It’s fourteen minutes until midnight. I roll wearily from my overheated mattress and trudge upstairs to the much cooler, emptier kitchen. A trick I read once when you’re having trouble falling asleep is to get up and start the routine over. A drink, something to eat, a change of scene. When you’re finished with your snack or your beverage or your late-night activity, you try again. I begrudgingly find a peach in the big basket brought home from the farmer’s market and sit down to cut it into slices.
Immediately when I twist apart the two halves, the woody smell of a rotted seed arises. I wrinkle my nose, poke at the softened, furry core of the otherwise unharmed fruit. The outside looked okay in the dark, soft enough to be ripe, but the pit of the peach has decayed. I set to work carefully carving away the parts of the fruit that are still okay, and pile the little rotten pieces at the very edge of my plate.
I wonder, absentmindedly, if the boy could have been carved up with the same dexterity. If his rotten parts could have been removed, leaving the sweet remainder untainted, pure. I can’t imagine what he would say if I presented this idea to him. Some degree of shallow offense, likely, then disregard, then aloofness. That, I think to myself, fingers tapping the knife, would be the first to go. The arrogant aloofness. His very own words ring back to me, packed away in storage behind months of other memories. The admittance of his own colossal ego, the consuming and delusional belief that he, in all his twenty-two years of breath, has had a more unique life experience and intelligent set of thoughts than anyone else in the world. This, followed by the more rueful yet still somehow pervertedly prideful confession that he also holds more hatred for himself than for any of his enemies. (I didn’t ask how many enemies a twenty-two year old could possibly have: he had a flair for the dramatic).
I rub my eyes with my free hand, chew on a section of peach. His contradictions were one of the things I loved about him. What could be more human than this, than the astounding ability to hold two entirely competing beliefs equally strong in one’s own mind? I shared this sentiment with him once, in one of the many hours-long visits we had in which he would mostly talk about himself, and I would mostly listen to him talk about himself. The moment I mentioned it, he piqued. I think he liked the fact that I loved him so much. He enjoyed the feeling of being adored, the feeling of one-way affection, of receiving the endless attention and admiration of a friend in love, and the subtle reward of power with every offer of lethargic detachment in return. To be admired without a cause, to be loved without reciprocating. Sometimes it seemed like even contempt was too great a response to be hurled in my direction, so he settled, often, for indifference.
When I told him I loved this about him, he narrowed his eyes. What did I love about him? His contradictions. What did I mean? He thinks he’s better than everyone, but he also hates himself so deeply. He grins. He’s flattered by my observation. He shouldn’t be. He’s told me everything I need to know about him, voluntarily, with the least amount of prompting possible. There’s not much need for close observation when the subject finds so much amusement in their own ramblings.
When I look at the little blue analogue clock lighting up the dashboard of his car, I decide that it is time for me to go to bed. It’s gone from being late to being early, and my brain is worn from hearing him talk about himself with such contentment and so little consideration. I love him, yes, but I tire even of those I love. He talks a little longer. I listen, but only halfway. The pacifist in me doesn’t like to end conversations, doesn’t like to interrupt people when they’re on the verge of self-discovery. I sigh, I rub my eyes, I look at the clock. He’s been on the verge of self-discovery for hours now. I want to go to sleep.
The memory seems all at once overly vivid and deeply foggy. A glance at my own clock, blinking from the kitchen stove. It’s still late. I know the details of the memory are real, but I don’t know where they belong. Was that the conversation in his car, or in my apartment? Was it still dark by the time I left, or had the sun come up already? One evening when he’d fallen into a depression dark enough to want company but not dark enough to ask outright, I went to his room instead, and we stayed up late into the night watching old movies and making occasional commentary. When I finally left, on the very edge of late becoming early, he thanked me. I think it was the only time he ever did.
I finger my last slice of peach. My eyes feel heavy. I wonder, will I finally go to sleep now? In a way it feels further than before, my throat dried out with the ache of old grievances, things I hadn’t felt the pain of in a long time. Is seven months a long time? I don’t know. Perhaps time is multiplied when one is truly ready to heal. The fuzzy skin of the peach seems less appealing now, and I can’t help but dredge to the surface one final memory.
Decay, perhaps, begins with self-absorption, but it doesn’t end there. It continues until it consumes everything around it: putrefaction cannot be contained. Maybe this is a way for me to shift the blame, I think. I was poisoned. I was tainted by the festering touch of an already ruined being, I say, but I know it isn’t true. I know my rot came from my own inner core, not from his. I went along with it, knowing it was wrong. I allowed him to make a wrong choice: I participated in his wrong choice. In the world of my dreams I don’t have to lead, I don’t have to make the hard choices. In the world of my dreams, he is appalled by the idea of using me for sex. He doesn’t let it become my choice: he makes the right one for the both of us. In the real world, I know better.
He tells me not to take it the wrong way. I’ve just confessed my absolute adoration for him, and he tells me not to take it the wrong way. I ask him what exactly is the right way to take it?
He tells me he wants me. I kiss his mouth, and he flinches. I tell him he doesn’t want me, he wants it. He doesn’t look at me then.
He asks permission before he does, and I, having already hesitated, give in. I know it’s wrong. Rotten, the whole way through. I decide, instead, to trust that I’ll be able to forgive myself.
Later, afterwards, we’re still in my room and he’s distraught about something else. I, exhausted, tell him I don’t have the answer that he wants, that I don’t have any answers at all. He tells me that he thought I was his therapist. I tell him that you don’t fuck your therapist.
I put the last slice of peach in my mouth, and only bite down once before spitting it back out onto the table. A little black bud clings to the inside crescent, now pressed down into the peach’s red and yellow flesh with the imprint of my teeth.
I knew it the whole time before it happened. I knew, leading up to it, that it would happen, and I knew, for the long months afterwards, that there had never really been a chance of getting to his good parts. No amount of cutting or carving or hacking away at the skin would bring me to the soft and loving places I so easily convinced myself he had. And maybe he does. There are no easy lines to carve up a person. Our rot bleeds into everything else, spread by habits and arteries and indolence.
I should have, I think to myself, chosen a different peach. I didn’t think all that much of it at the time. I’m sleep deprived, and hungry, and I didn’t know that it was rotten the whole way through, even if it looked a little bruised on the outside.
I glance at the pile of discarded spoil at the edge of my plate. And then I decide, with an astonishing amount of love, that I will not take blame for choosing a fruit that was only a little bruised. I didn’t mean to consume the rot along with it. I’ll look closer, in the future, and next time I discover that it’s gone bad, I just won’t convince myself that I need to save the good parts. Most of the time, the bruised ones are sweeter anyways.
End.
Raleigh women's art collective 