Scars

My body has no tattoos, though getting one sketched on my skin has struck my fleeting fancy a number of times. Scars, I believe, have always been enough for me. My pulsing shell has a number of them, each with their own story, memories that can elicit a chuckle or summon a heavy sigh. The faint one I have between my eyebrows is from the night before Thanksgiving of 2006, the night I cheated on Julia, a drunken act that sent me spiraling into anxious, guilt-ridden insomnia for months before we parted; the one running down my chest is the only physical remnant of the surgery I had for my pigeon chest when I was 15 (since the surgeon wouldn’t let me keep the ribs he lopped off).

Lately, I’ve looked at this miniscule one on my left hand, above the knuckle for my index finger. I got that one the night Colleen first kissed me. We were at a bar, drinking and telling stories about our families, our lives before we had stumbled into each other, like we had for months before, when my hand flailed to make a point and singed against the cigarette of a patron who stood next to us. The next morning, foggy and weary and confused in my recollection, in how to feel about what happened, I looked at it since it was raw and irritated when it rubbed against my blanket. I shook my head and grinned that I had been blessed with a token, a reminder of that night.

After then, we carried on our affair (she had a boyfriend of nine years) for over two months, profusely making out at bars, an occasional street corner, fog-covered rooftop or twinkling parks all over town. It continued until I quit my job and left for a vacation before I went to school. It was our first time doing such a thing, like two grown-ups negotiating tricycles down sinuous Lombard Street. Even before I came back from my trip and decided we should end it, we had seen it coming. We wrote about it, sometimes, in all the e-mails we volleyed, back and forth, at the office.

Now that we’re not even friends, the city I live in is now one peppered with scabs, waiting to be ripped off, places where we shared an abundance of joy, moments we’ll never have again. They are places I have to look away from if I’m under a blanket of blue, or gloss over with a bittersweet smile when I have no regret. Some of the songs we played to and for each other, at those jukeboxes, can be painful to hear.

When my heart is choked by those aches, by that remembrance of foolish hope I once had, or when I’m reminded that she’s no longer a part of my life, I think of my most treasured night with her. It was the one time we had in which I felt she truly let herself go, didn’t hold her affection back, and really allowed herself to swirl in a world of just us. That night, after work and a few drinks, I put Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” on, and we belted it out to each other and for all to hear, as we sat at the bar, like a 21st Century version of Sonny and Cher, or Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. We went nuts when the opening piano chords to Ray Charles’ “Mess Around” came on; the song was very dear to her (and now to me, though I already loved it before) because it’s one she and her siblings, far away in Minnesota, used to dance and go bonkers to when they were growing up. We did, too, hootin’ at the bar (well, mostly me), before I flew to the jukebox, inspired to play my next set of songs, when she tried to wrench my hands away for her turn. Even if she doesn’t, I still remember, while wrestling for supreme control of the sacred jukebox, when I stared into her eyes and said, “I’m crazy about you, Pizzi,” and she smiled and said without hesitation, “I’m crazy about you, Libbo.” (they were nicknames she came up with). That night, she hugged me and tucked her head into my chest, into my arms, like she never had and never would again. She did that so many times that one of my sleeves smelled of her perfume, the fresh, soapy scent that still reminds me of her, whenever someone walks by and leaves such a whiff of it. A few days after that night, when I sorely had to wash my dirty laundry, I decided not to clean it, in case I wanted to embrace it in my hands and conjure the memory held in that aroma.

I remember those moments, sometimes, when I look at my scar. Recently, when I noticed that it was fading, becoming barely noticeable, I briefly thought of lighting a cigarette to scorch it again, but that wouldn’t be earnest to its true moment of inception. But more importantly, it would be sad and pathetic, an attempt to continue something that is no longer there.