By Taina Teravainen, Staff Writer, Emerson College
The sudden reprieve summer break brought me made me feel like I was open to anything. There is an ambiguous hopefulness that grew as I realized I could put my cardigan away, that I could walk bare-legged on the streets at dusk, that time and commitments and the future were of no concern. Summer meant I was stalled in the heady, warm promise of adventure. There is a restlessness that grows in my belly over wintertime, and blooms into a need to stay out until dawn, drinking rum and cokes and working up a sweat, dancing in a dark room with strangers. My friends from my island home of Singapore converged with me in Boston, where we took the 8-hour Greyhound bus ride to Montreal, Quebec. I expected nothing but I hoped for everything.
Our second night began with tequila shots and jagerbombs. He was a stumbling mess, grease in his hair and a button up shirt, and I probably wasn't in any better state. I took my place back on the moving floor (no, really, there was a revolving dance floor) and he turned me around as gently as a drunk person could, by the shoulder. So we were dancing up on each other in a hesitant, slightly restrained and polite way, testing each other's limits. His palm grazed my ass. I leaned into him.
His friends were leaving so I asked, "Are you leaving with them?"
He said no.
His stretched ears and the tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves made me think quickly.
"But do you want to leave with me?"
I told my friends I was going home with him. He took my hand and we ran giggling out of the bar.
All summer I had managed to keep these feelings at bay, because I had gotten a glimpse and tried to get out before I was in too deep. How many one night stands bother to see each other again? It was a rude shock to my heart when I found that I had that hope. It was a given that I would add Alex on Facebook – he had made French Toast for me in the morning and then walked me back to my hostel. I knew I would like him. Him and his mishmash of accents and languages. He broke me down with drunken Skype calls and long distance texts and then I found myself, the first weekend back at school, taking the same damn bus to Canada. ‘Cause I wanted to. I wanted to walk down that same tunnel we had run through in daylight, I wanted to see his streets, I wanted to roll over and have him pull me in close. I wanted to trace his tattoos with my fingers in the morning and read Jawbreaker’s Accident Prone lyrics etched across his left forearm, as we drank tea in bed.
There it is, I thought to myself as the bus hurtled out of the darkness and sparseness into the bright lights of the city. He was so shiny and so unattainable, so foreign and so new. And yet I found myself at his kitchen table. All so very real, and exhilarated from the fact that I was finally there again, getting drunk on his motley collection of Jack Daniels and cider and beer and vodka. Empty bottles lined the top of his cabinets, indicators of the countless times he’d had friends…or girls over, doing exactly what we were doing. I couldn’t fathom that I had come back to make a new, tiny memory of being there with Alex, and the fact that I could fit neatly in a list of other people, and it wouldn’t be any different for him. It was both exhilarating and it turned my stomach.
“Are you okay?”
I placed my hand on his cheek to draw him closer and suddenly, we were kissing, his hand sliding up my right thigh.
I was jealous of him, of his apartment, and his bedroom almost completely filled with the huge mattress on the floor, the Misfits Crimson Ghost flag hanging over it, the shelves with covered with Spanish words written in marker. People who have their mattresses on the ground are people who don’t entirely have their shit together, but I liked that. He was so self-assured and so damn cute.
Boston felt light-years away. I drank alone. There was much of this, to the chagrin of my roommates. I found myself sending more texts that went unanswered. He only called long after I had gone to bed. “I miss you,” I said, and the sentiment was echoed. It didn’t, however, manifest in anything I could hold, anything to which I could point and say, “There, this is proof that he wants me back.” The New Year creeped up on me and I slowly came to terms with the fact that I willingly let a summer fling drag its feet and pull me in deeper than I could bear. It was time to let Alex, this beautiful, vague, unavailable boy, go.
We fucking held hands on his streets and I can’t forgive him for it.
Taina Teravainen is a 21-year-old girlchild who loves tattoos and milk tea. She hails from the little island city of Singapore and writes a lot about boys, feelings, and the search for home.
The sudden reprieve summer break brought me made me feel like I was open to anything. There is an ambiguous hopefulness that grew as I realized I could put my cardigan away, that I could walk bare-legged on the streets at dusk, that time and commitments and the future were of no concern. Summer meant I was stalled in the heady, warm promise of adventure. There is a restlessness that grows in my belly over wintertime, and blooms into a need to stay out until dawn, drinking rum and cokes and working up a sweat, dancing in a dark room with strangers. My friends from my island home of Singapore converged with me in Boston, where we took the 8-hour Greyhound bus ride to Montreal, Quebec. I expected nothing but I hoped for everything.
Our second night began with tequila shots and jagerbombs. He was a stumbling mess, grease in his hair and a button up shirt, and I probably wasn't in any better state. I took my place back on the moving floor (no, really, there was a revolving dance floor) and he turned me around as gently as a drunk person could, by the shoulder. So we were dancing up on each other in a hesitant, slightly restrained and polite way, testing each other's limits. His palm grazed my ass. I leaned into him.
His friends were leaving so I asked, "Are you leaving with them?"
He said no.
His stretched ears and the tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves made me think quickly.
"But do you want to leave with me?"
I told my friends I was going home with him. He took my hand and we ran giggling out of the bar.
All summer I had managed to keep these feelings at bay, because I had gotten a glimpse and tried to get out before I was in too deep. How many one night stands bother to see each other again? It was a rude shock to my heart when I found that I had that hope. It was a given that I would add Alex on Facebook – he had made French Toast for me in the morning and then walked me back to my hostel. I knew I would like him. Him and his mishmash of accents and languages. He broke me down with drunken Skype calls and long distance texts and then I found myself, the first weekend back at school, taking the same damn bus to Canada. ‘Cause I wanted to. I wanted to walk down that same tunnel we had run through in daylight, I wanted to see his streets, I wanted to roll over and have him pull me in close. I wanted to trace his tattoos with my fingers in the morning and read Jawbreaker’s Accident Prone lyrics etched across his left forearm, as we drank tea in bed.
There it is, I thought to myself as the bus hurtled out of the darkness and sparseness into the bright lights of the city. He was so shiny and so unattainable, so foreign and so new. And yet I found myself at his kitchen table. All so very real, and exhilarated from the fact that I was finally there again, getting drunk on his motley collection of Jack Daniels and cider and beer and vodka. Empty bottles lined the top of his cabinets, indicators of the countless times he’d had friends…or girls over, doing exactly what we were doing. I couldn’t fathom that I had come back to make a new, tiny memory of being there with Alex, and the fact that I could fit neatly in a list of other people, and it wouldn’t be any different for him. It was both exhilarating and it turned my stomach.
“Are you okay?”
I placed my hand on his cheek to draw him closer and suddenly, we were kissing, his hand sliding up my right thigh.
I was jealous of him, of his apartment, and his bedroom almost completely filled with the huge mattress on the floor, the Misfits Crimson Ghost flag hanging over it, the shelves with covered with Spanish words written in marker. People who have their mattresses on the ground are people who don’t entirely have their shit together, but I liked that. He was so self-assured and so damn cute.
Boston felt light-years away. I drank alone. There was much of this, to the chagrin of my roommates. I found myself sending more texts that went unanswered. He only called long after I had gone to bed. “I miss you,” I said, and the sentiment was echoed. It didn’t, however, manifest in anything I could hold, anything to which I could point and say, “There, this is proof that he wants me back.” The New Year creeped up on me and I slowly came to terms with the fact that I willingly let a summer fling drag its feet and pull me in deeper than I could bear. It was time to let Alex, this beautiful, vague, unavailable boy, go.
We fucking held hands on his streets and I can’t forgive him for it.
Taina Teravainen is a 21-year-old girlchild who loves tattoos and milk tea. She hails from the little island city of Singapore and writes a lot about boys, feelings, and the search for home.