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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

During our last month as neighbors, Tara and I engage in innocuous, friend-type activities. We get pedicures. We take our unwanted clothes to thrift stores. We organize a yard sale. We host a dinner for our neighbors. We caution the ones who plan to renew their leases against sleeping with the incoming tenants, never admitting to anyone what we’ve been doing. We avoid eye contact during these conversations; only once do we look at each other and wink. She wishes I were coming with her to the UAE. As our travel dates approach—hers to the Persian Gulf, and mine back to the East Coast—I find myself wishing the same. There is still a lingering hope, the possibility of something good, maybe even great. But I can no longer afford the cost of finding out.

I’M NOT SURE WHAT I’M EXPECTING TO HAPPEN AT THE LGBTQ center reading on Sunday night. That I’ll meet someone who is neither straight nor married, that I’ll find some sort of community, that I’ll hear writing I can relate to. I arrive at the front desk and try to peer into the room behind it.

“Do you want a ticket?” the woman sitting at the desk says. But I hear, “Are you still a closeted dyke?”

I am certain she knows what I really want, that her eyes have seared through me, leaving me exposed. Appetite is embarrassing enough; visibly trying to satiate it, utterly mortifying.

“Yes,” I say. “One, please.”

Chapter 17

17

I AM RUNNING LATE TO OUR FIRST DATE. I’M COMING from a friend’s apartment in Sunset Park. I’ve been back in New York for six days, working an entry-level office job and crashing on the couches of various friends until I can find my own place. It’s not exactly ideal, but at least I’m back in the city. The decision to come back to New York put a circumstantial and friendly ending on my quasi-long-distance relationship with the visual artist. He didn’t appear to be terribly upset, and we agreed to stay in touch. For once, friendship after a breakup seemed possible.

Until I can find a teaching gig, harder to come by in New York than in the Midwest, an office job means regular hours and potential for a more “normal” life. I’m still readjusting to the crammed subway ride, hovering beneath someone’s armpit both to and from work, arriving everywhere disheveled and sweaty. In this environment there isn’t much to live for post-lunch, not until the stirrings of pre-dinner hunger. But for now that isn’t so bad, and I’ve discovered that having a job I dislike makes writing seem more appealing, an act of resisting against what I’m supposed be doing.