What we don’t say

When you get right down to it, the shampoo kinda sums it up.

See, late one Sunday morning I find myself waking up in the city with six hours between me and dinner plans in SoMa that I’d made two weeks ago and forgotten about. I have to decide which sounds better: spending three hungover hours getting home to the East Bay and back again… or sucking it up and buying a travel-sized thingamabob of Garnier Fructis, braving the grime of my fuckbuddy’s shower, then spending the rest of the afternoon pre-gaming said dinner at Dolores Park.

No contest, obviously.

So that’s how the shampoo lands in his cabinet (and the conditioner, and the $2 razor — because, you know): with apologies, disclaimers, and a big, supremely valid excuse: I can’t show up at this dinner smelling like sex, dude — and honestly, shouldn’t you own some shampoo anyway?

But don’t get me wrong, this stuff stays in the cabinet. I even offer to hide it somewhere more obscure: underneath the sink behind the paper sack he calls a “trash can,” say. Like, let me be clear — this is not some subtle hint. I’m not nesting.

Your sweat is just literally all over me. It might be nice to have next time too, so.

And you can be damn sure I’m careful to put the evidence away before I’m even dry. I’m not trying to cramp anyone’s style, and I’m well aware he swiped right more than once while I was shaving my legs.

So we drink, we fuck, we sleep ’til noon and fuck again — out comes the dirty little secret in the cabinet for 20, 30 minutes tops, then back in it goes and away I slip. Repeat next weekend. Text each other dumb political memes in the meantime. Snap him naked pics on Thursday nights.

And hey, he’s not the only one with online dating game. I go out with a guy who works at Petco and another who’s stoned out of his fucking skin and another who rides a motorcycle. Motorcycle guy has an Australian accent and a job at Apple. We have sex exactly one time before I start avoiding his messages and crawl back into a familiar bed for a familiar fuck.

But whatever. Not like he’s out there crushing it or anything either.

So it’s standard operating procedure for a while and then comes the genuine, honest-to-god innocent mistake of a fuckup: it’s Monday, it’s 6:45 AM, train leaves at 6:50. I’m running out the door and oh, shit.

I tell myself it’s whatever, that he can put it away himself for once. If the boy wants to stick it in some tall blonde from Texas who loves hiking, Avicii, and new adventures then he can put a razor in a cabinet so I don’t miss standup.

So you can imagine my surprise when on Friday it’s still there. All of it — shampoo, conditioner, shitty little razor. Still sitting there in the shadow of his disgusting Axe Body Wash.

That night he runs his hands over my goosebumps and tells me I’m beautiful and I cum until my hands go numb.

So I start to leave it out. If he can take me as his date to his open-bar San Francisco Unicorn Startup Holiday Party with an oh, I just assumed it was a given you’d be my plus one — then yeah, okay.

But still: I am cognizant of style-cramping. I tell him to download one of those weird fringe apps, find someone kinky to show him a thing or two — call him “daddy” in bed one time, make him cum right that second.

On the night I turn 25 he gets truly, genuinely, shithoused drunk. I shepherd him out of the bar and into an UberPool with a nervous driver and a quiet passenger in the front seat — hold his hand while he grumbles gibberish into his lap, our fingers flashing in and out of sight as we speed past strobing neon bar lights. Back at his place I get him up to stairs and onto his couch and out of his shoes and the whole time he’s just looking at me with these wide bright eyes, lips parted just a little, like he’s in awe, or there’s something on the tip of his tongue. He puts both hands on my face when he kisses me and sighs heavily, rain starting to slap down hard on the pavement outside, and we tangle our limbs together as the first of the lightning strikes close enough to make the walls groan and shiver with us.

I memorize his burrito order at the place down the street and he invites me to his book club.

I realize the seasons changed without me noticing.

And then one morning in early Spring he rolls over to look at me with this certain expression and before a word’s out of his mouth I know.

I come back the next weekend to grab the clothes I left — let him fuck me up against the back of his couch before he tells me he’s got a date tonight with some girl named Cassie. I look her up on Facebook on the BART home and get drunk on 14 Hands Merlot on the floor of my friend’s apartment. I stumble back to my own bed on a Saturday for the first time in eight months.

The next day we meet at the fish market, walk along the rotted docks and don’t say much of anything. Back at his apartment: I understand that you’re a little upset with me.

I excuse myself to piss out the the Irish coffee he bought me at Ghirardelli Square and sure enough the only thing left on the lip of graying porcelain next to my knee is his body wash.

So.

He calls me an Uber and somewhere around the middle of the Bay Bridge the driver offers me a tissue. My hands lace in my lap, small in the strobing light.

It’s funny how similar yearning and melancholy look on a face in the dark.