Someone Would Have Loved Tonight

I really wanted to go home. The trouble began and ended with a man named either Seth or Vinny. He was staying at my favorite hotel in town. It’s next to an Indian restaurant that I love, and the hotel itself is rather new in a town full of old hotels placed lovingly on the water. This one offers no promise of charm or elegance. Just modernity. New-ness. It lives and dies on youth. Architectural youth. Why am I talking about the hotel? It wasn’t really the hotel, but the hotel helped get me into trouble. And the trouble wasn’t really trouble. It was a man named either Seth or Vinny or some other name entirely, and he was covered in tattoos. And he wanted to spend the night with me.

We were laying in bed together (Laying or lying? Laying or lying?) and he told me that he’s a hair stylist (which didn’t surprise me, his hair was flawless, blonde, fell perfectly over and around his face) and that he lives in Wyoming (Why do people in Wyoming need fancy hair stylists covered in tattoos? Am I minimizing or being condescending to the people of Wyoming?) and that he has, as a client, a very rich woman who’s on a syndicated television show where she pretends to be a judge, but she’s not really a judge, and everyone who goes on the show gets a stipend so it doesn’t really matter who the fake judge rules in favor of, because it’s all pageantry.

Running my pointer finger over the outline of one of his tattoos (A boat. A sailboat. Do they have sailboats in Wyoming?) I tell him that he should move here. And then I clarify that by “here,” I’m not even talking about town. I’m talking about the hotel. I want him to move into the hotel and I want him to be waiting every night when I finish my day so that I can come over and crawl into bed with him and we can talk about Wyoming and the sailboats of Wyoming and the fake judge who gets her hair done while wearing designer cowboy boots.

Seth or Vinny or whoever takes this all in stride. He doesn’t kick me out of bed or force a yawn to let me know that it’s time to put my Italian briefs back on and hit the road. He pulls me in closer and tells me that it’s very important that I don’t fall in love with him. A second or two later, I know I’m in love with him. He looks like he’s missing a toe on his right foot, but he’s not. It’s just the way the foot looks, and something about that is beautiful to me. He has a travel bag by the bed and one suitcase with several socks hanging over the side, an aubergine button-down shirt, and a pair of khakis. I ask him if he would cut my hair before he leaves tomorrow, and he tells me that he doesn’t think he’ll have time. (How much time does it take to cut the hair of a man whose hair is not that long?) He puts a crime show on the television, and I find myself growing sad that nobody will ever know who killed Dana Marie, because the episode of the crime show is from the early 2000’s. I looked up the crime on Google, and it turns out, they did figure out who did it. It was a grifter who killed Dana Marie and then met the love of his life and had four kids and never killed again, but it didn’t matter, because Dana Marie was gone, and nobody was going to be able to bring her back.

Seth or Vinny (or maybe Josh?) got up and said he needed to take a shower, but that I should feel free to spend the night (or go home, whatever was more convenient for me), but I could tell he really wanted me to stay. I offered to hop in the shower with him, but he said that he really needs to shower alone, because he likes to shave in the shower, and he’d be terrified of slipping and cutting my throat with the razor. I pictured him shaving with one of those bare razors like in Sweeney Todd, and I knew he probably doesn’t shave with a razor like that, but I didn’t want to say anything. He went into the bathroom and closed the door that was really just two attached panels. I heard the whirring of the bathroom fan and then the water started running.

I used his absence as an opportunity to try to find his license. I no longer remember his first name, but at the time, the first name wasn’t even enough. I wanted the first name, the last name, the exact address in Wyoming, the height, the weight, the birthday. What would I do with this information? Nothing. But I wanted to shove as much of him in my brain as I could. It wasn’t to one day write a story about him. It was to take things from him without knowing whether or not he would want me to have them. (Does that sound disturbing? It sounds disturbing writing it. The idea isn’t centered around permission. He might have willingly told me his street address or birthday, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know if he would. I didn’t want to reveal how much I wanted to know.)

In the travel bag on the floor next to the bed, I found nothing but feathers. White feathers that looked like they had been carefully plucked off a goose. I didn’t know what kind of man might want to travel with a bag full of feathers. Something about this should have put me off, but instead, I was drawn in further. Once you decide that you need to solve someone, everything becomes a clue, and all clues are dizzying. All are welcome.

Having chosen the longest feather, I ran it up and down my arm. I liked the way it felt. (When was the last time I interacted with a feather? Have I ever interacted with a feather?) My arms are the most sensitive part of my body. People normally don’t pay any attention to the arms when they’re being intimate with you. I’ve had to ask men to kiss my arms, and they look at me like I’m asking them to do my taxes. Then, when they see my reaction to it (the whimpering, the teeth chattering), they overdo it. They kiss too hard. Sometimes they bite. I tell them I’m sensitive. They're confused. Wasn’t it what I asked for? Isn’t it what I wanted? Why can’t I make up my mind?

(Why can’t I make up my mind?)

The zipper to the travel bag gets stuck when I try to zip it back up. I panic. The water in the shower is still running, but that’s only because I know this man must take his time shaving. He’d never risk cutting that flawless skin across that Masaccio face. I try to soothe the zipper back into place. When that fails, I’m aggressive. I’m negotiating with a fastener. I’m begging. It isn’t until I notice a feather stuck in the underside of the zipper and remove it that I’m able to close the bag again. I feel like the luckiest man in the world. Outside, there are wedding receptions. In other parts of hotels, there are travelers making love the way I just made love, but none of them have just gotten away with something. None of them know the birthday of a man who will never love them.

(Do you want to know his birthday? Should I tell you?)

When he comes out of the shower, he has on a pair of kelly green sweatpants and nothing else. He hops on the bed like he’s about to tell me a secret, and then asks if I can help him sanitize the bed. I agree before I ruminate on how strange the request is. (It’s not that strange, I guess. Hotel beds are disgusting. Even the ones in nice hotels. I went to New York last year and when I came back I had bite marks all down my back. I’m convinced the hotel had bed bugs, but when I called them to ask for a refund, nobody answered the phone. How are they allowed to not answer their phone?)

We take all the blankets off the bed. The sheets. The pillows. The pillowcases. I ask him why we’re doing this now? Didn’t we just have sex on this bed? Shouldn’t we have sanitized it before we did that?

“But we weren’t sleeping,” he says, as though he’s telling me the capital of Alaska, “It’s more dangerous when you’re sleeping.”

(I would later think about getting that tattooed on my right thigh.)

He takes a spray bottle out of his suitcase and sprays down each element of the bed. First, the mattress. Then, the sheets and the pillowcases. The pillows themselves were next. Finally, the blanket. When we got back into the bed, everything smelled like a wildflower, which can have no smell at all. I felt like a hummingbird flapping my wings eighty times a second just to get a taste.

Turning off the light, he told me that I could leave if I wanted to. (Did he want me to?) He explained that when he sleeps, he says mean things to people. Insightful things. Things they’d never consider about themselves. He says that one time he woke up and the person that was spending the night (Am I jealous hearing about this?) was crying. They asked him to tie their hands behind their back. They asked him to stop speaking and start hitting. Start blindfolding them. Start the more traditional forms of pain and pleasure. But what was this? What was this slumbering assault? What was it?

(What was it?)

“And I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know what it is. It’s why I don’t usually have people sleep over. So you don’t have to sleep over. You might not want to.”

(What was he saying? Did he want me to sleep over?)

I really wanted to go home, but I didn’t move. He fell asleep, and it was silent. Where was my lashing? Where was my diagnosis? Why wasn’t he berating me? I lay there on my back knowing I never fall asleep on my back. I only fall asleep curled up into a ball facing my bedroom wall imagining myself in a warehouse where the inside has been designed to look like a forest or a Christmas village. I was laying (lying?) on my back, because I didn’t want to fall asleep. I wanted to live through every second of this experience. I know there are so many people in the world who die suddenly, never having spent the night with a beautiful man. Never having traced him or listened to him shower. Never having touched the mysteries of his travel bag. I didn’t see how I could resist the gratitude that would come from grabbing onto the moment with my eyes open.

Someone would have loved tonight, I thought. Someone who will never have a night like tonight would have loved to be where I am right now.

It was then that he rolled over. This beautiful man. (I love him. I love him.) He nestled against my side. His face nearly in my armpit. And he told me everything.

(Everything.)