CREATIVE NONFICTION 37
mark our adulthood with favors and friendship,
creating access to music, food, and art.
I walked into the bar, got separated from my
friends, and there he was.
I knew him; three years ago, we worked at
partnering organizations—same meetings, same
events, same hallways, where we passed one
another quickly but slowly enough for a smile.
Good to see you. Always a pleasure. And for me, a
rush of warmth. Back then, I couldn’t—or chose
not to—identify the location where that heat
gathered.
But there in the bar: a surprise, a thrill, a hug.
“How are you?”
“You look good.”
“What’re you doing now?”
“I didn’t know you loved Hazel, too.”
Before the band took the stage, we shared
stories, traced the places our paths crossed
without knowing—at bars and shows and
neighborhoods. Then the music started, and
we pushed forward, my friends too far away to
join. He stood behind me and sang in my ear;
he knew all the songs. The lyrics returned me to
my twenties, and we danced and jumped to the
music, elated. I felt his hands on my shoulders,
enveloping me.
At the end of the show, my friends re-emerged
and ushered me away. One of them asked, “Who
was that? What was going on there?”
Dumbstruck, dazed, all I could say was, “I
don’t know.”
less than two years later, a mutual friend
died, and a piece from that earlier time in my
life threatened to leave, too. My grief isolated
me, and I needed connection—someone who
would understand. I thought of him, of his
hands on my shoulders at the show.
We served on the same panel for a poetry
contest a few weeks after our friend’s passing.
We arrived at the same time, and I walked right
into him.
His arms around me, my head resting on his
chest, I released a deep exhale.
i was on the verge of fifty. And on a first date.
The morning after, on the day of our friend’s
memorial, I offered to make eggs (I am Molly
Bloom), but he didn’t want them.
I said I’d soon need to leave for work. There
was an ease between us as I got ready. He was
the first man to spend the night in this bed, and
I’ve lived here fourteen years.
It didn’t feel like a one-night stand.now, i am the one who washes: dots, spots,
and smears on towels and sheets. But none from
slain suitors.
Cum and blood mark time, the nights and
mornings he’s been here. I pull back the fitted
sheet and see a certain stain grow larger on the
memory foam layer, larger on the down cover,
larger on the mattress itself. I am overwhelmed
by him, and my body’s solution is to bleed.
We joke that my hormones are in shock. All
this sex, all this stimulus and pleasure. It has
caused a disruption. I share our theory with
my doctor, more proud of it than I want her
to know, but she says, “It’s not the sex. It’s
perimenopause.”i am my own “Penelope” chapter.
In high school, my AP English teacher read
us an excerpt, her brogue let loose by Joyce’s
words. Rhythmic, undulating, the sentences
spun. My classmates and I avoided one another’s
gaze; were we supposed to be hearing this?
Feeling this?
Starting with my first relationship in college,
this chapter became my practice. I’d dutifully
pull out my Joyce anthology and read parts of it
aloud for a new lover, allowing Joyce to set the
scene.
Perhaps the gift of aging is being past com-
pensation. Even the most literary of props are no
longer desired.the blood won’t stop, but it isn’t a deterrent.
It just is.
Penelope’s voice becomes my own as I stand
and wait, stand and wait, thinking of his
tongue, his voice.
And again we reach for each other. Claw,
grab, hold tight like teens, as if this is all new.
As if we’ve known nothing else. As the stain
spreads, our pleasure and contentment deepen.
We sle ep.