L'Estate (Second Edition)
I had to change some shit around from the original "L'Estate" when I found out about how horrible of a human being the person I wrote this about really was. I seriously harbor intense hatred for him and I honestly hope he fucking finds this. FUCK YOU DENNIS. FUCK YOU.
He taught me two languages that summer and I swore I knew what happiness felt like. There was no rush, no need to decide who we were and where our lives were going. We were simple beings then, staying under the hot Roman sun long enough for me to get burned and him to get darker. I needed his company, I craved the feeling of knowing him like a glove knows a hand. I longed for short touches and quick kisses. I was his, and wanted him to be mine, and the summer was more beautiful here than it ever could have been at home.
Back home was where we left our problems and our scars. Our (in)significant others didn’t understand the wanderlust in our eyes and we did not understand their lack of curiosity. We wanted beautiful landscapes draped in a miraculous sunset, where they wanted to stay at home where they found comfort in their every day routines.
He taught me to fall in love with film and prose. We watched plays under the stars of the Italian midnight and drank sweet wine and tasted cigar smoke and the vague aftertaste of each other’s lips. He smiled at me with his lips and I smiled at him with my soul. We exchanged ideas and laughter after our brains and our tongues had been loosed enough to speak freely by the Chianti wine and Tuscan cigar smoke.
The world was ours and we were the world. Nothing else mattered to me except the smiles we exchanged in the hallways. I was young and so was his soul, longing for the days that once were and the days that never would be. I was drawn to him through the passion in his words and the laughter in his eyes.
My scars showed up during the day though. I would wear my mask, put on a show worthy of Shakespearean players, and he would play the fool, utterly oblivious to my affections, the way my face turned red when he said my name. The way I waited until we were alone to muster up courage to speak to him. My friends would wonder where my mind wandered during the day. I told them I was following my heart, which they didn’t understand. So they kept their questions quiet and I kept my answers silent.
He didn’t know what we were. Neither did I, so I took the cigar that was pressed between his lips, where I so longed to be, and smiled. Don’t worry about things that are imaginary, I sang softly to myself, it ruins the magic. No one ever knows what anything is, where they’re going, who they love. Everyone is in chaos and it’s useless to think on such petty things.
He taught me two types of love that summer and I swore I understood what they both felt like. I had dabbled in the arts of coping with the agony of pining for someone whom you would never have. In the imaginary world I had built up around myself, I told him of my love and he gathered my withered body up and kissed me, a kiss that one remembers until their dying day that they miss when they’re older and wiser. I imagined his fingers ghosting over mine as he whispered my name, real or fake, into my ear as he made sweet love to me. I imagined him taking me to his city, his favorite places on the weekends, whisked away to imaginary worlds that I only knew of because of him.
He told me that I was beautiful, but only when he was drunk. He would wrap his hand around my waist and touch my arm and make me laugh and compliment me in ways that no man had ever done before. I found I craved it, so I was desperate in the summer air as I sweat from the Italian heat and craved to feel the press of his body against mine while we filled the summer air with our heart beats and panting breath. I called him Apollo, because he was the sun. But to me, he was also the moon and the stars. He was my muse, what fed the fire that he already set inside my soul.
I, leaving my scars alone and ignoring the new blisters forming on my heart from being burned by the sun, believed his every word, and grew to trust him with my life and soul. I was content to be a quiet nobody until we drank, and talked, and smoked. As long as I could touch him and feel him touch me.
He taught me two types of pain that summer and I swore that I would never forget the way they felt when they burned my skin in entirely different ways. I realized what a silly little fool I was for thinking that he didn’t touch other girls the way he touched me, that he didn’t share his cigar with other girls the way he did with me. I watched as his hands clutched the shoulders and the hips of my friend and envied the way it must have felt. They spoke of politics and philosophy and I sipped my beer in the background, laughing at his smile and wishing to be her. Hating myself for wanting to be her.
He taught me what betrayal was that summer and I swore I never thought of murder until him. He clutched my friend’s hips too tight, forced alcohol down her throat and spoke of leaving his love for her. He treated her the way I wished to be treated by him and it made me sick to my stomach. He broke the solid trust that I had formed, leaving her in the care of him and having him defile her soul in a way I never thought would happen, never dreamed could happen. Because he taught us what it was like to feel invincible. He told us we could do anything and everything was ours for the taking. He showed us the world lit up at four in the morning and made us feel like we would never be the same again. He gave me revelations about myself and the world around me, he gave us roses and drinks. He clinked his glass with ours in the pubs because he was like us, he understood us, he was one of us.
But he was not one of us and we were not like him. He was a monster. As my friend sang the words of her horrible song to me, I sighed as quietly as I could as he tore my heart from my ribcage. I bit my tongue so hard it bled as he cut the vital organ up and left it with a message for me. The blood spelled the word “fool” out in pretty cursive letters and I never knew the truth could be so obvious yet so hidden at the same time.
He left us to clean up the mess and clear away the broken pieces. Our bodies were broken, bruised and burned by the fire he had set. I thought I was able to be a goddess and touch the sun, but we were mere mortals and it burned us into ashes. We wondered why we couldn’t leave the night we felt like gods as our lasting memory of the end of our marvelous journey, but we had no time to dwell on ghosts. We only had time to get up and move on, to take the train away from the memories and go somewhere fresh that wasn’t tainted with such vile horrors.
I sobbed quietly for what felt like hours. I shook with anger, never having felt so betrayed in the entirety of my existence until that moment. But I was okay, I was fine. I would not be broken by a man who claimed to be Apollo when he was really just a demon out to torture young souls still searching for their identity among the rubble left behind by previous generations. I would rise from the ashes this so-called god had turned me into, and I wouldn’t let him be the one who broke me.
The summer taught me many things, but never was there a lesson as cruel as this.
