050. played for a fool

For the longest time, I believed everything that Eric told me.

I had no reason to doubt him. He had been honest about everything with me. He was truthful about his past engagement, about the child he had made, and his fits of rage. I was never concerned about his ire being turned on me— he swore that he would never do anything to harm me.

An unsavory trait he had forgotten to tell me about was his impulsiveness.

It was just before Valentine’s Day when I received a text message from him, the simple and ugly ‘we need to talk’ flashing through my inbox.

He told me about the other woman, a girl I referred to as Moolissa. I have no reason for my childish hatred aside from the fact that she had given him something I could not. 

Eric told me it wouldn’t happen again, and I believed him. I had not given him my body, something he had needed. It was my fault that he had strayed. If I had only allowed him to touch me a little more intimately, he wouldn’t have needed to seek the comfort of another woman.

I blamed myself for his infidelity for the longest time. He cheated on me again and I broke it off, but there remained that doubt buzzing at the back of my skull. What had I lacked? Had I pushed him to chase after another woman?

One day, long after we had gone our separate ways, I came to the realization that it had never been my fault. It had never been about me. It had always been about him, and what he needed. Never had he asked me what he could do for me, and he had been annoyed with my platitudes about doing anything for him.

He had made me think that there was something I inherently lacked to men. All men would cheat on me because I was deficient in something that they needed.

That wasn’t the case.

Eric was just an asshole.

 44. fragrant

There is nothing more comforting than the smell of smoke.

It reminds me of warm summer evenings in Michigan, the grown-ups crowded around the chipped, green patio furniture. They would talk at length about things I didn’t understand, lighting cigarette after cigarette, long after the sun had set and it was announced that it was time for me to go to sleep.

The window of the spare bedroom overlooked the patio, and I would press my face against the glass and try to inhale the warmth until I became too tired to stand on my tip-toes and succumbed to a different sort of warmth.

Smoke brings to mind the nights I would spend at our home in Minnesota, staying up until four in the morning. My father would go into the basement and smoke his cigarettes there, as if he were trying to hide it from me. It would curl up the stairs and make the room hazy, and I would lean back in the chair and watch as the smoke dimmed the lights in the office.

The first time I had a cigarette, I was fifteen years old. I was at a party thrown by my sister’s friends, and was warmly regarded. We spoke of cult films and Philip K. Dick novels. I was feeling a warm buzz from something called ‘hobo brew’ out of a brown paper bag, and the sun was setting behind the old industrial section.

He had a short beard and a warm smile. He offered me a pack of Djarum Blacks and asked if I wanted one, and I reverently took one from the pack, regarding it in my fingertips. I held it up to my nose out of curiosity. It smelled of cloves and warm things I couldn’t place. I asked for a light, and he obliged.

The first drag hit the back of my throat, and I was surprised by the warmth. I coughed once, twice, and went silent. The second drag was easier, and conversation carried on until my sister had a fight with her boyfriend, and we retired back to our downtown loft.

Cigarettes remind me of warm memories. Their fragrance brings me back to dark evenings with loved ones, to jazz music curling up to the stars, and of warm nights with the grill going. They are like an old friend, quick with a hug or a kind word. They are warm, most of all.