My Funny Valentine

And I thought about him again; that time I traveled west with him. I remember the feral look of obscenity on his face and the leer in his voice. I tried to make him listen to Keith Jarrett playing Gershwin and he laughed and pulled the tape out and tossed it on the floor of the van. I hated him then, because his features were swollen and his voice was different. He told me I was a pussy and made me sit up all night listening to Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings but I escaped into a fantasy about a beautiful girl, whose belly bulged when she sat down and about the small of her back, where tiny hairs swirled away down out of sight and the unmistakable look in her eyes when she said she liked to swim naked after dark, and it was after dark. He hit me then, because he knew that look and wasn't going to let me get away with it. You little shit. Don't think you're better than me because this blood runs true, and he was right. And later, when the sun had been up for days and all the wood he needed was inside, he told me what it was like to grow up alone and afraid and I hated him more because it had turned him into a coward. But the sky was beautiful and it changed me and I never forgot the mountains that jumped up out of nowhere and the lakes that smelled like water, not like fish, and the cold gray asphalt that snaked away, always leading to somewhere I would never visit. I met her again, years later, and I told her I had always dreamed of this, lying with her, her skin dimpled in the night air and my hand on her hip, but now it was Baker playing My Funny Valentine and something broke in me and she got up and left, looking at me sadly, like I wasn't there. And it was true. I wasn't there.