The Topography of a Third Date

We are lying in bed—tangled sheets, sweaty hair. He runs a finger along the scar in the center of my forehead.

I always forget it is there.

“What happened here?” His voice is quiet. I tense and roll away.  

I know this game, the faux intimacy of a third date.  

At least he had the respect to ask about the scar on my face; sometimes they ask about the delicate lines on the inside of my left wrist. I don’t even bother answering those men. We both know what happened there.

The scent of our coffees hangs in the room, and I close my eyes.

“I tripped as a kid, smashed my head into a door jamb at my father’s job. I was an accident-prone kid.”

My eyes remain closed, but I try to sense his reaction. He will be searching my face for something to anchor onto. He is waiting for me to lament that I am damaged so he can rush in and pretend it doesn’t matter, even as he points out the scar.

I won’t give him the satisfaction.

If it weren’t so hot, I’d pull up the covers and cocoon myself. But it’s ninety degrees, and I haven’t put in my AC yet.

The bed shifts, and I feel the tips of his fingers on my ankle.

“And this one?”

My eyes flutter open. I look at him, bright eyes shining, summer sun on his tanned back. How did he even notice the blotchy white scar there?

“I tripped running to get my brother off the bus. Flip-flops and a wet dirt driveway are a dangerous combination. I tore up my entire leg.”

He smiles. There is something genuine about this, unlike the others, who are always prying, sifting.

He flops back beside me, propping his head on his hand, studying my face.

On our walk back from breakfast, we passed the town map—historic landmarks, little printed blurbs. He’d stopped to read it.

I’d walked past it every Saturday for years and never once stopped to read.

Now he’s looking at me the way he looked at the map. He must be thinking the same thing because his face cracks into a goofy smile.

“You know I love maps, exploring, what are the landmarks of your body? Of your life?”

His finger traces the curve of my hip.

I have a rule that I share nothing important on a third date, barely anything by the third month. They’re always gone within six months, anyway. What’s the point?

But something about his question makes me think back on my life—abuse, addiction, bulimia, love, sunshine.

I think of how he seemed genuinely excited to tell me about the textile mills that used to power the city for the remainder of our walk back here.

If my body is the map, I imagine myself lying on a table, the two of us pioneers studying the peaks and valleys.

For a moment, I am someone else, somewhere else, outside of myself.

“My nose,” I start. He raises his finger to trace it, and I close my eyes.

“A hill, perhaps?” he asks.

I nod, giggling. Then I tell him about the time I stuck a bead up my nose and my dad had to bring me to the emergency room. The doctor said they would have to do surgery to get it out. My dad had grabbed the extra-long tweezers and stuck them up my nose, pulling the bead free. My hero!

The man laughs beside me, still tracing my nose. My eyes are closed again.

The next story rises before I can stop it—a story of fists on my face. My voice wavers.  

“I think my nose broke, but maybe it just bled.”

I open my eyes just a slit—a test. The man in my bed is nodding, still curious, with no pity in his eyes.

My shoulders relax a little.

I tell him about the time that 46 bees stung me in the face all at once when I hit their nest with a PVC pipe.

“I was five or six, my face so swollen I could barely move.”

“Forty-six?” he asks, incredulous. I ignore his question and continue on.

“While sitting in the emergency room, I asked for McDonald’s. My dad thought I was hallucinating. I was just hungry!”

“The perfect historical reference point!” the man says through his laughter.

I watch him laughing. I am exposed and yet, somehow, calm. It unnerves me, but I want more—more truth, more openness, more.

“Any broken bones?” he asks.

I sit up to sip the remnants of my coffee.

“I broke my collarbone racing my pretend friend the summer before I had to start kindergarten. I had been so embarrassed to wear this big, bulky vest thing over my shirt, but then I got to school on the first day, and my friend Lindsey had broken her leg, so she couldn’t wear pants! She was in a wheelchair in her underwear!”

He tells me about how he broke his arm snowboarding and shows me the scar where they had to pin the bone back in place. The scar sits raised and red.

The silence hangs over us, easy, unrushed.

“Anything we can’t see on the surface?”

He slips his hand around mine, patient, waiting.

Every seven years, all your skin regenerates, I think. So, there is no reason to dig into the past.

But when I open my mouth, I am telling him the truth—about the anxiety, the grief. I tell him about the roads through my body, all those blood vessels, and how they spent years dilated by alcoholism.

I confess my lungs are probably scarred from all the pot smoke in my late teens, from the handful of cigarettes I have bummed over the years outside bars.

Just beyond the window, wind rustles through the trees. I watch the vibrant sunlight and shadows dance on the ceiling, wondering at the stories the tree could tell if we laid out its body as a map.

When I stop speaking, he kisses my nose, my forehead, my collarbone, the scar on my ankle.

He kisses the crook of my arm, where he’s noticed the little scars there. He looks up—a question.

“No drugs,” I say. “I donate blood every three months. Over a decade, that’s a lot of needlesticks.”

He nods. Shows me his own arms.

 “Mine were drugs,” he says, his voice is soft, but steady. “I can’t donate blood because of it.”

My fingers trace the tiny puckers in the skin. They look just like mine. Born of such different causes, but the damage looks the same.

I let myself lay my head on his chest.

“Why do I feel so at ease with you?” I ask.  

The silence stretches so long that I have to look up at him to see if he has fallen asleep.

“We all want to be seen—who we are now, and every version we have been.”

I snuggle into him as he continues.

“Sometimes I am so grateful to be who I am today, but other times I worry I am losing the versions of myself who kept me alive for so long. I don’t want to hide him, but I can’t always bring him up. Maybe that feels true for you too.”

Yes, I think.

Yes, that’s it.

The fan turns overhead, barely moving the air in the room, but I cannot unwrap myself from him.

How many other experiences had my body carried me through that I had not mentioned today?

How many more were to come?

It seems we’ve rolled the map up off the table and tucked it away for safekeeping.

There is relief in it, and yet, I find myself hoping that in time we will follow the map into the darkness, the parts I am afraid to explore alone.

I fall asleep hoping the softness of this moment will still be here when I wake.