A List of Things Found in Ohio in 1993
Longing. The gay kind. A high school made of red bricks. A library. A wedding cake courthouse. What else? Perverse spatiality. Contiguity without consistency. Cars. Tree-lined streets. Fast food restaurants. Someone once said the past is safer because it has already happened. There’s nothing to dread. But that isn’t true. I can tell you that much. Dread is everywhere in the past. The shaded running path around the reservoir. The bathrooms at Heistand Woods. The gray halls of the high school. Lockers. Fluorescent lights. The object of desire is either a fantasy or a lure. Classrooms. Old concrete staircases. The biology lab. Vials of fruit flies stored in shoeboxes. Some kind of experiment. Inheritance patterns. The effects of mutation. He’s almost like a shadow to me now, you know? The outline of a young man. Soccer jerseys. Brown hair. The smell of drugstore cologne. I can’t even really see him anymore. The way he would sometimes bump his shoulder against mine when we were at our lockers, and for the rest of the day, I’d wonder if it meant something. The way he gave me his used gum after lunch as a joke. I chewed the gum. I was really glad to have it because I thought it was almost like kissing him. The gymnasium. The principal’s office. The buzzing soda machines. I wanted him to be my boyfriend even though I knew how ridiculous that sounded. I wanted to go for pizza and see a movie. I wanted to kiss him for real. Psychogeography. The hidden meaning of landscapes. When exactly did he stop talking to me? The month? The day? Cornfields. The crumbling football stadium. Banners painted with red letters. My best friend who still lives in Ohio says it isn’t the same as it used to be. Things are better there now. I laugh a little when she says this. I ask her, better how?
