The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [14]
Love Grenade I
I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE THE KIND OF WOMAN JAMES Taylor would sing: I feel fine, anytime she’s around me now to. “Something in the Way She Moves.” You know that song. Don’t you wish someone wanted to sing that song to you?
Alas, my song would be Blood on Her Skin, Dripping with Sin, Do it again, Living Dead Girl. Yeah. By Rob Zombie. Because in college I was a living dead girl.
My first husband, beautiful boyman, reminded me of James Taylor. Of how exactly like his hands, exactly his voice, exactly his long lean body. Exactly his introverted acoustic guitar genius, exactly his artist eyes, exactly his ego underneath all that thin man. I shoulda been with Rob Zombie but I wasn’t. For a few years, in Lubbock, Texas, where I’d come on a swimming scholarship, I was with a JT man named Phillip.
Me: Doc combat boots. Kohl-a LOT - racooning my eyes. Ripped to shit tights and plaid catholic girl skirt and black leather biker jacket. No hairspray, no fingernail polish, no purse. Utterly out of place in Lubbock, Texas.
Those years were filled with him painting and playing guitar and me listening and getting high and making love and oh yeah, going to school. Which by the third year I’d flunked out of. The only As I received were in Philosophy. And that was because the professor was high every class so we just sat around shooting philosophical shit until we all started coming to class high too. Going to school, sleeping with Phillip. Trying not to fall in love with my roommate Amy. And swimming - though every month of each year the swimmer in me drowned a little more in alcohol and oceans of sex.
It was snowing the night of the first breakup in Lubbock. Snow in Lubbock looks weirdly dumb - Lubbock is as flat as flat gets. No mountains. No trees. No hills. When it snows in Lubbock one must get drunk and drive around. Don’t think badly of me. Remember what I told you - Lubbock is dry. So a woman gets … thirsty. And there isn’t much to “hit” in the dead of night, and even if there was you would see it a mile away.
So it was a drive around night. After a while we stopped. And I was drunk as a monkey, and I climbed up onto the shoulders of the Buddy Holly statue in a cemetery-ish park.
The Buddy Holly statue isn’t all that high, by the way. But I was acting like I was king of the world.
The main event was Phillip. Phillip cut the fingertips out of his gloves and played guitar at the base of the Buddy Holly statue. He played the acoustic opening to “ Wish You Were Here.” Which he’d picked out of the sky by ear. He played “Sweet Baby James.” Then he played “Suzanne.” At Buddy Holly’s feet. With a drunk ass blonde lifting her shirt up to the 30 degree night sky going “FUCK ALL Y’ALLLLLLL. EAT ME. WOOOOOOOOOOO.” To no one in particular except Lubbock.
I’d been with Phillip for about a year. How I fell for him was I heard his voice behind my head right after I walked past him in the dorm hall. He had the deepest voice I’d ever heard on a white boy. It was the kind of voice that curled around the top of your spine and jaw and made your mouth open, wanting. In my head was I am so far from my father I am so far from my father I amsofarfrommyfatherIamsofarfrommyfather.
When I turned around, there he was. With shoulder-length locks of hair, thick as shit eyelashes, Moccasin boots, and a guitar.
There he was that night, down in the snow playing “Suzanne.” Singing the night wide open. Me perched atop Buddy Holly sort of cross-eyed, looking at stars and drooling on Buddy’s bronzed head. Even angry girls can be moved to tears.
There are two reasons for us going busto.
Reason one: I spent the entire year making poor beautiful Phillip break into strangers’ homes at night to fuck on the floor. I don’t know why. It did a real number on him, I can tell you. He’d get so terrified, but he’d do it, and I’d run and turn a light on and he’d nearly coronary leaping with his 6’ 3” lanky ass body to turn it back off. I’d break into whatever liquor I could find and he’d try to fill the bottles back up with water