Felipe

Felipe

Athens, Greece // A Midsummer Night's Dream Rewrite

You have a boyfriend, Felipe, whose big fat Greek biceps stretch the sleeves of his white cotton V-neck on Sundays. You meet him behind the parish center because Dad won’t let him past the welcome mat, and with the Holy Mary garden statue and stone fairies watching, you wrap his delicious tabooed curls around your thumb and try not to stare too deep into his orb-like watery horse eyes.

If there really were a God, Dad wouldn’t have taken a liking to the frog two doors down—sandy-haired Dan who lives in his parents’ basement, who drives a V8 and carries a Mont Blanc around in his breast pocket. There’s a dying basketball hoop and a chained-up terrier in the front yard, but Dad doesn’t see that part.

“How about him?” he says, pointing with his beer out of the upstairs window as the Mustang rolls down the street. You shake your head and say not in your dreams, well, nightmares, and he says, “Just a thought, bub.”

It isn’t until Dan gets past your kitchen that you begin to worry. You trail into the house after church and fix your hair the way it was before you left, before your boyfriend ran his hands through it—hands with the fine gorilla follicles behind every knuckle. And you find Dad in a tank top sitting with your derelict neighbor, derelict Dan sitting on the loveseat, on a cushion. He sees you coming and asks for more ice in his lemonade. Dad waves and says he wants to introduce you to someone. You shake your head no and say you have better things to do.

“Like what?” says Dad later over dinner. It’s just the two of you. You tell him “nothing.” You say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “And what don’t I know?” You swallow and launch into a winding, made-up account of Dan from two houses down, how he made it out of the penitentiary this last spring and how he doesn’t believe in global warming or Pepsi.

“What’s wrong with Pepsi?” You shrug and add, it’s pointless, really, because Charlene from the gas station is hell-bent on stringing him along with her. Which is fine with you. She kind of looks like him, too—blondie ties up her tresses to keep then out of the gasoline—a good match, hey?

Felipe has you come over, and you agree to this, which means only one thing. Dad can sense the unorthodox seeping in when you tell him you’re sleeping over a friend’s house. “Remember, Jesus sees everything,” you hear as you duck into your car.

When you get to Felipe, you park in front of his white stucco house because there is a new car, aqua, taking up the driveway. You think it must be a relative until you see the pink dice and tassel hanging from the rearview and the oily fingerprints on the driver’s side window. You waste no time quieting your car and slipping inside, the blood flowing freely to your face, making you push your dark hair off your cheeks.

You find: your boyfriend, Felipe, and on top of him, Charlene, in the nude and all veiny and strung-out from pumping gas all day. She whimpers and makes porpoise noises until the loose board in the floor gives you away. She is quick to dress, putting her clothes on the way she finds them, inside out, but slow to answer. She tells you she changed her mind about your neighbor, what’s-his-face, Dan? but she still wants his car.

You look at Felipe, handsome curls ruined with the humidity of Charlene’s breath, and he looks at you like a losing lottery ticket. Like a cracked carton of eggs, and then he squints, maybe to make sure you aren’t a stranger. The course of true love never did run smooth.*

If you ever wanted to dig your nails into those sinewy biceps, now is your chance—to fall to your knees and weep and think of your Dad, and how could he be right? and cry harder. You make it across the room and realize how scrawny his arms really are without the rolled hem to puff them out. Your eyes travel lower and realize, too, that you really haven’t missed out on much of anything.

At home, your disappointment shows, and Dad offers to do the dishes, to ease your pain a little. You shake your head at today and run the water, and out the window, you see Dan pull up to his house, and you see him water his rat-dog and shoot the ball around for a bit, and you little by little, yes, you, change your mind.

Emily Scherny

* Lysander to Hermia. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1 Sc 1