All These Straight Girls
Memories on the subway
To E.B. Whose kind words went a long way And who I hope will read this eventually
Louise looked up from the book she was forcing herself to read, distracted by the chatter that surrounded her. The subway car was peopled by tech industry types of both the hip vintage t-shirt variety and their Patagonia vest-wearing brethren, and she found it impossible to make sense of the letters in front of her, grouped together in words, paragraphs, pages, and chapters — a book. A novel. She loved opening them up and letting her eyes drift to the quotation marks on any given page in order to get a sense of how the characters interacted with each other. This particular author, however, made a point of not including such conveniences, opting instead to let the spoken words flow into the third-person narration and vice versa.
When she looked up the author’s name along with the words “quotation marks,” the young woman rolled her eyes at the answers this much-lauded “voice of Gen Z lit” gave his interviewer. His words made him indistinguishable from the self-absorbed male geniuses of generations past and Louise was annoyed that she had once again fallen for it. Word fragments filled the stuffy air while loud rattling cut through the ambiance at regular-seeming intervals. There had been some big news about a streaming giant lying to its shareholders so naturally this was all that her fellow travelers could talk about.
It was 6 p.m. on a Friday and even though she knew where she was headed — home — Louise felt lost in the sea of men throwing around tech jargon and the names of CEOs most people had never heard of. It was the Esperanto of the internet age and it made her skin crawl. She just wanted to get home, greet her roommates in a way that made her seem sociable, and lie in bed watching Netflix until she would inevitably get a text asking if she wanted to go dancing.
Charles flashed across her mind and she thought about how the two of them used to get ready for their nights out. He would come over after work with a bag of fresh clothes and jump in her shower, making sure to let her and her two roommates know that he was taking a beer inside with him. It never failed to make them laugh — they loved having him over. He would emerge from the bathroom about twenty minutes later, dressed in black, smelling — somewhat boyishly — like shower gel and deodorant, his dark hair slicked back and glistening seductively. He would then cook all of them dinner, explaining each step like he was performing for an audience, which he was. It was always an intricate spin on a simple dish, far more than the sum of its store-brand parts, and Louise remembered the way the fragrance of the onions and garlic would mix with the thick, steamy, soapy air emerging from the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen.
She heard someone say a name she had read in an article once and couldn’t help but glance in the direction the voice was coming from since it was the first name she recognized amidst the conversations that swirled about as the train shot through the maze of dark tunnels. When they rode the subway together, Charles would often hold on to the overhead rail and playfully flex his biceps in hopes of making her laugh, which she did although her laugh gradually shrank into a friendly smile as time went on and the novelty wore off. But she loved the way he would grin with exaggerated self-satisfaction whenever he caught a little glimpse of amusement on her face and she didn’t want to deny him this small pleasure.
Charles was a creature of habit, routine, repetition — she liked that about him. He was that way with everything: they would tumble into bed and make out for about two minutes before she felt his large hands between her legs and it usually took him another two before he slid his fingers into her panties. From there, he would pull her pants off and go down on her, until she would guide his head back up to hers. “Please fuck me,” is what she would say, initiating an exchange from which they only rarely deviated.
“You want me to fuck you?”
“Yes.”
“Beg me for it.”
“Please… please fuck me,” she would say, repeating herself for emphasis.
This is the script they ran through every other night, trying to imbue it with spontaneous electricity each time. Much to her embarrassment, the memory flushed Louise’s face with excitement as the train pulled into a station and the background noise briefly intensified with hissing brakes, agitated mumbling, and the metallic voice descending upon the passengers from the car’s trebly, distorted speakers.
Sitting there, locking eyes with the reflection that was staring blankly back at her, she thought of Charles sitting at the foot of her bed, naked and strumming the shoddy, perpetually out-of-tune acoustic guitar she had gotten from her father when she turned fourteen. “Couldn’t you wait?/For some time to elapse,” is how his favorite song started out, a simple question introducing the singer’s heartbroken, bitter recollection of a failed relationship. The wordy, metaphor-laden lyrics always lead back to this simple question: “Couldn’t you wait?” Charles would start out with a mumble but usually became invigorated about halfway through his performance. “Couldn’t you wait?/For the midnight train at least/And all these straight girls are insane beasts.” He always sang that verse — something akin to the tune’s emotional climax — with extraordinary relish. She recalled the smirk on his face when she first heard that line come out of his mouth — he looked like he was getting away with something.
The subway car had emptied out quite a bit at the previous station but this barely registered. Memories kept coming to life with extraordinary vividness, again and again and again. She remembered their first kiss, drunk, clumsy, and heated. She remembered how she sat in the Uber afterwards, slouched in the backseat, going through every scenario she could think of with him. Would he tell her he had a girlfriend? A boyfriend? Was he going to use the word “mistake” in a curt text composed in the throes of a hangover? She had already been walking away from the long embrace they shared before Charles grabbed her wrist, spun her around, and kissed her. Had he picked up on something that night or was it simply about his desire, his need to claim her for himself?
She remembered studying his profile at the party she had dragged him to the day after he first spent the night. He was making her friends laugh and she felt something like pride as he stood there amongst these people he had just met, their eyes all trained on him, hanging on his every word. She remembered the assortment of heavy rings he kept on his nightstand. She remembered his pierced nipple. She remembered the first time she woke him up by going down on him. She remembered how he held her for hours after she got the call that her father had died. She remembered laughing whenever he would get frustrated with trying to write an email on his phone. She remembered the first time he called her beautiful. She remembered the first time he called her a bitch. She remembered him getting quiet, then angry after she told him about a bad breakup. “He shouldn’t have treated you that way,” is what he said to her.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she defended herself — or her ex, she wasn’t really sure.
“Yes, it was. No wonder every guy treats you like shit! You can’t even stand up for yourself!”
She had trouble recalling their last conversation — towards the end, every exchange felt like it could be the last — but she couldn’t get the image of Charles with his arm wrapped around a tall brunette out of her head. The girl was skinny and elegant in her new-girl confidence but Louise mostly wondered how long it would take for him to yell at his new lover. Perhaps she was wrong — last she heard, he now liked to go on about how he was keeping even his “enemies” in his prayers and had made a habit of ending every interaction by saying “big blessings.” “I think he’s Catholic now,” a friend said, laughing as she called his supposed conversion “very chic.”
As Louise sat there, her mind consumed by reminiscences, the costumer-service tenor of the subway’s announcer snapped her out of it — this was her stop. The book she had been trying her best to read was still sitting in her lap, though the bookmark had fallen to the grimy floor. She didn’t bother picking it up. Instead, she looked around the deserted car, pushed the novel into her bag, and made her way to the doors. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed but she would have to talk to her roommates first.
great slice of life piece. loved it!
This was great. Loved the “She remembered…” paragraph. Great rhythm. Great repetition. Felt that!