5 July 2009
On the Southern edge of Graceland Cemetery, you asked me: “What about you and boys?” and I told you about me and boys as we trudged across a gravel parking lot and found no entrance through the chain link fence, entwined with weeds.
On the Eastern side of Graceland cemetery, we passed a tiny playground where a little girl played against a backdrop of tumbled weeds and you said: “It’s just so different here. They want to get as many partners as they can. They just don’t understand. Like the more girls you can get, the better you are. Try in the middle of one of their brag sessions to say that it’s always better with that one person you really care about—when you know each other-- they don’t even stop to listen.”
On the Northern side of Graceland cemetery, as we walked a broken concrete path past rushing cars, you told me about the girl you were with in Nebraska, and how you were the first boy this awkward, Christian girl kissed, then the first boy she slept with and how before you first kissed her, you told her—“I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t know what we can have, I’m leaving no matter what after the school year” and how she said, surprising you: “I can imagine a pretty physical relationship.” You shrug. “She was amazing, the best girl I ever had. I truly believe when people are ready, they just are.” I walked and I wondered if from her side, it was as easy to walk away from their relationship as they agreed. Somehow, I guessed not.
On the Western side, we found the entrance and we wandered in, you reading the tombstones in German of Vater und Mutter, Alina und Otto. We ate impossibly sweet mulberries, juice staining our fingers as I told you about my grandmother, buried under the same tombstone as the man who abandoned her: Rest In Peace.
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