Kyle Minor - Praying Drunk

“There are many ways in which I feel more like your mother than like a person with whom you might be falling in love.”

“This is because I didn’t go skiing this morning.”

“It’s so many things. You are, I have come to believe, a fundamentally passive person.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like it was me who drove all the way here from Colorado Springs.”

“I can’t drive a stick shift.”

“I offered to teach you.”

“Don’t you think it would be horrible to try to learn while driving up the steepest mountains in the whole country?”

“Those are in Alaska.”

“Those drop-offs, though.”

“But that’s a spirit of fear.”

“That’s a spirit of safety. I want to be safe. I want you to be safe. I don’t mind learning to drive a stick, but I want to learn in a parking lot.”

“I have to ask you to clean up after I make dinner, or to do the dishes.”

“We’re staying in all these houses where friends of yours are out of town for the winter. I don’t know what I should and shouldn’t be touching or when it is an imposition to take the initiative. It’s a situation where I feel like you’re in the driver’s seat and I’m mostly taking my cues from you.”

“I’m thinking about gender roles here. It seems to me like the man should be taking the leadership roles in a relationship. But you are always taking your cues from me. I am the de facto leader, even though I am a woman.”

“There have been many instances where I have tried to take the lead, but you have made it clear that you don’t like the choice I make.”

“That’s what I mean by passive. You just concede the high ground to me.”

“I don’t think you would respond well to being strong-armed.”

“With love you have to do it. With love.”

“To me the more loving thing would be more of a give and take. More of a partnering kind of thing.”

“I feel like because you are so passive that one day the anger is going to come spilling out. I feel like you don’t tell me when you are really angry.”

“I have only one time been angry, but I knew it wasn’t right to be angry, so I didn’t say anything about it to you.”

“When?”

“When you were still living in Florida and you went to visit that guy in North Carolina and you rode on the back of his motorcycle and you called me and told me what a good time you were having there on the back of his motorcycle.”

“That’s true. That was fun. Really, truly fun. I loved visiting him, and I loved going for a ride on his motorcycle.”

“That made me angry, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t feel like I had the right to say anything because I don’t own you, we aren’t committed, you have the right to make your own choices.”

“So why get angry?”

“Because I wanted you to be having fun with me and not that guy on that motorcycle.”

“You don’t own a motorcycle.”

“I don’t even like motorcycles. People I knew kept getting killed on motorcycles.”

“So you were worried about me getting killed?”

“No, I was mostly worried about you having fun. And one other thing.”

“What?”

“I know some women who had orgasms from riding motorcycles. I had a picture of you with your arms around his waist, riding those mountain roads, holding onto him, having an orgasm.”

“So you weren’t concerned about whether I was going to get killed?”

“Did you have an orgasm?”

“Of all of the questions you should never have asked, this is the number one question you never should have asked.”

•

“Your flight leaves in six hours, so I think we ought to leave in three. That gives us an hour to get to the airport and an hour for security and baggage and another hour cushion in case we hit bad traffic.”

“Let me finish packing my things and then do you want to have dinner together before I leave?”

“You can have dinner at the airport, and it’s too early anyway, don’t you think? I don’t think I’ll be hungry until much later.”

“The reason I was thinking dinner was I have a feeling that after today we may not keep seeing each other anymore.”

“I haven’t decided about that yet.”

“If that is what happens, I want to spend one last nice time with you and let you know that I cared about you and that I care about you.”

“That’s something I want, too. I’m going into the bedroom and lie down while you finish packing. I’m tired, and I know you’re tired. When you’re done packing, why don’t you come into the bedroom and lie down and rest?”

•

“I love holding you.”

“Shh.”

“I mean it. This is something I will take with me when I leave.”

“Shh.”

•

“The reason I can’t let you kiss me is the same reason as always. Even though right now I want you to kiss me. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want you to understand. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“I will be hurt, but let’s not talk about it right now and interrupt what is nice.”

“Will you do one thing for me? When we get to the airport?”

“Yes?”

“When you go through the gate, and you want to turn around and look at me, don’t look back.”

“I know what it means, for you to say that to me now.”

“Shh. Put your face against mine. Touch your face to mine.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Just put your face against my face.”

“Language fails.”

“Just close your eyes and let go for a while. Let’s be together. Let’s be.”

“But what does it mean?”

“You don’t have to understand what it means. I don’t understand what it means. It’s not less beautiful if you don’t understand it.”

“I want it to mean when we get to the gate I’m going to turn around and take one last look at you.”

“Shh.”

“So I can remember you until the next time I see you.”

“Shh.”

“I love the way it feels, being so close to you.”

“No more words.”

1. The First Day I Met Sebastian

THE CHILDREN AT THE ORPHANAGE SAID Sebastian is a liar.

The man at the tree place said Sebastian is the best translator in Ouest Province. No French in his English.

The missionaries said, Sebastian is bad news. When he was a child he was always breaking things. You should see the two ladies who raised him. They’re both hunched over. He wore them out.

The Canadian dentist recommended Sebastian. He said one day he was up in the mountains doing field dentistry, and this husband and wife came in with vampire teeth. Triangles that came to points. They said their teeth hurt, and Sebastian said, “Don’t fix the vampire teeth. Just do the fillings.” But the dentist didn’t listen. He restored the man’s teeth and the woman’s teeth to happy squares. He showed them in the mirror. He thought they’d be so happy. But the woman yelled and the man cried. Sebastian listened and did his translating. Sebastian said, “Get out the file. They want the vampire teeth back. There’s a thing they do.” The man pulled the neck of his shirt to his shoulder. There were hundreds of little scars, some of them fresh.

I paid Sebastian seventy dollars a day. The other translators got fifty, but he said he had a thing for sevens. He said he had seven older brothers. When he was seven days old, seven women begged his father not to give him away to the two lady missionaries. They said seven curses will befall him.

“The first curse was the curse of English,” Sebastian said. We were walking the village Barette, taking the census of the rabbits and the chickens. “No Creole allowed. No French. Only English.”