Illustration by Tara di Gesu

James taught me how to fill my Zippo with lighter fluid. He spilled some on my floor and I cleaned it up so my cat Gob (pronounced like The Book of Job or Arrested Development) wouldn’t lick it. James talked for Gob. He said, “Gob is excited. ‘Gimme some of that lighter fluid. I’m going to get high.’”

I said, “My dad talked for our pets that way when I was a kid.”

We went outside with Gob. James read Big Sur while I read my dad’s novella. When I got to a scene that my dad had taken straight from our lives, I got angry and tossed the book next to me. I put my cigarette out and went inside. I wanted to cry in front of James, but I knew I would regret it afterwards. He tried to explain why it was OK, even good, for writers to use material from their own lives. I said I thought it was never OK to use someone else’s misery for your own gain. I was defensive because I do the same thing. James gave me wine and I gave him coke. In the middle of the night, he brought me water. In the morning I brought him coffee. He sat up to drink it. He went and looked out the window.

I said, “You’re so cuddly at night, and in the morning you’re so grumpy.”

“At night I’m drunk. And in the morning I regret drinking.”

“That’s rude. You regret it?”

“I regret drinking.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

He shrugged.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Maybe something is wrong with me.”

“No.”

Most of the time when I tried to kiss James he wouldn’t kiss me. I didn’t think it was because something was wrong with me. I didn’t think it was because he didn’t like me. He told me he liked to be withdrawn sometimes.

***

We were hanging out on Deva’s porch. I’d bought three packs of cigarettes and three bags of coke. The drip was comforting; it’d wake me up. James was making me angry and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because of the stupid tarot card reading. The tarot-card reader said James was rich and he was going to take me to meet a great spiritual teacher. I said, “James can’t afford drinks.” She said there was a “Jekyll and Hyde situation,” and that James omitted the truth. I felt like he might be lying, or not lying, but omitting the truth.

I saw a cockroach and thought it was a lizard. When I saw what it was I thought it was pretty. It was golden in the Christmas lights that hung from the porch. It hid behind a pot and I knew it was more scared of me than I was of it. Some guy was talking over James’s country songs. I told him to be quiet. He kept interrupting. I hushed him. I was rude.

James said, “Be nice.”

“Maybe I’m not that nice.”

I got up and walked to the end of Deva’s yard. She lived in a small apartment that was inside a big house, only a few blocks down from where we all worked together. It was in the part of Fort Worth that used to be “a bad part of town” but was now up-and-coming and full of bars and party houses, where five or six of our friends would live at a time. I expected James to come after me, but he started playing Townes Van Zandt.

I went under an oleander tree, and sat down on an old stump. I turned and saw something moving around. It was a kitten. He still had his umbilical cord, and his eyes closed shut.

I picked him up and wrapped him in my shirt. I took him up to the porch. James put the guitar aside. He said, “That kitten needs milk.”

“He’s too young for milk,” I said. “He needs a veterinarian.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” James said.

The guy, the interrupting guy, said, “Put him back and the mother will return.”

“Shut up!” I said. “Who are you anyway? Do I know you?” I looked at James and said, “He won’t make it until the morning.”

James said, “Was the kitten alone?” I nodded and he turned to the interrupter. He said, “When the kitten’s alone, usually the mother won’t return. That’s when you find a litter. Besides now it smells like her, so we can’t put it back.”

“It’s a he,” I said.

We went to a 24-hour drugstore. We bought the materials to bottle-feed. I stayed awake with the kitten. I called him Steve French. In the morning we went to a veterinarian and she told us how to do it. She said, “I just want to prepare you. This kitten is not even a week old. It’s very unlikely he’ll make it.”

***

I made James lie on his stomach on his couch while I put Neosporin on the scratches. His roommates were out of town. I felt bad, because James didn’t like to be scratched. I felt worse because I liked it.

“Be still,” I said.

He said, “I don’t dislike the marks because they came from you, I just don’t want to be marked by anyone.”

Steve French, a couple months old, was asleep at my house in a pink storage bucket with a glove full of hot water keeping him warm.

James pulled a shirt on and said, “I have a friend coming to town, and she needs to stay here, just on the couch.” The jealousy welled up in me and made me sick. I tried to be calm.

He said, “She’ll be here a night and then her boyfriend’s coming up and they’ll stay together at his parents. You two will get along.”

The jealousy disappeared. Having a boyfriend meant nothing, but James said the girl played guitar but didn’t know how to tune it, and that her boyfriend tuned it for her. Why would you cheat on a guy who tuned your guitar? I thought about this for so long that I got lost; I didn’t know what he was saying. I could make him happy.

The next morning Steve French had an appointment at the vet. The bad news was Steve French had to have an eye removed. It was infected, possibly a defect he was born with, but I worried because of one time he wiggled out of my arms while I was feeding him with a baby bottle and fell. Gob, my other cat, carried Steve around the house in his mouth. I thought that was good. While Steve French was in the vet’s, I said, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can. You’re OK.”

I choked on my spit and snot poured out of my nose. “I haven’t wanted to kill myself in so long.”

“What about all of the people who love you and know you’re going to do so much good?”

“I just hate myself so much.”  

“What about them?”

I wiped my face with my hand. We didn’t know what else to do. So while Steve French got his eye removed, we walked around the block a few times.

In the waiting room, James asked if he could borrow my phone to write. He sat there typing earnestly with his thumbs. Steve French came out wearing a bandage around his head. It tilted to cover one eye. He even wore a little white gown, which maybe is something I imagined. I don’t know. I remember him wearing a white hospital gown.

I was crying too hard to drive. James drove. Then on the freeway I opened my phone to see if his note was there. He didn’t delete it or send it to himself, or something. He just left it there for me.

It said, “I like what she writes but don’t want her to know why, it would only give drive to her dreams, dreams that I feel would only lead to heartbreak. When I read about what we have said it feels more real, more important than the actual moment, which I often have trouble remembering if it weren’t for her reminders. This and the fact that I’m using her phone to transcribe what might be better left a secret thought, leaves me feeling like a prick. My instinct is to withdraw myself from closeness, I want very strongly to protect flowers from heavy winds and harm. All of my experience has taught me to control myself, even when I am happy to let loose. Nevermind. If only I had felt, if I was felt. Soft and strong and sure…”

“You are stupid,” I said.

“What?”

I threw my phone at him.

“Hey!”

“That note you left.”

I sat cross-legged in the front with Steve French in my lap, feeling shrunken and small, restrained tears caught on my lower lashes.

“Do you remember saying you were going to move to Georgetown with me?” I said. “You asked me to tell you when school started, if I was going, so you could start looking for jobs?”

“I do remember that.”

“I’m going in September,” I said. “That’s when school starts.”

“I’ll look for a job. That will solve all our problems.”

“I’m too romantic to understand that’s what you meant I guess. Just listen to me, and remember this.”

“I’m driving.”

“Then listen,” I said. “You are brilliant and handsome and sweet and intelligent and good at everything you try.”

“I know those things.”

Steve French mewled.

“Is it OK if I lie down in the common area naked?” he asked. The common area was the middle of our four-bedroom dorm.

“You’ll blend in with the trash,” I said.

***

It was the middle of my first semester. The dorms were like concrete bunkers. I spent most of my time with James, at a house he shared with four other people. It was less than a mile from campus. It was kind of like a co-op. His roommates were clean. One had a python. But we were in my dorm.

You weren’t supposed to have pets in the dorm, but I couldn’t leave Steve French behind. He couldn’t stay in James’ house because he made too much noise. He never stopped crying.

“Open up these windows,” James said. “The air in here is so bad, I can’t breathe.”

“Steve French makes too much noise.”

“You ever drink antifreeze? There’s only one way to do it.”

James opened the windows. He hollered out one, “People of Georgetown! Fuck the police.” He kept doing it. He thought it was really funny.

He got too drunk. I took care of him. I took off his shirt and put it in the washing machine. I took off his jeans. I put clean boxers on him. I wiped his face with a moist washcloth. I shook him awake and made him drink an Emergen-C. Steve French smelled like James, and it made me angry and happy and lonely. Then I drew little designs on James’ stomach and his arms while he slept, and Steve French mewled and howled.

In the morning, I had a letter from the administrator. It said I owed $500 in pet damages. It said that Steve French had to leave, and if they found him in the dorm, I’d be thrown out of school.

I went into the office and yelled at the redheaded man until he agreed that Steve French could stay. I couldn’t believe that part. I was 19 years old.

The happiest I can remember being was in the shower on acid. It was so pure. This happiness, the one I so often feel now, makes my chest ache and my legs bounce around. When he talks to me I am happy. When he tells me he is happy when I talk to him I am delirious. But the elation is tinged with sadness. It sits inside me and threatens to come out my eyes, like when he said he loved me. I’m so happy and so miserable. It makes me sick, in the best way.