We Live in Different Cities

On buses, BPD, and my island

I moved to my city for school and you’re a chef in the city we met. You take the bus to see me, and I take the bus to see you.

I wonder about the other college girls who sat in these same seats with their headphones on, listening to love songs with their vanilla perfume packed in the bag at their feet, with plans for a picnic or a night watching bad horror movies that they can’t even bring themselves to be scared of because they’re just that stupid. I love being that girl. I love texting my roommate “im going to be away this weekend :)” and spending that Thursday evening applying lavender face masks and coconut hair oil; slipping into my girlfriend skin. I wear my girlfriend skin for a weekend out of the month, and for the remainder of the days I wear the skin that I hope and pray no one will ever see. Greasy yet glossless hair, eyebrows growing out of my eyelids, overgrown fingernails, no jewelry in my pierced ears; just a few holes that grow a layer of crust as I sleep. It sounds vain to be so ashamed of this skin, the skin I wear when I’m behind on assignments or haven’t been asked to go out in a few weeks. But I’m not ashamed of it because it’s unstylish, I can get behind bushy eyebrows and greasy hair as a fashion statement; I’m ashamed because that skin is not me, that’s the skin I wear when I’m floating. Maybe floating isn’t the right word; floating sounds light, and when I am wearing this skin I am not like a bubble, I’m hovering, like a ghost or a needy intern. When I am hovering it’s like nothing can touch me. Money doesn’t matter; I will spend $50 to deliver fast food instead of walking five minutes to the dining hall. I will spend any amount of money to not be seen, like a ghost haunting the attic or an intern lurking in the corner of a conference room. Nothing enters me. I don’t read, I don’t watch movies

I wonder about the girls who rode this bus for the last time. Maybe because they don’t live in different cities anymore; all they have to do now is walk down the block or into the kitchen and the days of damp seats and distance are a distant memory they smile about over coffee and Cap’n Crunch. Or maybe because a bus ticket wasn’t a worthy investment anymore; the sweetness of his city soured and their plans for farmers markets and thrifted furniture never came into fruition. He got tired of waiting and chose someone he can see and kiss and hold every day. Or maybe she just got too scared of it happening so she stopped picking up the phone to avoid ever having to feel that betrayal; abandonment. I wonder if the girls who took this bus for the last time knew it was going to be the last time. If the last moments she spent with him were filled with blissful ignorance for what’s to come, or what’s to never come again. If their last memories together were mundane and full of promise, only for their last words to be exchanged over the phone, monotone, through tears that the other will never know shed. I wonder if they had known it was the last time they would take this bus, would they hold him tighter, or would they not hold him at all? Would they be grateful for him or resentful? Would they thank him for his time or curse him for wasting hers?

I wonder about you. I tell you all the time that if I could have one superpower it would be the ability to read minds. But really it would be the ability to just read yours. You tell me you’re so excited to see me and you’ve been counting down the days until I’m back in your room so we can hold each other again. I tell you I miss your cats and your mom.

I don’t bother to look at the assigned seat listed on my ticket and assume someone has already taken my seat. This is mostly an excuse to sit in the first window seat I see; bad manners, I know. I was up late the night before finishing all my assignments due the following Monday so I don’t need to spend this weekend worried about Kant’s ethical form; I wanted to rest my head on the window, even though at any small bump in the road my head will slam against the tempered glass. I listen to music and daydream about the last weekend I spent with you. I wonder if you’ll be different this time. I know you got your bottom lip pierced and I’m used to seeing it in pictures and it looks perfect on you; like you’ve always had it. But there’s a strange grief in the fact that I didn’t know the last time I kissed your mouth without silver metal rings in the corners was going to be the last time.

You don’t know this because you can’t see it through the phone, but sometimes I’m on an island. An island that I sail to myself, when the mainland gets to be too much. There are tigers and snakes on my island, I need to be big and scary or I’ll die. You don’t know I’m on an island, you don’t know that if I am calm I will fucking die. The sun beats down on me during the day; I’m a dizzy, angry, sweaty beast. The nights are cold and dark, every rustle in the bushes or the trees makes me jump; makes me hold a stick over my head ready to beat the life out of whatever dares to exist on my island. Beat or be beaten, or however the saying goes. I can’t talk about the island. Defending myself against the terrors of the island takes up all my focus, there’s no time to talk about the tigers that live there; but when I come home, I am embarrassed of who I was when I was fighting them.

You don’t judge me for these things, and in a way it makes me feel even more like a primal being. As if you know I can’t do any better; as if I don’t have the capacity for civilization. But then again, that may be the island talking; the suburban girl taking the bus to her boyfriend's house knows better. She knows kindness when she feels it.

You’re still at work when I arrive at your house. Your mom gives me a doughnut and your dog sits in my lap. Your cat is in my suitcase, comfortable in my clothes; I am comfortable in yours.