I send him a message thanking him for giving me Bob Dylan.
He responds, thanking me in kind for Liz Phair.
Later, I wonder if there is anything beyond blowjobs and heartache that i gave him which stuck. I don’t ask though. A couple of days later, I download all the Liz Phair songs I’ve avoided since we parted, because I might as well, right?
He was the prettiest thing I ever laid my hands on. I don’t know why I still feel guilty about that.
Hell taught me my how to wield power over others, but the power in our relationship was all hers. I wanted her to have it. I gave it up freely, but she abused it. She seduced my sad little heart but refused me at every turn. I know that now – that I was in love with her and she remained indifferent to me.
Sweet fucking jesus she was funny: gut-busting belly-laugh, can’t catch your breath kind of funny. She made a unicorn horn out of her hair and then squinched her face up into these insane expressions. She could hold them, the faces, and have entire conversations. Sometimes Paris would join in. They’d carry on with mundane conversations made hilarious by their delivery and expressions and all I could do was lay on the floor and laugh and kick my feet in the air and beg them to stop.
I loved when they were funny together.
But Hell was Hell and she could never leave a thing like that.
All those years, I never even looked at Army Boy sideways – not when we all lived together, not once they divorced, not when he and Tea talked about wanting to fuck me while they were getting it on in the laundry room. Not the night I sat across the room while he tried to make her come or later, when she furiously accused us of hooking up just to see if she could talk us into admitting what we hadn’t done.
All those years I kept my sticky fingers to myself because that was Hell’s heart.
She never could quite bring herself to do the same for me.
In this place so public that it’s private, you can call me Drucilla, Demetria or Cakegurl. They’re all mine, every one of these names, a lie I can defend. And this, best I can explain it, is the world’s worst love letter, which might sound shitty but is honestly so fucking sad and sweet that you might want to fuck off now or tongue a chalky antacid in anticipation.