Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am not from the South, or even the US, but I have loved Southern literature ever since I discovered Flannery O’Connor when I was a very young writer. I also admired Eudora Welty, and Capote, and in more recent years, everyone from Dorothy Alison to Jesmyn Ward to Julia Elliot’s the Wilds. There is such great insight, darkness, humour and so many unexpected elements.
I love Southern warmth, and I love all the subtext that lurks beneath it.
Roses or Herpes
The first pub we could stagger to was twelve steps from the plane.
“I know a place,” he said, and laughed, his throat gravelly, his bright blue eyes flashing as his voice dropped. “I found it the first time I was sprung from rehab.”
I don’t know why but I grabbed his hand. Ours hands fit together surprisingly well, each of his finger’s slightly longer and thicker than mine, both of our skin the faded olive of winter.
It wasn’t romantic exactly, but it was exciting, sitting in red leather chairs, our thighs almost touching but not quite, like he’d engineered the perfect amount of sexual tension.
He ordered our drinks, said I looked like a Manhattan kind of girl, and I held my glass up to the light hanging over our heads, the maraschino cherries swirling and tumbling as my heart raced.
I’d never had one before, and I drank slowly, taking in the way it tasted sharp and cold, but warmed me instantly. He took that in, in the innerving way he does, where he makes you feel like he can see clean through to your every thought and carefully hidden feeling.
I’d kept my distance for a long time. I thought he was beautiful, of course, and talented but it wasn’t a secret that he slept around, and that he’d had an opiate problem. The tattoos on his arms were part of his recovery, turning track marks into art, and I thought that was beautiful too.
I’d held back because I knew that guys like him made you do all the work, they didn’t chase girls, girls chased them, and they gave in like they couldn’t help themselves.
I wasn’t exactly a bring me roses kind of girl, but I wasn’t a give me herpes type either.
My problem was, I fell in love intensely, a love that was more than love, to quote Poe.
I knew I couldn’t handle chasing someone I’d never feel was mine.
So we orbited each other from a distance, friends who waved from across the room or liked each other’s Instagram stories until he saw me on the plane.
There was an empty seat, and he sat down beside me, a pair of yellow framed aviators hanging from his white v neck t shirt, a new spiderweb tattoo decorating his collarbones. He’d grown a small goatee and I wanted to touch it. My life had already fallen apart; I wanted my last jump off the cliff to feel amazing.
I kissed him now and he tasted like bourbon mixed with risk and hope, like a graffiti covered bathroom with my favourite Ramones song vibrating from the speaker to our lips.
He pulled back and rested a hand on the back of my neck.
“I think I should take you to a meeting,” he said softly. “And we should take it slow.”
I felt the room tilt around us.
I leaned my body into his and closed my eyes.
