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Blemishes

He was the type of guy who would drink luke-warm Molson straight from the can. Then he would pass the can to me and I'd leave my strawberry lipstick on the rim. We'd sit there for hours staring at each other and it would be most natural silence. It made me feel at ease. Then one day he told me that he wanted to swim far away and I nodded and said I liked to swim too.

We were young, you know. Youth is the deadliest disease. So we stripped to our underwear and he bit his lip when he noticed the blemish on the side of my hip. He pinched my stomach in a way that was both childish and suggestive. I smiled and said we should swim.

The problem was that we had no idea where to swim to. We sat at the end of the dock half-dressed and split another Molson. It was hot as a cup of tea, as it was basking in the sun with us all day. But we were young and diagnosed with youth and infatuation.* He said that he loved me. And the step from infatuation to love is one that is large and full of gaps and blurry corridors.

But I'm crazy, I said. I am not just seemingly eccentric or elegantly batty. I am actually crazy. Are you trying to seduce me, he asked. I laughed. Madness can only attract those who are already mad. And I wasn't going to convert him from rigid Christianity to secular insanity. No really, I said. I like watching ants crawl up my leg in my free time. I have the morals of a drunken clown.

That's all right, he told me. He said he loved me for who I was, with my blemishes and my permanently muddled state of mind. Let's swim already, I said. We jumped into the bay. I was too embarrassed to admit that the blemish on my hip was really a hickey.

*This claim has not been verified by a professional medical doctor.

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