Come on Skinny Love

I had already been awake for a while, but she didn’t know and so I pretended to lay there and drool until I felt her stir. I rolled over and saw Ivelisse’s figure silhouetted by the street lights. I slowly climbed out of bed and looked at the clock on my dresser. 1:30 AM. Most nights I woke up, reaching out for her, searching for her warmth and only felt how vacant the other side of my bed was. It was cold and I wondered how the heck Ivelisse was able to stand so close to the windows with all the drafts that were coming in. I grabbed a blanket and quietly padded over to the window. The blanket was draped across my shoulders and my arms were draped across hers. Skin caressed skin in a warm embrace that Ivelisse refused to reciprocate.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Being spontaneous and romantic,” I answered and kissed her neck.

“You’re a fool.”

I laughed and hugged her closer.

“I’m your fool.”

She leaned forward slightly, trying to escape my arms.

“Well aren’t you comforting,”, I laughed, trying to keep her in place.

“Comforting is my job”.

I didn’t know how to respond and just looked past her shoulder and out the window. The Queens borough bridge shone over the river and twinkled hello to the enormous blue City Bank building who in turn stared wistfully across the water to its relatives in Manhattan.

“What are cities in the Dominican Republic like?”

“Why do you care?” she asked back.

“I’ve never been there,” I sighed “I guess I’m curious.”

“The cities there suck;” she paused to think, “New York sucks too, but not as much as Santiago or Santo Domingo.”

“It’s not that bad here is it? I mean the bridge looks really nice tonight. That’s part of the reason why I got this apartment in the first place. The view, well that and the price. Some other guy was asking for almost $3,000 a month.”

“It’s just a bridge,” she cut me off. I guess she didn’t want to hear about building hunting.

“It kind of looks like a necklace being strung across the water. It’ll look beautiful on you.”

She scoffed and pulled away from my arms and went back over to the side of the bed where our clothing was discarded. Her attire wasn’t super flashy, nor was it overly revealing. I actually didn’t know that she turned on a red light when I had first met her, but then again, the first time I laid eyes on Ivelisse I was nursing a shot glass. I wanted her the moment I saw her, and she, well she wanted my money. But then again, I had seen her through a haze of Bacardi, and in that haze, she was an angel in a tight dress. A tight dress and hips. Lord have mercy.

The first night I had her, I fell asleep with a spinning head and a throbbing chest and woke up to a headache, and to Ivelisse bumping her knee against my night table. She had been rummaging through my wallet and scowled when she saw how little I had to my name. But the rent had to be paid that week, and slowly freelancing in any field didn’t make for a fat wallet.

Soon after, I learned how to cut back on fast food binges, took shorter showers, and remembered to close the fridge more often. All that extra income became hers. Ivelisse kindly declined the proposal of a second session, but I followed her, not unlike how a girl in the third grade followed me for a week after I had hugged her. I didn’t understand how she had felt, or why that girl even bothered following me. But now, it made perfect sense. I tried to treat Ivelisse to meals, mostly Thai take out, mofongo from a family owned place and takoyaki from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Chinatown.

Other times, when we were just sitting around in my apartment, before or after making love, I’d try to be silly and serenade her.

“Can you just please shut up,” she screamed after a very bad rendition of a BeeGees song.

            “Alright, alright, I’ll stop.”

            Ivelisse ignored me and pretended to become engrossed in a paperback novel that I had left on my nightstand. I fiddled around on my laptop expecting a comment from her regarding the book or just anything else in general. But nothing. The silence was too much to bear, so I figured I’d go on YouTube to relieve the awkwardness.

            “Hey, what’s your favorite song?”

            “I don’t have one”, she rolled her eyes.

            I fiddled around at the recommendations. None of them looked like anything Ivelisse would enjoy, but then again what did I know, how hard was it to just tell me her favorite freaking song. I fiddled some more until Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love” came up. About a year ago a friend made me listen to the song. His long time girlfriend broke up with him shortly before she took a job overseas. I had to put up with his angst for about a year while he would play the song nonstop and explain the lyrics to me. He called every night to talk about it; that was the year I decided to get an unlimited texting plan.

Bon Iver’s 2009 performance at a concert in Glastonbury was at the top of the list, so I clicked.  As usual, Bon’s hair was swayed into a floppy mess as he practically bounced out of his seat with each guitar strum and drum beat. The last chords hummed and the crowd screamed its approval to Bon’s heart wrenching song.

            The sheets next to me rustled and I turned to see Ivelisse practically perched on my shoulder. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, forcing blood into every nook and cranny of my body, especially my nether regions. It was rare to see her voluntarily coming closer to me, especially when it didn’t end in me handing over a portion of my paycheck. I leaned a bit towards her, hoping that the moment would last just a little bit longer.

            “Did you like the song?” I asked

            She nodded slowly and leaned her head on my shoulder in order to have a better view of my laptop’s screen.

            “Play the video again.”

            I obeyed and slowly reached and hung my arms around her shoulders and received no complaints.

            “It’s not a sad song, it’s like he’s mad or something, but I don’t know why,” she said, thinking out loud.

            Ivelisse frowned and stared down at her stripped sheet covered knees. Her eyes peered into mine. I have met Dominicans with yellow eyes, green eyes, hazel eyes, light brown, dark brown and even once an Afro-Dominican who had one hazel eye and one dark brown eye, but I had never seen one with such dark eyes. Onyx could be the only way to describe them.

            “What do you think?” she asked.

            I snapped out of my strange admiration for her eyes and held myself back from giving Ivelisse the same damn-girl-do-you-have-a-map-because-I-just-got-lost-in-your-eyes line that I had said the first night I met her.

            “What do I think about the song…?”

            “No idiot, what do you think about the lint in your belly button,” she shot back.

            I laughed and leaned closer to her.

            “I guess it is mad, at one point in the song he says, and if all your love is wasted so then who the hell am I. He also says ‘I’ll be holding all the tickets and you’ll be owning all the fines’. My guess is love didn’t work out so well and now he’s upset about how the woman he was with decided that their time together wasn’t worth anything.”

            “But what if it their time together ended badly? What if some things aren’t worth salvaging?”

            “That doesn’t mean the time they spent together can’t still have meaning,” I responded “It’s like when a married couple divorce, they might not feel the same way, but what if they learned a few valuable lessons, or if they had a kid or two? Those children still love them, and they love those kids right back, so it wasn’t a waste.”

            I paused for a bit.

            “I guess I’d feel insulted if someone told me that all the effort I had put into a relationship didn’t mean much,” I concluded.

            Ivelisse peered at me; I could practically see her absorbing my take on Bon’s angst.

            “I think I get it, but if something’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of time.”

            My fingertips skimmed her bare shoulders leaving behind a trail of goose bumps. Despite being amazingly skilled in her line of work, Ivelisse didn’t seem to enjoy intimacy. She met every one of my caresses with  her frigid can-we-just-get-on-with-this attitude. She didn’t tremble, she didn’t sign in response to me trailing my hands over her waist and down to her thighs, and she didn’t beg for more. I barely knew what counted as a sensitive spot on her body; Ivelisse on the other hand was skilled at each and every one of my weaknesses. So her suddenly sprouting goose bumps from a simple touch was just as likely as Empire State building walking over to Paris in order to have brunch with the Eiffel Tower. I trailed lower, trying to gauge how long it would be before Ivelisse would smack my hand away.

            “Is this a waste of time?”

            My lips brushed hers as if asking a question, she responded by leaning in. Another rare occurrence. I was usually swatted away with a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you but I figured that Bon had worked some magic. It had to be the acoustic guitar. The first time I had seen his performance of “Skinny Love”, I had felt a slight man crush growing.

 My heart fluttered as she deepened the kiss and slowly skimmed her hand around my shoulder and onto the back of my neck. Her breath mingled with mine, warming the cool air around our heads.

            Skin caressed skin, and the pale washed out teal of my sheets stood out behind Ivelisse’s flushed olive complexion. Her nails left a soft ticklish trail on my back as we slowly moved together towards something uncertain. Her silky black hair coiled around her head and formed hieroglyphics around us. I tried to decipher them, but I felt Ivelisse reach up and run her thumb across my jaw. The small black beauty mark next to her left eye lifted slightly as her lips turned up on the corners. Her genuine smiles were strange, not straight-line strained like her sarcastic smiles, or puckered like her pissed off smiles.

The rest of the night became a haze of the lack of space between us, heat, and her shy smiles where the right side of her lips tilted up before the left side.

           

***

            Most mornings after began with me in an empty bed and a note on my night stand informing me that money had been taken out of my wallet.

            For once in my life, the universe, God and Buddha had joined forced to smile down on me through the simple act of Ivelisse sleeping in. I closed the curtains to ward off the day and crawled back under my blankets. We spooned for about another hour until she stirred and pulled away the moment she realized that it was past 7:30.

            “Your hair looks nice,” I said, laughing at her desperate attempts to untangle the black locks with her fingers.

            “Good morning to you too.”

            “I thought you didn’t like morning,” I said.

            “I don’t.”

            She threw one of my shirts on and padded to the bathroom. I straightened out my bed and hurried over to the kitchen. I figured today would be the day that I would have my clique moment of a guy presenting his girlfriend/lady friend or love interest with a homemade breakfast. But my fridge decided to kill that moment for me. Its lack of food jeered and reminded me that Ivelisse didn’t even count as a love interest. If she was, I wouldn’t have expected her to be gone by morning, meaning that I would have planned ahead by having groceries in the house.

            I walked back to my room and then ran back to the bathroom when the idea sprang into my head. I pounded the door.

            “Hey…Ive…want to go somewhere with me?”

            “No.”

            “Why not?” I pressed.

            No response. I knocked on the door again.

            “It’ll be fun, I promise. I just want to treat you to something.”

            She opened the door and raised her eyebrow at me.

            “Where are we going?” she asked.

            “Get dressed.”

            “I said, where are we going,” she demanded.

            I walked back to my bedroom to throw on some pants.

            “You’ll see,” I called out to her.

***

            I dragged Ivelisse off the N train and joined a large crowd that was of school groups, college students, high school kids, young children and their parents. We all proceeded to leave the station in a herd.

            “Where the hell are we?” she asked me, pulling back on the arm that I had grabbed.

            “You’ll see”.

            “Tell me”.

            I turned, smiled trying not to laugh at how bewildered she looked.

            “No”.

            Most of the crowd seemed excited. Their elation hit me, and I became brave enough to let my hand slip down Ivelisse’s wrist and intertwine with her hand. She let it stay. And so I strutted through the crowd clasping her hand with the bravado that most men must have when they’re still in the “honeymoon” aspect of their relationships. The emotional place where both couples still call each other every other night and give meaningful gifts in hopes of attaining that “ever after”. Ivelisse’s emotions didn’t seem to match.

            We made it up the myriad of stairs that it took to get out of the subway station. And that’s when she saw the sign, the big block letters that covered the side of the wall across the street from the iconic Nathan’s Hot Dogs.

            “Why the hell did you bring me to Coney Island?”

            “Oh come on, like you’ve never wanted to come down and just hang out here.”

            “No.”

            I turned myself towards the amusement park area of the boardwalk and prayed that Ivelisse wouldn’t disentangle her fingers from mine. She walked, more like huffed and plodded, but we made it to the swirly blue gates that read Luna Park. I purchased the passes and dragged Ivelisse to an array of rides. She didn’t even flinch on the airplanes that twisted and turned, seeming as if they were going to strike the ground at any second. But she cracked a smile on that weird pendulum ride and when the circle had turned so that it was our side of the ride’s turn to view the sky as we went up, I turned to her.

            I once had a grandfather who liked to tell me that life gave you very few true-love-slow-motion-passion-burning moments. It’s like when a parent holds a child for the first time, that first soft kiss between a new couple, the first caress that leads two people into making love, or just someone walking down the street and realizing that they had seen their soul mate. I only know that because of stories and movies, that and my grandfather was a romantic. So all I had was Ivelisse on a ride, her lips turned upwards as hair tumbled everywhere around her shoulders and neck. The sun silhouetted her cheekbones and caressed around her eyes, bringing out the crinkle of her smile. The rays turned the black of her irises into a coffee bean brown and I swore to God that I had never witnessed something so flawed, yet so beautiful.

            Ivelisse seemed to enjoy every other ride after that and allowed me to pick a few. We played games, won those crappy plastic prizes, ate taffy and over priced funnel cakes while leaning over the railing that separated the boardwalk from the sand.

            “Have you ever been here before?” I asked after several moments of silence.

            “No, always figured it was overrated, kind of like most amusement parks,” she told me.

            “But it’s just such an iconic part of Brooklyn. Tourists and native New Yorkers alike come here,” I tried to reason with her.

            “It looks like it’s been gentrified though,” she said glancing at a store that looked a bit trendier than some of the older one around it, “I hear tourism is getting bigger and bigger every year too.”

            “Is that bad?”

            “Ask any local, and they’ll tell you how annoyed they are. I know I’d be.”

            “You’re just a ray of sunshine, has anyone ever told you that?” I asked. I was hoping that my little “surprise” would woo her.

            “All the time,” she flashed a grin.

            Behind her stood the remaining tower of some ride that had killed a few people over 10 years ago, a few new roller coasters, and to the side was the Ferris wheel that everyone called The Wonder Wheel, or should I say Deno’s Wonder Wheel. I don’t remember how old it is. And I have no idea who Deno is. The last time I had been on a Ferris wheel, it was at some street festival somewhere in Queens. The good thing about ghetto carnivals is you get the thrill of surviving poorly maintained rides that have little to no safety belts or bars to keep you in your seat. You make it out alive, and you have enough street cred to last you a year. I survived the wheel with a friend who kept rocking it once we made it to the top. The only thing that stood between me and the concrete was a bar. A loose bar. A loose rusty bar. I had so much street cred, I got to eat everyone’s chicken nuggets at school the next day.

            The Ferris wheel at Coney Island was the one that gave you tourism cred. It’s like when you forget which train goes express into the Bronx and you go looking for a subway map, the fold up kind, and a friend laughs and calls you a tourist. Or a hipster.

            It was old, but that just made the wheel so much more appealing. Old as in vintage. Old as in unique. Old as in a countless number of lovers, friends, and family members had ridden the wheel, a countless number of people had gotten closer to heaven, closer to the sea, and to each other. I wonder if one of them was a lonely client dragging along a woman who was in it for the tips.

            “When can we leave?” Ivelisse asked, making me jump.

            “We still haven’t gone on all of the rides yet,” I insisted.

            “Do we really have to go to all the damned rides?” she shot back.

            “Honestly, this place is a lot of fun if you’d let it be fun. I mean, there had to be one time when you wanted to come here and just goof around on rides.”

            My patience isn’t infinite.

            “Fine, whatever, we’ll go on another freaking ride,” she rolled her eyes.

            And there we were, huffing and plodding all over again. And to think I had made so much progress. I purchased the ticket for the wheel and waited online in an awkward silence.

            The wheel had little carts instead of open air seats. They were painted carnival colors, the reds and blues and starch whites that stand out in a sepia photo. Ours was green. We sat opposite of each other in the cart. A middle aged man smiled and closed the door on us. Ivelisse and I probably looked like the start of a very bad blind date, or an adult film. The cheap kind.

            The cart shuddered and up we went into the stratosphere, where ever that is. I looked out and saw the ant people and noticed that Ivelisse was looking too.

            “You’re right,” she muttered.

            “What?”

            “You’re right, I’ve always wanted to come someplace like this, but no one ever offered to take me, and I would have felt pathetic coming by myself,” she sighed.

            She leaned out slightly away from me and looked out towards the beach. I went over and sat next to her.

            “You never told me you wanted to come here. You’re lucky I thought about this out of nowhere.”

            Ivelisse shrugged, I leaned on her shoulder and she didn’t shrug me off. The cart swung gently, suspended and I hoped the ride wouldn’t end so quickly. But it did, most rides do. Should be a crime, especially with how much they’re charging these days for anything interesting in Brooklyn.

            Other rides didn’t require begging and dragging. And down the iconic Cyclone, fingers intertwined with mine, hands were raised in the air during the initial drop, and that adrenaline rush was the sweetest.

            Afterward we sampled soft serve, oysters, corn on the cob, over priced chicken hot dogs and I had a lukewarm beer as Ivelisse stared and cringed.

            “Do you want one?”

            “No…beer looks like piss.”

            The sand finished the rest of the bottle for me.

            The sun softly lowered itself, deepening shadows around us. Sometimes wish it would stand still for just a little bit. But it doesn’t, and it won’t.

            We left the boardwalk behind and headed towards the subway station. Ivelisse commented on the sea animal signs and I told her it was the aquarium. I promised to take her.

            Shadows lengthened as we walked towards the station hand in hand. Someone had chalked a lopsided blue heart on the sidewalk. I prayed it was an omen.

           

           

           

           

           

           

            ***

            It was a strange week. The weather was warming up and so many women took it upon themselves to show leg. Well, that and everything else. The view was nice I guess, but it was a bitch to get Ivelisse to show anything. Despite her line of work, she was modest. I liked her modesty, but I like her legs a bit more. Maybe a lot more.

            I tried to get her to open up more, asking where she would like to eat, what her favorite color is. Her favorite childhood story. Her first kiss. Most of them were responded with shrugs and eye rolls. The answer to my first kiss question made me feel pathetic.

            “My first kiss was with Juanito. I was 13 years old I think, and he was 15 and kinda hot. Tall, dark, and handsome, and he was a great dancer.”

            “Should I learn how to dance?” I pressed on, trying to see how I could make myself a bit more likeable.

            “Na, you’re kinda pale and stringy. It’ll look wrong.”

            “Gee, thanks for the honesty.”

            “Any time,” she said, flashing a brilliantly crooked smile.

            I suppose her sarcasm was better than the initial can’t-we-just-get-this-over-with. Her straight forward approaches and reminders to be paid showed me that I was still a client.

            “Teach me how to dance bachata.”

            “No.”

            “Why not?” I was running out of patience with the idea.

            “You’d suck at it.”

            I threw a pillow from my couch across the room at her. She swatted it aside.

            “You don’t know if I’ll suck at it if you never see me dancing.”

            “Why are you so pissed off?”

            “Because you never even try to show me how to dance.” I was practically begging for a dance lesson.

            “Whatever.”

            She packed her bag and proceeded to leave. I held out a wad of bills. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around the money and tried to pull away. I pulled her in and kissed her hand. I was startled to feel the brush of her lips against my temple. Our eyes met, and she turned away abrubtly, as if shocked by her own tenderness.

Ivelisse left without saying a word. I didn’t hear from her for about a week and a half after that. 

***

            She stood on the corner of Union and Broadway in a black dress. THE black dress. I didn’t know whether to stand and admire or to stalk over and shake some sense into her. Why did she need other clients when she had me? Didn’t she know that I had dreamed about her coming back all week, dreamed about going to Coney Island again, dreamed about her beauty mark. Dreamed about those legs. Lord have mercy.

            My left hand was covered in writing. It’s a bad habit that I’ve had since I learned how to write. Ive, Ivelisse, Ive, Ivelisse, Ive, Ivelisse. It was written down as quickly as I had chanted out her name. Like a type of voodoo spell to make her come back. I wonder what the ladies in white behind the counters of those middle Brooklyn botanicas would think about my love-maniac juju. Maybe they’d help me have her all to myself.

            But anyways, there she was. A fire stirred in my extremities, and then it stirred in my chest when some other guy approached her. I crossed the street, was almost plowed over by a city bus, but by some miracle, I made it across.

            “Hey buddy, something I can help you with?” I told the guy as I put my arm around her shoulder.

            “Get the hell out of here.”

            She squirmed away from me.

            “I’m working, get away,” she spat at me.

            The guy gave me a once over and then continued to undress Ivelisse with his gaze.

            “So we have a deal or what?” the guy asked her.

            “Nope, no deal,” I smiled at the guy. “I tell you what; go run your pockets some other place.”

            She shoved me aside and walked up to the guy, grabbed his hand like I had always hoped she would grab mine. Jealousy is an ugly thing. I used to think that anger was, but jealousy is a hundred…no a thousand times more detrimental. It leads to anger. It leads to people saying ugly things. Well…more like it leads to people spewing ugly words to the individual that is causing all the envy. Words such as fucking hooker. Jealousy makes you go on a downward spiral of self pity. A downward spiral of I-have-not. A downward spiral of I-am-entitled-to. A downward spiral of Ivelisse stomping on my left foot with her heels and running off with that guy. He wasn’t that good looking anyway. Maybe he was rich. I hope he was rich. That’d be a good way to justify everything.

            I took the N train home, found a bottle of Bacardi in the kitchen and took a swallow. A few swigs later and the Bacardi bat and I were contemplating the meaning of life.

            “You think she just switched to become an escort to make money?”

            “I don’t think so buddy,” said the bat.

            “I mean I really liked her, don’t you think she liked me back just a little bit?”

            “Maybe, but let’s face it, you’re not rich, and you can’t dance,” he explained.

            “Why does everyone say that, they don’t even give me a chance to dance for them or to even teach me how to do anything? I will dance the freaking Macarena in a dress if it makes her like me.”

            “Woah, slow down there crazy. That won’t get her excited over you at all. And look at you all pale and stringy . Who the hell is going to try to teach you how to dance?” the bat laughed.

            “I can learn, I can so learn. Watch.”

            I danced to no music and sloshed the contents of the bottle all over my hands and down the neck of the bottle. I wiped the rum off the bat.

            “Dude that was twerking on crack, just sit down,” the bat advised.

            “Sorry buddy, I’m usually a good dancer, I swear.”

            “Sure you are, it’s alright dude, just sit down and chill. I mean plenty of ladies out there. I mean you’re stringy, but you’re not ugly.”

            “Thanks bro.”

            “No problem,” the bat smiled up at me. He paused, “Have you ever considered just getting her a gift and just telling her how you feel?”

            “She likes gifts?”

            “Have you ever asked her what she likes? Dude where the hell would you be without me?”

            “Oh my god…I am the crappiest pimp alive.”

            “You’re not a pimp, you’re a client, and pimps aren’t so uncoordinated.”

            “Oh God, no wonder she hates me. I never asked her if she likes gifts.”

            “Calm down there crazy,” the bat said, “a gift is an example. What if she likes cards?  Some people love receiving cards instead of texts, and some people think texts are better than cards, have you ever asked her what she wanted, or what she liked.”

            “Oh yeah,” I shot back, jabbing my finger at the bottle, “how come she hasn’t asked me what I’ve wanted, huh. Why is it all about her?”

            “Because you’re the one who picked her up, brought her home and then ended up liking her. How clique are you?”

            “I’m not clique, I’m just…” I paused.

            “You, my dear friend are an unromantic idiot, stop reading poetry because you certainly aren’t learning anything from it.”

            “Poetry helps me plan out things for her,” I pouted.

            “But have you read it to her, do you even know if she likes poetry and what kind of poetry she likes?”

            My shoulders slumped.

            “No.”

            “This is exactly why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

            “What do you know; I mean what if she doesn’t like poetry?” I tried to regain my dignity.

            “You wouldn’t know that,” the bat snapped back at me, “you never asked her. Honestly, it’s like you don’t pay attention to any of my advice.”

            I stared at my bare feet in solemn defeat.

            “If it makes you feel any better dude, my buddy got his girlfriend a puppy once,” said the bat.

            “How is your bottle bat friend capable of buying a puppy, and why is that comforting? Don’t people like cute pet gifts?”

            “She had allergies,” laughed the bat.

            My chair shook as I laughed and took another sip from the bottle. The bitter burn made me feel better. God bless the Bacardi family, wherever they are.

            The bat wasn’t so chatty the following morning. That or my headache wasn’t letting me hear him over the pounding in my head. It would have been nice to talk to someone. 

***

            She was on the corner of 6th avenue and 14th street this time. The dress this time was a deep plum. I hadn’t seen that one on her before. My Ivelisse stood on a corner and my Ivelisse smiled at another guy and my Ivelisse stood there without me.

            “Leave.”

            “No.”

            “Get the hell away from me.”

            I hoped it wasn’t an ultimatum.

            “Please, just come with me,” I begged.

            She ignored me and scoured the crowd.

            I was there the next day and the day after that. I contemplated giving up, but the bat wouldn’t let me. Either I’m a pushover or he’s going to make an awesome lawyer one day.  A week later the bat talked me into staring her down from across the street. The night after that she wasn’t there. I wanted her to be there, where I could watch her and feign to be her protector. I wanted her in my apartment, throwing snide comments and sudden tender glances. I wanted her right next to me, the one place she never seemed to be. Not sure what I did to screw it up. Maybe it was the jealous spiral. Not sure.

***

I called her phone several times a day. No response. Texts went unanswered. And then my doorbell rang. It wasn’t her, it was the delivery guy. The bat had kept me so entertained in conversation that I had forgotten about the bacalao and white rice that I ordered from the Caribbean fusion restaurant two blocks over.

***

            The bell rang and it was finally her.

Ive, Ivelisse, Ive, Ivelisse.

My…well I suppose I can’t say she’s my love, I mean I love her, but does she love me? Did she at any point love me, or did she love that I opened my wallet? Did she love the take out, the random serenades of classic Italian and Dominican songs in fluid words that my tongue stumbled over? Did she love that I actually wanted to seduce her before letting her step a foot into my bedroom…I wish I could call it our bedroom.

“Apparently you’ve been looking around for me.”

“Apparently you’ve been working overtime,” I shot back.

My bat buddy tried to feed me a mushy line, something about how I should just tell her what she means to me. But my response was better. At least I’d hoped it was.

“How the hell am I supposed to pay my bills or send money back home or even save up for stuff if I don’t work.”

“Well excuse me if I wasn’t giving you enough money,” I responded. “Pray tell me what it is that women in your line of work save up for?”

The corner of her lips turned up slightly, the movement was accompanied by a subtle twitch on her left cheek. In her head, she had probably murdered me four times. Twice by strangling me, once by decapitating me with a machete, and the last by castration.

“Oh I don’t know, maybe I’m saving up for condoms like every other woman in my line of work, or maybe I’m just saving up so that I might one day afford those tiny little dresses like all the other women in my line of work wear, or maybe I just want to do something with my life, but then again, why would women in my line of work even dream of making something of themselves,” she said.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to take the bat’s option.

“I could have bought you all those things,” I didn’t know what else to say to that.

I heard her hand connect with my face before I felt the sting and realized that I was looking at the window and not her face anymore. I wanted her to punch me, tackle me against a wall, and tear me apart. Rip me limb from limb and bite down into my flesh with her teeth.

“With your paycheck, let’s be real, you can’t buy me shit, and you know what, I don’t want anyone to buy me anything. None of you own me, you can’t own me.”

I tried to reach out to her, explain that all I’ve ever wanted was to be with her, not own her. I just wanted her to be close to me, close in an acoustic guitar- finger tips- slow dancing kind of way. I mean chick flicks made it seem that if you didn’t have that, your relationship sucked, but if it was with Ive, it wouldn’t be so bad. And maybe not as clique as a movie since she would put me in my place every five seconds. And there would probably be several nights where I’d have to sleep on the couch, or floor, or maybe even in the hallway.

“I don’t want to own you,” I tried to explain.

“Bullshit…that’s all any of you want, it’s always about ‘my bed’ and ‘my girl’ and ‘my money’ with every single one of you.”

“I never said anything about my money”.

I trailed her around, trying to get Ivelisse to look at me for 5 seconds. But she shoved me aside and raided my bedroom for any of her forgotten things, random clothing, and a small comb with parrots carved onto it.

She tried to grab a souvenir I purchased for us back when I had dragged her to Coney Island against her. I smacked it out of her hand. She picked it up and I lunged for the little plastic keepsake. We tugged on it until she let go and I stumbled backwards over the corner of the bed and came to a halt after I slammed my shoulder into a wall.

“Why the hell do you even want that thing?  You yelled at me for making you go to Coney Island. I bought it, too. It’s not like it means anything to you.”

“I just want to keep the damn thing, why does it matter if you bought it or no?” she said through gritted teeth.

“Because I want it, you didn’t even like the damned thing. You didn’t even want to take the picture. It’s not like you care about memories with me, I literally paid you to stick around.”

Her cheek twitched again. I was definitely being decapitated in her head.

“Why does it matter if you bought me anything or not?” she repeated. “It’s not like you’ve purchased me.”

“Yes I did.”

Her mouth hung open, and the weirdo I am, I stared at her lips and wondered if a stream of spit would come down if she kept her mouth like that long enough.

“What did you just say?”

“I did buy you; you sold yourself to me, isn’t that how it works?” I shot back.

            My conversation with the bat was looking better and better when I noticed Ivelisse blink several times. I didn’t know if I should have interpreted that it was caused by holding back tears, or just the shock of anger that was currently coursing through her veins. I always told myself that despite the hints of objectification that I’ve always laughed at in jokes, or noticed in movies or television shows, I thought that I was all for treating men and women equal. That and my Feminist literature in undergrad was no joke. Thanks to classes like that, I figured that I’d always find a way to make it work with the ladies. But I guess that wasn’t the case tonight.

            “So I’m something you bought.”

            She didn’t yell. I wanted her to yell, she had every right to tear me a new one at that point.

            “I didn’t mean it that way.” I tried to reach out and offer the souvenir.

            Ivelisse stared at it and then sighed, glanced at the door and then at her feet. She looked small. It’s not as if she’s very tall, but she suddenly became little.

            “I actually had fun that day,” she told her feet. “It was the first time I had ever gone there, and I thought that maybe you were one of the few guys who didn’t see me as something that came with ownership.”

            “Ive, how the hell was I supposed to think about this whole thing? You sold yourself to me.”

            I wished I was a smooth talker.

            “You didn’t have to spend the night with me,” she told her feet again. “You could have just said no.”

            “You threw yourself at me, what the hell was I supposed to do?” I tried to reach out to her. And then you started playing hard to get despite everything you do for money.”

            Her eyes met mine in a blank stare, and a muscle on her right cheek twitched. Somewhere inside Ivelisse’s mind, my toes were being snipped off one by one with a rusty pair of garden shears. She gazed at her feet again. I practically jumped out of my skin when her shoulders started shaking. Ive was laughing.

            “Oh, I see, it was my fault,” she chuckled, “after I left that first time and you went out of your way to go find me again.”

            She giggled her way to the night table and threw the remainder of her things into a bag. Ive turned to me and wiped tears of mirth from her cheeks.

            “I guess it’s my fault that I try to keep some sort of boundaries and control while I do this, you all act like going to bed with someone for money is easy.”

            “It’s not like you complained whenever I paid you or bought you dinner.” I wanted to take those words back right after I spit them out into the air.

            Ive’s knuckles practically turned white as she clutched her bag.

            “I see,” she straightened herself up, grabbed her bag and proceeded to leave my room. I trailed her.

            “You know I didn’t mean it like that, you don’t have to leave,” I begged.

            “Whether I stay or leave, it won’t make a differenc. I mean you paid me, you can easily pay someone else to spend the night with,” she smirked.

            Her hand reached out for the neck of my bottle of rum.

            I stood at the door and heard her feet patter down the stairs and out the front steps.

***

            There was a knock on my door. I opened it.

            “Good evening sir, sorry to interrupt you,” said the police officer.

            His badge said Abreu. I didn’t want to look at his face.

            I asked him if he needed my assistance for anything.

            “Actually there’s something I would like your assistance with. There’s an intoxicated woman on the roof of this building, she says that she knows the person in this apartment.”

            What’s her name.

            “She said her name was Ivelisse. Do you know her sir?”

            “I know her, I think. She was almost my girlfriend,” I told the cop.

            “I’m going to have to ask you to come up to the roof.”

           

***

            She stood on the ledge and danced. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Her limbs, the legs, the feet that were a little bit too big, yet slender. The dark hair, the dark eyes. The kind of tan that didn’t need lotions or lights. Perfectly imperfect. Lord have mercy.

            Ive, Ivelisse, Ive, Ivelisse.

            She was wearing the black dress, the one she had on when I met her, back when I was in a desperate drunken spiral of thoughts, unsure of where my life was going, and unsure of where I could purchase warmth and heat.

            Get off the edge.

            “I can’t, it’s like we always dance on the edge, funny how that works out isn’t it,” she laughed.

            Please please please, get off the edge.

            “Dance with me,” her hands reached out to me.

            I can’t, get off the edge and I’ll dance with you forever.

            “And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be kind,”

            And I told you to be balanced and I told you to be fine, and if all your love is wasted, then who the hell was I?

            “And I’ll be holding all the tickets, and you’ll be owning all the fines,” she spiraled even closer to the ledge.

            The cops were in a frenzy. They called for backup, some tried to negotiate, but the cop that spoke to me asked me to get her away from the ledge. They inched closer. I wondered if they had a group of people down on the street with a net or a trampoline in case she jumped. Please God, don’t let her jump. Lord. Have. Mercy.

            “Well, was it a waste for you?”

            No.

            “I swore that I didn’t like you, but then again, I liked you. I liked you too much.”

            I like you too. No. I love you. Now get off the edge.

            “I can’t”.

            Yes you can. Please.

            “No, you don’t know what it’s like, you love me and you still see me as something that you own,” she laughed, “my my my, my my my, my , my”.

            Get off the edge and I’ll never own you, not ever. You belong to yourself. And I belong to you. You’re my skinny love.

            “I’m not anyone’s love. Not then, not now, not ever,” she laughed again and took a swig from the Bacardi bottle, the bat didn’t give any advice this time. “Funny how that works isn’t it, isn’t it funny?”

            It’s hilarious, now please, please, please get off the edge. Please.

            “I can’t, I want to, but I can’t”.

            Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Get her the fuck off the edge.

            “You shouldn’t pray and swear, He doesn’t like that, but then again, I don’t know if He likes me,” she moved farther away from me.

            The cops were now trying their negotiation tactics. They urged me to make her stop dancing, a few more spins and she’d fall. She’d fall and break. Get her off the edge, they begged, they pleaded.

            Get off the edge. I’ll dance with you forever if you do. I’ll learn bachata. I swear.

            “You won’t learn, they all swore that they’d learn, that they’d love me, where are they now?”

            I’m here. Come on skinny love lets last the year.

            “I’m not your skinny love; I’m not anyone’s love,” she spun once. She spun twice.

            In the movies, whenever someone is going to jump off a building or try to commit suicide, there’s always a net, or some sort of smooth talker, or one of those blow up mattresses. Where the hell was all that crap when I needed it.

            “We can help you,” the cops promised.

            She spun one more time.

            “I tell my love to wreck it all, cut out all the ropes and let me fall, my my my my my my my my, right at this moment, this order’s tall,” she took another gulp from the bottle. The bat refused to speak.           

            Please don’t fall.

            “You have to sing the rest,” she giggled, whipping rum from her chin.

            The lights from the cop cars down on the street illuminated the side of the buildings. Had anyone been standing blocks away, or just looking down on this part of Astoria, they’d have thought that a carnival was going on. Every time Ivelisse spun, she was lit up, silhouetted by the lights like the figure of Mary in a church. Triumphant, yet always gracefully mourning and rejoicing all at once.

            “Sing,” she commanded.

            And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be kind, and I told you to be balanced and I told you to be fine, and in the morning I’ll be with you, but it’ll be a different kind, and I’ll be holding all the tickets and you’ll be owning all the fines. But that’s not true. I’ll be with you in the morning, if you want me to.

            “No you won’t.”

            She spun. It was my favorite spin, probably because she had her arms out, and her right leg up, almost like a ballerina. It was probably because she was right at the edge, and the lights made her all red and blue, and because the dress clung to her tights when she spun and I had a better view of the outline of her legs. Lord have mercy.

            Ivelisse spun as she fell. Movies make it seem like people plummet in a noisy downward spiral. She just quietly disappeared off the edge and into the lights. The cops were on me soon after, they didn’t let me go to the lights. They patted, caressed, pressed, and pushed up against me. I crawled forward and finally clung to the edge, looked down and asked myself again why no one had bothered to set up a net. I looked up, then down again.

            Ivelisse lay on the sidewalk. She was broken. And so was I.

Impressum

Texte: Angely Mercado. Song "Skinny Love" sung by Bon Iver, lyrics are property and copyright of owner.
Bildmaterialien: editing by Angely Mercado
Lektorat: Patrick Sean aka Felixthecat
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 13.08.2013

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Widmung:
For mom, this family's Ivelisse, even though she isn't a lady of the evening (hahaha...please don't get mad mom!). And to women around the world who have very little options but to turn to certain professions in order to feed their families, especially those in the Dominican Republic. And as always, for Jesusita and Luisa.