Last Night

Last Night

“You’re retarded,” she says. Fuck you, I think. My mouth is closed as I look out across the terrible, gray, choppy Lake Michigan. It’s boiling. White caps show that the lake is not the sky.

The south side of Chicago’s shoreline is hemmed in by concrete walls and giant immortal rocks. We’re sitting on the rocks and she wants me to go fuck her at her friend Jessica’s apartment in the city. Again. By “her apartment” she means a little stuffy room next to the stairs on the roof. We walk up there with blankets and an intent to mate on the greasy, shedding carpet. It gets fucking hot up there. I’ll wake up sweaty and covered in lint wishing I knew where the fuck I was. “No” I say. I run my hands along the red and black fragments of the disintegrating wall under us. Signs spray-painted every 10 feet along the crumbling wall advise people not to dive into the jagged obsidian rocks below. I look at her. It’s no longer romantic. She’s mad and out to make me feel dumb. She asks if I came all the way down to Hyde Park to sit by the lake then just leave after an hour. “It feels like longer” is all I can say. She says “Take me to Jessica’s”.

The sun is falling: pink, slate, and gray, silhouetting the Sears, the Hancock, and the city.

“I’ve really got to get home, it’s getting late.” “Ok bye.” She won’t even look at me. “Could you at least show me how to get to a bus station?” She says “Oh my god” gets up and starts walking away, her feet grinding on the concrete. She’s hips, hips, hips; her shirt riding up on her back. I look back at the lake one more time before getting up. It’s still doing its thing: scaring me. Bone breaking, sloshing, concrete refusing to follow the lead of the setting sky.

On the way to the bus stop she talks to Jessica on the phone and makes loud plans to invite over a group of guys with cool names like Justin and Wesley. She’s walking fast, leaving me behind, shutting me out. You are the female me, I think, and I hate you.

The bus stop sits under arches of trees and a dim street lamp. An old black guy on a bench bathed in yellow light from the heat lamp above nods to me, and looks back across the waste covered street. She says “Bye” and turns to walk away. I say something like “It was nice seeing you tonight”, but she’s too proud to turn around. She’s walking away: gone, sexy, disappearing out of the glow of the streetlights and into the dark.