BALDIE, my love

I think, delusionally, that the greatest love I have ever had occurred to me at nineteen. He took me with him to buy his dinner and his cigarettes, bald-headed and beautiful. We held hands as the world waned, store shelves picked clean and classes cut short.

After the worst sex of my life, he and his roommate took me on a date to buy Plan B. This was a familiar proposed three-way that never actualized, the glory of my resistance despite Third’s attempts.

Third came into the shower with Baldie and me, spilling and spewing and butt-naked. Baldie, de-be-spectacled, looks to me with a half-ounce of hope before expelling Third onto the grout-dirty tile. Third slugged away, again defeated.

On our IKEA pilgrimage, Baldie called another woman beautiful and I agreed. Leaving his swastika-stained palace for the third and final time, at Richmond and Jarvis, a man lights himself on fire. Left behind, a puddle of warm flesh and caution tape.

The birth control makes me so sick I can’t eat for three days -- and I look great. This means the pill was doing its job, Internet says. The world continues to spiral into a pandemic pandemonium. Baldie’s come-over call is met with a hacking cough, resulting in cut communications.

Baldie waits a year then calls me persistently, twice a week for three weeks. By this point in time, I’ve decidedly dedicated myself to another. On this dedication, I do not respond to Baldie. Still, years later, I walk around Richmond, wary of the glint of a shaved head.