In The First Place

I suppose I thought it was going to be like a movie. I hadn’t seen you in a few years, and the last time I’d been crashing at your place, a teen mother with a little baby, the weather had turned cold and we couldn’t chance sleeping in cars or on the streets. You’d had a girlfriend then, but you owned a house and you let us stay with you.

You were kind of old and gross, and I hated that you had a waterbed. But you were a sex therapist, and I always got off when we did it. I think you wanted to move us in to your house, too, but something about my relationships with every man in my life has always meant that the closer I get to a guy, the more I hate his guts. Or maybe that’s just the way it is for everyone, not just those of us who got boned by our dads, uncles, and babysitters. Maybe it’s just the human condition to despise the people who try to help us.

Anyway, I moved on to other couches and waterbeds, eventually moving to another state, and a few years later I was back at your doorstep, pregnant with the second child and about to get married. I hadn’t been planning to stop at your place, either, but I was driving past and I recognized your door, and I thought, “Fuck, man. This is going to be just like a movie.”