Jade Sharma - Problems

Isn’t it a little sad we can’t do a little of everything there is to do? I’ll never know what it feels like to jam my cock into a tight little asshole.

I woke up and looked at the clock to see how late I was. Every time I looked at a clock, I hated myself. I grabbed my iPod, threw it in my purse, put on my big purple sunglasses, and ran out and got into a cab. Put my headphones on. Lucinda Williams sang, “Lemon trees don’t make a sound.” Then the iPod died.

Should have showered after I masturbated. My jeans rubbed against my shaved pussy and made me feel wet and gross.

In high school, I went down on a girl at a party in a field. Her hairy, gnarly pussy on my face and the pussy juice all running down my neck. It tasted like pennies.

After I stood there forever, smoking cigarettes and calling Ogden’s phone and getting sent to voicemail, Ogden finally turned the street corner. It always felt like he came out of nowhere, like it was some kind of magic trick when he appeared.

He said he was sorry. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a hundred years. It felt nice to be pressed against the cool leather of his jacket. When love came easy, it felt like it would last forever.

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. He took out a pack of American Spirits. “Want to smoke?”

“Sure,” I said. I tried smiling. My teeth felt soft.

We walked down the street. When his hand came near mine, I held it, but then he pulled his away and put it in his jacket pocket.

Robert Lowell wrote, “What woman has the measure of man / who only has to care about himself / and follow the stars’ / extravagant, useless journey across the sky. . / Because they cannot love, they need no love.” The stars don’t need anything. Men do, though. Just because they can’t love doesn’t mean they don’t need love. They need more, usually.

The first time I spent the night with Ogden, I lay on the sofa drinking wine while he hung paintings. All of the paintings looked as much like nothing as you could think of. He stepped back and asked me if one was crooked. I asked him if I could watch television, and he said, “Whatever.”

I passed out at some point. I woke up in the middle of the night on the couch, freezing. The streetlight shone through a window. I couldn’t find the light switch. I walked down the hallway with my hand against the wall. The floor was cold. I woke him up by punching him in the shoulder. “How do you leave me on the sofa with no blanket or sheet or pillow or anything? Why didn’t you wake me up and take me to bed?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled into the pillow.

“Is this your first day on Earth?” I asked him. I found the light, which made him sit up with his eyes squinting. He picked up his glasses from the bedside table, like, “Let me put these glasses on so I can deal with this bullshit.” He asked me to lower my voice. How many times in my life was someone asking me to lower my voice?

“I came here so we could spend some quality time together, not to watch you hang up paintings and then leave me passed out on the sofa. This is the most boring masochistic thing ever.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to deal with whatever crisis you have this week and then have sex with you. I am an actual person,” he said.

“I’m an actual person too. Not a thing you leave on a sofa, for Chrissake. And why is this fucking house so cold?” And then I broke down crying. Then there was silence, and I said, “I want a father figure, not an actual replacement for my actual father who actually neglected me. This isn’t Freudian. It is retarded.”

Sometimes I thought the only natural ending to our relationship would be a homicide/suicide. Anything else would feel like a letdown.

That afternoon after Thanksgiving, we went to a bistro on Eighty-First and Park. He asked the host about sitting at the bar, but I said I wanted a table and pointed to the corner booth, only for the host to walk us past it.

“That’s a four top,” Ogden explained. We had a choice between three different tables.

“Want to hide behind the column?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you want to hear the specials?” the waitress asked. He didn’t answer. She picked up the specials menu and pointed at each item while she read it out loud. After she left, he looked at me and said, “What the fuck was that about? She read what was on the menu.”

“How’s your dog?” I asked.

Ogden went on about his car breaking down instead. All the crying messages I had left for him echoed in my head. I wanted to run out of the restaurant and throw myself into traffic.

“The car broke down and I had the dog and the cat with me and I had to take them to a motel. .”

After we ate, we ordered another round of drinks and then went outside to smoke. It looked like it was going to rain. I had always loved dismal weather. I found it comforting. I wrapped my arms around him.

“Let’s go back to your place,” I said.

He stared at me

“Do you have any pot? I want to get stoned and do it,” I said, almost whining.

“No, I don’t think you should come back with me tonight.”

“Why not?”

“I think we should cool it for a while.”

“Why? Peter doesn’t know anything, I swear.”

He shook his head. “That’s not it.”

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“When did you decide this?”

“A while ago.”

“We can’t just fuck?”

“Nope.”

“We can’t even make out?”

“No.”

“Do you love me?” I asked.

“No,” he said. Extras passed us by, glancing at us. What was the story line they imagined? That old man was hurting that young woman.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” My voice rose.

“I’m not being cryptic.”

“You never did?”

“Why do you think I never said it back to you?”

“I thought you didn’t want to confuse everything because I’m married.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“Do you care that I love you?”

He looked at me like I should have already known the answer. He looked at me like he didn’t want to have to say it, and then he said it. “No.” Right on cue: the lump in my throat and the tears down my face. He looked at me like he really didn’t want to be going through this bullshit right now.

“Are you attracted to me?” I asked. Throw me a fucking bone.

“Not as much as I probably should be.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He opened the door for some woman with a stroller and then nodded at me. “Let’s go back inside.”

We sat down. I cried. There was no point in trying to hold it together anymore.

This is life: You walk down this path and people join you. Then they leave, and you’re alone again, and you keep replacing them. Then those people leave too.

“I don’t want to be with you. You need to accept that,” he said.

“I learned it a second ago,” I said.

“Look, I’m not abandoning you. I do care about you.” This was part of the speech he had rehearsed so he could come out as clean as possible. So he could say to himself, “I didn’t just abandon her.”

“Are you seeing someone?”

“There isn’t another woman,” he said.

“Give me another chance.”

“Believe me, it’s better if it ends like this than if we had a big blowup or if Peter found out. This way we can always be friends, okay?” He smiled.

“I thought you loved me.”

“I didn’t love you and I never have,” he said, staring directly into my eyes. “I didn’t chase you. I didn’t lie to you.” He was being a lawyer. He had all this evidence. “I never said I loved you or made you any promises. I’ve always been honest with you.”