Around for Western Appropriate

I knew that heat was closer to sunset than my dance shoes. I knew that he left me a note saying he was lonely. We lived together. We had two rooms and a painting that was half-finished. We bought it at a yard sale along with an air fryer and a doll that was missing a nose. I knew he hated Friday nights. I knew he didn’t like that I worked at Western Appropriate until closing time, because it left him to fend for himself. I knew that he loved how he looked in the bathing suit I bought him when we went to Bradley Lake. I knew that he snuck away with one of the other guys in the cabin and when he came back he picked a fight with me about the way I repacked our suitcase. I knew he was unhappy and I knew he would only find happiness again without me. I knew I couldn’t let him go. I knew the handwriting on the note was shaky in the way his writing always got shaky when he was forcing a change of some kind. I knew I stood there in the living room of our apartment for a full three minutes unwilling to believe that my husband was gone. I knew I had been around for Western Appropriate and not for him, but Western Appropriate paid (most of) our bills. I knew he didn’t work, and he resented that I supported him. I knew there was a word on the note that I couldn’t read, because the writing was nearly illegible. I knew the word “sorry” was nowhere to be found.

I knew when we met he was manic. I knew that when he stripped off his shirt and pulled me up onto the bar and stomped his feet like he was trying to collapse the whole place that I would love him even if it killed me. I knew that when he made me come out to my parents that I would, from that moment on, only have him as a support system. I knew that I was willing to make him my lungs and my kidneys and my liver and my toenails and my back teeth and my earwax and my follicles. I knew I was willing to love him in a way that others would make fun of and show concern for and that would leave me to volcanic water and hurricane eyes. I knew he would render me lost. I knew he would destroy me, but not by leaving. That I didn’t know.

I knew that when I came home one day and there were two other men there in bed with him that I would agree to non-monogamy even though something about it scratched at my neck. I knew that I would read what he was reading and watch what he wanted to watch and befriend his friends and call his mother “Mom” and eat his favorite foods and listen to his favorite music and I would find myself becoming a lesser version of him, and that it would feel good and that I would be ashamed of how good it would feel. I knew that I would get a tattoo where he told me to get it and that I would let him pick the image, and that he would pick his name, and that I would find that so incredible that I would ask the artist to make it as big as humanly possible. I knew that I would be marked forever, and I wanted more. I wanted his name everywhere. I wanted my body to be a ledger and I wanted to owe him more than I could ever pay back.

I knew that the first time he put me out, because I dared defy him when he wanted to have a guy over who I knew to be a dealer that if he didn’t let me back inside the apartment, I would walk outside and lay down behind his car. I knew that he would call me dramatic, but I didn’t know if he would let me back in, and when he did, I knew something had changed. I knew that the way I was looking at him was unsettling something chemical inside him. I knew that he couldn’t be with anyone as unstable as he was, and I knew that, until that night, he thought I was steady and controllable. I knew that when I walked back inside the apartment and slapped myself in the face in front of him and he grabbed my hands and yelled “Stop! Stop!” that he began to make a plan to leave, but I never knew that it was a plan to be put into action. I knew that people make plans all the time that are left unexecuted, and I knew those would be the kinds of plans he’d make.

I knew that the rent was paid up for two more months. I knew that the electric was paid, but the cable wasn’t. I knew that he wanted to get a dog, but that we couldn’t justify it. I knew that he’d been talking to that guy from the cabin when he thought I was asleep. I knew that he was texting him throughout the day. I knew how stable that guy was. I knew that his partner was also damaged, but recently got on medication, and the aphrodisiac of chaos had waned. I knew that when they came over, it was not a fourway, but two passionate lovers and two onlookers, and I knew that when I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, nobody knew I had left. I knew when he started asking me if I wanted to work at Western Appropriate forever that he wanted me to have a plan beyond the lines I tried to color in. Pictures of a life with Saturday night movies and Sunday books in bed. I knew when he went home to hold his dad’s hand as he passed away and didn’t invite me to go that I was on a kind of parole. I knew everything was temporary. I knew a feeling runs into a ring and comes out a commitment. I knew I could be wrong. I didn’t know what I could be wrong about.

I knew when I kissed him before I left for work that he had just brushed his teeth. I knew he held the back of my neck for a little longer than he normally did. I knew he cleared his throat after he told me to have a good day. I knew when he went to check his phone that he was finishing up a game of online chess. I knew when I got home, he’d be glad to see me.

I knew he’d be there.

Why wouldn’t I know that?

If you ask someone what day it is, do they have to know? Or can they just say it’s a Saturday? Is it instinct? To know the things that don’t need to be known, because everyone agrees on them. Is that even knowing?

He loved me so much.

I didn’t need to know that.

It was a Saturday.

It had been Saturday forever.