At work that day, I remembered how you felt between my legs, and I could hardly wait to get back to you. I'd go along, running the bottle labeling machine, and have such a powerful sensation of memory--I ruined dozens of bottles that day. I was so happy I wanted to sing.
At morning break, the woman who drove the canteen truck noticed the hickey you'd left on my neck. Is it serious, she had asked. A late might at the bar, or an ongoing relationship? I don't know yet, I had answered, knowing full well what it was she wanted to know. I smiled, I'm trying, I added. I know that I was trying you, trying you patience with me, but to her I meant that I was trying to be serious.
I had been sleeping with you, in your bed, a few days a week, for months. Naked. The first night that you asked me over, you wanted to get me drunk and fuck me. Nothing serious, nothing to wrench your life around for, just fuck and that was all. No obligation. We drank, listened to jazz albums. The evening grew late, we went upstairs, took off our clothes, and went to bed. I talked you to sleep. The next day, a friend of yours came over and took us to the mountain. It was your first time there, and you were excited about the snow, and the height of it.
That weekend, your live-in lover was out of town, with her other lover. You were pissed. You didn't mention the details to me, in fact you didn't mention it much to me at all. After all, if she could do someone on the side, so could you. That I was to be your person on the side didn't mean I should anything about her.
You didn't get to fuck me, but you enjoyed my company enough to try again. You called me again, as I had hoped you would. I came to spend the night with you, and again I talked you to sleep. I did that to you for a long time. At first, I didn't think that I wanted to do you. I liked you, I enjoyed your company, but I didn't want to fuck you.
I had gone through some pretty strange times in my head the year before that, had thoughts and feelings that I couldn't express to anyone enough to talk about, much less have anyone help me work them out. I was feeling very rejected from my last two love affairs. I was feeling inadequate both humanly and sexually. I was unhappy and lonely, and couldn't understand why someone should want to get to know me better, but you did want my body. That I could understand. Sex is a commodity, however bought. My body had been surveyed regularly at the bar...
Emotionally, you were high-strung. You were constantly having some
sort of drama (dyke drama) with your lover, each pushing emotional buttons and playing
head games on each other. The two of you had angry scenes whenever you went anywhere. I
knew she existed; I had met her. You didn't hide what I saw as a disastrous relationship
between the two of you. She hated me, and didn't believe you when you told her that we
hadn't been fucking, had only been sleeping. You hardly believed it yourself. It certainly
wasn't the way you wanted it.
* * *
Finally, I came to a point within myself. I had lain in bed with you for four, maybe five months, desperately wanting sex, but even more desperately being afraid of being physically and emotionally unable--inadequate. I decided I couldn't be afraid anymore, at least not to the point that it crippled me. I had to start somewhere, and that place seemed pretty obvious. I decided that I had to make a move. By this time, you had pretty much accepted that you weren't going to get into my cunt, and had stopped trying. You accepted me on a different level, one with which you were totally unfamiliar. You'd never slept with someone you weren't fucking, and to be doing so on a fairly regular basis was almost too odd for you. If there was a first move to be made, it wasn't you who would make it. Intellectually, I contemplated this; intellectually, I attempted to sound out my emotions. How to make that move? I chickened out.
Life for you was rolling on. You took a vacation to the East Coast, a trip "home". Your mother and sister and brother were as they had always been. Your friends hadn't seen you for so long that a distance had grown up. You found out that you had asthma. You were sick, and glad to come home.
Homecoming was a shock to you. While you were gone, your house had
been robbed. Kids. They took your answering machine, a car stereo that didn't work, a
camera that didn't work. The rest of what they took wasn't worth the money, but it meant a
lot to you, the souvenirs of your lifetime. You cried, and for a week, you didn't want to
see anyone. Then you called few friends, and one of them was me. I came to see you, be
with you, hug you.
* * *
One night we'd gone to a bar. It was late when we got back, and you were tired. I was still pretty awake, but willing to go to bed. You crawled in, with me right behind you. We snuggled up, and you went to sleep, the kind of slow fade that I do to you now. I lay there, facing you, with my head just below yours. Timidly, I reached up and laid my lips on yours. A goodnight kiss was all I intended, but your sleeping mind made it into more. It was the move that I'd been waiting for. The sex that night wasn't anything astounding, but it led to another night, and another.
You didn't want to fall in love. I did. You had just been through a relationship that make you want to take a breather from anything resembling love. I was afraid of rejection, so I wasn't letting myself expect more than was stated. I hardly let myself expect anything at all.
My daily routine hadn't changed drastically. I was still getting up at you house at some ungodly hour of the morning, driving to my mother's house, picking up my carpoolers, and going to a dismal eight hour job. I'd get off work, drop my carpoolers at their respective homes, and drive up to your place.
My job was the same, get there, pack vitamins, take a breather around ten and buy something from the canteen truck, eat lunch around twelve, take another breather in the afternoon when I got bored or frustrated, and leave sometime around five.
The difference for me was that I had you on my mind, and I had the sensation of you with me all day. I longed for you, and was happy the day when the canteen woman noticed that hickey, so I could smile about you to someone else instead of holding you inside myself as I had all morning. It was the next day, or even a few days later that anyone noticed that mark you made on my neck. I smiled about you privately for awhile before I said anything to anyone else.
I couldn't keep you a secret for long at all. I shared you first with my current co-worker and most recent ex-lover. I waxed eloquent, I spoke with stars in my eyes, I danced with joy, and she smiled that I was finally happy.
A week after that fatal kiss, I appeared at your house. It was Friday night, and we were going to do "something." Nothing in particular, just something. Saturday, you were going to a party, a costume Halloween party. I was trying to be nonchalant, too excited about you to try to expect to be a part of you life. I couldn't let myself be set up for the possibility that maybe it wouldn't be so. You hadn't formally asked me to go with you, though you'd talked around me to other friends about it. I think you had just assumed that I would go. I thought that when you finally got around to asking me to join you, I would turn you down. I had every intention of saying no, though my intent was not to snub you or to make you miss me. I thought that I would say no because I'm not much of a costume person, and more importantly, I couldn't allow myself the illusion of fitting so neatly into your life. You may not want me there at all, and I was so afraid of expecting too much.
Saturday morning was sunny and cheerful. I got up with you, and you were beautiful. Your friends called, and we went out to breakfast with them. One of them asked me if I was going to the party, and I shrugged. You still hadn't asked my to join you, and though I felt certain that you were expecting me to be with you, I really didn't want to find that I was wrong. I don't think that you ever did formally ask me to join you.
The party was wonderful. Your costume, the one that you had to do drugs to allow yourself to wear, was outrageous, and it was a favorite of the party. We went to a friend's house, and he did your makeup. I didn't watch the transformation, and when you were done, I could hardly believe it was you. I spent the entire party in awe, looking to you, and hardly believing that it really was you.
At the party, another woman was flirting with me. It worried you, that I might go off with her, and leave you at the party, under the full influence of drugs, with no way home. When you realized, you asked my intent. You seemed somewhat panicked. Would I do this? You didn't want to stop me, you said, but you should know so that you could arrange a ride home. I was surprised. I had arrived with you, and would certainly leave with you. To do anything else had never occurred to me, would never occur to me. I told you this, and added that if I had wanted her, I could make arrangements to do it later. I was anxious that you understand that I was committed to you, that I would not do such a hurtful or rude thing.
Throughout the party, you kept thanking me for being such a good person. You thanked me for giving you a cigarette when you wanted one, for getting water when you were thirsty, for being at you side when you needed to touch security or reality. You even thanked me the next day numerous times. I woke up that next morning, and your arm was around me, holding me tight. When you woke up, you hugged me, and thanked me for taking care of you.
Later, we talked about what had happened at the party. You told me about your ex-lover, and how the two of you would go places, and she would pick up someone right in front of you. If you tried to object, she berated you for inhibiting her liberty. That I would not even think of doing such a thing was, to you, a new concept. You were so accustomed to her ways that you had forgotten that people usually consider the feelings of their lovers. You were astounded, and honored that I had that much respect for you.
Meanwhile, you were still trying to make the relation with your ex-lover work. The two of you didn't think of yourselves as "ex-" yet. The two of you fought violently. You knew each other so well that you could each trigger the other's anger in an instant with a seemingly innocent comment. She'd call you in the middle of the night, and I'd lay next to you, listening to fights and reassurances, words of two people who both loved and hated each other. You couldn't and wouldn't get along, and wouldn't let go. Once, you left me to be with her, promising to be back soon. I laid in bed wondering whether you'd come back and tell me that you didn't want to see me again, that you wanted to see me always, wondering whether you'd be back at all. You came back that night, and I kept coming back.
Thanksgiving came, and you went out of town to be with friends. I stayed in town to be with my mother, but joined you the next day. I got to your friend's house where you were staying late in the day. You told me that you'd missed me. Suddenly, you realized that you wanted me in your life, more than you thought you would. That night, you told me that you loved me, and suddenly I could tell you what I had wanted to tell you for a while: I love you.
Although I didn't move in with you until months later, we slept
together every night, most of them at your house, some at mine. That was a few years ago
and we still sleep together every night.
Kearin is one of those two crazy white girls living in the ghetto. She writes in her spare time while managing the front desk at Hotel Leslie.
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