after love

by nat raum

when the floor of the bolton street apartment shakes, it’s because everyone is jumping in unison. for a moment, i grow concerned it will collapse into splinters. the last cup of of jungle juice i drank enters my bloodstream and rapidly dissuades me of this notion. i inch deeper into the throng of dancers.

cheap inkjet photos of the birthday boy adorn the walls, die-cut like paper dolls. some photos are just of his face; some are stuck to the sides of the rubbermaid storage container full of haphazardly-mixed cocktail. i usually bring my own beverages to these kinds of things, but i want to seem like i belong every now and then. i ignore my recent ex-roommate during a smoke on the stoop. i ignore the snapchat messages that my newly minted ex-boyfriend leaves on delivered. all the while, beats thrash through the apartment as chatter ricochets off the white plaster walls.

i have always felt attracted to tragedy in the secret kind of way; heartbreak flocks to me like poles of a magnet. i think about emma watson in the bling ring: this situation was attracted into my life as a huge learning lesson for me. i lost my best friend. i lost my boyfriend. i lost my first apartment. i have always thought of god (if he exists) as vengeful, perpetually conspiring to push even more loss on me. i still don't know what i am supposed to learn from this.

in an instant, the echoes of cher’s “believe” shift onto the stereo, prompting cheers and giggles before uniting the room in pursuit of a singalong. i turn ignoring into forgetting for just a moment while the disco and the voices and the mix of cheap booze and discount juices swirl through the party. i pull my camera out to record as the host throws his head back, gestures wildly with both hands, and dons a falsetto to belt along with our dear cherilyn.

now i think of the assertion that you can’t live in a moment with your phone out—myth: busted. the joy of drunkenly singing along to a song i once only knew in passing will live with me for longer that i’ll care to admit, all because of that three seconds of video footage. i won’t have to believe anymore; i will have proof of the after.