revelatrix | May 16th, 2025 9:13PM
this girl i knew
Hey all, Roxie here. It’s been a while, but I’m surviving. There’s always more to learn, and there’s always more to do. Responsibilities have a habit of sneaking up on you when you aren’t looking. Try as you might, you can’t ignore anything forever.
There was this woman I met in the time between checking out of that motel and coming here. Forgive the non-sequitur, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
I’ll let her remain anonymous. It’s really the least I can do. She was a little older than me, a little taller, a little more put together. She had black hair and brown eyes and these little round glasses that looked like they didn’t belong in this day and age.
We met at a rest stop in god-knows-where, somewhere on the boundary where the mundane world falls away into the soup of dreams and nightmares. I was working there, scrounging up a little money before moving on. She was just passing through.
I gotta say, that place was weird. It was at the bottom of this impossibly deep valley, hot and wet and full of plants that definitely don’t grow on Earth. The sun was red and large and we only got to see it for a couple hours a day in the window where it hung at the top of the sky between the sheer cliffs. The people there were nice, though. They gave me soup when I was hungry and a warm bed when I needed rest. They even taught me how to keep the bugs off. I figured I owed them.
I helped make the beds and clean up the place. You know, the usual. It didn’t pay much, but I didn’t need much. It was a nice little gig to rebuild the savings I’d depleted over the past months. Once in a while, I had to greet a guest. Some of them were nice, some of them weren’t, but none of them were terrible. I could probably dredge up some of my notes about them, but that’s a story for another time.
Anyway, I met her a couple weeks in. It was late when she came in, so late that I (working the graveyard shift) was the only one to greet her. Even then, I was practically falling asleep at the desk. I remember her looking at me and flashing me the knowing smile that comes when girls like us recognize each other. We talked a little as she fished some money out of her bag and I went through the motions of checking her into an available room. We exchanged names. She told me she was a journalist running a near-mundane culture column. I told her I was something similar — which was pretty much accurate but less embarrassing than the truth. She laughed a little at the serendipity and headed up to her room for some sorely needed rest. Nothing much happened for the rest of the night.
I was surprised she was still there when I woke up the next afternoon. She let me sit next to her at lunch, which was pretty nice. It was about then when I realized she was really, really pretty. Like, damn. I wish I could pull that off.
While we were eating, and before I could begin to interrogate the feeling in my chest, she told me she would be staying a while. She’d been on the road for some time and she needed a place to revise and edit her findings. I told her she might learn a little more, considering what kinds of people come to this place. She asked me to tell her more, and so I did.
The conversation lasted long after everyone else had gone. We got stuck with cleaning duty as the last ones out, but we didn’t really mind. It’s pretty easy to talk when you’re just sweeping floors and washing dishes. I even ended up telling her about Siete Lágrimas de Oro (removed from the context in which I met him, of course. Even I know not to trauma-dump to a woman I just met.)
Despite that, she seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. With enough experience, you learn how to tell when people are just humoring you. This wasn’t it. It feels good to be understood, you know? To be able to look at someone and know that it’s not just in one ear and out the other. And then we’d switch roles, and she’d tell me all about the things she was studying, and how much she loved her job, and where she planned to go next.
I had a few things to handle before dinner, so we couldn’t talk forever. The way she smiled when I suggested we talk later made my heart flutter like a drunken butterfly.
Yeah. It was that bad. So sue me. (Please don’t.)
Dinner was pretty uneventful. It was my turn to help with cooking — which was fun, don’t get me wrong. I learned how to cut up plants I’d never seen before and use spices with mild psychedelic effects like it was no big deal. The innkeeper guy was happy to teach me how. He was basically what you’d expect from his job description. You know, a big guy, on the older side, arms like hairy tree trunks, impressive mustache. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. He was great.
That being said, it was all just passing me by that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I’m pretty sure the innkeeper could see my disappointment when he told me she was swamped with work and was eating in her room. I tried to shake it off, but it just sort of lingered there like hot air at my back. I still ate a fair bit, though. Not eating pretty much always makes things worse. Also, the food was still really fucking good.
After dinner and a few other chores, I went up and knocked on her door to ask her if she was done eating, and if I could take her plate back. To my surprise, she let me in. She’d finished drafting the article she had been working on, and was just about to head down.
Originally, I was just gonna take her plate back down and give her some time to rest. It must have been embarrassingly obvious that I wanted to talk to her, because she asked me to stay and chat a while.
She told me all about the article she was working on. It was about the history of this neck of the woods, roughly speaking. Apparently, she’d been going around looking at old sites and taking pictures. I told her that was really cool, and that I liked history too. Well, that and the supernatural. You know me. She laughed, but it didn’t carry that mocking tone I’m so intimately familiar with.
The plate, long since cleared, sat forgotten on the side table. We both sat on the side of the bed. She scooted a little closer to show me some of the photos she’d taken. I tried to quiet the frantic hammering of my heart.
You can probably guess what happened next. All things considered, I’m already toeing the TMI line just by posting this. Damn my journalistic integrity. At least I didn’t have to ask if she was into girls. I probably would’ve looked stupid.
But yeah, we spent the night together, and for the first time in ages, I wasn’t kicking myself immediately after. It was pretty nice. I woke up feeling refreshed (and a little sore) and I wasn’t even late for my next shift. It was pretty hard to focus, though.
We spent more time together after that. I’m pretty sure the others caught on, but they were too polite to bring it up. Granted, it took a while for us to figure out whether that had meant anything. The next week or so was awkward, but not terribly unpleasant. We hung out, we talked about books together, she even showed me some work from this cool-ass independent journalist she was a fan of. It was cool, but to an extent it didn’t feel real. Me, Roxie Revelatrix, landing a cute girl? Perish the thought.
I eventually figured out I had to get my shit together when she said she would be leaving in a couple days to do some more wandering. I broached the subject when we were spending one of her last nights talking and watching a show she had downloaded on her laptop.
She was resting her head on my shoulder when I told her I needed a change of scenery and asked if I could come with her. I remember how she blushed, face softly illuminated in the light of our makeshift TV screen. She asked if that meant we were something serious, something more than a fling. And I, in my infinite wisdom, said yes.
Doubt was gnawing at me as soon as those words left my lips. And it didn’t go away when she pressed hers to mine.
We left a couple days after that, and for a while, I thought it started to fade. It was great looking at ancient ruins, and even better to just listen to her talk on idle nights where she didn’t have to stay up until three in the morning writing. She was so wonderfully intelligent, way more than I was. Probably way more than I am now. I could cook, sure, but she could make something that actually tasted good.
We had to camp out a couple times along the way, using equipment we’d haggled for at the latest stop. Sometimes just laying out there was better than finding a place to stay. There were a few stinkers, but even at the place where my sleeping bag filled with standing water, there was still a beautiful view of alien stars and someone to share it with. I guess I’m lucky, though, because we didn’t see any of those beetles that lay eggs in your soul. Freaky shit, to be honest. And I thought botflies were bad.
In spite of all that, I fell more and more in love with her every passing day. We would hold hands under the open sky and listen to corny music when the sky was clear. When it was cold, we snuggled up together until the warmth of our bodies stopped coming from separate objects and became one solid, happy mass. For once, I understood Ishmael’s lovesick rambling on a physical level. But, much like Moby Dick, this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t wrap my head around why after everything I've done, after all the mistakes I've made and the people I've hurt, get to connect with someone again. This momentary happiness I’d found had to be a cruel joke played by the universe at someone else’s expense. Sooner or later, I would fuck it up again. Sooner or later, it would all come crashing down.
On the worst nights, I would try to slink away and cry where she couldn’t hear me. She caught me once. She put her hand on my shoulder and begged me to tell her was was wrong, because she wanted to help. I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t. I actually snapped at her when she kept pressing me. The way she went back to the tent like a kicked dog made me want to cut out my tongue so I could never say something like that again. When we woke up in the morning, we tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. That was the beginning of the end.
I never told her anything. I just let it fester inside me, filling up my chest and gut like warm, heavy tar. It put a barrier between us. I could almost see her pounding on the glass, trying to get to me. And that just made me feel worse. I’d roped this sweet, wonderful woman into my trashfire of a life, and now she was going to get hurt. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t know what I did deserve.
I left when we got to the next hotel.
That’s it. I just left. I woke up in the middle of the night and set everything she had loaned or shared with me on the table, keeping only the things I had bought with my own money. I checked out, mumbling some excuse to the receptionist about a family emergency. I looked at her contact in my phone and stood there contemplating what to say as a goodbye.
I blocked her number without saying anything. That, more than anything else about that period of my life, is what kills me to this day. It’s just another thing hanging over my head. Another thing to lose sleep over, even now. And I try to be better, but the past is the past.
I don’t know where I was originally going with this. If you’re out there, if you’re reading this, I just want to say I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart. I did a shitty, shitty thing, and if it helps, if you haven’t forgiven me, I haven’t forgiven myself either.
I read your article. It was great.
Signing off and looking forward,
Roxie
💬 4 Comments 🔄 0 Reposts ❤️ 9 Likes
MaliciousTautologies: :( that sounds really terrible for both of you. i hope you can move on and find some peace to work through these things.
revelatrix: Thanks. I appreciate it, really.
saxhomophone: dude you don't need to be sharing all this
revelatrix: It's my life, dipshit. Don't call me "dude."