Dear Kurl,
You probably don’t remember much. In fact, it’s possible you don’t remember anything at all.
I couldn’t quite believe you had been driving in that condition. I consider it a miracle that you made it safely all the way to our house and managed to park, albeit more on the lawn than the driveway, before passing out. Maybe you passed out long before arriving, and the car drove itself to our house; as far as I’m concerned that would hardly have been more miraculous.
Some years we stay home on Halloween and hand out candy, but this time Shayna and Lyle and Cody Walsh and I had spent the evening at the Fright Night Movie Marathon at the rep cinema. I’d endured The Shining and The Blair Witch Project with them but had begged off Saw, the late-late show, and Cody drove me home. When it comes to horror movies, my father and sister are insatiable and omnivorous. I can’t keep up, even physically: My eyes start to sting, staring at the screen for that long.
So it was me who found you in our driveway with your forehead resting on the steering wheel. Headlights on, driver’s-side door ajar, radio set to AM and reporting the weather, the whole car reeking like a distillery.
I said your name and jostled you a bit. Your head rolled along the wheel, but you couldn’t even straighten up.
And then you said, “I have to go.”
“What?” I said.
“This is my mom’s car,” you said, slurring. “She leaves for work at five. I have to go.” And you turned the key and started the engine.
I stayed wedged in the open car door. “You’re drunk, Kurl. No way you’re driving like this.”
You lifted your head and looked at me. “Hi, Jo,” you said. One of your eyes was swollen shut, the bruising spread all the way to your cheekbone. Your lip was split, oozing.
“What happened?” I asked. “Did you get in a fight?”
“Of course I got in a fight.” You smiled at me, which only brought fresh blood to your lip.
“Come inside,” I said. “Let’s get some ice. I’ll call Lyle.”
But hearing my father’s name must have spooked you, because you straightened up and put the car in reverse.
“Wait! Kurl, wait.” I didn’t know what to do. The car was rolling. I’d already been forced to take a couple of quick steps sideways so the door wouldn’t sweep me off my feet. “Stop the car and move over. I’ll drive,” I said.
Immediately you slid into the passenger seat and curled up with your cheek against the headrest, as though me taking the wheel was what you’d been planning all along.
“Put your seat belt on.”
You groped around for the buckle, all obedience.
As you must be aware, I am several months away from being eligible to apply for my regular driver’s license. I’m fairly sure my learner’s permit doesn’t allow me to drive with a heavily inebriated eighteen-year-old for a copilot, either. Luckily, Lyle has made a point of putting me behind the wheel for practice whenever we have occasion to take the car outside Minneapolis, so I’m already a decent driver, even at night. Also luckily, I had recently studied the map, curious about the location of your Outer Sanctum, so when you mumbled your address I knew approximately how to find your street.
You were so quiet that I suspected you’d passed out again; I wasn’t sure, because I was utterly absorbed in the task of not committing any traffic infractions. I turned onto your street, but I was worried that someone might look out your front window, so I parked the car at the curb a few houses down from your address.
Your face was turned away, to the window, and you didn’t respond when I said your name, so I got out and walked around to your side of the car and opened the passenger door. I was relieved to find you bleary but conscious, at least, awake and looking up and blinking at me with your one good eye. Your face was like meat.
“Maybe I should have driven you directly to the hospital,” I said.
“Come here, Jo,” you said.
You were asking for assistance, I thought, so I leaned in and unbuckled your seat belt for you. You grabbed my arm and swung one foot to the ground, and I braced to take your weight.
Instead of trying to stand up, though, you took my wrist and waggled my hand back and forth. “Hi,” you said, as though we’d just now happened to run into each other, and I was waving at you.
“Hi.” I laughed despite my worry.
You lifted my wrist with your fingers around it like a bracelet. “Fine-boned,” you commented.
Kurl, there are all kinds of reasons for you to have done what you did next. You were still deeply in shock from the fight, from your injuries. Or it was simple curiosity. Or you thought I was someone else. You thought I was Shayna, maybe—you’d driven half-unconscious to her house, after all.
You moved your hand to my waist, to my belt, and gave the end of it a little tug.
Then you brought your other hand up and undid the buckle.
“Hey.” I straightened up, but you held on.
“Dear little Jo,” you said. Your voice was low and soft, and you frowned at my zipper in great concentration. Suddenly you seemed less drunk.
All that scrutiny, not to mention your hands so close, had the predictable effect. More than the predictable effect: I felt like I’d been plugged into a socket. Trying to hide it was futile, and anyhow you were splayed halfway out of your seat, and you weren’t trying to hide anything, either.
You undid me. I gasped at your touch, and I think I must have swayed or lurched, because you brought your thigh in hard against mine to steady me.
The truth, the whole truth, Kurl: After the first five seconds I didn’t much care why you were doing it. Your hands were callused. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but there was a kind of rough pressure that seemed somehow to spread from your hands and build up everywhere under my skin, as though my whole body was scraping against itself from the inside like sandpaper. My breath came fast and I felt scratchiness in my throat, too, as though words were lodged there and would either choke me or come pouring out into the street. I was pinned between pain and the perfect, stunning opposite of pain. I held on to your shoulder with one hand and your head with the other, and I could feel my own pulse in my fingertips as though I was transferring my hectic heartbeat directly into your ear, your hair, your spine.
I heard a high, whiny little moan and realized it was me. I didn’t recognize the sound, didn’t recognize my own voice. For a second I thought to myself, about myself, Who is this? Who could this person possibly be? and at the discovery of this entirely new person, I could feel myself smiling, utterly delighted, right in the middle of everything.
You weren’t looking at me, Kurl. I hadn’t noticed it until that exact moment—in my defense I was somewhat distracted. I guess I assumed you were focused on what your hands were doing, and you were, of course. But you were also avoiding my eyes, a fact that became clearer to me when you glanced up and caught me smiling, and in response you raised one hand up, to my face, and pressed it gently over my eyes.
“Don’t watch this,” you said. “Don’t look at me.”
I pulled away from you. I turned aside and—clumsy, trying to go fast—zipped my fly and buckled my belt and tucked in my shirt. My hands felt like somebody else’s hands.
You reached out and jammed your finger through one of my belt loops, catching me and twisting me back around to face you. “Wait, wait,” you were saying, attempting to hold me there and free your other foot to get out of the car. “Jo, Jo, wait a sec, hang on.”
But I was shivering, going numb. The whole time, Kurl—for those two or three minutes, or however long it was, not long—I had been so wholly right there, suspended there between your two hands like a creature hardly human. I have never been so present in and aware of my own body as in those few minutes. I was right there—but you didn’t want me there. You wanted to do what you were doing in private, without me there to witness you. Or perhaps you wanted neither of us to be there. You wanted it not to be happening at all.
Either way, by that point I was entirely in agreement with you. I was so ashamed of myself! I wrenched my hips away, and you yelped—I’m afraid I may have sprained your finger trapped in my belt loop. If you found it damaged this morning, then I apologize, and you should be aware that that one injury wasn’t a result of your earlier fight. I left you in the passenger seat and I sprinted off down your street, kept jogging back the way I’d driven until I got to the plaza at the corner, where I flagged a taxi.
It’s possible you don’t remember anything. Trust me, I have considered the possibility that the wiser course of action would be for me to say nothing. But I reminded myself I began this correspondence with you on the principle of honesty.
You undid me. That’s all I’m trying to report in this letter. You undid me, Kurl, in more ways than one.
Yours truly,
Jo