Love in the neon grotto

The sun rises and nothing changes

Dayton, Ohio 7.15.16

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At 12:20 a.m., she knocked on my door. She came straight from work, no stops in between, even though the gas light had come on in her car. That was a problem for tomorrow. Something more enticing waited for us now. Enticing enough for me to wake from my slumber and pull on a pair of shorts, select a pair of sandals. 

When I get up from the loveseat, she sits down and turns her attention to an episode of Kids in the Hall, playing midway through, still streaming from before I fell asleep. She half watches and half hollers at me in the bedroom to hurry up. I’m workin on turning my sleepiness into manic desire, a practice I’ve honed this summer. 

What I desire is to be seen. Not just by anyone, but by him, selected from the pack because his notebooks and his diurnal aloofness match the tone of my own grandiosity, and make me believe that he could see me, and let me see him. 

I am now wearing my shorts and my sandals and have even grabbed a purse and am set to follow her out and lock the apartment door behind me. It’s hot outside, but not as hot as my sparsely furnished, unair-conditioned apartment. We take over the empty street, amping each other up to be wild and loud.

We are seeking affirmation and intimacy, but through indirect channels because we’re young and we don’t know how to ask for love. We go in the only way we know — through the neon grotto that is the bar, unwelcoming and cold. True romance is an island and the bar is the icy water we have to swim through to get there.

The music is loud inside, but the crowd is thin. We order from the tough, austere bartender and take our drinks to the hard patio furniture outside where a collection of dudes are circled around an ashtray. There’s my interest, her interest, and three others. They are often here late at night, loud, bombastic, and free. I can’t imagine any of them but him in the daylight, and when the day breaks I know he is no different. I’ve watched closely to find a moment of metamorphosis. I’ve looked at his face during the entirety of a sunrise and nothing happens. He is never more reachable, never more real.

We sit on the hard, dirty patio furniture and try our best to be fun, and to be seen. The goal is to garner attention in the night in order to earn the promise of sincerity in the day. 

I drink just enough to feel more gullible so that I can misinterpret bar chemistry for the spark of real connection. This takes one and a half drinks. I don’t go beyond that because I don’t actually trust this, and because I don’t want to spend all my money on bottom-shelf vodka. One and a half drinks is enough to keep me awake for a long while, optimistically leaving space for that spark to ignite all the way back to my hot, hot apartment.

This story could end here in empty sex, and maybe that would give me more clarity, but that’s not what happens. Instead, we sit in my back room — the one with all the windows that face the east — and smoke cigarettes and talk around subjects. It’s not that we’re talking about nothing, but we’re also not talking about something. When the sun comes up, I watch his face to look for the change, but he remains the same. 

When he finally goes, I fall asleep wondering if I’m the one who can’t shift into sincerity. It takes many more trips to the bar, the writing of a song, and the space of several years to realize that, in fact, it was both of us.

Thanks for reading <3

Katya