by Mark—Age 30—Astoria, OR

The bridge I see from my window rises quickly from Oregon and crosses a river so wide it could be confused for the ocean it feeds.

Bridges occupy a piece of real estate in Sarah’s brain. She’ll spot them on trips and make me pull over. Covered bridges, short steel trussed spans bridging creeks and the Art Deco jobs with turquoise lights.

“Take my picture,” she’d say. “But make sure to get the bridge.”

I remember, years ago, leaving my first girlfriend for a family trip during the summer. I thought about the nights we had spent under the shadow of the rusting water tower near my house.

Her name was Natalie, and she didn’t care about bridges.

She had that sixteen-year-old skin. Her vanilla perfume would hover near her collarbones like a necklace.

When we were apart, I carved a piece of her out of the air and looked at it too long. When I returned, she was just a stranger walking through the high school halls.

Years later, relationships later, I met Sarah. She has tide pool hazel eyes with purple and blue anemone speckles clinging to the edges of her pupils.

We’d make love in the morning and nap. After a while, I’d look up, and she’d be gazing at me with those eyes.

We’d drive over the mountains and past the jagged lava fields or west to the coast, the dunes and the juniper trees. She was always scanning the road ahead or searching the side roads for a river or creek. Water meant a bridge was close by.

And now, Sarah and I are separated by work and geography. There’s a thousand rivers and a hundred bridges between us.

The hulking bridge framed by my window runs four miles across the river bar and ends in a different state. The land on the other side is similar, but if you look close, you can see differences. The ponderosas seem flatter, just as the bridge is flat after its aerial leap from the south bank of the river.

I wonder if Sarah will still be looking for bridges if we ever reunite. Maybe she has tired of them. Or maybe, tonight, when the lights of town boil out toward the middle of the river, I’ll reach out the window, grab the dust-green steel tresses of the bridge before me and crush them with my bare hands.

(Photo: Estherase)

Early on I knew if you can apologize with enough sincerity, you’ll be forgiven for anything. And if you can enjoy faking that sincerity, then you can do anything. I’ve never been able to fake it. It has either shot out in a thick hot stream like this piss I’m spraying this bridge with, or I felt it annoying my bladder, not enough to push out.

The piss smells nasty but it’s a stink that came from within, nice and cathartic. I’m helping the streetlamps turn the bridge yellow, and can’t help but think of all the faces I’ve stared at since I finally became aware of my own existence. They melt together, swirling in the piss, staring back as a pulsing mess of eyes and lips.

I don’t call you guys anymore. And it’s funny that I’m thinking about you while holding my dick, staring at the city. The farthest parts of the city are weird rectangles with colored squares shining out. But when you look at the closest part, it’s bent, rusted fence breaking away around a long unused playground, bordered by condemned freeways.

You guys don’t call anymore. I can’t blame you. You’d hear the same voice on the other end but know it’s just some weird illusion formed by beer at 3 AM.

And You in particular. It’s hilarious that I’d lay on your floor and trace every thing I’d ever done as being significant in leading to you. The culmination of my fate. Wrapping you in my arms, smelling your tears, eating your smiles. It was the closest I’ve ever got to leaving myself behind, forgetting that terrible day I became aware of my own existence.

Now I’m afraid to call your family. I’ll either find out that you aren’t who I remember, that that little girl doesn’t exist anymore”¦or just confirm that little boy is gone too.

I’m still standing on this bridge, unable to fake the sincerity to say I’m sorry for being less than I’d hoped to be. I can’t say sorry for not caring it’s the same for you. Still standing here, staring at a city long abandoned, instead of walking in those rusted playgrounds. I’m watching my piss steam and spill off the bridge, and
when I get home I’ll want to call all of you, and you can be damn sure that I won’t.

Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat says that if you are in the service industry, you have been globalized. Your job can be done from anywhere ““- even if it’s filling orders at McDonalds, or even if you’re a hooker. Here’s how that works ““- escort services have been around for a long time as a dodge against getting busted for prostitution. The Internet has made this an easier and better dodge. In the old days, the pimps would advertise in alternative newspapers and try to do some screening. They’d set up the “date,” and give the girl a call. In today’s flat world the pimps are pretty much out of business. The girls all have websites and do their own booking and screening. Now here’s the really wild part. The johns have websites where they review the girls! You have to learn a whole new vocabulary, but happily, the websites provide a glossary of terms! The first new term you learn is that these guys are not johns, they are “hobbyists.” Their hobby just happens to be paying women for sex.

So I spent some time cruising a few websites. My line of reasoning was something like this — I dated my last girlfriend for three and a half months before she dumped me. I dropped a bundle on her, and she let me, even though she made a lot more money than I did. We’re talking about theatre tickets at $40 to $80 dollars a pop, and dinners in nice restaurants at $100 to $150. I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back on it, I spent at least $100 a week on her. We went out for about 15 weeks, so that’s around $1,500. Now the going rate for escorts is about $300. So I could get laid by a young, reasonably attractive woman once every three weeks (with no strings attached and no emotional commitments) for what it cost me to date a 50-year-old attorney and get my teeth kicked in.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to become a hobbyist. It was cathartic thinking about it, but there are many good reasons for avoiding this hobby. First of all, they’re hookers for God’s sake! Secondly, I’m not ready to give up on true love, no matter what anyone thinks or how old I get — hope springs eternal.