what we are...
You're a proto-type bachelor. I'm your half-a-decade behind counterpart.
We bask in fading embers and we swap tales of dating disasters like
two old war vets.
Your last girlfriend
tried to kill herself by jumping out of your truck at 60 mph.
Once, to get home sooner, I allowed myself to be date-raped in a Subaru
behind a Red Lobster.
A woman once broke
your heart into nine pieces and then stole your David Bowie "Pin-Ups"
cd.
A man I once loved had sex with
his mistress in my apartment while I attended my father's funeral.
At 22 and in love, you moved 256 miles east of Marina Del Rey to be
with a woman who you found out later belonged to the Heaven's Gate
cult.
At 31, I risked eviction by giving
my rent money to my cocaine snorting boyfriend so he could make his
child support payment on time.
The
afterglow has died. You spring out of bed, your hand reaches for your
pants, your shirt, your shoes; all of these items are donned with
quick, decisive gestures. Your eyes are fixed on the door, your mind
on the drive home, not on my cooling, lonely limbs or the space next
to me that you just vacated.
You salute me
goodnight and close the door without a sound.
It's dark now. I shift from right to left, and then brush a stray
hair from my eyes. I hug my pillow.
It was
too much merlot, or not enough. It was the ticket you got from the
cop the first night you took me home. It was breaking my private rule:
never get involved with anyone at Christmastime. It was your compulsion
to discover if I was truly "interested..." or was it "interesting?"
It was when I told you that I tell the truth as I see it, which runs
counter to the lies a courtship is based on. It's because your two
cats are your best friends. It's the fact that you have a fireplace,
and I don't have vanilla-scented candles. It's because you can't hold
up your end of a conversation, except to make random jokes and non
sequitur remarks. It's because you interrupted the passion of our
first encounter when you stopped, took me in your arms, held onto
me for dear life, and then I whispered, "I'm scared." It's the fact
that I take public transportation and have become geographically undesirable.
It's because you were raised as an only child and have limited social
skills. It's because I won't trim the whole hedge no matter how much
you complain. It's because you open doors for me and then walk ten
paces ahead. It's the fact that you can only view me through a telephoto
lens. It's because I wanted to see you on a Saturday night.
It's the moment our commonality merges when we straddle each other
in that classic '69 pose, cruising towards release, each one's mouth
open to receive, and then swallow the waves of entropy that come,
and then go... but never leave.
copyright 2007
m. lecrivain
