BRITTANY ACKERMAN / LOVE LETTERS TO NO ONE IN PARTICULAR
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
— T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock
I.
My first boyfriend was named Matt. His parents slept in different beds. At seventeen, I was allowed to sleep over on weekends, even school nights on rare occasions. I found it odd that I was sleeping in the same bed as Matt while his parents were apart. They blamed it on their schedules, their morning routines, whatever. But I knew they couldn’t stand each other. His mother was a freaking pill. She had a pinched face and hated me. She yelled at me once for leaving a dish in the sink. When his parents finally split up years later I'm not sure what to say to Matt. He tells me over Google chat and we’re not really in each other’s lives anymore. But I feel bad, like I owe him some kind of condolence. I think of what to write, but before I can respond he tells me I'm a bitch and leaves the chat.
II.
My mom says that I'm not the one who keeps getting rejected, but that I'm the one making the decision to leave. My mom is usually right in matters of the heart. We go to lunch in the mall on her breaks when she works at Macy’s. She leaves her name tag pinned on her cardigan so we can get discounts at the pizza counter or a free drink at Manchu Wok. We share fried rice and egg rolls and I'm so heartbroken, I can barely finish my half of the food. I don’t tell her that I’ll be sleeping the rest of the day, or that this is the only time I’ve left the house all week, but somehow she knows. I am so in love with my mother that maybe no one else will ever do.
III.
I drive three hours north to meet David in Orlando. David was a camp counselor at the sleep away camp I attended when I was in middle school. Now, I'm twenty-one, and he’s almost thirty. David has a headache for most of the weekend, a migraine, and I spend two full days on the couch with his roommate, Frank, and their dog, Sonny. We watch episode after episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I get high and laugh and we order pizza and I don't learn anything about Frank. He makes me scrambled eggs in the morning and I sleep on the couch because David is too sick to have me in his room. I almost leave a day early, but then David feels better and we go out that night. He takes me to a place where they have pool tables and we drink Blue Moon beers with orange slices in the glass. He wears a leather jacket even though it’s summer and I make fun of him and then realize I don't really even like him that much. I mainly just liked the idea of him, the thought of hooking up with a former camp counselor. The next morning we go to The Waffle House and David cries and tells me he’s in love with me. We took separate cars so I could leave right after breakfast and I say I have to go to the bathroom. I hand the waitress a twenty and it only takes me two and a half hours to get home.
IV.
In tenth grade I'm in love with Justin Kaplan. I show my mom a picture of him from our yearbook and she shakes her head “no.” “He didn’t invite you to his Bar-Mitzvah,” she says, and it’s true, but I run into him at Best Buy one day when my dad is looking at television sets. Justin’s just bleached his tips and him and a friend are looking at video game consuls. I tell my dad I have to go to the bathroom and walk to over to Justin. When he stands up, Justin is almost six feet tall. I'm only five-foot-one. I'm wearing a bright yellow tank top and thankfully my hair is straight, freshly done. Justin towers over me. He asks if I want to go for a ride in his friend’s car, his friend Danny who’s older and has his driver’s license, his own car. I know my dad will never let me so I say maybe another time. Justin leans down and whispers that he’ll see me in my dreams. I never dream of Justin, and we never see each other outside of school again. Years later at our senior prom, I wear red and I watch Justin watching me dance with my boyfriend. We don’t speak and that night I dream of him. In the dream we are trying to save the planet from its end but we’re too late. The cliff we stand on begins to crumble and I can see a fire blooming all over the earth.
V.
I'm in love with two boys at once. Kevin, who lives in my dorm, and George, who is in my poetry workshop. I go to Kevin’s room every night and he feels me up but I won’t let him kiss me. He feels my entire body up and down with his hands and then we go outside to smoke and walk around in the snow. He tells me something about his mom, how she has tunnel vision, but I don't know what it means. George writes me emails all throughout the day and I respond when I get back to my dorm. He writes me poems addressed to me and only me. He has a girlfriend, but they don’t get along well from what he’s told me. He invites me to go bowling with him and his friends one time when his girlfriend is away and none of them talk to me and it feels like they all hate me. I leave and George doesn’t follow me or ask me to come back. I go to Kevin’s instead but he’s out and his door is locked so I can’t wait for him. I go outside for a cigarette but my pack is empty and I curse myself for being so greedy.
VI.
Our acting teacher never shows up and Kyle asks if I wanted to get high. I turn around, not sure if he’s even speaking to me. He lives right off Grant Street around the corner from my house on 7th. I follow him back to his place. I can see all of Kirkwood from his steps, the whole street, it was really something. We walk up to his door and he lets me in. There’s a big bowl of Dum Dums on the kitchen counter and I motion towards it and he nods. I take my chances on a mystery lollipop, the purple wrapper with yellow question marks all over. We go to his room and I sit on the couch, choosing to avoid the bed. Kyle takes out his stash box and packs a bowl. We pass the bowl back and forth and he tries to find some music to play on his computer. The clock by his bed says 11:30am. I think about how the whole day is ahead of me, but it feels like it should be much later. I keep waiting for him to relocate to the bed and make a move. He pulls a butterscotch lollipop out of his pocket and says they’re his favorite. I tell him I have to get going. Are you sure? he asks. But it’s too late. The moment has passed and I'm already thinking about the rest of the afternoon.
VII.
When I move back home, I see Mikey at a Panther’s game. I hadn’t seen him since we graduated high school and he asks if he can have my number. The next weekend we go for drinks and I end up at his house for a week. He’s living with his parents and his mom makes us roasted chicken and we eat it with our fingers in our bathing suits. We go in the pool and nap and fuck and he shows me V for Vendetta for the first time in his movie room. Eventually he has to go to hockey practice and I say I didn't even know he played hockey. He shows me his stick and equipment and asks if I’ll come to his next game. I leave his house and then come back a few days later and it’s not the same. His parents are gone and we can still do whatever we want, but the magic is gone. We play video games and watch Archer all night and don’t sleep together. I go to his next game but leave at half time. Maybe my mom was right after all.
VIII.
I date a convicted felon because I don’t want to work on my novel. I am taking part in a self-dramatization, I tell myself. I feel like this because I am special. I am a deep thinker and if I could get out of my own head I’d probably have 30,000 words by this weekend. But a good friend told me, don’t get mad at yourself, get mad at your strategy. The felon lives an hour south and I always drive because he’s on house arrest. He comes to see me twice. The first time is for our first date and he takes me to sushi and then to stroll in a Japanese rock garden. It’s magical and I feel like it might work out between us. I think. I always have thoughts like this though. I think it’s special because he takes me to SOHO House and we talk about other people who we hate. I go to France for a writing workshop and he can’t find a reason to keep talking to me. We once sat and drank coffee and he couldn’t keep his eyes off of me.
X.
At a party I meet a guy and for some reason explain to him the depths of my prior situations. He stops me while I’m talking and says, “You deserve better.” At work the other day I printed out some blank receipt paper and wrote down those words. “YOU DESERVE BETTER” in all capitals. Maybe if I keep telling myself, I will believe it. You are special. You are a deep thinker. You are worth more than you give yourself credit for. You are a writer. You are a writer. You are a goddamn writer.
XI.
I go to the salad place every day for lunch. It’s a short walk from my office and I love their steak salad with goat cheese. Darcy rings me up and never charges me extra for the steak, even though it’s the most expensive item on the menu. She writes her number on my receipt and I call her from bed one night. She asks if she can come over and I tell her yeah, to bring a bathing suit because there’s a hot tub on my roof. I wait and wait and finally call her back and she says she couldn’t find anyone to watch her daughter. I get high and watch one of my favorite movies, Neon Demon, and wonder if I should start bringing lunch to work, or just go somewhere else, if the steak will still be free, if anything would have even happened if she had come over. But Darcy doesn’t work at the salad place anymore. “She moved to Texas,” the new cashier tells me, as I pay full price for what I ordered.
XII.
I thought you were everything. And now you’re going bald and got fat and have a baby. You only post pictures of the baby, not your wife, your partner, whoever it was who actually carried the baby. A part of me felt like I never belonged, but at the same time, I was always trying to get away. And now I just don't know who I am. You’re so different now from the boy on the skateboard in the videos. And we can’t go back. There’s a pang of it in my body, the never going to go back to it. I look for pictures of you when you were younger, when I had met you, when we were in our twenties. I remember the site you had where you posted pictures of girls who you had slept with. I remember seeing myself on the site and calling you crying, begging you to take it down. You laughed and told me to get a grip. I took everything you said so literally, so word for word, so by the book. I wish you had told me not to worry so damn much.
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and graduated from Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program in creative writing. She teaches archetypal psychology and American literature at AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Hollywood, CA. Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, Cosmonauts Ave, Fiction Southeast, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine is out now with Red Hen Press, and her debut novel The Brittanys will be published with Vintage in 2021.