The Seven Year Itch

We spent our days like rolling stones. Though not as wealthy as we once were, we still managed to float easy from place to place. We would get bored in the tiny purple room in his mom’s house with only a mattress that had permanent imprints of our two bodies intertwined, hugging and a large flat screen tv. The room would have been pretty bleak had it not been for the brightly colored walls. Days spent in the purple room would consist of me sitting on my computer and researching all kinds of things from personality disorders to politics. He would sit in his thrift shop chair, squish his feet into the plush brown square of carpet I bought for him and wind up for the day with his video games.

And sometimes I would share the interesting columns I was reading with him and other times I’d just look over at him and touch his hair and kiss his face. And he would kiss mine. And we’d go back to our bubble. Inside these purple walls we were the only two people that existed.

But there was always a feeling of wanting to grow; of wanting to grow together; of needing something more. We truly were extensions of each other. What I wanted for myself, I wanted for him and vice versa.

After many hours of debate we concluded that changing our perception would be a way to view and experience our relationship in different ways. It wasn’t that it had been seven years together and we had tired of each other. We felt we could never burn out on each other’s love. Like many couples, we weren’t experiencing that seven year itch. In fact we didn’t feel whole without each other. We didn’t believe codependence was a bad thing as many psychiatry websites would let on. It was only a bad thing if we broke up, which we were determined to never let happen. Even without the rings and the legal documentation, we had made commitments to each other. We knew we would be together forever.

His hair was now short, but the shade of brown was so familiar as the sun gleamed off of it in the fever of Summer. Every June for the past seven years of our courtship I’d admired the sun’s rays cascading over his shiny brown mane. He found it strange that I was always staring at him but I couldn’t refrain from paying attention to even the most modest details because everything about him just thrilled me. Whether short or long, his was still the only hair I really liked.

Soon the clouds rolled in to join the sun’s lonely party. She would hide behind them, relieved of duties of always having to be the most beautiful and the day became slightly algid. We were now enjoying each other’s company under a pale blue sky that kissed a murky tranquility on its horizon. Endless sand and sand colored beach chairs even though it was no longer a beach day. We contemplated what we would do together. What was next for us? Six years behind us, the seventh just beginning. We wondered what the future would unravel for us.

An uppity man wearing a shirt two sizes too large for him pulled up to our private beach in a black beamer. He had now officially entered our world. Something we rarely let others into. But he had a present for us; a way for us to change our perception. We wanted to spend the hazy day in a rare drug addled haze. It was a way to celebrate our seven years.

I gave the man his crisp green bills and he gave me the little blue pills. I watched until the black car was completely out of site and we were alone again in our world. We split the first blue pill as we weren’t sure of its strength.

Lazily we lounged on the flesh colored chairs. And suddenly, it felt like a beach day again. The mild overcast felt warm. The gray sky looked warm. The sun’s balmy distant rays began to feel as if they were comfortably baking us even in the slight off season cool breeze. He hugged me. And it felt as if two people were hugging me; one from inside of my body, coursing through my veins, cradling my soul and his tight grip embracing my pale flesh exterior. I wasn’t sure what love was, but I had an idea of love. I always thought he was it. I thought our relationship was it, but the blue pills enhanced the love, slightly skewing my previous reality.

We would converse with each other about the most mundane of things and yet feel completely enticed; namely the other people on the beach. We would notice everything; the group of older people with leathery skin enjoying the day.

“Why are the only other people on the beach old?” he asked with a wry tilt of his head.

“Because we’re unemployed, dummy,” I remarked. “And those people obviously collect social security so they can sit on the beach all day long. Only the unemployed and the old can truly enjoy life for what it is these days.”

He laughed, a deep, honest chuckle. “I’m not unemployed, you know?”

“Oh my gosh, you aren’t?” I cooed flatly, raising my eyebrows.

“Nope! My full time job is taking care of you!” He tickled me.

I grinned and tried to tickle him back even though he never had any reaction to it. “Oh, shut the fuck up. That’s my job too. You’d just die if I ever went to work!”

My gray eyes locked on his, “You’re right,” he pondered his response. “I probably would die.”

We split another blue pill. We kept splitting blue pills until the sun grew colder and the leaves grew colorful.

Suddenly the little things didn’t bother us anymore; people’s judgments of our nomadic lifestyle and their concerns over our obsessions with each other, not always having gas money or food. None of it mattered. Everything was okay again in our world. Until the blues would dissipate in our systems and the other kind of blues would come. The kind of blues that would make us snap at each other. These were the kind of blues that would make me cringe at the sound of his soothing voice. These were the kind of blues that would make him hurl his cell phone at the wall if I asked him to fix me a sandwich.

These were the nasty kind of blues. Not the little round blues packed with artificial happiness. These blues even the best salesman couldn’t pitch to me, but I had unknowingly gotten roped into the game the first time we had ingested the initial pill. I paid for our highs, but I was grudgingly paying for our lows as well.

We loved each other when our brains were pervaded with the blue powder. We hated each other and we hated our world when the blue would go away. We would fall hard and even hugging each other just didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t complete without our blue friend, our second lover who adamantly came first. We had to comply to her every demand if we wanted to feel whole like before; like before we ever met her.

Sometimes I’d spend time with our blue lover all alone. I wanted her all to myself. There were many nights when he would punch walls and cry in the purple room which we’d often return to by default. Despite his agony, I breathed a sigh of relief, just rolling over and going to sleep, never letting on that I was having an affair with what was supposed to be both of our lovers. I didn’t want to make him jealous or see him hurt, but blue was just too good. She was making me quite selfish.

After his tantrum would end, he would scratch my back for me, as I promised him I’d get more of the pill for us tomorrow. The blue pill made me itch. But it was a good itch, satisfying in the fact that I was positive she was inside me when the itch came. She felt so good inside of me.

She was a nasty, dirty lover. She’d leave scratches all up and down my back. Likewise, my thighs and arms and chest were clothed in her red claw mark frenzy.

I didn’t want her to go. I wanted her to hug me forever. But after a couple of hours she’d always leave. She’d leave me cut up and feeling empty as if I’d meant nothing to her. She meant so much more to me than I did to her. She loved to fuck with our heads. She loved to come in between us and leave us feeling barren and like strangers when she was gone.

Now just the two of us, we stared at each other, on our mattress bathtub of sweat.

“I miss you,” I bellowed, my yellow shirt twisted. The desperation of my tone was wretched.

His brown eyes didn’t leave my gaze. They looked different to me somehow. He looked defeated. “I miss you too, but I don’t feel whole anymore! I need the blues! What the fuck do we do?!”

I always hated when he panicked because he used to be my rock. He wasn’t allowed to lose his nerve. That had always been my job.

Unable to bare the mental anguish, we called once more on our blue lover. She came to us in the same black beamer she’d always arrived in. And everything was okay again. Our world was ours again. Although we both knew it was a distortion; feelings always came before logic. Feelings made everything seem logical to us.

Even with our greasy hair, our malnourished stomachs and uncleansed bodies, we told each other it would all be alright. We just had to figure out a way to feel happy forever.

Laying on the stained mattress I smiled at my original lover, while my new lover was inside of me once again. “Remember what John Lennon wanted to be when he grew up?”

“Um… a musician… dummy,” he retorted.

“No!” I took my hands and grabbed his face. “He wanted to be happy when he grew up.”

“Well, we’re grown up and we are happy. We’re living John Lennon’s dream. We must be pretty special,” he sighed, his eyes half opened.

We enjoyed the ensuing silence. The white noise of the crisp Autumn air being pushed through the mini window fan was like music to us.

I broke up another blue pill for us to split, scratching at my skin, rubbing my tiny button nose raw.

“Here. Let me do it,” He insisted after he gulped down the blue. He scratched my body for me. This was our seven year itch.