tumblr reads piece: interloper

I bought a book explaining the science of memory and now can’t remember where I put it. I figured that if traces of you are going to stick with me like undigested gum, clinging to my entrails for eight years, I would like to intellectualize the hows and whys. I know that you’re squatting in my hippocampus. Interloper, you will sit heavy on me until my ribcage cracks or something else gives.

There was no method for deleting the framework laid down, this is not like that. Don’t get me wrong—if science could go there, I would follow in two beats. Instead I brought someone new into the foreground and shifted you to stage left. Reworking the formula. The scientific method, discarding what did not work and experimenting with the variable’s opposite.

So I am in Vermont, a guest in a new man’s second home. 



He drops our bags on the floor of his kitchen and busies himself to setting the scene. He lights the fireplace by flipping a switch. We cross paths on the stairs and I raise my eyebrows at him. He smiles. I can see that I’ve done that thing where I have already realized I am likely not in love with this man but still came along for the weekend anyway, “just to see.” Did I talk myself out of him? For a second I think maybe, maybe I am too buried in my head about this, but then he flicks on the stereo to set the mood with Dave Matthews.  I glance at him suspiciously for any sign of hemp necklaces.



While he putters around opening mail, turning on lights, closing blinds, I pad around the bottom floor opening my investigation. His hallway is decorated with posters from movies he has worked on, programs, playbills signed by cast and crew. “Is this YOU?” I ask, gesturing to a photo of someone twice his current heft in a cap and gown. “Yeah. I lost a hundred pounds since then doing weight watchers.” This is new information. “Oh,” I say, trying to keep my expression neutral. “I only really follow the program now during the week,” he says quickly.

The next morning I roll over and his side of the bed is a pile of rumpled sheets. Downstairs pots and pans are clattering and I can hear cabinets slamming shut.  I wander down and perch myself on a stool at the kitchen counter. He sets a plate of wheat pancakes in front of me along with a tub of I can’t believe it’s not butter. I try to picture him explaining weight watchers to my father after being asked about the sports he plays and push the food around my plate.

On our first date he warned me that he isn’t very cultured but he is cute, tall and has all of his hair so at the time I smiled this away. He says he has zero time for pop culture, including television. People who contend they are too busy to watch TV should be studied under a microscope. I neither trust nor believe anyone who claims to be too busy for TV—even Obama made time to see the wire. Extra shades of disdain if the last book they read was The Da Vinci Code or Malcolm Gladwell’s latest.

I spend the next two days with a knot in my stomach.  After we’ve packed up our things on Sunday night we sit down to dinner. I am in high spirits at the prospect of heading home but he wants to talk. “I’m very effusive,” he says. I smile. I’m not, and I see where this is leading. “I don’t know how you feel about me, I mean I feel like you do but maybe you don’t. Maybe I’m wrong. I can’t tell.”

“I am here, aren’t I?” The verbal trap rings in my ears as the words exit my mouth but I don’t want to have this discussion before we depart on a five hour car ride. He doesn’t seem to notice and continues to talk in my direction. I’m sure his tax accountant is just as awesome as he says he is.

-bailey kennedy