Upon Reading Your Ex-Boyfriend’s Obituary
by
Rachael Peckham
You’d lost track of him after seven years, though there was a time when you feared he’d never stop tracking you. He was good at long distance—a track star who didn’t look the part, a little stocky, dressed in grunge-era cardigans, with chin-length hair he tucked behind his ears. He spotted you on the first day of freshman orientation and wasted no time, singing The Doors. Hello, I love you / won’t you tell me your name? He was serious about three things: his kid sister, the back pain that would eventually end his racing, and the belief that Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain.
Six months into dating, you started to wonder about the things he told you, like the time he shot heroin and the kid sitting nearby lost a game of Russian Roulette with a gun in his mouth. He confessed this one night over a bottle of Calico Jack, the first night you stayed in his bed tasting coconut and ache.
After a while, the drinking, the mood swings, and the stories that turned more and more apocryphal—it stopped being exciting. Some of his stories were just offensive, like the girl from his high school caught luring the family dog to the basement with a jar of peanut butter and nothing on below the waist. You called him on it once, and he wasn’t sorry but rather a little appalled at your ignorance, because that’s how you learn to tell a story. All writers know this, he said, about a story. You step into it like a pair of pants. You own it like it’s yours.
Following the break-up, he took off in his car, called you from payphones at ungodly hours. He couldn’t tell you where he was and would you care, if he did? You did, but not enough to tell his parents—or a mental health worker—or even his RA. Why didn’t you care more? Why didn’t you take his words more seriously? Why didn’t you file a complaint when he returned to the one class you and he had together, Rhetoric II, to deliver a speech he’d titled “Cupid Needs a Gun”?
Between semesters, you heard a tapping on your bedroom window one night. His eyes were wide and dancing, his chin-length hair had come untucked. He pleaded through the glass to hold you one last time. That’s all he wanted. All he’d driven there for, at this ungodly hour. And this is what haunts you the most, how you let him—not in spite of your fear. Because of it. Because fear can play Russian Roulette with your mind sometimes, when, most likely it will be okay. Of all the unknowns, it will probably be okay. He’ll eventually grow tired and leave. At worst, maybe fall asleep.
Six months into dating, you started to wonder about the things he told you, like the time he shot heroin and the kid sitting nearby lost a game of Russian Roulette with a gun in his mouth. He confessed this one night over a bottle of Calico Jack, the first night you stayed in his bed tasting coconut and ache.
After a while, the drinking, the mood swings, and the stories that turned more and more apocryphal—it stopped being exciting. Some of his stories were just offensive, like the girl from his high school caught luring the family dog to the basement with a jar of peanut butter and nothing on below the waist. You called him on it once, and he wasn’t sorry but rather a little appalled at your ignorance, because that’s how you learn to tell a story. All writers know this, he said, about a story. You step into it like a pair of pants. You own it like it’s yours.
Following the break-up, he took off in his car, called you from payphones at ungodly hours. He couldn’t tell you where he was and would you care, if he did? You did, but not enough to tell his parents—or a mental health worker—or even his RA. Why didn’t you care more? Why didn’t you take his words more seriously? Why didn’t you file a complaint when he returned to the one class you and he had together, Rhetoric II, to deliver a speech he’d titled “Cupid Needs a Gun”?
Between semesters, you heard a tapping on your bedroom window one night. His eyes were wide and dancing, his chin-length hair had come untucked. He pleaded through the glass to hold you one last time. That’s all he wanted. All he’d driven there for, at this ungodly hour. And this is what haunts you the most, how you let him—not in spite of your fear. Because of it. Because fear can play Russian Roulette with your mind sometimes, when, most likely it will be okay. Of all the unknowns, it will probably be okay. He’ll eventually grow tired and leave. At worst, maybe fall asleep.
NUNUM
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