"But everything looks perfect from far away, come down now, they say..."
After everything happened, I knew I had to get out. So when I entered the study abroad office at Trinity that November, anywhere other than Texas was looking great. My first choices were Italy or Spain, but unfortunately they were both incompatible with my major. After seeing the Australia brochure I was sold, sandy beaches, attractive people, and the lowest cost of any program I had explored. A packet of paperwork later and I was ready to go, it was the only thing keeping me sane; knowing I would be out of Trinity in less than a month, never having to go back.
The stares and comments were getting to me then, right around Thanksgiving, when I would walk into the library and it was suddenly silent in a group of people. When I started hearing things like “oh she’s the girl who pretended to get raped,” or “did you hear who she accused of raping her?!” It didn’t matter who was on my side at that point because the numbers were shifting and I didn’t have the energy to prove anything else, when I couldn’t even prove him guilty at the trial.
After dropping all my classes I had gone home for Christmas—to my dad’s, where for the first time, we were alone together, just the two of us, both of my brothers choosing to stay in Seattle with their girlfriends that year. And here is where my memory fails me, because maybe it was the rape or the memory of my mother, or the thought of a Christmas spent just me and my dad, but I remember nearly nothing from the 2006 holiday, only that I wished for it to pass me by as quickly as it had arrived.
~
Somewhere between reality and fantasy is where I found myself in Sydney, Australia that February. Like when you are awoken abruptly from a dream and you fake the rest, keeping your eyes closed, imagining the ending.
Getting off of my 16 hour flight it was already dark there, the sky lighting up from the city upon landing. I felt disoriented, far from home for the first time really. A shuttle was there to pick me up, to take me to Macquarie, the college I had chosen to study at that was located only a few miles outside of the big city. I couldn’t get my bearings that night, too tired and maladjusted I gazed out the window and looked at the opera house, the only recognizable structure I saw as we passed tall buildings that looked like any city against the darkness of night.
I was dropped off at a housing office, where I met Ben my R.A. who resembled Ben Affleck—if he had an Australian accent. He showed me to my house, walking down across the grass and up a sidewalk to my new residence, a five bedroom house with a common kitchen and living area. I drug my suitcase upstairs—it was heavy, given that I had had to pack six months worth of living into a single bag, and I examined my new quarters: small, but adequate, a twin bed with a blue blanket, a closet, a window and a bathroom. Everything had cobwebs on it but my body and mind were too tired to care, and after brushing my teeth I simply collapsed onto my musty smelling mattress, which was uncomfortable and tense. I don’t remember falling asleep but I remember waking up later, it still being dark outside, to the sound of people downstairs drinking and shouting for hours. I didn’t want to go down there in the dead of night, sleepy still from the plane ride—my personality dead and unwelcoming. So I put on my headphones, listened to Third Eye Blind, and when my eyes opened again it was light out.
In the morning I showered and unpacked, keeping my door locked in case unwanted company presented itself before my liking. When I went downstairs one of my roommates was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. A tall, handsome boy with dark brown hair cut short and warm eyes; I smiled and introduced myself,
“Hi! I’m Ashley,” I stuck out my hand and met his as his jaw dropped slightly.
“Pat,” he said quietly, “You live here too?”
“Yea, I just got in last night, I’m in a bedroom upstairs,” I said smiling and already sweating from the humidity of our non air-conditioned residence.
“Whoa,” he said.
And behind me entered another roommate who looked like he was coming back from the gym, a handsome blond with diamond stud earrings wearing a muscle tee and basketball shorts. He started talking to Pat right away, before introducing himself and so I took the initiative.
“Hey! I’m Ashley,” I said, smiling at him
“Ben. Nice to meet you,” he said, gripping my hand.
The two of them started talking and so I left to explore, not wanting to linger with new people when I could linger in a new environment outside. I was anxious to see what things looked like in the daylight, how I felt settling in here, living with boys, being so far from anything like home. It was summer there, in Australia, where the seasons are reversed and the warm sun hit me in February, hot and sticky against my forehead, highlighting the green grass and flowers that surrounded my new house.
~
I’d like to say we bonded right away; my roommates and me. But that would be my false memory, saying that we were instant friends when really, it took some getting used to. They were from New Jersey, my roommates Pat and Ben, east coasters with harshness and out loud personality that I was unaccustomed to. There were two others in our house too—Jonas, an outdoorsy redhead also from Washington state who wore shirts from National Geographic everyday with animals on them. He was sweet, but different, another example of someone I would never normally be friends with, but there we were, in a house all together, with a two channel television and each other to entertain us. Kathryn was my other roommate, a mom-dressed girl from Oregon, who ate all my pudding from the fridge that first week but admitted to it, who had long brown curly knotted hair and a meek smile. She reminded me of everyone at Trinity who sat in the library on Saturday nights, studying when I was getting ready to go out.
Ben was the harshest of my roommates, his no bullshit attitude outwardly only hid his teddy bear heart that I got to know after a few weeks of trying very hard to get to know the real him. One Wednesday on a booze cruise we talked outside, on the deck of the boat. He told me about how his mom died of cancer when he was in fourth grade and I told him how my mom died too, and I felt for the first time that night like I was connecting to someone here, that maybe my living arrangement wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Pat too was wonderful, I ignored his crush on me and focused on our friendship as he shared his macaroni and cheese with me nightly when we both came home wasted and starving and ate right out of the pan that the water boiled in. He was my favorite, Patrick Moyle; the person I felt closest to the quickest, the person there I knew would do anything and everything for me.
I fell into a pattern there quickly, one of no-consequences and letting loose, a feeling I had never gotten a high from my whole life. I went out drinking with them every night—Pat and Ben, and our next door neighbors—Billy, Jenna, and Shawnte. And of course E.J. from up the way, the only authentic Australian in our group, a 3rd year student at Macquarie who came from a town called Wee Waa and made us all laugh until we cried with his phrases and euphemisms that somehow seemed universal, even though we came from different continents.
Jenna and I became close quickly, she was beautiful and so much fun, brownish auburn hair and eyes, a perfect figure that she was never proud of and the ability to get me out to do things I would never have done back home. She was my nudge that pushed me into letting go.
~
I became a serial dater of Australians and Americans. I became a huge fan of boxed wine, or as we called it, “goon”. I learned what it meant to be drunk for five days straight. I also learned that if you’re still drunk in the morning your chances of a hang-over are slim. I ate cold pizza for breakfast, I became a master at beer pong, and the Jersey boys were kind enough to teach me the fine art of strip poker. “When in Rome” was a phrase uttered by everyone multiple times a day. I now understand that the walk to a grocery store can indeed be five miles in the rain and uphill both ways. I went topless on the beach.
I saw a production of “Madam Butterfly” at the Sydney Opera House. I tried every restaurant in my “Exploring Sydney” travel book and realized that none of my favorite restaurants were in it. I started referring to breakfast as “breaky”, and friends as mates. I hiked the Blue- Mountains and saw two poisonous snakes. I stayed in a hostel all by myself. I scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef. I went surfing twice and never caught a wave, except to the face. I went on a two week tour of New Zealand. I went horseback riding on a horse that actually starred in “Lord of the Rings.” I went kayaking on Lake Wanaka. I fell off the raft on a white water level four rapid, and I lived to tell about it. I saw at least ten species of poisonous insects. I had crumpets and tea at a little house turned restaurant in the rainforest and felt the most at peace I have ever felt. I took a harbor cruise. I saw Nicole Kidman’s house. I went swimming through the largest water fall in the world.
I took a ten hour road trip in an RV with six boys and Jenna. I watched the sunrise in Surfer’s Paradise and saw wild dolphins jumping around. I went home with a guy at a bar and when I realized my mistake I climbed out of a window in his bathroom. I went to a city called Nimbin where marijuana is legal and everyone smokes it, eats it, and feeds it to their animals. I visited a beach town called Byron Bay, where clothing is optional. I slept on the beach over night with a boy, without a sleeping bag or a pillow. I found sand in places for days. My skydiving got canceled due to bad weather and I posed disappointment when secretly I was relieved. I can count the number of classes I attended on two hands.
I saw “Mission Impossible 3” at the IMAX, and Tom never looked so good. I picked a tattoo off of the wall of the parlor after 3 rum and diet cokes. A hot pink playboy bunny right above the box; and I don’t even believe in casual sex. I went to a local bar called “The Ranch” with my roommates every Tuesday night, so did Captain Morgan. I got fucked in every game of fuck the dealer. I had a three hundred dollar bar tab from one night at Bungalow 8.
And then when the summer was starting to end in late March, I met a boy. I saw him at The Ranch one Tuesday night, dancing and doing it well, looking Australian, a spotlight seeming to attach itself to him in a room full of drunken strangers, in a bar I went to weekly. After that first night I noticed him he kept cropping up—at the gym, on the bus, and at gatherings in the “village” of houses where we all lived.
~
He tasted like cigarettes and cheap red wine. My friends applauded when he pushed me against the cold brick wall on the patio of some bar I will never remember. He tilted my head slightly right and put his lips to mine. We kissed the same, not similar, but alike. His tongue intertwined with mine and his lips were like velvet. It was the only movie star moment I’ve had in my life, when the crowd clapped and cooed and yet fell silent to my ears as I entered into the still daze that rushed blood through my body like the first chill of the winter air.
I spotted him first, in his black fingerless gloves dancing to Michael Jackson and being so incredibly hot that I couldn’t help but hold eye contact until he came over and bought me a drink. With the help of the tequila shots my roommates forced me to take before leaving the house, I managed to exude sex appeal, touching him just enough to keep him interested, leaning in close to whisper in his ear. What I whispered I’ll never be sure, but I was told at one point I licked salt off of his lips and squeezed his butt with both hands. They should put warning labels for this behavior on Patron Silver, and then everyone would buy it.
He was a musician, an actor, a writer, with too many tattoos to count; all things that draw me in like Eve drew Adam to the apple. He held my hand and walked in front of me and made sure everyone knew I belonged to him. It was the summer time, June, but in Australia the winter was approaching, there was a bite in the air, an assurance of what was to come. That first night we took a taxi straight home and forty five minutes later we were in my cool white sheets, stranger on top of stranger.
His eyes were blue, the kind that you never know whether you can trust or not. His hair was sandy blond and waxy, shaped into some sort of Mohawk, his skin was tan, and he had a little silver ring pierced into the left corner of his bottom lip. He was 6’3 with a body that rivaled Brad Pitt in “Fight Club.” He was mysterious without being creepy. We talked for hours, just laying there, skin on skin, breath on face. He was American too, from Arkansas but without any hint of an accent. He asked me everything I couldn’t tell, but when he told me all without holding back I told him about my mom and about what happened back in Texas before I came. And I let him hold onto me that night, something I never do in fear of feeling faint without it.
He kissed me every time we saw each other, not a peck, but a full blown lip lock. We had melt in your mouth moments and we fought like two crazy people who end up ripping off each-others clothes mid afternoon. It was not the dream I thought it had been that first night. 9. That was how many tattoos he had, they covered his upper. My favorite one was a little black cross that sat right under the bulge in his bicep. He intrigued me, the way I would imagine cocaine does for some. I was infatuated with every curve of his body, every flick of his tongue, every word that he sang to me as I fell asleep. He surprised me, he was unpredictable. We were in love one day and he hated me the next. He was stable and strong, vulnerable and passionate; I was a little bit in love. We would sit for hours and he would strum his guitar and play songs he wrote for me. They sounded like me; the me I was with him.
He made his own clothes and I changed mine to mimic his. I bought black rocker tees and wore silver studded belts and high heels with crossbones etched in the side. He told me he loved me on our third date and I told him he was crazy, but secretly believed him. He was a fighter and a biter and his teeth marks would linger all over my body. I loved the way he smelled, like sweat and cologne, like bittersweet chocolate.
We would dance. He would pull me on to the dance floor and we would go crazy until my feet gave out or he gave me that look which meant it was time to go to bed. We were lovers and maybe, almost, friends. I would get so close to figuring him out and then he would change again, just in time to keep me guessing. I gave him my heart within days, because I am incapable of pretending and easily lost in beautiful lies. I let him hold my hand in public and French kiss me in front of strangers.
He turned the head of every girl in every room. He challenged me, my writing, my acting, my faith, me. He pushed me to be a better person and to say what I mean and do what I feel. I was a different version of myself with him, one I didn’t know or trust, but was growing very fond of. When I woke up in the mornings he was already awake, watching me. He liked to kiss my eyelids and crack my knuckles. He was the closest I’ve ever come to an addiction. We had to be around each other, had to be touching. Not a day or night went by when we weren’t together. It was fast and intense and unlike anything I ever thought I wanted. But I wanted it and I wanted all of him, even though all he gave me was just short of everything.
One of our last night’s out in the city, Josh, my roommates, and I went to an Irish pub near Darling Harbor. I came out of the bathroom and had a trail of toilet paper stuck to my heel. The entire bar howled and I obliviously laughed right along until Josh came over and pulled it off for me. We danced dirty until a slow song came on which just happened to be Oasis’s “Wonderwall”. Possibly one of the most cheesy, overplayed, and cliché songs imaginable. It was during this song that I got my first glimpse of reality. As Josh and I swayed back and forth, cheek to cheek, bodies intertwined, all I could think of was how much I was going to miss him. My eyes began to swell up with tears. Maybe it was the martinis or the song, or the city I would soon say goodbye to. But maybe it was the boy. As if he was reading my mind Josh whispered into my ear, “I’m gonna miss you Bunny.” I looked at him through glassy eyes and realized that he meant it.
As we laid in bed together that night, listening to old school “Third Eye Blind,” Josh told me I wanted to be his girlfriend. It wasn’t posed as a question, but rather my feelings were recited to me. “You wish you were my girlfriend.” He said it casually and with a half smile, sure of himself. I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and turned away, already vulnerable being naked and without a blanket. The truth was I did want that, but I was too afraid that if it happened I might not recognize myself anymore. I fantasized about the two of us staying together after Australia, making it work somehow. For now though, it was what it was, and I surrendered to him and his ‘girlfriend’ title, placing my hand on his cheek and pushing my body up against his. It was the best sex I’ve ever had.
~
When June came and everyone started leaving, Josh was the first to go. He never came by my room to say goodbye like he promised me he would. The last night we were together he took me out to our favorite bar in the city, an Irish pub near ‘The Rocks’ on the harbor by the Opera house. We had too many shots and danced until we were sweaty, his eyes in my eyes, my fingers all over. I went to the bathroom to blot my face with a paper towel and drink some water out of my cupped hand running under the sink. When I came back some girl was hitting on him, like usual. She was blond with lips and boobs and my hand in his didn’t sway her from him. So I turned his head and stuck my tongue in his mouth but of course this game wasn’t fun for him because he wasn’t the one initiating. So we fought all the way home, him telling me that I was a jealous bitch and ruined our last night in Australia, and me saying nothing because I’ve never been good at finding words to say, only ones to write. We couldn’t get a cab so we had to ride the bus and I moved three rows back from him, crying it off as I always did this time of night, waiting for him to never apologize but make it better by cupping my chin in his hand and kissing my tears, in that way you wish men would, but only he ever did.
*
I went to visit him that August in Philadelphia. I bought my ticket when we were still together, and after not hearing from him all summer I went anyway. His movie had come out two weeks earlier and I had gone to see it, twice. He told me the day before I was to arrive that he couldn’t pick me up from the airport, that we would have to ‘meet up somewhere’ later on that day. So my roommates drove in from Jersey to pick me up because their love is unconditional, it stretches across continents. We all got ready together in a tiny one bedroom -apartment, just like the old days, listening to Jay-Z and drinking SoCo and coke. I was wearing a new red dress, my brown hair in long tousled waves from the rainy humidity outside, my body freshly tanned from yesterdays Texas sun.
“Damn, Ash,” Pat said, complimenting me.
“That dress is too short; you look like a whore, go change.” Ben smiled at me, and there we were all back together again, it felt great.
We went to “Fat Tuesdays,” some bar in Philly that I insisted upon since I have little girl memories of a frosty mug from there that we kept in our freezer. Three drinks deep I saw him walk in, his tan blazer covering some sort of artistic, ‘Goth’ tee underneath, his wrists adorned with leather cuffs, and his lip looking unfamiliarly bare without that tiny silver ring. His hair was shorter now, darker, his eyes the same blue that always caught me off guard, like looking into a tank full of jelly fish thinking you can see through to the other side when all you really ever see is what’s right there in front of you. He didn’t smile but came right over, picking me up and spinning me, in the way only he would do, in a scene that only he would make. My roommates looked on in disgust, or at least Pat in disgust acting as my protector, and Ben in disinterest acting as himself.
“Hey you,” I said a smile spreading widely across my face.
“Hey beautiful,” he said grabbing me in his warm Josh embrace.
“I saw your movie,” I said.
“And?”
“And, I liked it.”
I wanted so badly for him to kiss me, I could almost taste his lips, but instead he put me down and stroked my face with his fingers.
“I need a drink,” he said expecting me to get it.
“What do you want?”
“Vodka martini, thanks babe.”
So I walked to the bar because nothing had changed, and I ordered his martini and a round of tequila shots for all of us.
“To reunions,” I said, shot glass up high.
“To friendship,” Josh said giving me that look.
And we all took the shots and there we were together again, getting drunk in a different hemisphere. Things weren’t the same but we pretended they were, we hoped that they could be.
The song “Love Generation” came on and we all danced and sang along because it was the song of Australia and we all wanted so badly to be back there. I grabbed Josh’s hand and he pulled it away and that’s when I should have known for sure, but the alcohol made me feel sexy and falsely secure. I kissed him and he turned away, whispering in my ear that we could be friends, that things weren’t the same now, that he couldn’t lose me again.
“We were never friends,” I shouted, the beer-tears swelling up in my eyes.
“We can be now.”
And I stormed out of the bar, waiting for him to follow. When he came outside I was already soaked, my red dress revealing more than I would like and my hair mixing with tears and raindrops sticking to my face.
“You didn’t think this would work did you?”He said, his eyes smiling mildly at my obvious infatuation.
But I said nothing because I came here thinking it could work, that if he saw me he would want me, that I could be good enough for him 10,000 miles from where we had started. He kissed me on the cheek and it made me so mad that I wanted to slap him, but I couldn’t.
“I won’t be your friend,” I said sniffling away the emotions I couldn’t stifle.
“I know,” he said calmly, in that arrogant way that pissed me off but I couldn’t get enough of. He provoked my love hate relationship with myself.
“Well why did you say that then?”
“Because I was playing hard to get,” he laughed.
“You are so arrogant,” I said, and meant it.
“No, I just pretend to be to piss you off.”
We both knew that wasn’t true, and I stood there looking up at him as he rung the water out of my hair.
“I was always too good for you anyway,” I said, thinking if the words were out loud, maybe I could mean them.
“That I know,” he said and he pulled me in close, hugging me with one hand on the small of my back and the other behind my neck
When we got home he slept on the couch and I slept in the bed because now we were both playing hard to get, accept somehow with him, I always managed to be easy. But the weekend didn’t turn out like I had pictured, just like most romanticized dreamt up weekends don’t, and a day later I ended up alone in a cab on my way back to the airport, sexless, knowing that I would probably never see him again, but still pretending that I might.
~
Two years later I stood outside on the damp pavement barefoot, wearing nothing but a grey sweatshirt, hood up and a pair of Spiderman underwear. It was creepy in a way, but I didn’t know that then and I leaned against the side of the A-frame, my back to the water. It was pitch black except for the light from my cell phone that illuminated just enough for me to see my toes, pink with cold. I could only get reception outside, near my car but not inside it, against the house, but not close enough to feel the heat escaping from the doorframe. I was at my aunt’s beach cabin in Washington because it was close to my brother Ryan’s house and to school—the summer school I was attending for my last credits post-Trinity. It was quiet and in the mornings the sun would rise, pouring through the big bay windows and onto my tired eyelids. That’s when I would write, sometimes for hours, looking out at the ocean, using the tide as my muse.
I had been in bed, under the down comforter, imagining my dreams in an empty house. It was after eleven when my phone lit up, and even later when I returned his call. I didn’t recognize the number because it had been so long. I had tucked him away in my memory for safe keeping, out of my head and away from my heart. I knew it was a three hour time difference, but forgot he was an insomniac and so I let him speak, and I only listened. The tone and rhythm of his voice that I once had memorized now sounded strangely unfamiliar.
“I thought about you a lot today,” he said. And I imagined his words were whispered, even though no secrets can be heard by the ocean.
“A lot,” he said “all day.”
I said, “Did you see the new Batman movie?”
“I miss you,” he said.
“I saw it, it was really, really good.”
“Remember the time we went out dancing? And then we ate crepes at Pancakes on the Rocks?” he said “And I told you I loved you and you wouldn’t believe me?”
“Of course;” and I caught myself before saying more.
He said, “Those nights with us were perfect. Remember our first kiss?”
And I closed my eyes so I could remember the taste of his tongue in my mouth, warm, two years ago warm.
“Yes, I remember.”
“That was the best sex I’ve ever had,” he said.
“You’re lucky,” I said.
“You’re gorgeous, how’s your boyfriend?”
“I don’t have one, I’m in between, how’s your girl?”
“Remember that night in bed?” he said.
“No,” I said, though I knew them all by heart.
“When we listened to that song, what was that song? And you had just gotten your tattoo?”
“Such Great Heights.” I said, “The Postal Service.”
“I know. Remember when we smoked a cigarette together?”
“Yes,” I said, because it was the only one I had ever smoked.
“Do you think about me when you look at your tattoo every day?”
“No, I think of how it’s permanent.”
“Sexy Bunny,” he laughed.
I could feel my feet shifting on the pavement, and my cheeks getting rosy pink from the moisture. I wondered how much longer I could stay warm here, before my blood raced back to my heart and hid from his.
“It’s late,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
And for a minute I listened to his breath from the other side of the country. I thought about what his fingers would feel like next to my fingers, and how his skin would smell on my sheets.
“Hurry up and move to Boston,” he said, “fight for me.”
“No, I won’t. Be with the girl you love, get married, invite me to the wedding. I promise not to mention the sex or the crepes.”
“She’s not you. We’re not engaged, we’re not talking about forever.”
“We will always have Australia,” I said.
“It’s better than nothing,” he said “You know that night I kissed you in the street, and everyone applauded and you told me that you wanted me forever?”
“Yes.”
“Did you mean that? Do you think about it sometimes?”
But I didn’t answer, because I had thought about it, on nights when I laid next to the wrong people in bed.
I said, “Sweet dreams Josh.”
“I’ll meet you at Bondi Beach in my dreams,” he said.
And I would never tell him that the short story I wrote about him got published, or that his kisses made my body shiver, or that I sometimes close my eyes and think about those nights we spent together, and wish they were tonight. And that’s just the thing about memories, they grab a hold of you sometimes late at night and make you question everything you believe in, and sometimes, you start to believe in something else.
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