The Love Story of John Miloas
by
Thea Kinyon
____________



“I kinda wish I had a boyfriend.”
“Wanna go out?”
“Sure.”
I met her at a party. She left purple lipstick on my face and glitter on my shoulder and somehow I came home that night smelling like vodka and perfume and with her phone number in red Sharpie on my wrist. She’d had green eyes...
I was a single guy not too young and definitely not old with a studio/apartment in an overpriced American city, working as a clerk for a cell phone place and doing about the average amount of drugs for someone my age.
There was one afternoon in March when a guy I knew but didn’t like asked if I wanted to go to a party in the city that weekend. I wasn’t planning on going, but somehow found myself there after work, and I only stayed for one drink... which became four... then I met Tamarind... (like the spice) then I don’t remember much except for the face of another girl after Tamarind faded away, and the next day I had the vague suspicion it was this nameless girl with all the glitter in her hair who had left her number on my wrist. I was trying to scrub it off in the shower, but then got this idea like “well a number is a number, don’t just loose it.” Besides, Sharpie doesn’t come off that easy.
“I’m not home. Or I might be passed out on the floor... Anyway you’re not gonna get ahold of me anytime soon, so leave a message and stop calling.” That was the next weekend. I have a bad habit of hanging up on answering machines - I don’t know why, but they intimidate me. I guess I’m afraid I might say something stupid and people could just play it back over and over again and laugh at me as many times as they want. Years later, she’d take out the old tape, and play it to the whole guest list... “Hahahahaha! What a dumbass! I can’t believe he said that!”
I forgot about her one day over coffee when I realized I no longer had a job. I’d lost it the night before, but these things sometimes take awhile to sink in. (Fight with the boss, and business was slow these days anyways...) I was drinking coffee, and realized the ninety cents I was putting on the table was my very last ninety cents, and somehow the nameless girl slipped away into distant memory. Five minutes later the waitress poured me another cup, and said, “Hey, you come in here a lot don’t you?”
“Not really. Sorry.”
“Hm. Then where have I seen you before?” That’s when I looked at the waitress for the first time. Why are the only girls who ever hit on me perpetually stuck in skimpy uniforms... Anyways, she was a blue-eyed redhead with too much make-up. That’s what I noticed.
“I don’t believe I know you...”
“Hm. Well, sorry for bugging you. Want some more creamer with that?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
She said she’d be right back.
I suppose with her hair up and different eyes and normal colored lips, anybody could look drastically different -
But I didn’t think too hard about it and when I finished my cup, (and forgot about the creamer before it had a chance to never come.) I left to go sulk in my apartment and feel unemployed.
And the next weekend I found myself at another party that I’d gone looking for this time because getting drunk by myself is a lot less exciting. Of course, there she was. I didn't even go through two shots, (just one and a beer) before I saw her on a leopard-print couch with her feet on some gay guy’s lap, (his name was Stephen and he’d been hitting on my answering machine for a month,) laughing her guts out like she was on too many drugs at the same time, and then she fell off into the jungle of platforms and huge pants and fishnets and shag carpet before I could interrupt them. Stephen tried to dust the glitter off the couch arm but gave up and came to the bar to join me. How did I know all these people with enough money to have bars in their houses...
“You look like you're wallowing in excitement... Something wrong?”
Flight attendants, cheerleaders, waitresses with glitter in their hair and guys who want to get me drunk and do my nails.
“Nah I just lost my job and the rent’s due next week and I’m lonely and I need a girlfriend.”
“Hey, if you need some money, just ask, hun. You could make it up to me... And as for the lonely part -” He winked at me squeezed my side (to which I twinged, and asked,) “Hey what’s that girl’s name?”
“Which girl? Who needs a girlfriend, John. You just need to get laid, that’s what you need. You’d be amazed how much good just one fuck will do.”
“That girl you were talking to on the couch...”
“What about her? She’s a total dike if that's what you mean. It’s so obvious.”
“I mean what’s her name?”
“I believe, it’s Suzanna. No wait - Lydia?” I raised my eyebrow. “JJ. Her names JJ. Yes. That's it. Since you care so much. But I'm telling you, she’s gay.”
“Hey, I’ll be back...” I disappeared to look for a bathroom.
And then I was there with her and an empty bottle of aspirin on the tile floor, telling her that her life was worth more than that and her cussing me out and asking who the fuck I thought I was anyways. I shut the door and locked it behind us and she started screaming at me.
“Fuck. Shut up! Listen, JJ, or whatever your name is -”
“Nobody calls me JJ.”
“Fine. I don’t care what your name is, but you can’t fuckin kill yourself in somebody else’s bathroom.”
“YEAH! Cuz you poured all the fuckin pills down the toilet! Asshole.”
I was insanely glad that the music was so loud.
“Why won’t anybody just fucking let me die...” She said to the toilet.
“I’m not going to let you out of here until you promise me you’re not gonna kill yourself.”
“Hah. Fine, I’ve got all night.” She sat back down and leaned against the bathtub. I had no idea what I was trying to do. I didn’t even know her.
Somebody knocked on the door. “Go away!” I yelled.
Long silences piss me off. “So what is your name?”
“Do I even know you?”
“We met a couple weeks ago and I saw you at work last Wednesday.”
“Which work?”
“Emma’s diner. How many jobs do you have?”
“Oh. I don’t remember you. Did you talk to me or did you just see me? Oh eew you weren’t stalking me were you?” She sounded like she’d been stalked by a million guys just like me.
“You poured my coffee and thought you’d seen me somewhere before but I didn’t remember you until after I left. ... Your lipstick is smeared.”
A tube of lipstick appeared magically in her hand and became a purple smear coming at me at a million miles an hour.
THWAK! Right at my shoulder, and it ricocheted off the door, coming to an unnoticed spinning halt under the sink..
“Ow! You hit me!”
“Go away.”
“Promise you won’t kill yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
The last people leaving found us in the bathroom, (half unconscious - me being the conscious half,) and gave us a ride to my apartment, because none of us knew where she lived.
And I woke up the next afternoon with no hangover and somehow expecting to see somebody next to me, or at least glitter on the other pillow, but she was still passed out on my couch where I’d left her.
When I had clothes on and the coffee maker working she came into the kitchen and asked me what my name was.
“John Miloas. Your turn.”
“Miloas? Did you call me a couple weeks ago and not leave a message?”
I am thankful to whoever came up with the idea of caller ID. Now she knew who I was.
I only found out her real name after I made her coffee. (Cream not milk, six sugar cubes.)
“Xoie’s a nice name.”
“It’s my middle name. It’s nicer than JoAnna.”
“Where did JJ come from?”
“Short for JoAnna. My little sister came up with it when I was five.”
She downed the rest of her cup and got up from my table.
“I have to leave. You can call me JJ if you want.”
And she slipped away.
She’d left her orange contacts by my bathroom sink.
And one day in June when it was raining she called me. No I hadn’t forgotten her. But I hadn’t seen her since that morning in April.
“Is John Miloas there?”
“That's me.” “Hey. It’s Xoie. Remember me?”
“JJ? Yeah. Tried to kill yourself lately?”
“Not since last Saturday. Too bad you weren’t there, they had to drag me to the hospital and pump my stomach again.”
“That's not healthy.”
“Let’s go for a cruise. I just bought a Datsun.”
“I have to go to work in ten minutes.” I’d gotten a job at a coffeehouse in early May, through a tip from Stephen, ironically.
“I’ll drive you there.”
“It’s two blocks away.”
“OK. I’ll be at your house in five minutes.”
She’d just bought a Datsun. A beautiful Datsun, one of those 70s Z cars that I’d always thought about wanting but never wanted to want.
“So where do you work?”
“Right there...” As we passed it. “You just ran a red light.”
“How do you feel about rain?”
She went around the corner like it was an X Game sport.
“I like it I guess.”
“I hate the rain. It reminds me of sunshine.”
She sped up to another red light and must’ve been going fifty when she went under it - just as it turned green.
“Woooo! Am I good or what?”
“You’re crazy! Where are we going?”
“To work. Where do you work again?”
“Turn here.”
“Oh yeah, The Coffeehouse. Do they have good coffee?”
“Yeah. But it’s kind of pricey. And don’t buy the cheesecake, it’s stale.”
She pulled up in the red zone in front of my work and kissed me on the cheek. “Bye.” I noticed her eyes were brown that day as she winked at me and I stepped out of her beautiful Datsun.
That weekend she was the one who made coffee for me, and I didn’t even have to tip her. I found out that her natural eye color is gray and she grew up by the ocean. Her parents made her take swimming lessons since she was two, and when she was fifteen she ran away from home. I learned that she was her most philosophical when she was sober at three A.M. (which happened about as rarely as one would expect) and she was more surprised when she learned I’d been a virgin until I was eighteen than she was when she learned that I’d lived in New Zealand for a year with my cousin. She thought the world with all it’s insane variety didn’t have a place for her and never had.
I saw her all the time that summer; we were going to parties now together instead of alone and having sex only with each other, and she’d tried to kill herself just twice in the past six weeks: once right before I called her (I came over and took her to the hospital) and once right before she called me (I came over and took her to the hospital.). Once when we were both sober and in the shower she said she kinda wished she had a boyfriend.
“Wanna go out?”
“Sure.”
JJ was just another suicidal druggie - like so many people I’d met or ignored or stepped over at parties - I’d feel bad, but then when they start slipping away I couldn’t care anymore because they’d have taken me with them if I’d let them. But without realizing it I’d already been taken far enough that I could’ve followed JJ anywhere.
That summer my cousin died. Out of the blue one day, I got a call, and realized I had one less blood relative in the world. I hadn’t seen him in ten years, but it was still a shock - and the next morning at work JJ came by and leaned her elbows on the coffee-stained counter, and her red hair was in braids, and I got the sense that she was still sober from the look in her eyes - (at least sober in the normal sense - to her life was a drug in and of itself; the only drug she had a will to kick.) I noticed her but didn’t let on until the triple mocha was made and had whipped cream on top and was handed to an eager balding customer. She wasn’t wearing any contacts and she smiled an “I’m-sorry-for-you” smile. A bouquet of lilies and lilacs magically appeared in her hand with a sympathy card attached then she kissed me and disappeared.
One day in August we were standing on a bridge and I realized I was in love with her.
She leaned against the rail and her hair blew in her gray eyes and she was probably laughing and crying in her head at the same time but I couldn't tell because they were cancelling each other out.
“If you really love me you’ll let me jump.”
“What?! No! Come back here, JJ -”
She climbed up on the rail, and glanced at me, and turned to face the water. “This world isn’t for me, John.”
“JJ! NO, DAMMIT listen to me, don’t do this again - “
“I’ve never jumped off a bridge before!”
“And you’re not going to! JJ...”
She was starting to slip.
“If you love me let me fall.”
“I’ll never let you fall -”
She was slipping and a tear was falling down her cheek as I started toward her. I looked at the water.
“JJ I love you. If you don't live for the rest of the world, live for me...”
Was it a faint smile behind the wisps of red hair...? And she slipped away.
I rushed to the rail just in time to see her feet disappear under the still green water and I jumped after her. I didn’t think about it until I was falling through the air, rippling green water rushing up at me at million miles an hour.
Stinging a little from the impact, cold water all around me, cold - there’s something so free about being completely submerged, completely and unexpectedly submerged - and somehow I found my way to the rippling sunlit surface, and somehow there she was, wet hair turned dark and each drop of water in it glittering with the sun. Green reflecting off her chin and lips not purple or pale but red and wet and just a little pouty but alive.
We floated there, treading water. “I love you too John.”
We both laughed.