Twilight at Carbon Lake.
I remember a trip we went on once, right at the very end. We went to the lake.
I was never very outdoorsy, and I didn’t really want to go, but love is a crazy, fucked up sort of thing, so I did. For you. I did a lot of things for you. I woke up at five thirty in the morning for you. I dug out my old swim trunks for you. I skipped breakfast for you. I drove two and a half hours for you. I put on sunscreen and bugspray for you. I did a lot of things for you.
In my dreams the night before I had imagined the lake as a black cesspool, ruined by pollution and contamination, a hateful and poisonous thing, perhaps even demonic. I had dreamed of black hands grasping at me, one of them grabbing onto my leg and dragging me to some kind of horrible fate.
Of course, in the end it was a beautiful lake, and that just made me hate it even more.
We loaded our boat into the water and you took control. The lake was your territory (of course, by that point, what wasn’t your territory?) and you gave me a little tour. You showed me your father’s cabin - burned down since then, thank the lord. You showed me “the best fishing spots,” though I didn’t see a single fish that entire day. You showed me your clearing, the hidden, tucked away spot at the back of the lake where you lost your virginity.
Fuck you. You think it’s okay to do that to someone? You think it’s okay to show the man you haven’t slept with in six months the place where you lost your virginity? You think it’s okay to call him up drunk in the night years later and tell him about your hilarious coworker who keeps pressuring you for sex (but it’s okay, because you won’t give in to him!) Do you think it’s okay to still be in love with him when he’s clearly moved on? It’s not fucking okay. It’s not.
You had invited some friends along, so we went back to the shore to meet with them. We waited in silence for a few minutes until their car pulled up. I had never met any of them before.
I tried. I did a lot of things for you, and the one thing I always did was try. I tried and I tried and I tried. I tried to have fun with your friends, I tried to be cheery and sunny and I tried to be happy with you, I tried to just smile at you and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do any of it. That was when I realized that I didn’t love you anymore.
When they left, later, you looked at me. You knew. You had to know. You couldn’t be naive enough not to know. You had the gall to speak to me. You tried to start a conversation.
“James? Are you okay? You seem…off.”
I looked at you. I really looked at you. I thought about what I was about to do. “I hate this place,” I said.
You looked shocked and appalled for a moment, and then you put your pouting face on, but there was a moment, right before that, right before you started your terrible, annoying fucking pouting, where I saw your true face and I realized that it wasn’t the lake that was black and polluted and demonic and awful and poisonous and terrible.
“I love this place,” you pouted. “I’ve always loved it. This place is the most important place in the world to me.”
“I hate it here. I always hated it here.”
“Why?”
It had already clicked for me, of course, but it shocks me to this day that it took you this fucking long to put the fucking pieces together.
“Because you brought me here, I think, and maybe I always hated you, too.”
And that was it.
