Previously: On the night before I left Oklahoma, he and I went for a walk out into the tall grasses of our restored prairie … It gets easier. It takes practice. Do you feel anything? … Next time you’ll feel like you are planted on this fucking prairie, swaying back and forth, wind goes this way wind goes that way, swoosh, swoosh, wind goes by, but you stay there, fucking planted, dude … Here is some advice for you, America: when you are going down Interstate 90 at almost eighty miles an hour and letting your mind wander this way and that, do not let it wander to the memory of the time you smoked weed on the prairie late in the evening with the wind pushing the grass and hushing out all other sounds … I’m sorry. I should’ve pulled over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry … Are we stuck? … We were stuck.
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
She fell asleep on my shoulder in the taxi. Chemically, there was no other possibility; there was just too much alcohol in the blood. We pulled up in front of her building, and I asked the driver to wait, but she said, “No, no, no. I meant it. I want to. Come inside.”
I paid the driver and she began undoing my belt on the way up the steps. She gave me her keys, while she knelt down. Key after key failed to unlock the front door of her apartment (the symbolism of which was not lost on me, even given my level of inebriation, which was, clinically, three sheets to the wind. “This doesn’t bode well,” said I.) She was on her knees, right there in the foyer, working my belt the rest of the way open and massaging me through my underwear. “Let’s fuck right here.”
It was a compelling argument. “That’s not a bad idea, but, look, I got the door open. We can fuck a lot of places now.”
She pushed me into the living room and then crawled in after me.
I had a dream that night.
I was on a boat. A rowboat. I was bobbing in the sea. It was night and the stars in the sky seemed right on top of me. I couldn’t stand up. They were too close. Ana was sleeping in the boat next to me. The boat was rocking back and forth. I had to ask her where to go. I felt so tired. I didn’t have the energy to lift my hands to shake her awake. I decided we were fine where we were. We just needed to rest. We would move in the morning. I laid down next to her and made a pillow of her hair. I needed to ask her one thing. I spoke her name into her ear. She sat up quickly and knocked on the side of the boat. Her knuckles sounded like a hammer. Thwack thwack thwack thwack thawack!
I woke up.
Ana was next to me on the phone.
“Shots fired near 19th and Racine. Sounded like five. No, I didn’t see anything.”
I put my hand on her back. “Gunshots?”
“Yeah, Jackson, that’s what I said.”
She rolled over and went back to sleep, and I sat there listening to the oncoming sirens.
When I woke up the next morning, she was already at the dining room table. She had showered and made coffee and had gone out to get Mexican pastries and was somehow able to sit there and eat and drink without facing intestinal insurrection. After pissing for about forty-five minutes, I made my way to the living room and flopped on the couch like a hungover fish who planned to stay for awhile.
“Shit, I think I’m still drunk.”
“Well, sober up, my friend, because my mom and sister will be here in, like, twenty minutes.”
“What? Are you serious? Why? What time is it?”
“We have brunch on Saturdays. It’s Saturday.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
She moved her head up and down. How she could tolerate such a violent motion was beyond me.
“Should I leave?”
“No, you can stay, but you might not want to be drunk and/or in your underwear.”
“Oh man, let me get cleaned up.” I moved into a position approximating sitting upright. Last night was still a force to be reckoned with.
“Hey, were there gunshots last night?”
“It was a Friday night, wasn’t it? You woke up, remember?”
“Kind of. Shit, where were they?”
She was looking into her laptop, pastry in one hand, held as if she were presenting it on a platter. “How the fuck should I know, Jackson? I was asleep.”
“It’s just I thought I heard you on the — is there anything in the news?”
“It won’t make the news. This is still just Pilsen, not Logan Square yet.”
“I was just asking if —”
She continued to hold the pastry in the air, like it was material to her argument. “If what? If anyone gives a shit? No, no one gives a shit. But don’t worry, they never shoot at gringos so you can come and go as you please.”
So I was a gringo. I could have made the point that I was asking what happened because I gave a shit, but my head was splitting open from the inside and I couldn’t handle any more torment. Why why why did I think it would be anything other than a fiasco? I guess I didn’t. I knew, deep down, that it would be a fiasco. The real question is, why did I think the fucking would justify the fiasco, but it’s not a question worth asking, the answer is so obvious: because hearing a woman like Ana say she wants to fuck is like being called by God, and God is always worth the fiasco.
Right?
I rubbed my temples, not so much out of pain, but more to block the sight of Ana from my peripheral vision.
“Oh, so it’s like that?”
“Yeah, it’s like that. You think it’s not like that?”
“Ana … Christ. I need to leave.”
The 18th Street stop seemed real far away. I walked and wondered if Ana felt like I felt? Was she hung over like this? How could she not be? But how could she eat? Maybe it was her way of acting like everything was normal and nothing happened that night that didn’t happen on any other Friday night. Do you want to know what happened, America? You do, don’t you. Us in the living room. Her on top. Me on top. Me tasting her. Us in the bedroom. She tasting me. Both naked. Her on top. Was I wearing a condom? Motion. I was. Pressure. How did I get a condom? Doesn’t matter. Her mouth open. Her hair in my hands. Motion. Releasing. Kissing. Sleeping.
America, to date, that’s the most significant thing I’ve done with my life. Make of that what you will.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
When I got home, Belmont was waiting in front of my building.
Then Jackson laments the loss of the efficacy of the Magical Negro trope and then he gets another phone call and then he needs a break and after next week I, too, will be taking a break.