When the gunman comes for me

It’s 2016 and I could be next.  There are shootings, bomb threats, violence on every corner, human against human, man against woman against child against the world.  My job has become dangerous, going out at night could be lethal; people die at grocery stores in the morning and at bars at night.  And that’s just in Williamsburg. 

I ask myself almost daily if all this risk is worth it.  I’m not negotiating peace treaties in a war torn province or doing humane work for the United Nations.  I’m talking about our history.  It’s not even my families, like millions of other Americans, my roots in this country are barely a century old.  I’m talking about people that I have no real reason to defend, no tangible connection to.  Except that they’re human, and so am I.  They are our past, our present, and our future. 

Every time I hear of another shooting, I wonder if this is what it felt with stamp act riots rippling up and down the east coast.  If citizens lived in fear of being dragged out of their beds just for looking the wrong way, saying the wrong thing, being on the wrong side.  This is not a new struggle, the idea of “national identity” is  contrived out of nothingness.  And isn’t that the beauty of it?

So If I’m next.  If the gunman comes for me and I can’t run or hide, for the love of god don’t send prayers.  I’m not a saint.  I’m not a martyr.  I lie and I am vain and filled with human foibles.  Don’t make it a call to action; don’t put up ridiculous black and whites of my vacant smile (but in all honesty, choose a flattering photo.)  Don’t talk about my childhood dreams or how I was going to save the world.  The world cannot be saved by the countless innocent lives snuffed to soon. 

Instead, listen.  We are bothers and sisters, black and white, brown and red and every color in between.  There are so many good sane people in the world, we cannot be held hostage by the violent few.  I am living my life to the greatest purpose I can imagine.  I am trying to connect the past to the present, to learn from our wounds instead of just picking at the scab until it becomes infected.  If I’m next, I want it to count for something. 

Make me count. 

I want to believe it's cold in my memory, but in reality it was nearly eighty.

Pitch black- I've closed the store again and an hour past midnight I'm finally speeding towards home.  Just stay away- my silent prayer.  Don't let me have persevered to die here, on the side of the road mangled into the white sheet metal of my brand new Corolla.
The phone rings five times before you answer.  A month ago, it would have been once.  Six weeks ago and you would already have sent me five concerned messages.  I would have yelled at you, don't you understand that ever one costs me three quarters?  How things have changed.
 When I hear your voice it sends such a shock of relief through my body that I let out the breath I don't realize I've been holding too fast and my first word is lost.
"Hmm?"
"Hey, I love you."
"Mhhm."

Clickity click click.  They keyboard is the giveaway of what I have known since the third ring.  Distantly I can hear the other people, the headset that you won't-can't? take off.  And so, I try to talk.  I don't know how to do this.  I've never had a boyfriend before and then you, you called me a goddess.  You told me I'm beautiful.  You chased me.  The first one, only one to do so.  Though the whole conversation I get five words, maybe six.  Forty five minutes later and the silence stretches into endless tears.  You don't hear, or you don't care.  Probably both.  I try again.

"Let's play our game....I'll ask you a question but you have to answer truthfully.  No lies."
"Sure."
"Most embarrassing high school moment?"
"I don't have one."
"First kiss?"
"I told you that already."
"If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?"
"I don't know.  Hey Prot, I need heals!"

Just like that, I'm shut out.

Did you know then, I wonder.  Did you have any idea that I was taking every nice thing you said, locking it into a box deep in the back of my mind for the days when there was nothing left to say.  Were you already propositioning them, in between sending my pictures as bragging rights?

I wanted to give you the world.  You handed it back to me.  Literally.  The plastic globe that I had spent six months searching for, you put it right back in my hands.

So instead, I locked away my love.  I learned to apologize for your shortcomings.  I learned the art of fear.  Of my own worthlessness.  Meanwhile,  I gave everything I had.  I love you, without fear or distrust.  In a way that I never will be able to again.  I took care of your dog.  I loved him as my own.  I went to the hospital with your sister when she had her child.

And I learned to write murder stories.  I learned it was safer not to say things out loud.

Until you found this.  I won't make that mistake again.

Now I love cautiously.  I apologize too easily.  I don't make decisions for fear that I will make the wrong one.  I look for violence and fear and I'm surprised when I'm met with love and a gentle hand.

You told me sex was better when I'm scared.  Better when I'm hurting and crying.

You made me believe that was the only way.

Some days, I can still hear your voice, still see the crooked tattoo on your shoulder blade.  You will not be my nightmare.  I banish you.

Mr. F

I know, somewhere here buried in years of memories I have described with fresh eyes what it felt like to run slipping and sliding back from that house.  I'm sure that everything seemed so brilliantly clear, but now the edges have faded.  You're still tall, I think, with brown hair and brown-maybe hazel eyes.  I'm perpetually wearing what I think is a green tank top with horribly unflattering skinny jeans.  I remember you trying to take them off, and me fighting equally hard to keep them on.
"No," I said, "No." And you stopped, wait- did you?  Or were you one of the persistent ones that I could only fight off through feigned sleep?  I can't recall.  All I know is that at an ungodly hour of the morning the next day I'm slipping and sliding my way back across campus, the guilt heavy in my stomach.
"You only kissed," I tell myself,
"No big thing.  Not any big thing."
But it is a big thing, because if she kissed Tim, I don't know what I would do.  Murder her, or myself.
And what comes next?  I can remember waiting to try to find the right way to say it-but also knowing that inaction would result in someone else telling her what I can't seem to find the words to say. Did I tell her?  Or did someone else?  I don't know.  All I remember is a coldness.  That's why I lost my last true bit of friendship, I think.  And it was all my fault, even through my rum filled haze.

And now, where is she?  Not talking to me, or anyone else for that matter.  Quirky etsy shop shut down, no more Alison Sudol songs to sing together.  But, I've seen the pictures.  Beautiful brown haired baby boy, perfection.  Something I'm afraid I may never have.  She was, is, everything I've ever wanted to be.  And there she is, *poof!* gone.  I remember the day she came over to my room, a stack of vogues, and collaged words onto the dorm wall.

"I believe."

From that point on, whenever I opened the door those words fluttered up and then landed steadfastly in place again.  Words to live by.  Words to leave by.  And so I packed up and went, because I felt dirty.  She was the one person who never said those things about me, not that I knew of: but she's the only one who had a right to.

For years, I've repeated that mantra whenever I have the misfortune to think of that night.
"It was only a kiss.  They weren't even dating.  It was no big thing."

My Dear Mr. Felix, why couldn't you leave it at that?

Once upon a time, she read everything I wrote.  And now I know these words will fall upon blind eyes.

Oh my darling, if I could only tell you, redeem a bit of myself.

If only.