Everyone’s getting wasted at the lake tonight. The train tracks cross over the lake. The moon is making the lake really shiny. Cynthia doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. I’m a little beyond the border of the party. I’m standing with the shadowy bushes. I feel like some freaky creep. I catch Cynthia as she’s galloping back toward the group. She was peeing in the bushes. She’s so tall. Why is she acting like such a horse?
All I say to her is, “Can we talk? We at least owe that to each other?”
“What? Do you want?” she spits, turning her face toward the group, where she wants to be.
All I say to her is, “Cynthia, you’ve been acting so strange around me lately.”
“What do you expect?” She shrugs harshly. Still avoiding eye contact.
All I say to her is, “What do you mean?”
“People change, you’re no exception,” she says.
I ask Cynthia to elaborate. I’m not feeling satisfied. She rolls her eyes. She begins the elaboration process. She says I’ve scared people. She says I’ve hurt people’s feelings. She says I’ve hurt her. She says I’ve traumatized our anthropology professor. She says I’m a sexual opportunist. She says I’m not a clean person. She says I’m a dirty person. She says she knows it was me: I was the one who burned down the barn. She says more, but I don’t want to hear more. She’s so done with me, done with me, done with me. Her face is hands-down the hardest betrayal I’ve ever seen.
I swear, sometimes, people of all ages and hair colors make the roughest decisions. These people are making rough decisions all around the world.
Well, Cynthia is young, blonde, confrontational.
And me, I’m trembling like the guiltiest criminal.
I’ve lost most of my vocabulary. Most of the time I can barely speak. I pay foreign exchange students to write my essays for me. I drink like an Irish fish. I’m strung out on marihuana every day. I’ve snorted raspberry flavored cocaine one hundred and ninety-eight times. I’ve tried gas station drugs, embalming fluid, elephant tranquilizers, cheetah piss, toad venom, crystal speed, lysergic blotter acid, black tar heroin. I have nonsense on my mind. I think there’s drugs stuck in my spinal cord. I think it’s important to try everything once.
It’s a pretty big group of us out here tonight. A friendly face coerced me into coming. His name is Bernie. His hair is bleached. His life is somewhat unwatchable. His paintings are terrific. His accent is a deeply fried Southern accent. His dad’s this ultra rich preacher. Bernie once found Girls Gone Wild in his dad’s study. Bernie has a loud mouth, but he’s a good guy, and he still wants to be my friend.
Bernie wants to pull me out of my new shell.
Bernie knows I’ve got a new blanket in my new shell, too.
When it comes to Bernie, don’t judge a book by its cover.
Tonight, Bernie said, “Let’s go.”
Tonight, Bernie threw me in his car.
I felt like a sock monkey.
Tonight, Bernie gunned it to the lake.
Tonight, Bernie said, “We’re here, Beautiful.”
At least then I felt like a beautiful sock monkey.
Bernie’s always calling me Beautiful.
I used to scream whenever he’d call me that. These days I take the compliment.
Once, in the middle of the night, I woke up to Bernie giving me oral sex.
I asked him to leave my room.
He knew what he was doing. The blowjob didn’t not feel good.
“Are we cool?” Bernie asked, the next day.
“Yes, Beautiful,” I deadpanned while putting together some lunch in the dining hall.
Still, Bernie—his tray trembling—continued. “I am so sorry I did that. I hope this don’t change nothing. But I get it if it does.”
“Stop it, Beautiful.”
He reached out to touch my arm. He pulled his hand back. We finally made eye contact. I threw some chickpeas onto his tray. We both laughed.
I’m a vegetarian. I adore animals. I abuse the salad bar. I fill the entire tray with food. As much as I can put on it. Heaping piles of greens. No plates necessary. Thank you very much.
Anyhow, it’s easy to forgive Bernie. He has a drinking problem, and it’s worse than mine.
Alongside his drinking problem, he has a drug problem, and it’s worse than mine.
Bernie leaves elephant droppings everywhere, it’s all part of the addiction.
Alongside Bernie’s problems with drinking and drugs, his dad is cruel.
Bernie and Cynthia don’t like each other very much. There was a bit of an incident in the winter. I shouldn’t go into details, but the term fathead was blubbered.
At the lake, Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” is playing from a big long redheaded boy’s car. The semester’s almost over. I’m failing all my classes and there’s no going back.
I’ve been thinking about doing something permanent to myself.
Like a boxcutter with no name. Like shouting cowabunga! and jumping in front of a speeding locomotive. Like a few handfuls of pills knocked back with something clear and strong.
“But, like, don’t you know that that’s it?” Bernie, stoned and puzzled, asked me tonight in my room, before he dragged me to the lake.
I was lying in bed. He held a six-pack of Rolling Rock. He was standing near the door.
“I’m sorry for being dramatic, Bern,” I said.
Cynthia has been talking this whole time. Now she’s standing with her arms crossed. The night has turned. The late-spring breeze carries the coldest depth of the lake.
Things are hot and hairy and I’m shivering.
What I need is a chilled bed in a warm sanitarium in a friendly place. What I need is a whole lot of unconditional loving. I feel like a boring ghost. I don’t want to be me. I don’t want to get into it. It’s not exactly an icebreaker. It’s grounds for hateability. It’s making me sick. It’s making me put out cigarettes on myself. It’s making me an atrocious conversationalist. You wouldn’t understand. You would run for the hills. You would put a little militia together from scratch. You would turn into Cynthia.
Everyone else is hanging out on the lakefront. They’re drinking beers and having a good time. We’re another country. They can’t hear us.
But the redheaded boy with the car keeps turning from the party to look at us. He’s a judgy person. He thinks he knows everything.
I don’t want to deal with him for the rest of my life.
But I’m too weak.
His name is Ricky Fitzpatrick.
“Are we cool?” I’ll ask Ricky tomorrow, shaking in front of the library.
“Don’t talk to me,” Ricky will deliver with a cigarette dangling in his mouth. His gold earring will glisten with hate.
He must have such violent thoughts about me.
My heart is trying for my mouth tonight. I feel a victim complex coming on. I don’t want Cynthia to see my scared parts. Why am I so scared?
Because Cynthia’s scaring me.
Losing someone is scary.
She’s saying the worst things someone can hear about themselves. She’s talking again. She’s asking me questions.
“Don’t you realize you’re scum?”
“Don’t you realize you’re a waste of space?”
It’s hard to answer Cynthia.
My mouth won’t open.
Her hate tonight: so sticky, final.
Last summer, in the city, there was a viciously hot day, and Cynthia and I got caught right in the middle of it. So we ran into an empty movie theater and put our feet up on the seats in front of us. We watched a movie about a mayoral candidate with a very inconvenient sex addiction. She liked it, but I didn’t. We watched a movie about a sad man with no legs who tries to solve his sister’s brutal rape and murder. I liked it, but she didn’t. We watched a movie about a precocious girl who talks to bugs. We both liked it. We watched a movie about a charming boy whose nosebleeds never stop. We both didn’t like it.
We wasted that whole hot day at the movies.
The best day ever, but I don’t want to talk about that hot day anymore.
That hot day is beyond worthless trash now.
That hot one. After the movies. On the A train. I suffered a panic attack so bad, I went blind for minutes. On the cold subway floor, Cynthia cradled me, whispered sweet things into me. She was being so kind, so encouraging. I was going to be okay, I was going to be fine.
“You’re my partner in crime,” she whispered.
I adore you.
I love you.
So much.
That hot July, Cynthia stayed with me and my family, and we didn’t have sex. We’d gotten most of the sex out of the way in the winter. She’d also fallen for Ricky, so there was no point in even suggesting sex. We were just friends.
In the winter, with a smirk, she’d said, “Best sex you’ll ever have.”
In the winter, with a grin, I’d agreed.
Best sex I’ll ever have.
That sex was the best excitement of my life. That sex was the last best thing that happened to me. No, wait—I mean, that hot day was the last best thing that happened to me.
It has taken Cynthia six minutes to break up the friendship. She walks away from me. She has nothing left to say to me. She has shaken the nasty decision off her chest.
After about a minute of standing real still, I stumble away from the lake party, and into what’s left of whatever’s going to happen to me.
Whatever, whatever. I’m sweating badly. I’m on the flimsy tracks crossing over the lake. It’s very dark. It’s perilous. The water moves with the breeze. My world is settling into a crack. I’m wearing tennis shoes. The tracks feel so uncertain under my feet. I can hardly see my feet. I don’t care about my feet anymore. I hope a search party forms soon. I don’t care about search parties anymore. I would love to meet Cynthia for the first time. I would love to start all over again. I break into a crying jag. I am completely unlikeable. I can hear fish jumping. I can hear Bernie drunkenly calling my name. I can hear Randy Newman’s “Short People.” I’m thinking about movies with trains and bridges: Stand By Me, The Lost Boys, The Bridge on the River Kwai. I’m thinking about movies with horses and Cynthias: there are none?
Guess I’m heading back to my room. There’s nowhere else to go. Without a car, I’m pretty sure these tracks are the only way to get back.
I want forgiveness from Cynthia, but if Cynthia ever tried apologizing to me, I’d totally deny her, I’d tell her not to bother, I’d tell her she lost the best relationship she ever had.
I’m just kidding.
But seriously, I’d deny her into oblivion, she’s never ever getting my forgiveness.
Now I’m wondering what happens if a train comes roaring out of nowhere. Now I’m wondering what happens if the train is named Forgiveness. Now I’m wondering what happens if the train named Forgiveness makes the flimsy tracks collapse. And I fall into the lake. And it’s unforgivable to get wet down there. And I have to forgive Cynthia for making a rough, nasty decision. Because there’s no other choice. Because heartbreak, heartbreak. Because I can barely swim.
**********
It’s six years later at a hammam in Paris. I’m watching Bernie get vigorously washed by a strong young handsome man. Our beautiful and talented and intelligent girlfriends, Mira and Marisa, are in the women’s wing.
Mira and Marisa are very successful models. Bernie earns mad money selling his paintings. I inherited my grandmother’s fortune. The four of us, we travel the world, and nothing matters.
Things are slow.
I know the rest of my life.
The future for me is this afternoon.
Here’s a story, an instance, an illustration.
One humid night at a sweaty salsa club in the heart of Mexico City, a short and desperate gentleman named Luís asked Mira to dance. They danced for almost twenty minutes.
I drank a few beers. I watched them dance. I thought about making babies.
If Luís had his druthers, he would’ve danced the night away with my girlfriend.
“Excuse me,” Mira said, “I’m going outside for a cigarette.”
“Okay, okay,” said Luís. “I hope to dance with you for many more musics.”
To this day we speak fondly of sweet Luís.
Now it’s my turn to get scrubbed down.
I lie down on the hot marble.
Bernie still bleaches his hair.
Still Bernie after all these years.
Our heads are still salty unmade beds.
I think Bernie’s in love with me. I think it’s permanent. I think I’m fine with that.
Outside the hammam, boys sell shitty cell phones and extra poisonous drugs.
The joke: the train’s named Forgiveness when the train should be named More Inconvenient Hurt.
I filled up the tray, not the plate.
Those tracks were full of holes.
More poisonous than usual.
I’m lucky to be alive.
While the attendant—who doesn’t speak a lick of English, and I don’t speak a lick of French—works me, I decide to fire the question.
The question I’ll fire forever. At everyone I meet.
“Do you by any chance know Cynthia London?”
Bernie rolls his eyes.
I don’t think the attendant hears me, but it’s okay.
It still counts, I still fired it.
With my gunny gun.
You know what? I bet the attendant thinks I’m talking to Bernie.
Bernie starts howling. “Steve! Big dummy! He don’t give a fuck about trains! He don’t give a fuck about bad swimming! He don’t give a fuck about Forgiveness! He don’t even understand you! He don’t know that freak bitch!”
Bernie can be such an annihilator sometimes.
The cigarette burns on my hands? The cigarette burns on my hands.
I’m not even going to bother asking the attendant about Ricky Fitzpatrick.
Bernie pours a bucket of cold water on himself.
Drenched.
Typical.
I’m so hung up.
What did I even do?
Wait. Don’t answer that.
I’m a big dummy.
I already forgave you.
Mini-interview with Myles Zavelo
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
MZ: Probably reading writers like Bret Easton Ellis, Dennis Cooper, Denis Johnson, Barry Hannah, Scott Bradfield, Tao Lin, Amy Hempel, Beth Nugent, Mary Gaitskill, and Kate Braverman.
HFR: What are you reading?
MZ: I’m reading In the Cut by Susanna Moore and Autoportrait by Jesse Ball.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Cynthia Forgiveness Swimmer”?
MZ: It was actually prompted by a prompt! In a workshop I took last year taught by Amy Hempel.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
MZ: Many pieces, all the time!
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
MZ: I want a dog so badly.
Myles Zavelo’s writing has appeared in New World Writing Quarterly, The Southampton Review, New York Tyrant Magazine, Joyland Magazine, Forever Magazine, Muumuu House, Maudlin House, The Harvard Advocate, Hobart Pulp, Berfrois, and elsewhere.
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Heavy Feather Review 