Apartment A2

My first apartment had bumpy, uneven floors and a tick in the walls. I was living in the old apartment when she broke up with me. The second night I spent there she and I went around the apartment and had sex in every one of its rooms. This was before I’d even gotten any furniture moved in. My bed would remain on the floor where I first dropped it for the entirety of my time living there.

We had sex in every room that night: mine, the closet, the living room, even my roommates room, right next to the frame of his bed, a cold painted steel frame leaning against the wall. She was on all fours and I was on my knees too, right where he’d eventually put his bed, right next to his picture of Jesus.

She sat on the ledge in front of the sink in the kitchen and I fucked here there too. I was bumpy and uneven and paunchy and she was perfect, fit and slim; dark, olive skin; callous and still fragile.

After she’d broken up with me it was never very easy to do dishes again, to stand in front of the sink, facing in, my hands down in the water, my finger tips wet and pruning, hesitating and burning down there. If I left the window open the steam would rush up in my face and sometimes the pilot light in the stove would blow out too and the room would smell like gas. It got a lot easier eventually, and even now I just hate doing dishes for all the normal reasons, for all the reasons I had for hating to do the dishes when I was young, before things got complicated. Before sex and kitchen sinks had anything to do with one another the way they sometimes do now.



Caleb, the no fun apt. room A2