about her new boyfriend while N. skated the length of the neighborhood. When the time came for them to leave, N. stood saying, “Can I hug you?”
    This time I agreed. I went back to DC, back to school and important men to walk the dark monuments with and speak of futures, how I hoped for these futures. We turned at the end of Farragut Square, and the last man bid me adieu in his Ukrainian accent, his tall silhouette ungainly against the backdrop of ambulances rushing down K. Street.
    “Where do you wanna go? I have Chinese leftovers.” You said this twice. “I have Chinese leftovers.” I thought of the word leftovers. I didn’t know where to go, so I got on the train with you and we got off at Union. It was grand, empty, but also farcical- there was some preparations underway, stars and stripes projected tackily against the fine marble. I waltzed around, taking a book of comics left by some missionaries, inspecting the little characters as they proclaimed, in all capital letters, their torments, before, of course, the good lord stepped in. I tore out pages of the book, and with the gum you offered me, stuck small unrelated images throughout the station. You were giggly, soft. We reached a Starbucks. I tried to steal a banana for you, but an alarm system came on, and I scattered. You walked blithely away, and I rejoined you, until we found some chairs to sit on and you offered me Chinese. I had bits and pieces.
    “Do you eat anything besides candy and small pieces of bread?” you asked me, and I did not answer, for once, embarrassed.
    You had small dark curved eyes, eyes that seemed to fall upon a different outline, they had a significant contour, they signified. Your nose and mouth- you were cute. Your hair was out now, black and Jewish and wild. I said, “I like your hair. It’s different than yesterday. “
    “It is so much. Ugh. I had it up. It was less all over the place then.”
    An employee comes over, asks if she can stack our chairs. You are apologizing. We leave, get on the train together, passing a homeless man sleeping in the doorway. The light inside the metro is bright, fluorescent. You explain that you have come from West Virginia but have lived many places, and are staying in DC.
    “You do know the metro closes at 11? I might go home soon. Where do you want to go?”
    You don’t know. We are here, or here, but then the next moment happens, the train leaves. There is only one need. It is to stay together long enough to keep talking, to finish this conversation. I feel as though everyone in the train is listening, all these anonymous DC people, as you tell of how you were sent away to school in Arizona because you were depressed in high school, how later you dropped out of McGill, traveled to Peru, Morocco. You say your friends are crazy because they were the crazy girls at the special school, and you didn’t like the sad ones, like you. Your friends are scattered around now, at their respective colleges and pursuits.
    “They were boring”, you say. “I later caught up with the crazy ones and had a promiscuous phase.”
    You have a hard time with your mother, your step-dad runs a men’s group and is overly enthusiastic about interventions. Your father is wealthy, and more reasonable. We are at the end of the line now, confused, but still together. We walk towards my car, and I drive it gently through the barricade to avoid paying the parking fee. You sit there. I sit there. It is cold outside, hot in the car.
    “What are our options?” I say aloud. “We could sleep at my mom’s, but it would be hard. Only floor space, and she’s reluctant...”
    “Wanna go to West Virginia?” You laugh. I have responsibilities in DC, tomorrow, though. We drive to my mom’s, and she emerges, surprised, in a white bathrobe, before returning back upstairs to her newspaper.
    You are looking through the books. “Your mom, is she a therapist? So is mine”, you say. We are arranging our things on the floor, rearranging them.
    “You know what?”, you say. I look up.
    “If you drive”, I say, “I’ll go wherever you take me- as long as you bring me back tomorrow.”
    You have your bag in hand. “Let’s go.”
    We are back in the car, long miles, deep darkness, getting deeper in the hills, until we enter a ridge in the earth, a darkness that splits wide open, and the small town lights are winking. You drive the Prius up the hill, and it struggles over the steep slope. Here is a house built like a dome, complete with a garden, warmed from the inside by a wood stove. A small cat greets us. You let the dog outside.
    This was the first time. You smoke a cigarette on the porch at the top of the dome, both of us staring at the impossible circle of light around the full autumnal moon. We bend over the space heaters in a house that is still cold, in this sudden winter cold that has only just begun.
    In the dark green sweater, your back forms a crooked curve, one that I cannot help but notice, and think- and there is something beautiful. You are warming your hands.
    I am at a loss. “I wanna say something”, I say, “But I don’t know- if I should say it.”
    “What, what is it”, a statement more than a question. Your dark, almost black eyes, small and with this penetrating light.
    “I think...” I stretch it out, bend also to the heater, back, away again, sit on the edge of the bed, “I have a crush.”
    “Oh”, you say, “I do too.” And I go on, and you repeat all these things after me, as though they are normal and we both know them. I love especially how you say ‘I know’, as though everything I say is really just a reiteration of something that I needn’t have said, because really, you already know. We retire to our separate rooms, and I awake in sunlit confusion, only to have you drive me back to school, to the important men, because really, they hadn’t happened before- I’ve been so confused- and I was so relieved to get away from the capital the second time, it was bliss to stretch the mind awake away from the petty affairs of the world, and no longer tend to my appearance in a world of suits.
    You met me at Union Station. This was the second time. We planned to go to New York, but I did not want to any longer. “I just got back from there four days ago”, I told you as we sat in a row of empty seats by the Amtrak. A man came to sit behind us and I wondered if he had come to sit precisely behind us just to listen in to our conversation. Or maybe I said this as we walked through the double set of doors out onto the metro, this time passing no one, because the homeless man who had been sleeping there before was gone. We were on the metro for awhile, and I still felt as though everyone were listening- when suddenly, you began to cry.
    Or, you didn’t actually cry, but to me you said, “I think I’m going to cry...”
    We got off the train, you, running delighted to a bus that turned out to be out of service. “Well”, you said, resigned, sitting on the bus stop bench, “We could wait until 8:26 or walk for 20 minutes.”
    “Let’s walk”, I said. As we crossed the parking lot, I wondered aloud what had made you so sad. We were in a neighborhood now. No clarity for you, but houses. Now I was meeting your mother- small, beatific, full of endless energy, too-bright eyes. Your step-dad: rumpled, attractive, young, unshaven. A hand extended.
    “It’s so good that you’re going to Berkeley Springs,” your mother said giddily, every word like an interjection, “Keep the home fires burning! And you’ll see the queen! Has E. met the queen?”
    “The queen...”, I say, out loud, “Oh, you mean the cat.”
    Your step-dad wandered out of the shower, clutching shampoo, “In the bathroom,” he said, “There’s poo, and there’s shampoo.” This proclamation was met with a positive response from your mother, and a tired look from you to me.
    We were in the car again- again, again. And then we were petting the cat in your room, under the skylight, the full moon. The cat sits between us, stretching, grey, friendly green eyes, always going and then returning. “Should I ask?” I say, as though to myself, or to you.
    “Ask?”
    I am uncertain, but find myself in this sudden insurmountable. There are snatches of you, of your bright dark eyes, which are really so soulful or full of something, doubtless, the way you bite your lip in hesitance, your wild black curls. You are small, and made of something, something very true.
    Two nights in a row, under the moon, like geese in a row as they move in formation, south, on this soon-to-be-winter day. There is a nothing to us, simply in your hair, and you, full of sweet looks. You have what look like acne scars, soft, impossible, rose-colored. The you of you. You are full of care, you are familiar to tuck into my shoulderblade, and hold the mind. I evade you, but return. It is kind, I think, and you are you, without explanation. I think about your finite bends and sleepy endlessness. You laugh at me when I try to count your vertebrae. I am happy, then.
    And then I am tired. In between this, somehow, is a day, full of a trip to the coffee shop that your mother owns, and a flat trip to the grocery store, where, in a panic, we try to buy enough to use the coupon your mother gave us. You know everyone in town, their daughters and husbands and wives. You say hello in a different voice, but still thoughtful. You show me some baby teeth your mother had embedded in a mosaic wall of stone. You hate the mural that the man painted on the side of the store: inexplicably, he thought it wise to include both Iwo Jima and Yoda, side by side. Such is the American way, he must’ve thought. We are sandwiched between old-timers in motorized carts. I wake, feeling, now, totally at a loss, totally sunlit, totally over. You try to come into the spare room where I sleep but I turn away. I can hardly muster the words to say: “You woke me up.” You apologize and retreat to yours. I listen to music alone in my room all morning and then start messing with my synthesizer. Later, I find you, and you sit on the edge of the bed. Neither of us knows what to do. I am wordless, I want to be alone, I no longer have words with you. I lie back, my mind is emptied. With you, I cannot speak. I have already said enough.
    “My crazy mentor has invited us to brunch”, you say, “But I couldn’t find the car keys in time so now she texted me to just come over. She’s a dominatrix.”
    “You’re interested in sex work?”
    “No, I just want to know how she influences people. I think it’s interesting. Or, well, I admire it. I want to be able to do that.” I look at you for a moment, thoughtless.
    “Okay, let’s go.”
    We are on a winding country road, in the hills that remind me of the hills I so deeply long for, back in upstate New York. I am plaintive, nonverbal, staring at the winter trees cast in rich evening light. Cast in gold. I am afraid I have Midas’ touch, that I will hurt you or otherwise be bad for you in some way. I am also tired, so tired. I wonder again whether we will part as friends, when this all fades, or if we will always hold this sweetness like a note in the air that goes and goes inaudibly, now that the moment is done, now that I have shown you my true appreciation. “What else is there to say- I have nothing to say-” Or if this is one of the last rides I will take with you, you driving my car, focused on the curve of the road, that slight wrinkle of concentration forming around your eyes. I think, we will be better in middle age, you and I. It will be better then. Or maybe when we part, that is the last look I will be granted into your little world, your young wise eyes. I want, more than anything, to be good to you, and it is no matter whether I am here or there, so long as I do that- and that we are now, still together, for this fourth day, is indisputable, and the long hour weighs upon my chest as I wonder if this is where I should be, at this moment, in relation to you, or if this is a stolen hour too far- I cannot think with you here. I must go.
    You sit with S., the dominatrix, in her small trailer-like house, oppressive wood paneling and two hefty brown dogs play-fighting, and you smoke a joint together and she does her make-up. “This one’s his mom”, you say, pointing to one dog as the other lunges. S. likes to talk about boundaries, is always congratulating herself or others for taking a stand. She has an impenetrable face, and is always watching us. Earlier you told me that you had slept at her house once- thought nothing transpired- and you saw that she texted one of her partners: “Just woke up next to a beautiful young woman half my age!”
    “So much for boundaries”, I say. Someone else might stick to you in this house, to see if she poses any real threat to you, but I am doubtful and figure, always, that you know what you are doing. She invites us to the bar but you decline, and we walk back to the car.
    I forget this part. On the way there we had to stop in someone’s driveway. I had asked if you thought we should be just friends soon. I said, romance for me is a means to friendship, and is short lived in itself, it is just a moment of uncovering before the real thing. Or perhaps it is loss. It is both, really.
    “We should wait until we see each other again and then talk then”, you say, which I find judicious.
    “If we do,” I say. “Though I’d like to be friends awhile.”
    “Me too.” You pause, with a hand on the mirror, “I think that the longevity of this depends on it.”
    Soon after, you start crying again, which is when we have to stop the car, and all I can hear is the sound of the willow tree scraping, even whispering against the car window, and I hold your face with my hand until you silently turn the car back on.
    “We never did find my backpack”, you say.”I wish I hadn’t lost it, though I have my wallet and phone I miss the journals- I was working on a writing project-”
    On the way back from S.’s house, we don’t know where to go, again. You suggest your house, the dome, and then ask if we should just after all, part ways. We are both so ready, and sad, and eager for the impending loss. You park the car in the darkness at the base of the hill, crying again. I kiss your face.
    “I’m going to smoke a cigarette,” you say, opening the car door and I stay inside, leave you alone out there in the space between the warehouses, thinking of the day before when I took one of many photos, this one of you climbing onto a railcar as the sun set over the train yard.
    You get back into the car. No words but steady miles. I am wondering if we forgot something. I think of the space heater I left on, I think of the dog and the cat, of the groceries left in the fridge. I cannot break this silence. You start to get out of the car when we reach your house. I pull you back. I hope that no one is looking out at us on this neighborhood street. I get up and walk around to the driver’s seat, while you get your bag from the backseat.
    “Is that all?” I ask, indicating your bag.
    “Yes”, you say, and I open the driver’s side door, turn the key quickly as you walk away.

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