Daisy Whitney

Excerpt from THE COMING ATTRACTION

“I didn’t really have the breakfast sent up here,” I confessed.

“I’m not that hungry,” he said, standing next to the bed.

Our voices trailed off. I felt the momentary silence, like a vacuum, begging for me to fill it with words. Eric had been so open with me already downstairs, sharing his letter, his memorized thoughts penned to me. Surely I could do the same. I could be that person who wasn’t afraid to be honest, to take risks, to listen to instinct. “I guess I just wanted to kiss you without having eyes in the back of my head. Without wondering who might be watching. It just seemed to be safer here in your room,” I said.

I needed to make the next move. So I simply crossed the two or three feet of space between us in the tiny, tiny hotel room, as if I’d never been stuck in the first place. Maybe I really hadn’t been.

I placed my hands on his shoulders and looked up at him. I wasn’t tall, but I wasn’t short either. I was 5’4 ½ but bumped myself up to 5’5” for my driver’s license and I kept in shape as all good New Yorkers do – by walking. Eric didn’t tower over me. He was just the right height, a standard six as he had said.

Nick was shorter, lankier. He had a musician’s body. Eric was sturdier and taller, like a lacrosse player. But I didn’t want to think about Nick or about everything in Eric that wasn’t Nick. I wanted to push Nick from my mind, shoo him away and enjoy the next hour or so. Just enjoy that Eric was taller than me, taller than I was used to. That he was broad, but not bulky. That he was here. That he felt good as I leaned my face in to kiss him again.

This kiss was deeper, closer. My arms wrapped around his neck, while my hands worked their way up into his soft hair. His hands pressed firmly onto my back. I felt hungrier than yesterday, but maybe that’s just because I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I thought momentarily of the French toast being made, laced with powdered sugar and strawberries. Then there were Eric’s lips on mine, sweeter than the breakfast that would go uneaten in the kitchen at the Hudson Hotel when an unemployed actor discovered a deserted table. Eric was sweeter than any hot chocolate, chocolate milk or lemonade.

Excerpt from THE BREAK-UP ALBUM

I sit down in the café and pull out my magazines, watching briefly through the window as Alex and his dad walk down the street. My heart feels heavy for a moment as the two of them cross the block, hand in hand, then leave my line of sight. I miss the days when we were a threesome, when we’d each hold one of Alex’s hands and the three of us would walk down the street, visit a cafe, play frisbee in the park. I do miss the quiet normalcy of being a family. But so it goes and here we are now just another divorcing couple in New York City, just another man and woman whose vows were nixed, just another pair of exes living separate lives.

Sometimes, when I feel dark and moody, when I get cynical and jaded, I wish we would fight like a regular old divorcing man and woman. I wish we could lob insults and invectives at each other with vigorous abandon. But just like that night at his apartment when I threw his phone, he wouldn’t take the bait. He wouldn’t fight back. So I’d just stand there yelling too much, feeling too much, the only one with any emotions for the other, just like it had always been. I wish he would push back, because I think that sort of release might be good for me. I feel like that horse at the races, the one who’s bucking at the gate, snarling and huffing out horse fumes or something, nostrils flaring, hooves furiously clawing at the dirt, ready for the bell to ring, the gates to fly open, setting him loose.

I notice a cologne ad in The Advocate open in front of me. I laugh silently, then think why not? Of course, there’d be cologne ads in The Advocate. So I peel it open and lean my nose towards the strip of scent. I close my eyes, telling myself it’s GQ or Men’s Fitness, that it’s a magazine for straight men, that it’s a Daniel Craig I’m sniffing rather than a Rupert Everett.

It smells good. It smells like a man. And I wonder if this feeling, this bucking horse feeling, really isn’t about anger wanting to be unleashed. I wonder if it’s something else, something more potent, more powerful, something else that’s been building up for more than a few years now.