Life is Interesting
FICTION by Emily Sauter

Fuck, it’s only been forty-five minutes and my hands are already sweating. I don’t have a headache yet though. That’s usually around hour three. It starts right in the back of my eyes and it just festers and burns, as though an elf has decided to camp out in my brain for a night. There should be smoke coming through my eyes.

I-87 is a road that used to excite me as a child. I-87 meant summers in the Adirondacks, on an island, eating green mashed potatoes, dyed for “Christmas in August.” I-87 now means nothing but a gateway onto a different road, which actually leads somewhere.

I’m trying to think unsexy thoughts, because if I think sexy thoughts now, like how in five hours I’m going to sprawled out on a double bed in a HoJo’s in Brookville, PA, with a man that, in high school, used to lie to me…well if I think about it too much, I’ll lose that hormonally unbalanced feeling. He’ll take me in his Irish arms and I’ll look into his eyes that are blue like the glistening bottom of a glass of Guinness, and I’ll just yawn, which is the most unsexy thing you can do. Lying there like a newly dead body, still warm. How unromantic.

I’m thinking unsexy thoughts. Think about baseball. Too bad that doesn’t work for me because I’m a woman. I hit I-80 and I start to think about how unsexy the room is going to be. It’s going to have that glossy blanket that itches you when you sleep. And it’s always pulled around you too tight, cutting off circulation to your feet. The view is going to be of a parking lot full of pick-up trucks and American cars. The bathroom is going to be tan and drab with a dirty mirror and a showerhead that doesn’t work. The room will be too dark or too light. The “Do not disturb” sign will disturb me. There will be pamphlets on a particleboard table on what to see in Brookville, PA. What exactly does one do in Brookville, PA? I’ll tell you what I’ll be doing in Brookville, PA....or who I’ll be doing.

Then my female instinct kicks in when I hit the border and start heading into the hilly, one-dimensional landscape of Pennsylvania: the dreaded second thought.

I like him and all, but we’ve done this before and our sexual skills together are sub-par at best. He’s one of those kissers that you have to stop and wipe your mouth before preceding. I might as well bring a towel to bed with me.

I already went through with this. I said yes to him because it’s a story to tell. Imagine the look on people’s faces when I say I drove five hours to a hotel in the middle of nowhere right off the interstate because I wanted to “make life interesting.” I am in college. I am supposed to be thinking about keeping life interesting. In five years, I’ll be too tired to want to drive five hours to fondle in a room where thousands have fondled before me.

The headache has kicked in. It sears my eyes and burns my temples. The road has become a long gray zipper. I’ll have to get on my knees tonight. I’ll have to fake it like I always do. I’ll have to get thrown up against walls, rock the Kasbah, and let him hold me in his pasty arms till the sun comes through the polyester curtains. But I wanted to do this. It has been a while since a boy has wanted to even touch me. I’m not desperate but I want to know that someone cares.

He’s not bad looking either. He’s rather beautiful actually with soft brown hair and a smile that could make you feel whole again. He has a bitter intellect with pretty blues eyes. He’s a diver.

When we were in high school, he told me he loved me but I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. I was not popular and he was a football star. I accepted this quiet affair and we met in parks, in basements, to quietly exchange a hurried and awkward affection.

This time it’s in a hotel away from the world. A hotel room is your own little island. He can be proud of me on his own deserted island

I was starting to regret it as a soft gray rain fell on the highway. There were too many trucks on the road. They kept cutting me off. The dusty condoms that have been mocking me on my shelf were going to break and I was going to end up pregnant, caught with the confession that I drove five hours to fill myself up or maybe, to make myself more empty than before.

Would he resume responsibility for the child? He was Catholic. Would I be able to get an abortion or would his father, who had the disposition of a deep-sea fisherman, make us get married? We would sit in bed ten years from now still yelling at each on who is better: the Yankees or the Red Sox? Our child would be conflicted because she would know she was a horrible mistake.

“Mommy and Daddy fight because of me,” she would say. And it would be so depressing because she would be right.

The exit was coming up and I braced myself. My stomach was a spring vacation at Club Med. My heart beat as if I had been driving my car Fred Flintstone-style all the way from New York.

Would this be awkward? Would we end up watching episodes of “Full House” in the dark waiting for one of us to make the hurried move towards sexual ecstasy? Would my mind dream of other men while he tried to be the best lover I ever had? Would the cleaning lady walk in on us while we were having a pillow fight, I only wearing his Bernie Williams shirt and he only wearing my pink underwear? Would we realize we love each other so much that we would find a justice of the peace and get married and I would leave school and go live with him at his fraternity? Would his mother approve? Of course she would approve! She had always loved me and would give me discounts at her stationary store. She wrote me thank you cards for no reason every few months and I didn’t understand why.

As I sat in the parking lot, I couldn’t find the will to open the car door. Even when he came over and tapped on my window, I found myself frozen in my velour interior.

I opened the door and finally smiled. “At least life is interesting,” I whispered into his ear and he held me in his arms.

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