By Samantha Arriozola
By Samantha Arriozola
“Like are you really even healed? Because you done accepted the call.” Leilani felt reflective after the name of a Certain-Somebody-She-Shouldn’t-Be-Talking-To reappeared on her phone.
“I just feel like he, men like him, are just playing around with us like little puppets,” she laughed. “Just Andy’s toys waiting to be put back up on the cupboard again.” She smoothed out the NYX foundation on her cheeks, eventually spreading it down her neck.
In nameless strappy sandals and Steve Madden Mary Janes, I was taking notes on our love-based, questionable decisions while Leilani beat her face and I ate another deli sandwich for dinner. With fifteen minutes left before my therapy session, June, Leilani’s cousin, also listened to our musings.
“When he was here,” Leilani went on, moving into the concealer under her eyes, “he made me feel magical.” She continued to pad the product with her beauty blender, buffing with the pointed edge until the light beamed its reflection under her eyes. “But when he would leave I felt like that puppet again. The lights shut off, the stage curtains closed, and I would just,” she acted out a marionette collapsing from the release of its strings. She raised her hands up, then let them drop, tilting her head as she released her shoulders down and deflated.
Leilani lifted her head back up and gave a full-bodied laugh
(the beauty of closeness
and rejoicing in our truths).
From behind Leilani in the next room, we heard June’s warmth in laughter, carrying the moment throughout the apartment.
“Now, Juneyy,” I sang, “I want to hear what YOU have to say about all of this.” He let out a quick “Oop!” and shuffled over to the bathroom where Leilani was painting herself museum-ready for her night out.
June’s energy is consistent and ethereal. All moon dust and sun rays, a combination of soft presence and firm honesty.
“Look.” June shuffled over with gloss designing his mouth, black cat ear headband, and skin shining like summer. He smiled and added, “When I used to have my links, I wanted to be a fairy. Like mystic and, you know—“
“Magical?”
“Yes! Like I wanted to cast spells, put them under hypnosis, you know?” More deep and empathizing laughs in the room were shared as he continued to explain. “But I mean, it’s all an act. I wanted to be ON. I would put on a show, we’d—” he moved his hands in lighthearted hesitation, knowing we could finish his sentence, “—until,” he dropped his arms, “they left.”
We got quiet for a moment, and then Leilani filled the momentary silence, placing her sponge on the surface in front of her.
“You know the way you clean your house when you know someone’s coming over?”
“YES!” June and I exclaimed.
“I used to deep clean, everything.”
I remembered all the times One-Off-Men would come to my apartment on late weekdays, weekends, occasional holidays. I would gather socks that I couldn’t have been bothered to move before, glasses of old smoothies crusted over in spoiled banana sweetness and blueberry skin, and mugs of rotting tea bags and non-dairy creamer. I would vacuum the meals that I ate hidden away in my room, on a desk infrequently used for work. I’d sort through Spectrum Internet upgrades in postcard format, all too glossy with effort that would be thrown away by the majority of its recipients.
“Me, too,” I agreed, June nodding.
Leilani continued, “But I only did that for NOLA,” a nickname given to the ever-traveling New Orleans native who was the familiar cautionary tale for all of us in our late twenties and early thirties. A love for Carrie Bradshaw only furthered our need to call our lovers by anything other than their names, Instead of Carrie’s “Big,” we had “The Guy Who Freestyled At Me,” “Juijitsu Guy,” “The Arizona Iced Tea Can,”
(and that wasn’t referring
to the drink, but it sure
did have to do with size),
and then there was “NOLA.”
We take the necessary precautions for safety in all forms — from Magnums to hidden electronics for fear of robbery which would, unfortunately, not derail us from our original plans. Visits to gynecologists and primary care doctors, and preventative measures to keep our pH levels balanced. The towels, the screenshots to best friends, the shared locations. All the intuitive protections we would take to keep us safe, yet men without names would still find their way to turn gentle touches into wreckages that could never fully leave us.
(Here we were rinsing
our tongues of the moments
we swore never to share in public.)
“He used to nitpick everything,” Leilani continued. “He would look at the dust on my ceiling fan and tell me to clean it, and he would look around for more issues that I forgot or didn’t notice,” Leilani scoffed and shook her head, “in my kitchen, the living room, my bed.” She began sculpting her cheekbones with bronzer, then went around her jaw, leaving a trace of a shadow. “He treated me like shit.”
June and I shook our heads with something in between violence and empathy. I thought about the men who I had collected. The disappearing acts and portals outside of door frames, swallowing them whole after a good night kiss. I recalled the relics of lovers in the form of a lavender hoodie, an opened bottle of Bacardi, and boxers hopeful for their owner’s return. The items that were never reclaimed by people who had already moved past their ownership. There’s a mutual coldness in the etiquette of a late night visit that must be adhered to. No feelings, just touch, just skin, just a temporary hold. Nothing more.
And then there was NAME.
In the first look, we lit up in disbelief.
It’s you, it’s me, it’s this.
We circled each other like hungry predators waiting for sudden movements to trigger the muscles into action. It was different and the same, and it felt like a memory in the making. He would teach me that peace could be found in the warmth of breath alone. A sigh like relief when we would turn the lights off in my room and join each other to sleep, resting my head on his chest, his arm keeping me close. Even when it all started coming down in the flick of a preroll, NAME would always say something to make me laugh.
“Gimme a f***in’ smooch,” would often be his go-to, gravel over satin. But I could never balance the responsibility of attraction and illusion. I could only disappoint him, someone who thought I could walk on water while my ankles were pulled to anchor.
Leilani had a different problem, “It was the other way around, I thought NOLA was the one who could walk on water. It was awful. Just awful.” She paused for a moment, setting her bronzer down, and swapping it for translucent powder to silence the dew of the products as they warmed. She grabbed her sponge again to begin the coverage of her work with a matte finish.
She shook her head slightly,
“I was the one who would oil his feet.
But when we were together,”
she dabbed the sponge
into the powder,
“when we’d be TOGETHER,”
padding the powder
under the sculpted
cheekbone, cutting
the shadows neatly,
“it was like I was in a
drug-induced fog,”
she locked her concealer
in with an extra tap of powder,
“for days.”
Leilani went on to describe these moments as “reaching euphoria” with him. A type of connection that couldn’t be released with ease, even if felt harmful and incomplete. The missing pieces always made the moments of excitement more “euphoric.” There’s always the danger of the “If…” logic that keeps us hopeful that they will be kinder, or more attentive, or even reply to a text within 12 hours.
(If I stay they’ll see me.
If I stay they’ll see me.
If I stay they’ll
please see me.)
Holding hope for someone who wouldn’t even give you the grace of an explanation before they also disappear
(again).
“You know that one Jazmine Sullivan song? What’s it called…” she paused to think while June suggested some names. Leilani finished her makeup routine with a misting of setting spray and fanned her face to dry the moisture.
Text © Samantha Arriozola 2024. All Rights Reserved.