I've Never Done This Before (and feel like an asshole)

Hey Simon, can you email me? I think another girl is listening to you breathing heavily (by accident!).

Here's to Sandy

Drudging through the boat graveyard, my rain speckled glasses are smeared with dirt -- but necessary, for I am covering up my unwashed face, hoping to devoid notices of my unkempt hair knotted atop my head and the over-sized sweater I am wearing, belonging to my boyfriend's laundry basket -- watching my green eyes stamper through the sludge, carrying my bag and his bags of safety items -- what we threw together during the low tide -- I am eyeing the Russian Standard I know he is concealing, imagining the cool rim of the bottle as it reaches my lips, with just enough liquid left to burn my aching throat. I also know there is a new, full bottle of Absolut, just waiting for someone to crack the seal, so my excuses build to finish the other as merely a means of consolidation purposes.

My green eyes is yards ahead, bypassing the families who want to impress their Facebook friends with photos of sailboats and motorboats washed upon land. Some are wedged into the tall grass, the bow immersed in earth while the other half remains vulnerable on the road, naked for pictures. Others have collided, stopping the neighboring boat from wiping down the street. A particularly nice sailboat has leaned itself against a metal rod, stuck in the center of the road. It looks like it had a nice time cruising with the hurricane winds until it discovered the ocean was taken from under her. Her-- boats are women you know.

With his safety around him, my green eyes confidently stomps ahead, worrying his home, his lifeline, is damaged. Meanwhile, I have no clue how my home is. If everything I own is okay. If my blanket and laptop, previously bruised by my roommate, is in fact still in my room and in my condition. Home has different meanings for everyone but when it is tossed in your face so many times, it's a burden. Why aren't I in Brooklyn? If that is indeed my home. If we broke up right now, he would have a home albeit the weather or leaks or power; I would be lost.

My lifeline is here, is him. I have known this boy for one month and there was no question in my mind I would stay with him during the hurricane. If he could not leave his boat than neither could I. If he switched to the cheap hotel with complimentary pastries, bought booze and frozen meals, then I am there with him, too. My questions weren't limitless, rather, limiting. My love, I go where you go. I am where you are.

But cooped up together for four days has created a tension I was unaware of, brought out an insecurity I hid. The two of us, sick with a cold and deep-chested cough. My eyes water, and throat closes up, whenever he smokes his Newports. The liquor fogs my fevered head and with each temperature rising, my body is cranky from the lack of nutrients I am feeding it.

It is true, the ninja adventures in my mind, the romantic holding-each-other-through-the-storm did not occur. My notions of sailing together, of saving each other, were more from a movie than from reality. His love for a fellow sailor is, maybe, more real than his love for any girl. And my love for him is an admiration the silly girl has the older, much cooler boy. I feel like the gum stuck to his flip flop as he tries to make it home. I am only with him 'cause he is stuck with me. Home is all that matters.

I feel like an idiot. The one home I have I abandoned so it wouldn't be fair to call it such. Vodka is a home of types. It's my reliable, standby no matter what the weather or who I am with -- so call me a poet, a drunk, an emotional being -- why is that worse than a logical neurotic?

And here I sit, adorned in my boyfriend's dirty t-shirt and sweater, clean boxers and socks, eating a thawed out Broccoli and Cheese Hot Pocket, taking comfort in the tiny but real cubes of cheddar cheese embedded in the mushy crust. Eating one cold yet pliable, makes it apparent these frozen munchies are not as processed as originally believed. Or perhaps, dwelling in a sailboat in the boat grave yard, sloppy and sick, makes eating a thawed out Hot Pocket not so extreme and there is no comfort after all.