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Shoebox Kittens
I am damaged in the way that shoebox kittens are damaged. In the way that it is impossible to leave your house when it snows.
I have weak ankles. A weak soul.
I was out drinking last night and invited the girl from Texas. Not the stripper or the online girl, the one from Texas.
It's better to keep up to three girls because the rejection is less painful, the sex is less meaningful, the words, her
eyes, her tits, my rehearsed boilerplates: top five favorite movies, places traveled, weekend hobbies all cease to exist
and I remember being in a very white space, staring at the ceiling and screaming.
I'm usually listening to music to drown out the noise and I remind myself not to talk about politics, not
to cry; you can't really show yourself until the third date, the sex date.
I sometimes catalogue all the things I've lost: my mother, my dog, my sense of security. That ended when
I broke up with my college girlfriend. The one I was sure I'd marry.
I sprained my ankle so I'm walking with a limp to meet the stripper. When I met her at the club, she didn't
even ask me for a dance or to buy a drink, she just sat and talked and that's really all a guy ever wants-to
sit and talk to a beautiful Russian girl in broken English who needs a green card. It's like a fairy tale.
I limp to the restaurant and it's icy so I'm careful, a lot more careful than when I injured it-drunk, getting
out of a cab, angry about the Texas girl.
"I am pleased to see you," says the stripper.
She's waiting there, impossibly blonde and dripping with sex, but I'm convinced I'm the only one who's ever
watched her on stage. It was her first night, I had to call her over she was so shy.
"I hope you like this place," I say. "I picked it because I couldn't really walk any farther with my ankle, but it's pretty good."
"There can be no sex."
"Usually you'll want to wait till after dinner to say that."
"You teach me. I want to stay here."
We sit down and I order for her because Russian girls like a real man-an old-fashioned man and I'm him.
I don't believe in anything. They like that, too.
We eat pasta and drink red wine. I pay and even with her warning, we hobble back to my apartment. She has eyes like a lynx
and I can't help but remember when she finally left my side that night and took off the blue-sequined dress. I was so embarrassed.
She looked at me on stage as if we'd shared something. Maybe we had. She'd bought the dress at a sex shop. I found that sad.
I'd lowered the blinds just in case and it came in handy. My neighbors didn't have a right to see her. They didn't
have a right to her body any more than I did and I knew I had no right because except for her job and her accent,
she was unflinchingly perfect. It makes me happy to think of myself as her savior-taking her in, paying for her
meals and marrying her.
In my fantasies, she wears the blue-sequined dress down the aisle. I don't want her to, but that's who she is.
And even in dreams, I retain a sense of pragmatic despair.
It's sweet, almost. We watch a movie and kiss and during scenes where there's sex I touch the inside of her thigh.
She lets me and that's all I really want.
When we say goodbye, it takes on a hollowness that chokes me and I know about the tiny cocks she has to rub in
that little room above the bathroom. I can hear their greasy voices surrounding us. She's damaged, too.
At night, when I sleep, I sweat and imagine the vacant spaces of the future.
Matthew Di Paoli received his BA at Boston College where he won the Dever Fellowship
and the Cardinal Cushing Award for Creative Writing. He recently finished his MFA at Columbia
University for Fiction. He has been published in the West Coast Journal, Gigantic, and Post
Road literary magazines among others. Currently, he is writing a novel entitled Idol of Id and teaches
in the Advanced Creative Writing Summer Program at Columbia University.
Email: Matthew Di Paoli
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