Dave was late, so I sat in silence.
I took in the romantic arrangement of the peppermint moon. I contemplated the skeletal silhouettes of leafless trees, their juxtaposition against glittering stars sprinkled in the cloudy tresses of the inky night sky, like gravity-resistant flakes of cubic zirconia dandruff. I closed my eyes, and felt the cool white porcelain of the wall of the fountain on the back of my thighs. I let the babbling and rippling of the fountain behind me mollify my spirit. I imagined what it would feel like to lean back into the eternal regurgitation of white viscosity behind me.
Dave was a pathological flake, and after three years of dating, I still wasn’t used to his absolute surprise, confusion, and disappointment.
The midnight moon made the lukewarm clam chowder spewing out the fountainhead gleam, and feign the hypothetical texture of chunky pearl milk. The fountain borrowed its shape from an anatomically accurate dentist’s-chair-sink, magnified exactly 342.7 times in size, the porcelain fountainhead had been sculpted into the form of a retching 20-something caucasian woman, her eyes rendered glassy by bad decisions and framed by the mascara-stained cheeks they were set widely into. This gargoyle of regret had been named Lovely Tina by the town planner’s favorite public artist and boy-toy, Josh Nolastname, whose memory of his freshman year girlfriend continued to serve as his muse well into his 80’s. Tourists from far and wide, in pursuit of getting in touch with their emotions, traversed the pilgrimage to the quaint and cobbled village of Ulti. They stood before Tina in the hope of experiencing either catharsis or nirvana by association with her excruciating embarrassment and complete lack of control. Hardened men were known to burst into tears at the sight of Lovely Tina. It was rumored that if you stared into her eyes long enough, you could feel the bite of bile burning in the back of your throat. Some activist groups abhorred her for imposing non-intersectional monopoly over the experience of helplessness, as a purely cis, white, and female phenomenon. Others prayed to her as a Goddess of body positivity and self-love, celebrating the importance of making mistakes in life. But for locals like Dave and me, she would always be good old Vomitina, infectiously nicknamed by school children of Ulti on the day she was lowered into her sink, and lovingly regarded as such by their posterity. Nevertheless, she persisted—kneeling and groin deep, wide awake in a state of perpetual barfing.
I sighed and resigned myself to the usual onslaught of periodically escalating emotions I felt in these precise situations. First, Irritation. Ugh not again. Then Disbelief. Seriously, again? are we really doing this again? Dismay. I guess I should have expected this. Self-hate. Can’t believe I didn’t expect this. If I didn’t care so much it wouldn’t affect me. A false sense of Apathy. That’s it then, from now on I don’t care. Spite. Sucks to be him, he just lost my love and my trust (For his sake, I prayed that he would show up at the tail end of apathy, before it could transition into spite). Self-pity. I don’t deserve this treatment. All I do is love selflessly and this is what I get to show for it. I deserve better. Anger. Fuck that. One more time he does this and he is out of my life. Irrational anxiety. Shit what if he’s dead? Shit, what if he’s sick? What if he’s injured? What if he died on his way to see me, and couldn’t tell me because his phone got run over by the same speeding car that snapped his knees, smashing our only means of communication to smithereens? Guilt. He’s probably bleeding out in a ditch somewhere and here I am thinking harsh thoughts about him. Rationalizing. Okay no… this isn’t the first time this has happened. And it is always because of some stupid reason. He is probably just in bed. Or he is high. Or he is watching porn. Or he forgot. Or all of the above. Realization. I’ve been stood up agai—
“Would you like some cheesecake?”
“What?”
I glared at the blue haired man who had interrupted my internal monologue. His anomalous existence needlessly adding chaos to my already tumultuous state of mind. No one in Ulti had blue hair, or left their home after 8 p.m. I noticed a small but unmistakable dollop of cream cheese on his left cheekbone.
“Particularly stinking night, isn’t it?”
Cream-cheese-boi crinkled his nose delicately, but my obvious irritation had siphoned some volume from his confidence. The pink in his flustered face chasing patches of white into his hair until they were completely out of sight.
“Actually, I think it’s perfect.”
“Oh.”
During the winter, Vomitina’s sink would be crawling with tourists. But this was an off-season midsummer’s midnight. Summertime heat made the clam chowder stew, and forced its scent to infiltrate the usual coconut toothpaste-y taste of Ulti’s air. Many found this unsettling. But Dave and I loved it. Or at least, I did, and Dave nodded noncommittally at the sentiment. Every Thursday in the month of July we met here at midnight to celebrate that special night. That was three stew-y summers ago, when our love was born and confessed, or rather “stimulated and processed” (as Dave would prefer to call it), in the wake of Vomitina’s catatonic stare. We would sit in our spot, on the rim of her sink, our backs to her eyeballs, and our fronts facing the Dunkin Donuts across the street. Scoopin’ and sippin’ upchucked clam chowder out of pink plastic wine goblets with our names engraved on them, by me.
Today was this year’s first Thursday of July. Tonight the air was the perfect mixture of clammy, chowder-y, stew-y, coconut-y, and toothpaste-y. Tonight, the chowder tasted like mint and white chocolate. And Dave was late.
“I guess it could be worse.” Cream-cheese-boi continued, shrugging. Blissfully unaware of my potential state of heartbreak.
He shifted his weight indecisively from one foot to another.
“Anyway, I live in that building there… See the only balcony with the lavender grill?” He pointed to the eggshell apartment building growing out of the Dunkin Donuts. “I painted that myself last night.”
“I saw you sitting here alone. Would you fancy coming up and having some cheesecake…?”
“I… don’t know you, dude…”
“…Or I could bring some down to you…?”
His gaze slipped off the side of my face and plopped into the two pink clam chowder-filled wine goblets next to me. One of them missing a few sips.
“Are you here by yourself?“
“You have cream cheese on your face,” I informed him.
“Look, I’m not trying to be creepy,” he said hastily, using both hands to wipe all of his face, but only succeeding to moisturize it further with cream cheese.
“I am the new head chef at the only bakery this village has, and I recently ordered this instant-cheesecake machine online. All you gotta do is throw ingredients into it. Imagine an oversimplified 3D printer that only prints cheesecake. Frighteningly addictive, I’m afraid! Anyway, I was playing around with this recipe, and I accidentally ended up printing a lot of cheesecake. It’s absolutely delectable, a guaranteed visa-less passport to paradise! But I just moved here last week. I don’t really know anyone. So that leaves me in the present situation, with a house brimming with cheesecake, and a crippling craving for validation at…” he glanced at his wristwatch and then nodded to himself, as if impressed by the time, “nearly one am. And my cats refuse to give it to me.”
His eyes were the color of caramel drizzled over cannabidiol infused hot chocolate.
As he spoke, he wiped the remnants of cream cheese on his pink checkered apron.
Dave wasn’t coming. I could use the sugar rush.
“Besides,” he added for a good measure, “judging from the way you are singularly sitting by Vomitina with two glasses of wine, I can only infer that you either think you’re on a date with Vomitina, which would be a magnificently stupid idea—how would you feel if someone invited you out to partake with them, in your own clammy vomit margarita—or you’ve been stood up. Either situation would be better with cheesecake. Fancy some?”
I was all dressed up with nowhere to go.
My mind wandered to Dave. Dave had always been very sure of himself. Very measured in the affection he dispensed with, the intimate thoughts he authorized me with access to. And in the aftermath of loving him, Cream-cheese-boi’s rambling nervousness was growing on me. Besides, in the face of rejection, being wanted was flattering. Even though all he wanted me for was complimenting his cheesecake, boosting his ego, and perhaps by extension helping him mentally get off on his own greatness. But tonight I was at a low point in my life. I had been living in fear that my relationship had been approaching shambles since the night Dave and I started seeing each other, and tonight we had arrived there. Cream-cheese-boi had dessert spoon shaped eyes. Baby waves of pearly chowder cheekily lapped against the porcelain wall I was sitting on, like an ASMR lullaby.
I just didn’t care. I had hit rock bottom, and I knew I’d rather be there with cheesecake than without.
“What kind of cheesecake is it?”
“Calcium. But with blue icing.”
“Calcium, like the mineral?”
“Yes! But with blue icing, two different layers of premium cheeses encompassed by a layer of crème fresh, and lightly dusted with Castella snowflakes, pencil shavings, and layer of cashew crumble adding just the right amount of crunch. You’ll see.”
“Okay…”
“Okay, I am gonna go up now and get it. I hope you will be around when I come back.”
He threw in a wink and a flying kiss to improve his chances.
He darted across the street, ran up the stairs of his stoop, pushed open his door, spun on his heel, holding the door open with one foot, cupped his hands around his mouth to form a make-believe megaphone, and screamed, “Oh and just by the way, my name is Davleia, but you can call me Dave.”