Capgun (2005)

Down on her knees on the floor of her bedroom, dressed in the shortest little cutoff jean skirt. And she always loved that damned Death Cab For Cutie CD, and I never let her listen to it. I said that all the songs sounded the same and that it put me to sleep, and besides, it made her sad.

The last time I had stood waiting for her outside of my parents’ house like I did earlier tonight the August air was pleasant and lukewarm. Tonight the cold stung me through my sweatshirt, and immediately upon stepping outside I could feel the tiny bumps form on my arms. For a minute I thought maybe she wasn’t going to show; maybe this was her payback for every time I’d made her cry and now that she’d found me at my lowest she was going to stand me up and show me what a real broken heart feels like--the kind of broken heart that nobody’s there for.

But that car of hers pulled up a few minutes later just like it always had, that same impossible-to-place look on her face and she stepped of the car to greet me and I saw that she was wearing a fucking jean skirt, one that barely even covered her ass. And in the middle of November. Black gloves and a faux-fur lined jacket layered over a floral long-sleeve thermal shirt, but still... that miniskirt. She was always wearing little skirts like that.

She hugged me without saying anything, ribs on ribs. We got into the car and she stared straight ahead, gloved fingers on the cold wheel, no radio or anything. She’s still single, but I heard that now she’s been hanging out with some twenty-three year old. If she becomes his girlfriend, I realize, then she’ll suddenly be the eighteen year old, as opposed to being the eighteen year old like she always was when she was with me. Both are said with inflection, but in a different way. With him she’ll be the one who can’t get into bars. With me she was the one who could buy cigarettes.

So now we’re sitting on the floor of her dimly lit bedroom at three in the morning and when I get done explaining it all to her, tripping and stumbling over words and touching my hair like an idiot and choking up--she hugs me again. Oh God those hugs of hers, they fucking kill me. I don’t feel like explaining it. Not to anyone, or ever. Not even to her. Crying would be letting her win, finally giving her what she wanted. I could never do that.

She’s taken her coat off now and it’s just her in that thin little thermal top, so thin and clinging that her ribs stick out beneath her breasts and I can see them. She’s sitting with her knees bent, that tiny skirt riding up, her thighs just slightly parted and revealing her panties. And I can feel her ribs against me, almost like a bird’s ribs--the squish of her small breasts against my chest. She smells like something sweet cooked with vanilla, lots of real vanilla, and something from the summer. I wonder if I ever smell like that.

The feeling mosh violently inside of me like punk-rock kids; like throw-up, I just let it come. Her arms and kind words are the fingers down my throat. And from the stereo there in the dark Death Cab is playing the song “Tiny Vessels”; Ben Gibbard’s voice fills the sound void in the room singing I spent two weeks in Silverlake, the California sun cascading down my face. There was a girl with light brown streaks, and she was beautiful, but she didn’t mean a thing to me. Yeah she was beautiful, but she didn’t mean a thing to me.

Later we lie together in her bed just like we used to and I bend my back so that I can lay my head in the crook of her arm near her breast and she touches my hair like she always did and Ben Gibbard is still singing from the stereo, singing I need you so much closer, I need you so much closer over and over again. And it’s true, Death Cab really does put me to sleep, because soon the songs all run together and I’m out cold.

I stumble back into something of consciousness around two the next afternoon, my vision hazy and my memories of the night before an embarrassed blur, coming to the surface and breaking like a wave. I reach out for her, stroking her hair, and she rolls over, wide awake and staring into me with bedroom eyes and she sighs, smiles, and says: “I love Death Cab for Cutie.”

Fucking dammit. I tell her I want to go home.

The sky is white as we drive back across town to my parents’ house, the car engine whirring like a vacuum and sucking us up into the road. We don’t talk, except to say goodbye, and feel better. We don’t say I love you. We never have and we probably never will; and I don’t love her anyway so who really gives a shit? I probably should, but I don’t. I don’t love anyone. I just want to be alone. And to fuck.

I walk in through the garage, past my father shining his truck against the backdrop of his gun collection on the wall. The biggest one is polished so flawlessly that it shines like a mirror. When I pass it I can see my own reflection, in skinny girl jeans and eyeliner, there in it’s silver barrel. I’m not what he wants. I was never what he wanted. He grunts at me. I say fuck you, dad. I hate him.

My mother is making poptarts in the kitchen and I don’t even look at her; I don’t feel like talking or explaining, or answering stupid questions like where were you last night that I’ll have to make up lies to answer, anyway, because she doesn’t like me spending the night with girls.

The air in my bedroom is almost as cold as outside, and my unmade bed and lack of decor suddenly strike me as wonderfully tragic, like the backdrop for a cinematic suicide. I pick up my toy capgun from off of the floor and press the barrel to my heart and pretend to shoot it, bang bang bang. But there aren’t even caps in it right now, so it just makes a stupid clicking noise. I throw it back onto the ground. I kick it, and for the first time in forever, it seems like, I laugh. But I know even then that it isn’t fucking funny. No, it isn’t funny at all.

I lie down in bed, sprawling out across the tangled sheets that smell like orange Kool-Aid and girls I almost fucked and cigarettes I wasn’t supposed to be smoking. Apathetic, I reach over and turn on the radio. I cringe at the song that's playing, quickly turning it off again. I don’t want to hear it. Death Cab for Cutie. I fucking hate that band.