Intimacy Issues
Bleary-eyed at one a.m., Brian forced himself to shut his laptop and begin his bedtime ritual. No matter how hard he rubbed his eyes under the hot water of the shower, the glow of computer code still seared through his vision. He scrubbed anti-acne face wash deep into his skin and ran antibacterial soap along his bony body. He made sure his laundry sack was cinched tight before sliding naked under the blanket on his queen bed. Using the app on his phone, Brian adjusted the air conditioning another degree lower. Outside it was 88 degrees, cool for a summer night in Arizona, but Brian preferred to sleep at 67. He liked to cuddle up to a pillow under his comforter while his favorite podcast sent him to sleep.
Brian nestled his earbuds in and rubbed his feet together. On his phone, he tapped on the picture of the raven-haired, crooked-nosed goddess and the familiar punk intro began. “Hey everyone, I’m Alina Bowman, and you’re listening to Intimacy Issues. I’ve got ’em, you’ve got ’em, and, spoiler alert: there’s no getting out of this life without becoming at least a little fucked up. But at least we’re all fucked up together, right?” Alina’s voice, sturdy and smoky, traveled directly into Brian as though she were a part of him. His shoulders unhunched. He liked her voice being inside his head. It quieted his own thoughts.
“If you have something that’s been nagging the pit of your stomach, call or send me a voice memo, and I’ll try to work out your shit with some hashtag Real Talk and that greatest healer of all, music. Let’s jump right into the mailbag, shall we?”
Brian adjusted the sleep mask over his eyelids. The first caller was a young woman who didn’t like when her boyfriend fingered her; as a child, she had been molested in just that way by a family friend, and it made her feel powerless and sad. “But,” she said, “I just feel like… it’s such a basic part of sex that I can’t tell my boyfriend not to do it, right? So I usually just let him.” The girl’s voice was fragile and small, as though she were calling from the inside of a closet.
Brian tried to anticipate what Alina would say. This is an essential part of connecting with your partner, she’d probably tell the girl, so you’re gonna have to get over it sooner or later. Take your power back by finding a way to like it. That way you win, and your boyfriend will be happy, too.
Instead, Alina’s voice lost its serrated edge. “Oh, honey,” she murmured. Brian could picture her lips, painted red, moving in close to the microphone. “What happened to you really sucks, and I’m so sorry you went through it. But guess what? Now you’re an adult, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I don’t care how much your boyfriend likes or wants it; you never have to let him do it. If he really cares for you, he will respect that line. And if he crosses it, you’ll know it’s time to dump his ass.
“But you know what you do have to do?” Alina continued. “You’ve gotta be honest. You have to tell him where that line exists and help him understand why it’s there. Otherwise, he’ll never have a chance to be truly good to you. Because honesty is the greatest intimacy of all, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter if it has to do with sex or, like, I dunno, the time I confessed to my parents that I’d dropped out of pre-med. It’s fucking scary, but showing someone who you really are, and trusting that they will accept it — that is the ultimate vulnerability. And every time you practice it, you become a more whole human being. Now is the moment to move into that phase with your boyfriend, my dear. Because if you don’t, there will always be a wall between you and him, or any partner you ever have. What are you going to do, go through the rest of your life letting guys do things that make you feel like shit? That ends now. It’s time to change your fucking life.”
As the assertive guitar thrum of Fugazi’s “Suggestion” began to pulse through the earbuds, Brian sank comfortably into the folds of his comforter. Alina was so good. She always managed to surprise him. By now, the sound of her voice alone deepened his breath and relaxed his muscles. It infiltrated his dreams and kept the darkness away, like a forcefield. By the time “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space” began, Brian had started to drift to sleep, the solace meant for Alina’s caller now wrapped around him.
• • •
The next morning, Brian squeezed his foot gently on the brakes as his Honda crept through rush-hour traffic. The nine a.m. sun already dominated the sky, blasting white and unrelenting at 108 degrees over miles of glaring windshields. Brian flipped his visor down, cold from the A/C but feeling his skin burn nonetheless. He navigated his phone to the second half hour of yesterday’s Intimacy Issues and turned the auxiliary volume high, Alina’s raspy words consuming the small space. Since she only posted a couple times a week, Brian liked to break the episodes into segments. That way he could have a little bit of her every day. Sometimes he had her during his commute, sometimes while doing the dishes, but mostly while he fell asleep, if he didn’t get too high and pass out first. Once in a while, as a treat to himself, Brian listened to an old episode while jerking off to porn on mute.
Just a year and a half ago Brian had been unemployed, unable to leave the house, and could only afford to eat one meal a day. But Intimacy Issues was free, and the two hours he spent listening to Alina’s sassy wisdom were the only hours he didn’t feel pathetic all day. The advice she gave was kind but not hippy-dippy, touchy-feely bullshit like all the therapists he’d been to. She was better than a therapist. “Look, dude, I know it’s hard, but you need to take a walk around the block,” she told one listener last year, and Brian felt that she was speaking directly to him. “Get some goddamned vitamin D. Make conversation with the old lady at the grocery store. Get a goldfish. Connect with a being outside of yourself, you know?” She flowed her advice directly into the propulsive Harry Nilsson song “Gotta Get Up.”
Because of Alina, Brian had gathered the courage to finally try medication. That helped him find the motivation to apply for a loan and enroll in coding boot camp, and now he had a good job as a programmer in downtown Phoenix. Because of the community page on her website, Brian had found other people like him, shy weirdos who liked vulgarity and punk music and who were learning how to be vulnerable. They had become a kind of family to him. Together they edited Alina’s Wikipedia page and defended her from assholes who said she gave bad advice. They sent death threats to people who insulted her looks. They even supported each other’s Alina-worshipping Etsy shops, full of embroidered pillows that said “Ruthless Compassion” and enamel pins bearing the Alina quote “All humans hurt.” In fact, Brian was at this very moment drinking out of a “Respect My Fucking Boundaries” travel mug.
Brian finally pulled into the parking lot at Swzzlr, a startup that collected big data and sold it to marketing startups. On his way in, he ignored the hot receptionist, Sunny, who ignored him back. He had asked her out a few times when he’d started at Swzzlr, but she’d turned him down with a polite smile every time. So he’d tried to get to know her, understand her interests and all that shit. He knew she was into drawing, so through the company’s proprietary chat system, he’d asked her what she liked to draw. Oh, this and that, she replied, a full hour later, even though the front desk was not even busy that day. He asked her to show him something she’d drawn. Nah, she said. Come on, he persisted. As Alina always said, good things are hard-won. If I ever have an art show, I’ll let you know, Sunny said. Come on, I bet it’s really good, Brian tried one more time. It is good, but I don’t feel like sharing it, okay? Sunny wrote. Brian’s face had turned hot and he flung out the words on his keyboard: Man, I feel bad for whoever has to date you.
In the company kitchen, Brian refilled his mug, loaded up on Gummi Bears and organic dried seaweed, then settled into his workstation. He nodded to Mark and Shankar on either side of him and put on his noise-canceling headphones. Alina had shared a new Spotify playlist today called “Anxiety Can Fuck Right Off.” The loud world disappeared as Alina’s voice entered Brian’s ears with a quick, quiet intro.
“Hey Babies, Alina here. These are a few songs that calm me right the fuck down when I need it, and I hope it’ll do the same for you. Take a minute and tell anxiety to take a long walk off a short bridge.”
Songs from Khruangbin and Chet Baker and Fleet Foxes unclenched Brian’s jaw. This was his favorite thing about Alina: how real she was. He liked that she spoke openly about her own mental health issues; Brian had always been intimidated by women, but listening to Alina talk about her anxiety, her parents’ divorce, her suicide attempt at age twenty-three, he felt close to her. He was amazed, in fact, at how close he felt to this cute, smart rockabilly girl he’d never met.
Well, once. He’d met her once. He tried not to replay the memory yet again as he typed code and bobbed his head to Helado Negro, but it wiggled its way in. It was about a year ago, when Brian still didn’t have a job. Alina was on tour promoting her book, Feelings And How To Have Them. Tickets to her Phoenix live show were $200, and another $150 for the meet-and-greet afterward. Brian worked odd jobs on TaskRabbit for a month to save up for his ticket. Onstage, Alina, a tiny figure in a swingy dress and sleeved in tattoos, filled the room with her loud laugh and conspiratorial murmur. Brian laughed along with everyone else, all these people he knew but didn’t know, and afterward, waiting in line, he wanted to make friends but spent the entire hour with his hands in his pockets, trying to think of something to say.
When the moment arrived, Brian stepped forward, his trembling hand holding out a book for Alina to sign. He wished he’d brought a gift; other people had brought her cupcakes and handmade Alina dolls and custom-made dresses.
“Hi, honey!” Alina cooed to Brian, who thought he might die. Her nails were painted cherry red and he admired the details of the colorful winged bird inked onto her clavicle. Alina’s wing-tipped eyes looked a little red around the rims and he wanted to just wrap his arms around her and let her sleep. “Thanks so much for coming,” Alina said as she swooped her signature onto the cover page.
Grasping for conversation, some way to extend their time together, Brian blurted, “I hope you’re staying somewhere nice tonight. I bet this stuff gets exhausting.”
Alina nodded, her gaze lifting to meet Brian’s. “You have no idea.”
Brian’s mind became a wide field of nothingness. “So… where are you staying?”
“Oh, just some hotel my manager booked nearby.”
“Which one?”
There was a barely perceptible shift in the air between them, just a fraction of the glint in Alina’s eye dropping from view.
“Um… the Doubletree Inn, I think?”
“Oh, nice! Yeah, I know it — that’s right by my house, actually.”
“Cool. Cool, well, thanks again, take care!” Alina darted her glance past Brian to where her manager was standing.
To think of it now, Brian could kick himself. He could have recommended a taco place nearby. He could have told her about the vintage shops on Melrose Avenue that he knew she’d like. He could have practiced being vulnerable and thanked her for what she’d meant to him. Instead, he’d been so awkward, and she’d treated him like… well, she’d given him the same look that Sunny gave him every morning.
At his workstation, staring at the rainbow of characters against a black screen before him, Brian felt himself falling into a hole of self-loathing. He wished he could have another chance. He was much better now, more confident, largely thanks to her and the Intimacy Issues community. She understood him in a way other people never had; he knew it because what she said was how he felt. She talked on the show about how hard it could be to make friends, how she had to wake up every morning and literally tell herself in the mirror that she was fine. She talked about that weird feeling of sleeping alone after being rejected and about locking herself in the bathroom at a party just so she could stop smiling for a few minutes. It made Brian feel better to know that someone as successful as Alina could have problems. Her imperfection made her perfect, the same way her funny nose made her somehow prettier.
Brian had emailed and called into the show a few times, just to thank her and tell her how he felt, but she didn’t play non-questions on the air. Probably some intern had filtered them out before Alina got to them, Brian figured. Otherwise, she would have written him back, wouldn’t she?
By lunchtime, the insistence of the meet-and-greet memory had gotten stuck in Brian’s brain like a record needle trapped in a bad groove. Brian shut himself into a stall in the men’s room and breathed deeply to talk himself down. He still could make it right, he reasoned; in fact, he’d bet it would be better in person. He went to the Intimacy Issues page he always had open on his phone and browsed Alina’s tour schedule. Last time, he’d been broke, but now he was flush with money. Programming paid. He could take the weekend and fly wherever Alina would be. What could be more impressive, more flattering than to drop a grand just to go see her and say “Thank you”?
His heart sank when he saw that tonight was her last tour date. Brian checked the clock. Could he get to D.C. in time for the show? He could fake sick and race to the airport. But he’d called in so many times when he’d first started at Swzzlr, so unable to leave his bed, paralyzed by anxiety, that he was now trying hard to be a good teammate to Mark and Shankar. Be the person other people can rely on, Alina had told him.
Brian tapped his shoe against the faux marble tile. Alina wouldn’t be going on tour again until next year. He needed to connect with her now; the urgency he felt was deeper than hunger, more blinding than libido. He had been weaning himself off of medication, he reminded himself. No, he thought. This fell outside the parameters of his disorder. This was as real as anything he’d ever felt.
Brian’s foot paused. If tonight was her last tour date, that meant she would be home within a couple of days. An itch crept into the back of Brian’s scalp and he began to feel better. Brooklyn. He could definitely do a weekend in Brooklyn.
• • •
Alina rolled over, her own bed unfamiliar, and tried to discern what time it was from how the sun poured into her room. Her place was smaller and staler than she remembered; it didn’t have the purified air and anonymous sheets of a hotel. Even after three months away, it still stank of her, and of Darron.
She’d slept in full pajamas and her bathrobe, even though the muggy warmth of New York didn’t break for night. It was nice to be held, if only by fabric. Alina curled into a fetal position and ordered a bagel and iced coffee, sized Mama’s Tits (extra large, lots of milk), to be delivered to her apartment. She spent the next two hours dropping everything seeds onto her sheets as she answered fan emails and responded to her Mentions on Twitter and liked the Intimacy Issues community’s Instagram posts. Someone’s Etsy shop already had a ceramic mug for sale that said “It’s time to change your fucking life.”
The anxiety playlist was doing well; people were saying how much it helped them chill out. “Alina thank u 4 being so open about ur struggles,” a girl named Bree had written in a D.M. “I just got on meds for the first time after hearing u talk about it so casually. I had a hard time with my parents’ divorce too, and ur pod has helped me learn to be more honest about what I’m going thru. You are my goddess. Thank u!!!”
Alina sucked on her straw and wrote back. “Yass Queen, recalibrate that chemistry and get your shit done!! So proud of you. Thank you so much for listening and for reaching out. xoxoA.” Alina pressed Send. Immediately, a shadowy emptiness flooded her chest. It used to make her glad to know she was helping more people with this podcast than she ever would have as a regular therapist. But whenever people told her how great she was for being “so open” about her issues, Alina felt another dig in the mud of her heart. They didn’t know anything. There were things she couldn’t even say aloud to herself, let alone to her audience. They didn’t know about her father’s alcoholism or her brother’s accidental death at age eight. How it should have been her, but all she got was a broken nose. They didn’t know she used to cut herself every day, and still sometimes wanted to. They didn’t even know about Darron, because he didn’t want to be mentioned on the podcast, so she couldn’t tell them how wrecked she was over their breakup.
He had been a photographer friend of a writer friend of hers, and she’d hired him to do her merch photos last year. She’d posed for every picture, unselfconsciously changing in front of him out of the “Fucked Up / So What” crew neck and into the “No More Bullshit” v-neck and mussing up her hair to its maximum sexiness. When he’d photographed her lower leg for the “Just a human, being” temporary tattoo, its roses and vines curling around her calf, sculpted round by a high heel, she felt him transform at her feet. Something in Darron reached out for her, silently, so she let her fingers dip into his hair. They fucked on the couch and had been together ever since.
Darron was intense and occasionally mean in ways that felt familiar and therefore tolerable to Alina. He said the things she thought about herself, so she knew he was honest. He worshipped her but hated that she went on tour, guilting her for spending time with masses of people she didn’t know, so far away from him. Still, it came as a surprise to Alina, scrolling through her phone in bed in a Comfort Inn in Colorado, to spy the bottom of her audio engineer Karen’s signature Doc Marten/flower dress combination in the background of one of Darron’s Instagram posts. It was past midnight, after Alina had taken off her stage makeup but before the Ambien kicked in, and she froze. She called Darron, forcing her voice into aggression so he wouldn’t be able to tell she had tears rolling down her thickly-moisturized face.
“So do you want to be, like, non-monogamous or something?” she asked. God knew she’d slept with two or three guys while she was on tour, easing the edge of her loneliness one empty orgasm at a time.
She heard him sigh. “This is more than that,” Darron said. “She’s, you know, she’s here. And I love her.”
“But you also love me,” Alina said, her voice unbearably like a kitten’s. The silence that followed felt like the earth was being ripped apart. Hemispheres. Alina clutched the side of the bed. “So you’re going to be Darron and Karen? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Now she had no boyfriend and no engineer. She had only herself to take care of herself, as usual. That was a song, wasn’t it? Alina sipped the last drops of coffee through her straw, and sang it to herself, an old one by Gilbert O’Sullivan.
• • •
Brian emerged from Penn Station onto 32nd Street and 8th Avenue. The sound of New York was overwhelming — thousands of voices in different languages layered incomprehensibly over one another, sirens, car horns, the whoosh of delivery trucks. The smell was just as invasive, candied nuts roasted over a steaming subway grate beside an open garbage can. Brian made his way to Herald Square and put his back against a stone façade in the chaos of morning pedestrian traffic. He checked his phone. He needed to find the F train.
On the redeye flight in, he had checked Alina’s Instagram to make sure she was home. She’d posted the sunlit skyline from her plane window with the caption, Trash Pile Sweet Trash Pile. Brian had wondered with brief panic how he would find Alina in a city of 10 million people. Did she have an office or recording studio? The Intimacy Issues website had little information on her process. It would be easy to figure out where she lived or where she’d be going if he had access to her email. Hacking into it was a possibility, but Brian had paused at the Gmail portal where he would begin that process. A strange, dark hand had held him back. It seemed like cheating somehow; any idiot could break into her email, and this trip was not about proving his laziness. He would have to find her like a treasure on a map.
Poring through her Instagram posts, Brian saw the same coffee shop appear again and again. Intimacy Issues was sponsored by sock subscription services and hipster laundry apps, but Brian thought Alina should be getting paid for all the fawning posts she put up from Teats’ Coffee Shop. It was all he had to go on, and Google Maps told him it was right near a stop on the F line, so he bought a canary- yellow Metrocard and stuffed himself onto the Brooklyn-bound train.
In New York, everyone was so close together all the time. You could smell each other and people’s skin touched as they jostled around on the train. As the population of the car transformed at Jay Street, Brian went back to the Intimacy Issues website. The only address was for Alina’s P.O. box, where fans could send mail and gifts. Alina had just gotten back from her tour. Wasn’t now the time she was most likely to come to the post office and retrieve months of mail? He looked it up on a map and saw it was in the same neighborhood as the coffee shop. Maybe he’d see her there. But what if she didn’t show up? Maybe she had an intern or someone to do that for her? Brian scooted away from a man with a cart of full garbage bags beside him.
He disembarked at Kings Highway and put his hoodie in his duffel bag, longing to peel off his Devo t-shirt too. Even the air in New York invaded his personal space, the humidity coating his skin and thick in his lungs. But if Alina could take it, he could too. He followed his phone map until he found the post office, directly across the street from Teats’. He figured he had double the chances of seeing her there. Brian bought what Alina always posted, a large iced with milk, and settled himself into a seat by the window. It was 10:30. He had all day.
• • •
Alina spent the afternoon editing her next two episodes, a plastic container of pad thai on the pillow beside her as she cut out all of the “um”s and “uh”s and stammering, rambling bullshit and all the disgusting noises her human mouth made. She inserted XTC’s “Making Plans For Nigel” after a call from a kid afraid to tell his parents he wanted to go to South America instead of Princeton, and the Neko Case song “That Teenage Feeling” for a woman who was freaking out about being single again at the age of 39. “This really sucks,” Alina heard her own voice tell the woman, “but if I know one thing, it’s that our hearts always work out their shit eventually. No need to settle for some mediocre peasant just because you’re scared right now. I’ll be brave for you, until you can get there too, okay? Ready?” She went back and played the clip again, and again.
Alina stayed in her bed until the sheets smelled like her armpits. She pictured her brother, what he would look like, be like, as an adult. He would never waste his life inside on a day like this. Alina searched her mind for a reason to leave the apartment.
The sound of Brooklyn through her open window, noisy with children and sirens and bicycles, was comforting after three months of sterile hotel silence. I bet I have a lot of mail waiting, Alina thought. That counts. She pulled her legs around to the edge of the bed until she felt the cool wooden floor touch the soles of her feet. She was up. She padded to the bathroom and began to put on her face.
• • •
At the post office, Alina filled her branded tote with postcards and little bubble mailers with trinkets inside. Coasters with her face on them, pendants with the Intimacy Issues logo engraved into the metal. One package had to be signed for, so Alina stepped into line. As she moved forward, little by little, a heavy dread descended. She didn’t feel like talking. She didn’t feel like making chit-chat and giving herself to others. Still, she nodded politely when she handed the slip to Mimi, the weary woman behind the counter who always helped her.
“How are the kids?” Alina asked.
“My youngest, she’s starting to wear those hoochie clothes. Thinks I’m not gonna notice her fifteen-year-old ass hanging out her short-shorts?”
Alina laughed. “She’ll be all right,” she said. “She has you.”
Alina carried her things to a deserted counter and opened the box. Inside was a devotional candle, but instead of the Virgin Mary, it bore Alina’s smiling face. As Alina sighed, wondering what she was going to do with this object, she sensed someone watching her. She turned to see a young woman bearing an expression that had become so familiar. The Hesitant Adorer, Alina called it. It was the face that approached her at every meet- and- greet, accompanied by questionable fashion and a lack of physical boundaries right before the person dumped their tragedy onto Alina while thanking her for her bravery. “I love you so much,” they said. “My father killed himself last year…” or “You are so fucking amazing and I love you and you are the reason I left my abusive husband last month.” Alina didn’t have the heart to tell them that she was nothing, that she’d done nothing but use the F-word before playing a Led Zeppelin song that she didn’t technically have the rights to.
The young woman inched toward Alina, a fearful smile on her face. Well, Alina thought, this is why we don’t leave the house without makeup. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” the girl said. “But I heard you talking and… are you Alina Bowman?”
Alina nodded patiently. Blow-men, she heard her sixth grade bully sneer in her mind.
“Eeeee!” the girl squealed quietly. “I knew I knew your voice. Okay, I’m not gonna bother you —” Too late, Alina thought. “— but your show means so much to me and it really helped me get through last year, see I was in a wheelchair for like half the year —”
“Do you wanna take a selfie?” Alina suggested brightly. She might as well get it over with.
“Oh my gosh, yes!” the girl whimpered. Her hands shook as she fumbled with her phone. “Sorry, I’m not like this, I’m just so nervous.”
“It’s okay, Babe.” Alina pulled her lips apart and squinted her eyes. That counted as a smile, right?
“Thank you so much.” The moment the photo was taken, the girl no longer looked at Alina. She looked at her phone screen instead. It was like Alina had been transferred into the girl’s possession, to be disseminated bit by bit to everyone on the internet.
The inky feeling returned to Alina’s chest as she stepped outside. She checked her phone for an unlikely text from Darron. Nothing. How could she long for both company and solitude at the same time? Surrounding the post office were bodegas, Chinese food joints, a McDonald’s, but all Alina could see was the dive bar across the street, its Budweiser neon sign lit in the window.
Yes, it was her. Brian hadn’t been sure watching her enter the post office, but seeing her stand directly facing him, he recognized her sharp black bangs and slim hips and the way she scrunched her mouth. Alina fucking Bowman. She wore a tank top and jeans, just like any normal girl. He watched her cross the street, coming towards him, and Brian’s heart sped up; he couldn’t believe this plan had actually worked. He’d only had to wait six hours. Alina didn’t come to the coffee shop, though. She passed right by his window and went into the bar next door. Palms wet, Brian stood and gathered his things. His knees wobbled as he moved his body toward the exit, dropping his plastic cup into the trash.
Too early for whiskey? Never too early, Alina asked and answered herself. There was something really nice about drinking alone in a bar that darkened the daylight. Alina made sure to do all the basic bitch things like taking baths and getting massages, but this was her real self-care. She had tried to quit drinking a few times, but it was one of the only things that made her feel better. This and sex. Maybe she’d let herself have a cigarette later; she had earned it. With a breakup, you earned every vice, big and small.
The bar was more crowded than Brian expected at 4 p.m. on a Saturday, so it didn’t seem creepy to him to take the open seat beside Alina. He felt sweat spring to his armpits as he ordered a Lagunitas, hyperaware of her body just inches from his. He couldn’t even look at her. Should he wait until she spoke, then pretend he recognized her voice? Was that even a thing that happened? Or should he just tell her? How far he’d come and the clever way he’d found her — just be vulnerable and honest? Then, as so often happened on any given day or night, Alina’s voice interrupted Brian’s thought spiral.
“I love that band,” she said. He turned to her, startled to find her slate-gray eyes fixed on him. He went mute from terror. Alina nodded to his t-shirt.
Brian looked down. “Oh. Th-thanks.”
“Have you heard their cover of ‘Satisfaction’?”
“The Rolling Stones song?” Brian’s mouth went dry. Alina fucking Bowman.
“Yeah. It’s really great.” Alina’s eyes drifted in distraction and she pulled out her phone. She wrote a note to herself—that would be a good song for the pod. Maybe some caller stuck in a rut of some sort.
Don’t overthink it, Brian told himself. It’s Alina. She knows you, even if she doesn’t know it yet. “So, what brings you to this bar?” he asked, pushing the words out from the pit of his gut. “Are you meeting someone?”
“I’m meeting you,” Alina smiled. Holy fuck, Brian thought. “A bar at 4 p.m. is a great place to meet cute guys with good music tastes.” Guys liked to neg, but Alina piled flattery on top of flattery. It made men putty, and this guy looked like half a puddle already. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but maybe he just looked like all the pasty, hungry-for-love boys she’d met on tour. In any case, he looked weaker than Darron. This guy wouldn’t grab her belly fat in jest or invoke her brother’s name during a fight. This guy looked easy. Safe.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brian said. That was charming, right? What next? “I’m Brian.” He held out a hand he’d wiped dry under the bar.
“Melissa,” Alina said.
As her clammy palm slipped into his, Brian questioned himself. Had he gotten it wrong? No, it was absolutely Alina. This was the voice he slept with every night. And she had the dagger tattoo on the inside of her wrist.
“Do you live around here?” she asked.
“No, I’m in town from Phoenix.”
“Oh? What brings you from Phoenix to deep-shit Brooklyn?”
You, Brian thought. But now he wasn’t sure what amount of truth he should tell her. “Business.” He only had the capacity for single-word lies.
“What’s your business?” Alina’s body had turned toward Brian’s. She wore a necklace with an anatomical heart pendant resting against the curve of her breast.
“I’m a computer programmer.”
“Ooh, hot nerd.”
Brian blushed. “That’s me.” Nervousness gripped his throat. Their conversation felt like an electric eel squirming in his grasp. He wanted control. “You have a beautiful voice,” he told her.
“Thanks. And a face for radio too,” she joked, stroking the bump on her nose. She took a sip of whiskey to loosen her throat.
“Well, at least you’re good with makeup,” Brian said. There. That felt better.
Alina took a deep breath. So he was negging her, so what. She knew what that meant—it meant he wanted to fuck her. And that was what she wanted, so what did it matter? What did anything matter?
• • •
Alina locked the bathroom door behind them. The space was cramped and filthy, walls covered in years of graffiti, and Alina saw the reflection of her own hands on Brian’s shoulder blades in the mirror as she pulled him close. She could have brought him back to her place, but then he would see all the takeout containers on her bed, a bed that still reeked of Darron and her own B.O. He’d see the photos still on the fridge of them happy together. He’d see her suitcase on the floor, overflowing with dirty clothes.
Alina’s mouth was smaller than Brian had imagined, pillowy, wet. She had an animal stench to her and she tasted bad, like old floss, but her kiss was so intense that he pushed his disappointment away. This was his moment. He had earned it, and for once he was getting what he deserved.
Brian was gangly and sweaty as Alina pushed herself against him. He was skinny; she could feel his ribs when she ran her hands along his chest. That made her feel disgusting when he clutched her waist, so she took his hand and stuffed it down her pants. Brian’s breath shuddered and Alina felt a sense of triumph, a brief wholeness. The sound of a man happy to be with her was better than booze, better than junk food or even good music. Better than the orgasm that never arrived. She clung to the feeling like it was a train speeding away, riding it until it shrank and dissolved back into emptiness. Hollowness, her home. Alina sank deeper into her abyss when Brian put his hand on the back of her head and pushed it down to his zipper. Why fight the abyss? she thought, watching his long fingers tug the zipper down. What did you think was going to happen?
When it was over, Alina bent over the sink, rinsing out her mouth as Brian sighed and giggled. He placed a hand on her lower back.
“I’ll meet you out there, okay?” Alina said. Brian nodded and kissed the rose tattoo on her shoulder. Alina looked into the mirror. The black of her hair, the black of eyeliner smeared onto her cheekbone. Black shirt. Alina hummed a few bars of “Eleanor Rigby.” She turned toward the window above the toilet and tried to gauge whether her body would fit through.
Brian ordered another beer and whiskey and sat back, dazed and sleepy. What had just happened? He wanted to tell everyone around him what he had just achieved. He wanted to text Mark and Shankar, wanted to post about it on the Intimacy Issues community page, wanted to send Facebook messages to every girl who’d ignored him in high school. He couldn’t wait to tell Sunny. He’d drop it casually; what did you do this weekend?
Brian sipped his beer. He wanted to take Alina to breakfast tomorrow. Or maybe they’d stay in and fuck all day. He could fly her out to visit him in Phoenix; maybe he would move to Brooklyn. Change is good. Brian looked at the bathroom door, watched it, waited for it to open.
This story was first published in Meetinghouse Volume 4. Image by Jordan MacDonald and originally published in Meetinghouse Magazine Volume 4. “Intimacy Issues”
Jenna-Marie Warnecke is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in publications including New York, december, Tahoma Literary Review, and F(r)iction, and been honored by competitions including Book Pipeline and Austin Film Festival. She lives in New York City.