I moved out when I turned twenty-one. Not to learn or work, but to hide my habit. It started when I bought my first clock– the black cat with the tick tock eyes. Before I knew it, I was on my 400th, maybe 500th clock. I lost track completely and couldn’t think back through the thick fog of rage. Every morning I bought a new clock and every night I broke it before bed. I couldn’t sleep with the sound.
It became too difficult to hide this from my parents. They thought I was really into punk music because that’s what I would blast as I fished my hammer out from underneath my bed and went to town on the clock. Every night.
I told them it was time for me to carve my own path. They moved me into my apartment and hugged me goodbye. I had no furniture. I had a mattress and a plant. And a clock.
I applied for a job as a receptionist. I had zero job experience, but my hair goes up perfectly into a French twist, and I have a good voice for answering the phone and asking people how I can help them. This was a week into living alone. To celebrate my new job, and also to ‘get out of the house’ like my mother encouraged me to do when I last spoke to her on the telephone, I decided to go to a bar and get drunk. I chose the bar nearest to my building, so I could stumble back home and not spend money on a taxi.
I put lotion all over my body. I smelled like vanilla and looked like a glazed ham.
At the bar, I didn’t know what to drink. I sat there thinking for a while. While I was thinking, a handsome man in his late twenties or maybe early thirties came in and sat down a couple chairs to my right. He ordered a gin and tonic. When the bartender came back to me and asked me what I wanted, the words gin and tonic were so stuck in my head that I couldn’t think of anything else and reluctantly whispered to him, ‘a gin and tonic’, but he didn’t hear me over the music so he said ‘sorry?’ and I tried again, just slightly louder, ‘a gin and tonic’, and his voice thundered through the bar, ‘a gin and tonic?’ and the handsome man looked over and smiled as I winced.
He told me ‘good choice’ and then started flirting with me. He even moved to sit right next to me. Well, after a couple more of those gin and tonics, I started to flirt back. We both flirted so skillfully that we ended up making out all the way back to my apartment. At the door, he pulled away for a second and said that he had something incredibly funny to tell me, and to remind him in the morning. Then we dove into bed and made love.
After the love was made, he fell right asleep, but I stared at my clock. It ticked. I stared. I couldn’t break it now, with a man in my bed. There was nowhere to go. I thought to maybe step outside and smash it on the stairwell, but it was so late that it would definitely wake the neighbors and cause a commotion. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.
He became very comfortable, instantly, waking up and making coffee with my French Press. He told me about his job and his childhood, how he wanted very much to tap dance but was bullied for it. He showed me a scar on his knee from a rollerblading accident. I liked how his entire face scrunched up when he laughed, which was often. He asked me if I wanted to get dinner that night and I happily accepted the invitation.
We had sushi and he paid. We were there for hours, they basically had to kick us out. Then, it was the previous night all over again. The love making was wonderful, but I could’ve ripped my head off when he turned over to sleep and I realized that I’d brought him back to my place again, where the clock who got to live an extra day was happily ticking on the wall. I suspected that I was falling in love. Only love could make someone so stupid.
After that, he practically moved in. I mean, he’d still leave every morning and go to work, but we spent so much time together it felt like he was always there. There was always a pair of his pants on my floor. At night, I tossed and turned and cursed the ticking. During the day, I didn’t mind one bit. I was over the moon for him. I’d never felt so peaceful, and I’d never smiled that much. We listened to records and danced in the kitchen, and we took long walks in the park, even when it was raining.
About a month in, we were on one of these walks. It was not raining. It was hot and we were sharing a vanilla ice cream cone. We heard someone up ahead in the distance calling his name. This man came jogging towards us, really jazzed. “Hey pal, how’s it going? Haven’t seen you in a minute!”
“Hey, good to see you. It’s going well, yeah. Oh, this is–” He looked down at me and then he kind of paused and stuttered and then, “ –my friend…”
Oh I just about lost it. I waited until his dopey friend was gone, and then I shoved the ice cream cone at him and told him I was going back to work and to not wait up.
I sat crying into my hands at my desk until the phone rang. I knew it was him, but I wiped my hands on my skirt and answered it. He told me he wanted to talk to me and that he was waiting outside. I still had an hour left and he knew that. He was standing outside when I came out an hour later. I told him I was tired and wanted to go home. We walked in silence all the way to my building, up the stairs, and to my front door. I told him I wanted to be alone for the night and that we could talk tomorrow.
“At least walk me home?” he smiled, all crooked.
I frowned, “What do you mean walk you home? We’re already at my door.”
He was still smiling, but now looked slightly puzzled, “I’m sorry, I was just making a joke. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
He kissed me on the cheek and turned and started going up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” I called after him.
“Home…” he said.
I followed him. We walked up two flights, and he pulled out a pair of keys, and opened a door just like that.
I completely broke down laughing, which made him break down too, and we laughed like that for at least thirty minutes. I was crying and had to run to use his bathroom before I peed myself.
What had happened was that the morning after the night we met, the funny thing I was supposed to remind him to tell me was that we lived in the same building, but I forgot to tell him, and he thought he had. Those darn gin and tonics.
Once my bladder was empty and my eyes were dry, he apologized for not calling me his ‘girlfriend’ and told me that when he looked at me at the park, he didn’t know what to call me, because he didn’t think the word ‘girlfriend’ was fitting and couldn’t think of a more fitting one that wasn’t ‘wife’.
I sighed, took his hands in mine, and told him that before I agreed to marry him, there was something he should know. Then I told him about the clocks. God, what a weight lifted off my chest. “You know, I got so angry at you at the park, but I think it was less so what you said, and more so the fact that I haven’t gotten more than four hours of sleep a night since we met.”
A week later, both of our things were packed up. I considered giving away that clock, the one that had lasted a month, but in the end, I broke it. It had seen too much. We got married and moved into a house without a clock, and now I never know what time it is, but I don’t need to.
AHHHH THIS WAS SO GOOD I WAS SO INTO IT!!!
L🕰️VED!!!