"Blonde Sugar" by Rebecca Watkins
Photo credit: licensed under Public Domain and obtained from Unsplash
blonde sugar
Picture this: You are lying down on your yellow paisley sofa. Your legs are open. You are balancing a plate of meats, cheese, and fruit on your stomach. Your head is propped up by an assortment of pillows and your stuffed animal orangutan, Humphrey. Your eyes are closed. One of your hands is holding a strawberry to your mouth, the other is grabbing for Haloumi.
You are wearing all black. The man who takes the polaroid that captures this memory is your ex ex. He comes when you call, but this will be the last time you’ll call for him.
You and your ex ex have smoked a little, fucked a few times, and are taking a food break. You are lonely even though he’s sitting next to you. You miss your latest ex—the one who wouldn’t come if you called. It’s been two months since he moved out.
Your ex ex starts streaming some show you don’t know and you take too many hits that come all at once. You feel your breathing quicken.
You think you’ve forgotten how to swallow. You forget where you are. You tell him to turn off the show and that you need to put on your Blind Faith album to calm down. You feel like a mollusk without a shell. You reach for a blanket to pull over your head.
The last two months are a blur, mostly spent sitting in piping hot showers and going mindlessly to and from work. You’re going through the motions, but you’re not all there.
You feel anxious and want to be alone but don’t know how to get your ex ex to leave.
“Can’t Find My Way Home” plays on the refurbished record player your parents bought you for Christmas. Steve Winwood’s voice helps you find your center. You calm down a bit.
Your ex ex slides you down to the floor and pulls down your pants, probably hopeful that an orgasm will get you to feel better. You try to go along with it, but you can’t feel anything. You fake an orgasm to make him feel better. To make him leave.
You sit back on the couch, put on your leggings, and hear a ding. You dig through the couch to find your buried phone. You have a text from an unknown number.
Hey, this is Jessie.
George told me about you.
Are you free Saturday to get coffee?
He said you liked coffee.
This is the man your friend George wants to set you up with. You read the text a few more times and then Google search for a picture. George is taking his class at the local university and once during office hours inquired if Jessie was married or dating. George told him he might know someone.
You look at his university picture. He’s handsome, you think. He looks like a grown man. You’re ready for a grown man.
George showed him a blurry picture of you and gave him a post-it note last week with your phone number and list of things you liked. The list read: Coffee, Beer, Reading.
George tells you that he’s interested, although later Jessie will tell you that he was afraid you were old because George told him you were a high school teacher. You had just turned 24: not bad for this 34-year-old man.
Your ex ex, who found his way back to watching the show, is now certain that you have forgotten about him and are too distracted to feign interest in the show. He closes his laptop and says he has to leave. You wanted someone to hold you that night, but you didn’t really want it to be him. He didn’t come to cuddle. You thank him for coming, offer some food for his ride home, and escort him to the door.
You remember how you used to cry about him. You’ve realized he was just someone passing through.
You redirect your attention to the text and reply.
Hi, Jessie. Yes, I’d like to get coffee. Do you have a place in mind?
***
You get to the cafe before he does. You spent all morning trying on outfits and sending pictures to friends. Which one should I wear?
You decide on black skinny jeans, a cozy brown sweater, and black leather boots. Your butt looks really good, but you won’t know that until he tells you a year later.
“I saw your booty and knew I’d stick through the date no matter how awful it was. Turns out, you were smart and pretty, too.”
After a few more dates, this tall, dark-haired, handsome, Chacos and sock-wearing, math professor, house builder, mustache man becomes your boyfriend and you like the way he looks next to you in Home Depot or Lowe’s where he takes you to walk the aisles with him. In the plumbing section he shares his real estate empire dream. It is in the OSB section that he tells you he hopes to become the governor of Indiana and live in a penthouse with multiple girlfriends.
You tell yourself he must be kidding, and eventually you learn to just shake your head—a tick to shrug off his inconsistencies. You tell yourself you will remain important to him. He can’t let you go.
These are the lies that keep you.
***
Only one week into dating him, you meet his parents.
This seems too soon, you say. You realize later that he was pushing you so hard to meet them because he lived with them. This is something he has waited to reveal.
You’re in the car with Jessie and his parents for forty minutes. It is dark out when you get to the restaurant.
They order catfish and onion rings. They ask if you’ve ever eaten catfish. You haven’t. The bones are intimidating. Jessie helps you pick them out. You feel like a child.
You go back to their house and into Jessie’s room. You feel as though you’ve entered a time capsule. The Lego-blue room looks like it hasn’t been touched since the early 90s. It is lined with BMW motorcycle posters, has a full-size waterbed with side storage drawers and a computer desk with notes and CD-ROMs that appear untouched and undusted for at least a decade.
You sleep over and head downstairs the next morning. You search for Jessie in the living room but can’t find him. His mother points him out to you. He’s camouflaged with a burgundy blanket that is covering him entirely where he sits in a matching burgundy recliner. This endears him to you.
As you start towards him, he shouts:
“Boo, Boo, I need more eggggsss. Get me ‘dem eggs woman!” He says this in his exaggerated Indiana country accent.
“Come make’m yourself, Jessie,” his mom retorts, shaking her head.
“Don’t be a dingbat, Boo Boo. I need ‘dem eggs!” She argues with him, but then short-orders eggs with a croissant and a coffee refill.
You stand there and wonder how you should react. Do you nudge him, or ignore it, because he must be joking? You are getting initiated early to a family system with Jessie on center stage.
***
About two months into the relationship, you’re heading downstairs on a Saturday morning. When you get into the kitchen his mother is sitting on a dining room chair, sipping her coffee.
“Oh, Becca, is it true?” She grabs your hands as if someone had died.
You turn to look at Jessie. He’s smiling.
You turn back to his mom, “Uh, is what true?”
“Jessie just told us that you have to move out of your apartment! He told us you got into a huge fight with your parents last night and that you need a place to stay.”
Your jaw drops, and you imagine you look like a Looney Tunes character, seconds away from being run over by a perfectly round boulder.
“Ha, I’m sorry, what?” You ask, laughing. You’re currently living in the carriage house behind your parents’ home and are paying a small rent to them each month.
You think they’re playing a joke on you. You try to be a good sport.
His mother gives him a stare. She’s caught on to his game.
Jessie moves towards you to grabs your butt. “Hey, uh, Boo Boo,” he says to his mom. “Beks now needs a place to live and is going to stay in Jenny’s room, okay?”
His mother moves back to the stove to finish breakfast, ignoring him.
He laughs standing behind you as he sways you back and forth in his arms and keeps telling you that his sister, Jenny’s room is there for you if you want it. “We can get your stuff moved in tomorrow.”
You escape his grasp, find a book and sit on the couch pretending to read while you try to put together what just happened. Why did he make all of that up to his parents? Is this his way of asking you to be around more? Does he want you to move in with him? Is he just trying to see what your reaction will be? These questions consume your mind for the next few days. You’ll never be able to answer them.
***
You don’t move in with him, but you spend enough time at his house that your parents start calling you a stranger and tell you to talk him into spending more nights at your place so that your cat won’t be so lonely.
On mornings when you sleep in, he brings you coffee. When you hear him coming up the stairs, you close your mouth and move your head to cover the drool.
“Wake up, Blonde Sugar,” he says.
“Breakfast is waiting. Boo Boo outdid herself this morning. I’d give her a Purdue B.” He rates her cooking. She doesn’t seem to mind. You want to mind, but you don’t know how to be angry with him. He’s just being silly, you tell yourself.
You stretch and find that you’ve been swallowed by the waterbed. You push against the waves to get out and rush downstairs wearing his pajama pants. You’re comfortable there now. You feel like part of the family. The television is on, and Jessie is sitting in his burgundy recliner chair with the matching blanket covering his head.
“Is that Blonde Boo Boo?” You walk over to the chair. He sticks out his arm, finds your leg and holds you there for a while. You pat his head and make your way to the kitchen where his mom is filling your plate. He peaks his head out from behind the blanket and holds out his mug, beckoning his mother over to refill.
***
You’re lying together on the waterbed when he asks about your past relationships. You tell him your heart was broken. You thought you would marry the last one. He sits up and sighs, “You know that this isn’t going to end in marriage, right?”
You didn’t know.
You feel your hands go numb. You try not to cry. “Why not?” you ask.
“I’m just not the marriage type,” he says. “I want to be with you, but I’m not sure I can be with one person for that long.”
“How long do you imagine we’ll be together then?” you whisper. You regret asking this right away.
“I don’t know, anywhere from two to eleven years.”
Your chest tightens; the tears are on their way. You push yourself out of the waterbed and go to the bathroom. You sit on the toilet and look at the monkey-shaped toilet paper holder and stacks of playboy magazines that line the floor. You ask yourself, what did you expect?
You remind yourself that he was a rebound. You tell yourself you were using him and that it is okay if it ends. You talk yourself into the idea that you don’t need to get married. You don’t even need to be monogamous. You tell yourself that you’re not ready to give up the spinach and banana smoothies his mom makes you for your ride to work, or the big salads you get before dinner, or the snacks she brings you while you’re studying in the basement. You tell yourself it is worth it to stay for as long as you can. You make yourself believe that sticking around is better than saying goodbye.
***
Your ex is with a new girl, but you still walk at the park together sometimes. He tells you about her. You realize you knew her in college. You were almost friends. You both loved Stevie Nicks and almost went to see her in concert together. You tell him about Jessie. You want him to think you’ve moved on. He admits he’s a little jealous. He saw that picture of Jessie with your family on Facebook.
***
You help Jessie paint the house he’s building.
He decides he’s going to paint all his houses butternut squash yellow. You think it’s an ugly yellow and let it slip one day. He says you have bad taste.
You come to the site after work and on weekends. On one occasion, he calls to tell you to hurry to the site because he accidentally punched the nail gun through his hand. You accompany him to the hospital. He complains for days about how unnecessary it was to go to the hospital.
You clean and paint and make him coffee. You sit in 45° weather and read because you want to watch him dig, hammer, screw, bolt, hang drywall, and pour concrete. You like his calloused hands.
***
You’re in the basement together. Jessie has turned on a recorded episode of Storage Wars. He’s grading and you’re writing. He has talked you into doing a master's program, insisting you are too smart not to. You should do it, and even if you don’t become a writer, at least you will make a little more money once you report your new degree to the high school where you work.
You make more money than he does but you don’t bring it up. He didn’t get tenure at the other university where he taught because he didn’t care much for continuing research. He tells you often that grad school decimated the passion he once had for math. A PhD will take everything from you. “Permanent Head Damage,” he calls it.
***
He meets you at coffee shops and buys you lattes and studies with you. When you tell him that you’re taking the GRE, he promptly becomes your math tutor.
You tell yourself you will stay with him longer because he’s helping you. You need him. You tell yourself that it’ll be easier to end it once you’ve passed the math portion. He’s using you; you’re using him.
***
You dress up and he takes you to fancy university events and dinners. He shows you off to his colleagues and friends. He takes you to his office and pulls up your skirt. It is dark, but if people walking outside looked up, they’d see you in the window, pushed up against the glass.
He tells you to send him pictures of you so that he can email his friends and tell them about you—brag about you. He calls you his “Pretty Young Thing.”
He buys you hiking boots and Basil Hayden. He picks up Indian food on his way to your apartment. You walk around Indianapolis together looking for the next place to build. You imagine a future with him. You help him think through his building plan. He talks to you like you’re his partner—like this is your project, too.
He takes you on a trip to Lake Michigan to meet his college friends. You stay in a bed & breakfast near the water. His friends tell you they love you and that he speaks fondly of you over email. You make good jokes at dinner; you surprise yourself. You feel that this is exactly where you should be.
***
Once, while reading in the basement, he tells you he likes that you read, but that books are stupid. The only book he thinks is important is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. He tells you not to be like Jurgis.
Beat the system, he says. Don’t let it control you. Don’t let it kill you.
He tells you it is killing him. He’s depressed.
He talks to you about it sometimes, but mostly just complains about how his life plan has been derailed. He tells you he feels no joy. He tells you that you’re the only good thing in his life. He tells you that he’s not sure he can have any good things in his life if he wants to be productive. Nose to the grindstone. No distractions.
You are a distraction.
You fear your time with him is running out.
***
You are at your family’s annual family Christmas soiree. Your younger brother and sister have been co-hosting it for the past four years. They invite their many friends; you invite four or five. There are people gathered around the piano singing Christmas tunes, the six-foot tree is decorated and lined with presents. It is snowing outside. Your mother makes her famous eggnog and there is a table full of holiday-themed appetizers in the dining room you spent all day helping to prepare. You’re wearing a slim, green velvet dress and heels. You’ve invited Jessie. He didn’t want to come. He claims to be antisocial, but you still want people to meet him.
He arrives and finds his way to the kitchen. He greets your family, whom he has met before, and then promptly sits down on a chair in the corner. He gets up every now and then for more food but always goes back to his chair. You have to bring your friends into the kitchen to meet him. He talks to them for a while and then starts his “I want to leave” stare. Your friends notice this look and just think he is admiring your dress. You know better. He’s ready to go, but you’re not. You tell him he can go to your apartment if he’s tired and that you’ll be up in a bit.
“I think I’m just going to go home tonight. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to work on the house.”
***
For Christmas, he gives you an envelope. You open it to find two $100 bills. He’s regifted the money his grandmother gave him. This monetary gift, he tells you, demonstrates how much he cares: “I love money more than anything, so by giving it to you, you should know what you mean to me.”
***
You are in the basement on the couch. He’s grading; you’re grading. It’s finals week. Storage Wars is playing on the television as background noise. You are huddled under covers, reading papers and figuring final percentages. He’s got a stack of Calculus exams to get through. From the corner of your eye, you see him wince as he crosses off wrong answers. Each time a male student fails one of his tests he says, “hope you’re rich,” and each female, “hope you’re pretty.” That night, you will hear him say, “hope you’re pretty; hope you’re rich” 4 and 7 times.
You love him, you tell yourself repeatedly, hoping it’ll make your inability to leave him more rational.
***
You are in Costco with Jessie and his mother and watch as he makes her cry from frustration because he won’t stop bullying and ridiculing her. You are ashamed that you don’t do anything but say “Stop it,” and elbow him. You get a cart so that she can do her own thing and so that he will leave her alone. He can see you’re upset and tells you that he has to be firm with her because she’s so forgetful and ditsy. You tell him he’s wrong and he is unnecessarily mean, but he doesn’t hear you. You have no power, no sway. You know you can’t change him. Your only power is to break up with him, but you can’t do that.
***
He tells you that it seems like you have more testosterone than other girls. There’s something about your face structure, he says. It is more pointed, less curved, than your sisters’. He tells you that you’re strong for a girl. That you can do things your sisters probably couldn’t. This angers you. You know your sisters are strong.
He tells you that your voice isn’t as high-pitched as it should be, which is unattractive. He tells you one night in bed that he finds your younger sister more attractive than you—she’s more feminine, he explains.
You watch The Bachelor together. He tells you that if his favorite girl is chosen for The Bachelorette, he might have to apply to be on the show and date her. You laugh and tell him that they wouldn’t accept him. You think to yourself that they probably would. You start to hate the show you hated before watching it with him. You are afraid of him leaving you, even though you can’t stand anything he says.
***
He calls you out of the blue on one of your alone days to tell you he’s on his way over because he has something to tell you.
You remember that Valentine’s Day is this weekend.
You think he is going to break up with you. You don’t answer the door immediately, but stand at the top of the stairs, staring down, trying to think about what you can say to make him stay. He knocks again, you run down the stairs and let him in. He is carrying a dozen roses and chocolate. An early Valentine’s Day gift.
“You said you wanted chocolate for Valentine’s Day, right? My mom figured you’d like flowers, too.” He doesn’t stay the night.
You are afraid that you have become too attached. You tell yourself to take a step back.
***
You go to Europe for three weeks with your best friend, Alex. You’ve planned five countries in three weeks. You’ve cut and bleached your hair; you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on new clothes for the trip, thousands of dollars on plane tickets, train fairs, hostels, and Airbnb’s. You tell yourself you’re investing in a new you—a better you. Jessie is supportive in that he doesn’t really comment on your plans. He’s busy trying to get his new house rented, hopeful to start making some profit on the expensive build.
You text him a little here and there while away, but not every day. Not even every other day. He doesn’t seem to mind. You’re happily reading books on trains, eating bread and carpaccio, exploring art museums, new cities, and shopping.
When you and Alex get to the airport in Sweden to board your first flight home, you realize that you hadn’t made any plans to get a ride back from Chicago O’Hare to Indianapolis. You both call your parents to see if they would be willing to drive to Chicago to pick you up, but they’ve got plans. Knowing that you won’t want to take a bus if you don’t have to, you text Jessie and see if he can drive you both back.
He has just flown to North Dakota to pick up his new, custom-made, RAM truck. He eagerly agrees to pick you up on his way back. He wants to show off his dream truck.
He drops you off but doesn’t stay with you that night.
The next day and evening you plan to spend with your family. He tells you he wants you to stay with him but understands that you need to see your family. You have gifts to hand out and pictures to share. You’re eating tacos with you mother at a local restaurant when he texts you:
I think I miss you.
I used to be so cold and hard.
God damn.
This, you will never forget. This, you realize, is as close as he will ever come to saying he loves you.
It feels good, but you know, and your mother knows, that he is wrong for you.
That he has never been right.
Your mother is happy that you are happy to receive this text, but she warns you that he is probably not in it for the long run. You do your best to ignore her, but her words echo in your head days and weeks after.
***
You’re taking graduate classes at the university where he teaches. You meet him for coffee before class. You have sex in his office before class. You feel like a rebel. You feel important because you have access to his office, to him. He likes to meet you on the balcony of the student center. Sometimes his students will recognize him and interrupt your conversation to talk to him. He likes the attention. His students look at you as though they are trying to determine who you are to him—a student, a colleague, a girlfriend, a date. You feel like there is a sticker plastered on your forehead that reads temporary.
***
You tell him that you are thinking about applying for PhD programs. He tells you that you should. He tells you that you’re smart enough and says it in a way that makes you question if you ever believed you were before it came out of his mouth.
***
When you start applying to PhD programs, he tells you to apply to Indiana University—the school that is an hour away. You remind him that you will already have two IU degrees. You say that you should go somewhere new. You tell him you do not want to go to school in Indiana. He tells you that you’ll have to have a break-up talk soon. Long distance doesn’t work, he says.
You tell yourself you’ll be okay. You’ll be far away.
***
You get back to his house after a long excursion to Ikea. You fall into bed, and he decides to continue the break-up conversation. He tells you he doesn’t want to lose you—that he wants to stay in your life. You agree and he says, well, I guess all that’s left is to break up.
You didn’t realize it would be this soon. The conversation about the breakup has turned into the breakup and now you have to say goodbye. You sleep with him that night, thinking that you might be willing to go to school in Indiana if it means he’ll stay with you, but you remember they don’t have the program you want. You need to pursue your dream, quit your miserable job, and try to write.
The next morning, you get up early and leave without saying anything. You have to go to work.
A week later, you text him. I need my stuff. When can I come get it?
He tells you when. You bring a trash bag to fill.
As you leave, his mother hugs you goodbye. His sister cries and then you cry. You take your trash bag and drive away.
***
You see Jessie a month later at his new building lot. You’ve started dated someone new. He has too.
***
You move to Florida. He calls you and asks how the program is coming along. You talk for a while. He says he’s proud of you.
You look him up on Google. You do a deep search with his name and the name of his new girlfriend. You see that they are now married.
You realize that they got married three months after you broke up.
You spiral and assume he cheated. You tell yourself that this is why you’re so upset. Cheating is the only way this makes sense. You call everyone who ever knew you with him. You are horrified and confused. You even tell your current boyfriend, who is over 1000 miles away in New Hampshire.
You call Jessie. You’re outraged. He tells you that she just checked off all his boxes. You wonder which boxes you didn’t check off. You wonder why he tried to fuck you that one time you came home and had coffee to catch up. You wonder why he didn’t think to tell you. You wonder if he loves her. You drive yourself mad searching your memory for a clue to help you understand why he could marry her after knowing her a month but tell you that marriage was not an option.
***
A year later, you are at a thrift shop, browsing the record section when you feel a buzz in your purse. You look at your phone. His name pops up on the screen. You tuck your phone back without answering. You want to see if he’ll leave a voicemail. He does.
You listen to the voicemail more than twenty times. You have your friends listen, too. In the voicemail, he says he misses you. You smile to yourself, but you don’t call him back.
You do call him back, but a month later at your apartment’s pool after unsuccessfully trying to focus on an assigned reading.
You’re bored; you’re curious; you’re newly single.
He is happy to hear from you. He tells you his marriage is failing. You say you’re sorry to hear that, but you both know you’re not. He tells you he misses you; he thinks about you all the time. He tells you they fight morning and night; they don’t sleep in the same room; they aren’t compatible.
The boxes now unchecked.
He tells you he wants to see you and asks when you are coming home. You say probably in a month or two, but you’ll have to see. You tell him you’re not comfortable sleeping with a married man. He says he understands, but that he’d still like to have coffee. You know what having coffee turns into. You leave it open. You say you hope he can work on making his marriage work. He says its hopeless. He misses you. He wants to see you.
***
Picture this: You’re in your car, driving the 25-minute route to his house. You’re playing Lady Lamb’s song “Crane Your Neck.” Her lyrics expose the hole in your chest you’re sure he used to fill. You wish he could fill it just one more time.
And I placed my palm upon your collarbone
And I wished to fall asleep deep in your marrow
As gently as a mouse curled up in a ball
As gently as a mouse until tomorrow
You see yourself at 24, falling when you knew you shouldn’t fall. You see the lies you told yourself that broke your heart. You see that he wants you, but you know that it isn’t the way you want him to want you.
You pull into a lot two blocks from his house.
This is as far as you will let yourself go.
You tell yourself that he, too, is just someone passing through.
Rebecca Watkins is a third-year PhD student in the creative writing program at Florida State University. Rebecca’s primary interest is creative nonfiction and she is currently working on her first essay collection. She holds an M.A. in English from IUPUI and a B.S. in Secondary English Education from Indiana University, Bloomington. Rebecca previously taught high school English in Indianapolis, Indiana. She now resides in Tallahassee, Florida with her tuxedo cat, Charlie Chaps.