This is what I got out of Tooth School (1st draft)

Her first thought, on meeting him, was “He doesn’t look as stupid as Star says he is.” He was leaning against the front of the lab, smoking. His face had a slightly ferrety look, his hair was slicked back, and he wore a long chain on his wallet. Over the coming year, she would get great amusement from watching him lurch and reel as the chain caught on his chair.

For the first few months they worked together, he was silent. Then one day he cracked, into the existing conversation, a joke so clever and so foul that she found herself looking at him for the first time all over again.

Soon they went to lunch together, awkwardly at first, and then more naturally. “This is no good, she is married,” tutted their Armenian boss. They protested their innocence- “We’re just friends, Raffi.”

Cleaning day was the point of no return for her. After dousing the wax-covered floor in lighter fluid and setting it on fire, they snuck away, without clocking out, to the bar down the lock where they sat and talked and drank. She saw him backlit by the winter sun, his hair falling over his forehead, and she realized that she liked him way too much.

She took a picture on her phone to save the moment when her life changed forever. She lay in bed with the flu, weeks later, and looked at the picture, furtively, as a lifeline.

* * *

Sunday, June 05, 2005
I dreamed of you last night....

Instead of running away to Mexico, like we joke about sometimes, we went to the Enchanted Forest. I'm sure you've never been there, being from California and all, but I went there a lot as a kid. It was different, of course, in the way of dreams, darker and more disturbing. We were the only ones there, besides the shadowy staff, and we wandered in a maze of half-finished exhibits with puddles on the floor until at last I could stand it no more and kissed you.

And then I woke up sweating, sick with longing and horror.

I very nearly kissed you Friday, at the end of the day. Everyone else had gone home, and it was just the two of us. You have no idea how I long for those occasions. I was watching your hands as you worked, fixing my mistakes. I studied your fingertips, blunted and square with the cuticles sneaking up the nails. I watched your hair fall over your forehead. I almost reached out to you.

I'm crying a little now, as I think of it. I never wanted to be this woman- fat, old, pathetic. I never meant to lose interest in my husband. I never intended to fall for a man who is so clearly unsuitable, who reminds me so much of my father, who doesn't even read, for christssake. I never meant to be here. So of course, here I am.

I wonder sometimes how much of this you're aware of. On the one hand, you are terrible at figuring out women. On the other hand, you've shown a knack for figuring out me. It's a dangerous game. I often wonder if you find me attractive. I have no idea what I look like anymore.

All I know is that I want you. I don't want to walk away from my life and ride off into the sunset- I could never abandon my child, and I don't even think we'd last very long as an actual honest-to-god couple. I just want to be able to put my hands on you, to kiss you, to sneak off on our lunch break to fuck in your car. I want you to call me on the weekends and tell me you miss me. I want the rush, the adrenaline, to feel alive again. I want to feel like I'm not so alone.

* * *

Things changed at the lab. Raffi, the sweet, naïve, fatherly Armenian, left for California. Rick, the provocateur, collected his porn, sabotaged the machines and left to marry his Muslim lawyer girlfriend. Soon it was the two of them against the world.

She snatched every moment she could to go to work. To escape from her collapsing marriage and troubled child, to watch the man she loved and hope that no one noticed. “This is just between you and me,” Michael in shipping said as he related a piece of gossip. “And I know that between you and me also includes Zach.”

She got up early, waiting for the bus as the first light seeped in. Sometimes she got to work to find him still there, working, from the night before. Every day they went to lunch, she drinking a vodka tonic, he taking quick hits of weed in front of an empty storefront. They talked of their childhoods, painful past and present relationships, and sometimes sat silently, filled with thoughts that could not safely be said.

* * *

Tuesday, August 02, 2005
I'm so confused.
I decided that I want to stay married. I really, truly do. I know that I will never find a better man than my husband, and I know that if you and I ever were to try, god help us, to have a relationship, that we would end up horribly reenacting the hideous dramas of our childhoods, but none of this is any help in making me stop wanting to kiss you.

All the time.

When you get to work in the morning fresh out of the shower with your hair combed back, I want to kiss you. At lunch, when you have salad dressing on your chin, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you when you're sighing over the new cases, taking a drag off my cigarette, talking to doctors on the phone, running your hand through your hair, when you're looking at me because you just heard something you know I'll think is funny, and most of all when you've got a thin dusting of acrylic on your cheekbone.

I wish I could tell you how cute you are. How sexy your hands are, with all the calluses and your knuckles just the right amount of knobbly. How adorable it is when you get agitated and your hair starts sticking up. How much I like your laugh.

You're not even that good looking.

I just don't know what's wrong with me.

* * *

Nearly a year after Cleaning Day, they were fired- a combination of a stupid prank and management’s maneuvering. A week later they sat in a different bar and she said, her heart beating wildly, “I love you. I can’t see you anymore.” “I understand,” he said. They did not speak for six months.

* * *

Friday, September 23, 2005
I don't know how to get through this night.
I wish so much I could call you. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't count on an Aries when the chips are down. You don't want to see me cry. It would just make you squirmy and then you'd run.

But I don't know how much more I can take. My life is getting so awful so fast. I don't know how to live through this, and I don't have anyone to turn to.

* * *

Years went by. She convinced herself that it was an aberration, merely a symptom of other conflicts. They met and parted, with various degrees of conflict, never speaking of that which drew them together and kept them apart. They went out to nightclubs and drank too much. They lied to themselves, to each other, to everyone.

One night, again in the winter, after too many Cosmos, he sat down beside her in the booth. She leaned against his shoulder. He put his arm around her and trailed his fingers along her back. They sat like that for a long time, everything of seemingly endless significance, the remains of a sesame cracker clutched, forgotten, in her hand.

Later they would argue, and never resolve, who had moved first. However it happened, they were kissing, while around them their lives shifted into new configurations of uncertainty, fear and hope. Later she would remember the toast she ordered and then was unable to eat, the newly naked and vulnerable look on his face.

At home, she lay on the couch for two weeks, as if fevered. She slept and ate very little, losing nearly ten pounds. When she arose again, her marriage was over.

* * *

Saturday, December 1, 2007
Is it possible for a memory to become grubby and indistinct from over handling? I know we talked for hours that night, but I only remember a half-hour's worth, tops. I want to remember every word.

I went out last night with my brother and his girlfriend. We ended up at a bar, and it was horribly noisy and crowded and they seemed to know half the people there. Small fucking town, I guess.

That's only the second time I've been out of the house since the last time I talked to you. Both times I ended up in bars smoking and staring at my drink while someone says "Shit, man, that sucks. I don't know what to tell you."

I don't know what to tell me either.

I can't believe how much it hurts. I want so badly to call you, to tell you I can't do this. I want to see you again, to kiss you one more time. I want it to not be over.

Underneath all the pain, in spite of it all, a tiny part of me is happy. I never, ever thought I'd hear you say you loved me. It's thrilling and dizzying. It means everything to me.

But then I remember that I may never hear it again, and I curl up into a ball and cry. And I'm irritated at you, which is totally unfair. I want you to love me, I always have, but finding out that you actually do has made my life REALLY FUCKING HARD.

* * *

Finally, it was a real relationship, open, acknowledged, honest. But it didn’t take long for things to go sour. She had never lived alone. He knew nothing else. She was raised with constant, heavy drama. He fled from any sign of emotion. She cried. He withdrew. They broke up. They got back together. Horrible things were said.

The next winter, always in winter, they broke up for good.

* * *

Monday, December 1, 2008
I’m feeling very anxious just now.

I’m alone in my apartment. I haven’t been really alone in days, and I don’t like it. I don’t quite trust myself.

I miss you too much. I want desperately to know that you haven’t given up on me, that when I come out the other side you’ll still be there. And I can’t know. It’s dreadful.

I haven’t any food in the house, except some oat biscuits that I’m too troubled to eat. Terrible stenches are coming from the garbage, and there’s cat shit on the floor, and I can’t bring myself to do anything about it. I want to cry. The hope I felt earlier is gone, replaced by a grim emptiness in where I imagine my stomach to be.

I know that I ought to be concerned with getting better for my own sake, for my son’s sake, for the sake, God help me, of the work I have yet to do. But all I care about is getting you back. I know it’s wrong, but I’m powerless to change it. I don’t feel the anguish I often do, when it feels as though my chest is going to rupture from the ache and the longing, but I feel a deep, grinding, hopeless resignation.

I’m not proud of any of this, you know.

* * *

They are trying to be friends again.

* * *

She was going to buy berry pop-tarts, but then she saw the orange cream. She knew that they could be really good or really bad, and she would never know which until she bought them. From behind the counter, Mel called “You know you want to try them!” She did.

The night before, the man she slept with most often had told here that he couldn’t go on having sex with a woman that he didn’t love. She agreed that it was time for him to move on, and wished him well, even though she would miss him. The next morning she saw him posting in Casual Encounters. She was angry and hurt.

Seeking comfort, she called her ex-boyfriend and badgered him into letting her spend the night with him, watching tv and getting high. She took the pop-tarts with me.

The smoke filled her lungs, tasting faintly of mint and dirt. She coughed and gasped for breath. When the drug hit her bloodstream, she relaxed for the first time all week and reached for the first pop-tart.

The filling was runnier than she expected, and it was a pale, almost sickly orange. To her surprise, the grainy sweetness tasted exactly like St. Joseph’s baby aspirin. She said so to Zach, but he had never known there was such a thing as baby aspirin.

They smoked and watched cartoons for hours, lulled into finally feeling at home in the world. Zach’s hair had grown too long. Combined with the glasses that he seldom wore, it made him look every day of the forty he was about to turn. She ate her way steadily through the pop-tarts, washing them down with lukewarm diet Coke. They talked about whether it would be okay to have sex with a cartoon dog if he talked, drove a car, and smoked cigarettes.

Eventually, they drifted to bed. She could still taste the gritty orange in the teeth she was too lazy to brush. She ran her hand under Zach’s shirt, marveling anew at how hairy his chest was. He slept, murmuring fretfully.

She leaned her head against his and breathed in each of his exhalations. When awake, he held himself back from her, determined to never fully commit. Asleep, unguarded, for a moment he was hers. The smell of his breath was sweet, despite the years of meth damage to his teeth. It was the same smell she discovered the night he first kissed her, the night that killed her ailing marriage. The acridity of his beloved weed was mellowed by the journey to his pores. It was sweet and woodsy, like sun-warmed trees.

He stirred briefly and kissed her shoulder as she sunk gratefully into sleep.

* * *

Saturday, July 16, 2005
My mother says that when we are unhappy with our lives, we fall in love with who we want to be. I don't think I secretly want to be a chronically depressed, mother-hating, dyslexic pothead who'll die alone and be eaten by his neurotic cat. but okay, I kind of see her point. It would be a great relief to live alone. It would be a great relief to be able to turn to drugs. It would be a great relief not to be responsible for anyone's emotional well-being.

At The Bank with Grandma

Josh had a voice like a Jud Apatow character- bright enough and well-meaning, but perpetually stoned.

We talked about traveling, history and science fiction. His truck smelled like dog and was littered with fast food wrappers and Dr. Pepper cans.

His house seemed filled with dogs- sweet, smelly, rambunctious creatures, eager for love and praise and thrown balls. I rumpled their floppy ears, threw the slobbery ball, and told them they were all “the bestest doggies, yes, the vewwy bestest. Josh loaded the pipe and passed it to me. We smoked, and petted and praised the dogs. I felt slightly awkward until, as things began to get comfortingly fuzzy, Josh kissed me gently and led me to the bedroom.

His room, like the rooms of all the men I had gone home with and would go home with, had little decoration and what there was seemed halfhearted. I spotted strong eyebolts in the ceiling and asked, half-jokingly, if he was into bondage. He was, and asked how I felt about it. I don’t like anything that’s too contrived, I said, but I don’t mind a little slap with my tickle. His body was leaner than any I had felt since high school. His beard was soft, his arms were strong, he held me down, and it was good, so good, with no false moves or fumbling. For perhaps the first time, I focused not on the man in my arms, but on my body’s response, stronger than it had ever been before. A string of hoarse obscenities spilled from his lips, sounding not angry, but grateful.

A memory of being four years old, of my grandmother taking me to her bank in Albany. Once again, I feel the cool metal counter as I run my open mouth along it. I feel the smooth, slightly pitted, rounded rectangles of the gum that came tumbling from the vending machine’s mouth into my grandmother’s waiting handkerchief. Sliding a red one onto my tongue, I wait, breathless, to see if it will be cherry or cinnamon.

Afterward I was dazed, sated and sleepy. Josh lay panting beside me. I ran my hand down his side and said, without thinking, “That was just like getting fucked at the bank by Grandma.” Hearing his shocked laughter, I realized that it was the single dirtiest thing I had ever said.

* * *

I was nine years old, sitting in the living room of my grandparents’ house. It was early in the morning and I was using the solitude of the hour to eat stale jelly nougats out of the forbidden candy dish while reading an Oz book. Hearing footsteps, I quickly swallowed and crammed the sticky wrappers under the couch cushions, to be retrieved and disposed of later.

My grandmother Sara appeared before me, stark naked. I was appalled. I didn’t know where to look. My family was not terribly modest, but we certainly didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. Wrinkles everywhere, ugh. I fixed my eyes back on my book and said that I was fine, thanks, and breakfast in an hour would be great. Finally she left.

There are three things I inherited from my grandmother Sara- my long legs, my eyebrows that meet in the middle, and my wide inappropriate streak. Like Sara, I am apt to raise my skirt a little too high when I show you the bruises I got falling down last week. Like Sara, I find myself assessing other women, anxious to see how I compare. Like Sara, I am all too aware of any attractive men nearby. Like Sara, I have a tendency to say something outrageous and look surreptitiously around to see who noticed.

From my mother, I know that Sara and her mother Pauline were competitive for the attention of men. From Sara, I know that she was often ridiculed for being too thin. I imagine that I can feel her frustration at never being able to measure up to her elegant mother, the despair at being so tall and gangly, the determination to grab whatever scraps she could.

When I was younger, I had a prescribed role in life- the pretty girl’s quirky best friend. Always the confidante, quick to join any scheme, desperate to be more than a peripheral spear-carrier. I do not know for sure that my grandmother played this role, but I imagine that she did. Eventually, it begins to chafe. The soubrette looks for ways to upstage the ingénue.

And so it begins. The joke a trifle too naughty, the skirt a little short, the heel a bit too high. We cannot hope to win through innocence, so we are dissipated before our time. We read a little Dorothy Parker, drink our cocktails unadorned by fruit and fripperies, and take up smoking because it’s a wonderful prop. We flirt with other women’s husbands. Our own marriages end.

I don’t know much about my grandmother’s reaction to her divorce, other than that she went out on the singles circuit with frosted hair and gaudy cocktail rings. She remarried the year I was born, and although she was surprised when I called her husband a handsome man, she remained devoted to him until she slowly died of a series of strokes thirty-one years later.

I am still reacting to my own divorce.