{"id":4392,"date":"2003-10-28T10:59:08","date_gmt":"2003-10-28T14:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/httpblogslawharvardeduceerock4\/mason-dixon\/"},"modified":"2006-06-05T12:00:08","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T16:00:08","slug":"mason-dixon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/mason-dixon\/","title":{"rendered":"Story: Mason-Dixon"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> He knew this would be a hard one to leave. He felt her breath float across his chest as she slept, and pulled her closer. He knew this one would be hard.<\/p>\n

He cried their first night together. As she held his face in her hands and touched her lips to his forehead, his lips, his eyes, he whispered \u201cThank you for being real.\u201d He felt her smiling, and she pulled his face into her chest and closed her arms around him.<\/p>\n

He had asked her to talk dirty to him, but she couldn\u2019t. She giggled, embarassed, and he thought she was the softest and most beautiful girl he\u2019d ever met.<\/p>\n

He held her hand in public, kept her close at all times. \u201cDon\u2019t hold her so tight, she\u2019s fragile,\u201d a man in the street had said, laughing, as they walked past hand in hand. She laughed and put her head on his shoulder as they walked.<\/p>\n

She tried cooking for him many times, but always failed, full of apologies. He ate every bite of her terrible food, and asked for second helpings. She smiled at him while he ate.<\/p>\n

He called her every night, and left messages when she wasn\u2019t home. He called her at work one day, but she was busy and couldn\u2019t talk. She rarely had the need to call him.<\/p>\n

He spent days and days with her, and didn\u2019t want to leave her house. He didn\u2019t want to go back to his dirty apartment, his drug-dealing neighbors, his streets full of addicts and prostitutes and sex clubs. Her house was clean and bright and spacious, her neighborhood full of friendly family neighbors and flowers in every yard. Sometimes he ripped flowers from those yards for her. She always displayed them in a jar on her kitchen table, smiling as she chided him for taking them.<\/p>\n

He left her only to go to work\u2013he worked the late shift washing dishes, leaving his mind free to think of her. On his days off he tried to occupy himself with other things, but his thoughts always came back to her. When one of her roommates moved out, he hinted that he wanted to move in. He saw the hesitance in her eyes, and didn\u2019t pursue it. She suggested he find a cheaper place nearby. She began cutting out apartment ads for him, and he called a few. \u201cYou have to get out of that place,\u201d she said. The ads piled up.<\/p>\n

One night they went to a pub and a drunken Irishman approached them. He asked them if they knew what the Mason-Dixon line was. She couldn\u2019t remember, but he tried to answer the question. He liked to talk about history. He prided himself on his knowledge. He didn’t finish college and he was eager at the chance to discuss it with someone other than the lowlife regulars at the bar by his house. But he couldn’t quite recall the exact story of Mason-Dixon. The Irishman yelled at them for not knowing their history. \u201cWell please, tell me then,\u201d he said to the Irishman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t come over here to give Americans a history lesson!\u201d the Irishman shouted, and stomped away. She giggled, wide-eyed, but he followed the Irishman back to his table. He sat down and began to explain what he knew of Mason-Dixon. \u201cFrom my understanding…\u201d he began, but the Irishman cut him off. \u201cFuck off,\u201d he said, looking him dead in the eye. He paused a moment, taking in the Irishman’s words, then stood up and led her over to another table and ordered another beer. She touched his hand, and he pulled it away. He didn\u2019t speak for awhile. He kept ordering beers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019m just some dumb fucking Yank,\u201d he said finally. \u201cI guess it doesn\u2019t matter that my family\u2019s Irish. I guess it doesn\u2019t matter that my ancestors fought wars. I\u2019m just some dumb Yank.\u201d She kept her eyes down as he talked; she didn’t want to watch what this did to his face. He got angrier as he spoke, his voice louder. He began explaining Civil War history to her. She tried to touch his hand again but he pulled it away again. She sat silent. He continued his angry lecture, moving on to the Irish Potato Famine and ordering beer after beer.<\/p>\n

After awhile, he stopped talking. He looked at her and whispered, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d She half-smiled, relieved, and leaned in to kiss him. He didn’t know that when she excused herself to go to the rest room, she broke into tears in the stall.<\/p>\n

One day she was upset about a family problem, she was crying on the phone. She said she wished he could come over, she wished he lived closer. She needed him. He told her he had overly worn tires and needed to buy new ones\u2013not safe to drive an hour to Boston on such tires, he said. He told her he had to go, but he\u2019d call her back.<\/p>\n

The next day she called, still upset. She asked why he hadn\u2019t called her. He said he got home late from work and didn\u2019t want to wake her up. He said he had to get off the phone to go to work, but that he\u2019d call her later that night.<\/p>\n

A week later, she had filled his answering machine with worried messages. He showed up at work one day to find she had called to see if he had been coming in, and had said she was calling the police to report him missing. She called again and he answered the phone. \u201cLook, I\u2019ll call you back, alright?\u201d he said, and hung up.<\/p>\n

Three days later she had filled his machine again. Only now the messages were alternately sad and angry, always ending with \u201cWhy are you doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned off his machine and kept the ringer off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He knew this would be a hard one to leave. He felt her breath float across his chest as she slept, and pulled her closer. He knew this one would be hard. He cried their first night together. As she held his face in her hands and touched her lips to his forehead, his lips, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4392","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P58QoK-18Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}