We Live Here

She is determined and unwilling to listen to me. She says that my words are wrong, that they are useless, careless even and ultimately stupid. It is raining outside, exactly how I like to start my day. Cold, wet, melancholic and grey. I make eggs while she fitters with the heater. There is something wrong with it, hasn't worked since we moved here three weeks ago. It gives off this smell of burning clay, something wretched like it hasn't been cleaned in all the years its been here and it makes me think that’s how long it will take for us to get used to each other, in this studio apartment, sharing the bathroom, the bed, it makes it hard for me to share my feelings. So I write them down:

What I am feeling:

- Like this was a mistake.

- Like someone should have told me that she is crazy; that I was crazy for wanting to live with her.

- In 20 years i’ll look back at this moment and laugh.

She’s upset with me, she says that I am distant, that during the night I turn my back to her, don’t hug her, that she is cold, that I have to keep her warm, with my body or she will get a cold, catch pneumonia, die. I grab her from behind while she is in the bathroom in front of the mirror, pining loose hairs down, her arms moving carefully around her head.

That night I hold her tight, I am uncomfortable as I fight through the feeling of numb arms, tingly fingers but I submit to it like a drowning man to the sea and I fall into a deep sleep. In the morning her kissing me around my neck and face wakes me up, her slightly boney fingers moving down the inside of my underwear. She goes down on me while I’m still flaccid. My tiny penis grows inside her mouth.

A month later I’m in the shower when she bursts in and says we don’t make love often enough, lifts the lid, sits down and pees, doesn't flush and leaves the room. I go and find a used copy of the Kama Sutra, which we read together, giggling naked, our feet dangling on the side of the bed. The positions are enticing but the diagrams are confusing and after a failed attempt at something I never really understood, we resign ourselves to our usual routine.

Her vagina, I come to believe, is located at a strange angle on her body, it makes it hard for me to please her the way I had with other girls. I try to go in for an inspecting look believing there might be something special about it, but she covers herself with her hand, running her index finger through the opening of her vulva pushing all the skin that surrounds it, to make it thin and beautiful, like a drawing in a magazine, like a baby sticking its tongue out at me.

I go down to my favorite used bookstore and leaf through a book about tantric sex, but that ain't sex at all. We go back to just doing it once a day, like before we lived together and would cross great distances to be with each other. Morning or night, if the urge comes into our head one of us will initiate, with a look, a touch, a nod in the direction of the ever present bed. My penis becomes worn and small, like a pencil that's been used too much, dropped too often, sharpened too frequently.

I thinking:

- That it will take more time than I originally thought to grow accustomed to each other's presence.

- This place is small and has a tendency to smell bad.

- The windows don’t open wide enough, the exhaust from the passing buses enters our apartment and never leaves.

- The neighbor has a dog and we hear her nails on the hardwood floor all day.

- It is never quiet here.

I’m finally comfortable enough with her to start sharing my feelings. After dinner one night I tell her that I wouldn't mind being hugged while in bed once in a while. I buy her a vibrator, when I ask the checkout girl how she feels about this model she calls it a massager and does not acknowledge my question. It is small and translucent green, you can see all the little parts working inside, the wires and connections, the counter weights. It makes this funny noise, we assume is the normal vibration noise. It makes me excited to think of her trying it, but when she does she just laughs and invites me into her, one hand pressing my back into her, the other, vibrator in hand, trying to make its way into my anus. I tell her that I think she is using it wrong, but she wont let me look down there. Her vagina remains a mystery. I try to picture it when I touch it with my fingers, like I’m blind and she is the first book I’m learning to read. I’ve yet to make her cum, the massager sits in the only drawer next to our bed.

For a couple of weeks we go back to yelling at each other. She tells me that I am wrong, and useless. She'll come home from work and I’m coincidentally in the same position she left me in the morning. She says that I turn every situation into me. This also fades, especially when I stop resisting her and fairly soon we are back to doing it. This time twice a day, morning and night, like clockwork. On the weekends I try playing records on the turntable I found in the trash outside my high school but the sound is so terrible that we just sit on the edge of our bed and listen to the traffic pass through our half opened window, the exhaust lingering in our sheets. Lately she'll come home and in an attempt to engage me will turn off the tv show I am watching. She wants to have a dance parties, or she'll want to have lunch on the little bit of concrete right outside our kitchen door. If I am not in the mood or in the middle of a particularly good episode I'll give her a very firm 'no' and thats when the fireworks go off. She'll turn violent, then sulk and take long hot baths. I watch her naked body submerge it self into the hot clear water, and because I'm curious about her opening I peek for her vulva but only find the little stubbles, I watch as baby bubbles of trapped air quietly escape to the surface, her hair making circles around her troubled face. Most days I am sad, and I don’t know why.

What I want:

- More reasons to write.

- The hair on my back to stop growing.

- For my mother to come and cut my hair.

- To tell someone I don’t know, how I’m feeling.

Six months we’ve lived here and it's still hard for me to talk to her, so my feelings go unsaid. Her effort to make me open up pass with her bad temper. I draw little pictures of sad men for her to find in her planner. Most nights she cooks dinner for us and though it tastes bad I always eat seconds. I call my parents and they tell me that she is shy, they ask about her parents, about her relationship with them. They never ask me how often we have sex, and even though that’s a question I want to answer, I am proud but too shy to share.

We live here, in this place with six windows, three closets, one bathroom. We make our bed in the middle of the room and don’t invite people over often enough. The walls are bare and although I'm tempted to decorate, I never do. She says she loves me, and I tell her she doesn’t know what love is... but I accept her words, repeat them back in return.