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Back You Exist Too Much Save as PDF
Chapters (23)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter 1
  4. Chapter 2
  5. Chapter 3
  6. Chapter 4
  7. Chapter 5
  8. Chapter 6
  9. Chapter 7
  10. Chapter 8
  11. Chapter 9
  12. Chapter 10
  13. Chapter 11
  14. Chapter 12
  15. Chapter 13
  16. Chapter 14
  17. Chapter 15
  18. Chapter 16
  19. Chapter 17
  20. Chapter 18
  21. Chapter 19
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. About the Author

“Some of them were okay. They’d give us candy. They’d even let us touch their guns.”

During our visit to Nablus at the height of the intifada, the Israeli military imposed a twenty-four-hour curfew. We had no choice but to remain indoors. Still, I would sometimes sneak outside and wander beyond the gates of my great-grandparents’ house to play in the neighbors’ yard. One of my early memories in Nablus is of gunshots. I was six years old, sitting on the neighbor’s swing set, when I heard the rapid-fire popping sounds. I jumped off the swing and began to run. Though I was only next door, in the moment I didn’t know how to find my way back home. Seemingly out of nowhere a woman dressed in white appeared. I ran directly into her outstretched arms, crashing into her bosom. She held me tight. A dry breeze blew, a chicken clucked by. The woman held me, and pressed my head tightly against the whiteness of her gown.

Who knows if I invented her—the things I remember, no one believes. “You can’t possibly remember telling your father that your mother was in labor!” people say. “Your brother is only two and a half years younger than you.” They tell me I can’t remember my mother hemorrhaging and returning to the hospital right after I was born.

But I remember. Perhaps because I want to. I can just as easily forget when I want.

Chapter 14

14

MATÍAS IS A VISITING FELLOW AT MY MFA PROGRAM. He’s in town from Argentina for the fall semester to work on his fourth novel. We meet the day he arrives, during the welcome barbecue at the fellowship director’s house. He approaches me from across the backyard, as though in a movie. “Hi,” he says. “Can I offer you a university-subsidized beer?”

We make our way to the drinks table, where he pulls two dripping IPAs out of a cooler. We wander to a swing on the front porch. “So do you know anyone here yet?” I ask.

“Nope,” he says. “Just you so far.” The conversation quickly moves from pleasantries to relationships to breakups. He’s recently separated from his wife; they stayed together too long, he tells me. He seems surprisingly eager to talk about her, and he describes the boredom that crept in, her growing disinterest in sex, leaving him constantly wanting more love. I feel an immediately closeness. I tell him that my relationship with Anna ended in May, intentionally avoiding any details about my summer.

That’s how we begin.

The next afternoon I run into him outside the local bookstore. Apparently it’s the kind of town where this happens often enough. “What’ve you been up to?” he asks. I tell him I wrote a short story, did some reading. “A story about what?”

I wasn’t expecting him to ask. “Sex, actually.”