After a While, Crocodile
After a While, Crocodile1
Dear You—2
It was corned beef hash at the Golden Nugget after alt-country at The Hideout when my phone buzzed. A text from you: I’m in Chicago. Come see me. Well, I am slow on the uptake, but quick with the cliches3 so I was like, who does he think he is? Waltzing into my town—and it’s still my town, though I don’t technically live there right now—thinking I’ll come running, yeah, if he wants me to.4 M saw the shook look on my face and shook her head. No no no no no. She knew. She knew.5 She was there for all of it.
The motel hookup, and the falling in love long-distance. For the photobooth striptease and the cocaine binges; the moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel.6 She was there for—call for the doctor! call for the nurse! call for the lady with the alligator purse!7–the puke and the pink lines of pregnancy tests. She was there when you said: What’re you gonna do about it? And so: “I’ll miss you,” I say to the water, to the son or daughter I thought better of.8 Well, it served me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.9 Then your: What right did you have, my child too…10 And look what you’ve done, you gigolo. You know that I loved you, hon, but I didn’t want to know11 what I discovered next. That you’d been fucking your ex, and god knows how many other girls the entire time we were together. (I consider them my sisters, and I want their numbers.12
She was there for the aftermath of me, running from boy to boy to girl to boy, my slut rebounds. I hoped one might sweep me off my feet the way you had and stay around to pick me up, but. All I had was loss, and everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me.13 M consulted the tarot cards on my behalf and it seemed the deck was stacked with nothing but The Tower and the Three of Swords. Heartbreak, sorrow, disaster—what else is new?
Until H—one of your best friends—told me he’d had feelings for me since the night we met. (I mean the night he and I met, which was also the night you and I met.) And I thought: maybe this time, for the first time, love won’t hurry away.14 He crooned: my aim is true15 but we lived halfway across the country from each other and I was still recovering from the aborted love affair with you. So H and I were just a few months of offkey serenades over late night phone lines, another near miss, and not much more.
You reappeared two days before my birthday, with your crocodile tears, your jaws so gently smiling, welcoming me in16 with your reminders of things that might have been. And I said: Tonight, my heart is full of a sad song.17 My heart beat ¾ time and you waltzed me into bed and—Arrêtez la musique!18 I can’t be with you unless you cut off your limbs, cut off your hair, cut off your every other love affair. I’m sure you see the irony there, my darling. A notorious libertine like yourself presenting me with that particular ultimatum. What a laugh.
Another aftermath. See, sometimes you just get tired, and you must try not to die; and give your love though no one may receive.19 That was me: throwing my love, my sex, myself, at anyone who got near me, hoping it would stick. This time. B said, when I told her of another of these short-lived hookups, sad half-hearted flings: You press your luck up against his body. Now you’re stuck.20 Well, I like it down and dirty21, as you well know. (You remember the bathtubs22, the blowjobs23, the bruises.)
Yeah, you texted me while I had a mouth full of corned beef and eggs and M shook her head no and she was right, so: Sorry. Can’t. I texted back. See ya later, alligator. You replied: I’ll be here for a week, if you change your mind. I wasn’t going to. I went back to Wisconsin, figured being 1.5 hours away would remove some of the temptation. You spent the next few days texting, calling, emailing. Your please please pleas. Crocodile promises you’d be true this time. Maybe.
Never again, I empty-promised myself. Went out to the bar I got wasted at so many wasted nights, tried to anesthetize my longing with whiskey. This guy I sorta knew said: Will you come home with me? I wasn’t that interested but he reminded me a little of a ghost that broke my heart before I met you24; the sideways grin and stoned blue eyes of a junkie I’d loved long before I ever tried to quit you cold turkey.
It’s a wet August night, thick with rain. I’m counting every drop, about to blow my top25, and the air, the viscous air, pressed against my face.26 Okay. I came home with him. All the light in his house is a murky blue-green; it stinks of fermented grass and swampy mud and a fishlike whiff of sophisticated rotten meat.27 Wanna see my alligators?, he asks, and no shit, an entire room is filled up by a big pool of alligators; all scales and toothy jaws snap-snap and those spooky swamp-green eyes staring at me. I’m wondering if he’s gonna kill me and feed me to them? And the reptile stench makes me itch. But mostly I’m half-feral with boredom. Should I stay or should I go28, but where to go? When, buzz buzz, it’s you: Come back to me, to Chicago.
Must my foolish heart betray me so?29 Well. We are proof that the heart is a risky fuel to burn. What’s left after that’s all gone, I hope to never learn.3031 Love is real, unstoppable, actually a wild animal.32 I’m an alligator; I’m a mama-papa comin’ for you.33 See you soon.
After a while, crocodile,
E
Author’s Note: I wrote the first draft of this story during Ariel Gore’s Winter Intensive writing workshop in December 2021. The story itself came from one of the assignments, but I was reading Daphne Gottlieb’s Saint 1001 at the time and decided to write it in the manner of that book (i.e., epistolary and with footnotes). It appeared on Ariel’s website, Literary Kitchen, in the summer of 2022 (alongside my review of Saint 1001 + an interview I conducted with Daphne), but she has since moved the website and the older posts are no longer available. Daphne Gottlieb has a new book of poems which came out recently, so I decided to repost both this story and the interview/review here.
“I will say you, you, like an old love song. You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands.” —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
World/Inferno Friendship Society, “The Lady with the Alligator Purse”
Murder City Devils (Neil Diamond), “I’ll Come Running” (second-person pronouns changed to third-person)
We know, we know, we know.
Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”
nursery rhyme
Dorothy Parker (paraphrased)
Fuck you for thinking you got to be Rob Gordon, when I was the record-store employee and DJ who lived in Chicago.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “The Long Grift”
Cabaret, “Maybe This Time”
Ibid.
“How doth the little crocodile / Improve his shining tail / And pour the waters of the Nile / On every golden scale! // How cheerfully he seems to grin, / How neatly spreads his claws, / And welcomes little fishes in / With gently smiling jaws!” —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Edith Piaf, “L’accordeoniste”
Crooked Fingers, “You Must Build a Fire”
The Replacements, “Anywhere’s Better Than Here”
Ibid. (Second-person pronouns changed to first.)
In motels and other people’s apartments, scummy as soap, us, sometimes they were the only places we could be alone.
“Honey, I’m a cocksucker. What are you?” —Lou Reed
Irma Thomas, “It’s Raining”
Patti Smith, “Summer Cannibals”
Two answers on Quora, one by Clayton Emery (https://qr.ae/pG6p3f), the other by Davinder Palyal (https://qr.ae/pG6pBn)
The Clash, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”
Lotte Lenya (Kurt Weill), “Foolish Heart”
Songs: Ohia, “Being in Love”
Cf. paragraphs 1-9
World/Inferno Friendship Society, “So Long to the Circus”
David Bowie, “Moonage Daydream”
This is some incredible flash!
Love the Ani DiFranco ref ... she's the BEST live. I thought I was about to die at her show, but I'm pretty sure a joke kept my face symmetrical. https://darby687.substack.com/p/how-to-get-yourself-murdered