Three

I love the way you smell: bodies together in the guest room shower, coming in out of the rain, wet for any reason. A captivating petrichor. I love the way you smell: spitting a peach pip into your

algebra hands,

examining it,

and putting it back into your mouth to suck off the vestigial bits of fruit.

And you smell like sunshine, I decide, from my place in the crook of your arm. When we watch movies in the media room, you use the pillows from my bedroom and I use the pillows already in there, and at night when I’m trying to fall asleep it’s easier because it smells freshly of your cologne, of your lemony shampoo, of Avery Chai Tea.

Jason smells like Arm and Hammer deodorant, like lavender and socks and soap and old coffee. Jason smells like sitting in a classroom when you’re the first kid in there.  The three of us are having an Austen-novel adaptation themed film night. I mean, it’s weird that you provided all of them and it’s weird that Jason seemed as excited about it as I did, but what else are we going to do on a Thursday night? Watch Lord of the Rings again?

When we watch movies we’ve all seen before no one cares if it becomes background to conversation.  We can talk about stylistic choices the director took; we can discuss brilliant lines, themes. We can talk about that cunt in our art class, Dawn Malloy, and the dumbass things she said that made us laugh throughout the week and how she’s totally banging Corey the basketball guy and how he’s kind of a nice guy, he always gives me pencil lead, he can do better.

“If I was in a band,” you say, “It’d be a guy band, right, but I’d call us Harbinger Girls.”

“I’d call my band Eraser,” Jason says.

“You want to be in a band?” I ask, tilting my head up toward you. As cozy as it is cuddling up against you, it’s hard to converse this way. Usually when we sit this way we end up volleying topics off Jason.

“And do what!” you laugh. “Play the tambourine? Or like, the triangle?”

“You wouldn’t be the singer?” I poke my pointer and middle finger into the hole in your tee-shirt and I rest my fingers on your abdomen.  You startle, briefly, then relax. When Jason isn’t looking, you slip one hand up my shirt and rest it on my stomach. You play tickle fingers with my goose-bumped skin.

I want you to be in a band. I want you to wear tight jeans and a ripped fishnet shirt and women’s shoes on a big moving stage. I want you to be the focus in the midst of costumed dancers, crazy lights, and explosive pyrotechnics. I want you to write morose lyrics about fucking corpses, sea fowl, and mirrors. You would lilt around, seducing your audience, hands and arms flexed toward the sky.  I want you to play the guitar. I want you to play the violin. I want you to reek of capitalist opulence, make love to me in front of groupies. Our moaning, mellifluous: music unto itself.

And you would be rough, like a rock star ought to be.

“Eraser would be synth-pop, hipster shit you know? But it would be really depressing,” Jason says. 

Have you ever noticed that he like, never moves his hands when he talks. I find it captivating.

“Interesting paradox,” you say. I can feel your throat against my ear. I hear a hollow echo of your words from one side and I hear real life from the open ear side.

“We wouldn’t have dancers when we’re performing live, we’d just have like six or seven naked women who are just standing perfectly still for the whole show.”

I giggle, “I love it!”

He laughs with me. When Jason smiles, his eyes widen and he’s all lazy-comfy like a slow loris. It might be that his expression is amplified by his glasses, ‘cause you know they make his gray eyes look even bigger and the rest of his face kinda’ smaller.

Sometimes, I picture us as one of those elderly couples and Jason, veiny pale and inelastic, shares a bed with us and we’re all wearing matching nighties and sleeping caps. I drew something similar on a math test I didn’t know the answers to and got a D.

“Our Eraser ladies should all be bald,” I tell Jason. “Or, they should all be gingers!”

“Ugh!” Jason spits. “No! No Weasleys.” We all laugh.

Sometimes, when we’re all like this, it’s easy to forget how wounded he is. I want to hear his Eraser music, his depressing hipster shit. I want him to create. I don’t want to feel pain like he does, but I want to experience, tangibly, how he feels it.