Silence

NaNoWriMo daily prompt for October 19th was "silence"...

There are storm clouds gathering over the city.  No snow yet, it’s too early yet, but definitely thick ominous clouds.  Sweatshirts have emerged, hands shoved deep into pockets and backs hunched over from the weight of dread.  The streets are dry, which makes the cold and clouds feel even more powerful, as though rain would somehow sooth away the destructive force of the approaching winter.

The city hangs suspended in a web of silence, waiting.  Each breath drawn brings the ice into your lungs, the scrap of a razor down your throat, but it is better now than it will be later.  You can see it in the eyes of your neighbors as you pass them on the streets, the acknowledgement that it’s coming, it’s only a few more weeks away.  Suddenly men who walk with their shoulders straight and their heads proud are pausing at doors, worrying the arms of their jackets as they look apprehensively outside.  You can smell the fear on those who are older, as the sudden realization that winter is near and what once meant mere inconvenience can suddenly mean never seeing another spring.  No one knows what to say, what magic words once whispered by witch doctors can keep the cold at bay.

A few break the silence, chuckle merrily about the weather when they are delaying at the door.  These are the ones most frightened by the approach, seeking out the comfort and warmth of another’s reassurance.  They’re the ones who feel it in their bones already, in the ache of their joints and the pressure of the hat around their ears.  They are grasping for those magic words, seeking fruitlessly for someone to say “it’s only today, it’ll be warm tomorrow, winter will not come”.  But winter comes, it always does, and they know their helpless grasping is futile.

So silence prevails.  The city surrenders to sweatshirts, then sweaters, then coats, then boots, then gloves…each little defeat is a victory for the coming season.  We dawn our armor, reinforce our homes and try to fill our bodies with the warm of each other, but the cold prevails.  There’s nothing to be said.  Winter comes.

Noise

Prompt for today from NaNoWriMo is "noise"

There’s a noise in my head when she’s near.  It bounces around the confines of my skull, trapped between bone and soft flesh, turning my cerebral tissue into a trampoline as it ricochets from neuron to neuron.  It starts in the occipital lobe, that portion in the back of your head were all the visual information is processed, triggered by blue hair and gray glasses and ears ringed with piercings.  Then ping-ping-ping, off it goes, triggering memories of late night sex when it hits the hippocampus, the ring of heavy metal when the temporal lobes- the sound centers- are struck, the taste and smell of Thai chili as it travels.  A hyperactive two year old on amphetamines, the noise bounces off the confines of my head and I have to blink every time so it doesn’t come crashing through my eye sockets and out into the open.

Sometimes I don’t hear her, because of the noise.  We’ll be curled up in bed, legs entwined, my head on her chest and my eyes closed to keep in the noise.  She’ll be speaking about something, recounting a soccer game or explaining some type of computer system she designed at work, but the white noise buzzes in my ears and I lose track.  I try to focus, to draw the sound of her voice in past my ear drums so it can fill my skull instead, but then the pressure of so much noise begins to press on the gray matter and I have to pick one or the other.  It becomes so intense, listening to the noise and her voice and trying to figure out if I have a voice in all that.

But then, late at night, after our legs had unwrapped and rewrapped around each other a thousand different ways, there’s silence.  Silence in my head at least, as the pound of her heart echoes in my ears and the sound of her breathing fills my head.  The noise in my head goes silent, and finally it fills with her, just her, the sound of her presence not bouncing but rather gliding.  Her noise comes in waves, washing over my brain, and consuming more and more of the space.  It sinks into the crannies, the nooks and valleys and ridges, and creates a protective barrier against the white noise.

It’s then I settle back into sleep, protected and sheltered by her noise instead of the insidious noise of my own head.  It’s then, in the beating of her resting heart and the soft gasps of her dreaming state, that my head finally goes silent.  And then there is peace.

NaNoWriMo

I am participating this year.  My username there is yumesandman.  Hopefully it will go better than my dedication to this blog.

If anything though, it means you can expect at least a few more updates on here.

Eve.

Jealous

A writing exercise from class, where you take two characters and work through an issue in your personal life.

“Why be jealous at all?”

I sit there and stare at her, some part of my brain still struggling with the idea that she just can’t understand.  She’s at the head of her bed, leaning back against the metal bed frame, while I sit across from her at the foot.  We had been sitting together, then cuddling, then apart again; I was always moving, always too impatient or too nervous to sit in one spot.  Having to look at her directly, with her unwavering but not unfriendly eyes, is uncomfortable.  I occasionally look at the spots of mold in the corner of her ceiling or the picture on the wall of an apple morphing into two cardinals when it’s too awkward to look at her head-on.

“Because…because I want to be the one.” I start lamely.  I instantly regret it; sentimentality never had a place between us, let alone any value.  “Because I want to be unique, want to be special.”  Her expression hasn’t changed, but I feel like I have already lost her.  “I want to be so amazing in bed she won’t want anyone else, so witty and intellectual she’ll crave no other company, so endearing that she’ll always want to be around me.”

“But you aren’t those things.”

I shouldn’t feel offended, but I do.  Sometimes I crave a little sentimentality from her, a little romance.  I glance down at my hands playing with some folds in her comforter, arranging my face, and then look back up at her.  I look at her glasses where the paint has chipped on the bridge, at her hair with its streaks of blue even though it was cut so short, at the thirty-something piercings in her ears going every which direction and interconnecting with one another in a lunatic’s jigsaw puzzle.  I look at her ill fitting clothes- all black- the way her college-drama program tee-shirt doesn’t show her breasts even though she’s got them both pierced, but there’s no missing the flair of hips and ass encased in her black jeans.  Her arms are dark haired, leading to unshaved arm pits, she’s wearing a man’s watch next to a chain-mail bracelet she made herself, her whole aura is androgyny that borders closer to masculine than feminine.  I am looking at her untraditionalism.  I’m going to lose this argument.

“But I want to feel that way.”

She smirks.

“If you had someone follow you everywhere, constantly wanting your attention and company, you’d call them a stalker,” she points out.  I think about the boys- and girls- I had problems with in high school.  Well…and in college.  I was not the great beauty, the flawless blond by any means, but maybe I was too nice.  Maybe I didn’t send the right signals.  Maybe I just attracted the co-dependent.  “Besides.  If you love them, you’d want them to be happy right?  Even if that means with another?  Even with another and you?”

She doesn’t look away from me when we talk.  My eyes are always moving, watching her but then wandering, and watching her again.  She looks at me straight on, all the time.  I wonder sometimes, though, if she can distinguish me from the hundreds of women who have also crawled into this very bed.  I knew the majority only stayed there for an hour or two, while I might get a night or two a month, but I still wondered.  She had only said my name twice in the six months we had been dating; once to a waiter to confirm our dinner reservations, and once to the man at the gun range where she taught me how to shoot.  Never directly.

“No I don’t.”

“Don’t love them, don’t want them with another, don’t want them happy?”

I bite down on my lip and look away from her, upset.  It’s a bitter mix of anger, annoyance and sorrow.  I look instead around the room, taking in the dust bunnies and the overflowing bookshelves.  Her idea of cleaning her room so I can come over is to pick up her laundry and make sure my usual spot on the bed wasn’t covered in comic books.  The times she comes over, I vacuum and dust, rearrange my bookshelves in alphabetical order and hide the romance novels while bringing the intellectual science fiction to the front.  Then there’s the hour spent in front of the mirror, carefully brushing on a light layer of make-up and plucking unwanted hairs, picking out the right pair of jeans to hide my love handles even though I know they’ll end up in a pile on the floor soon enough.  I was pretty impressed on the day she wore a tee-shirt with an obscure psychology joke on it just for me.

“Of course when you love someone you want them to be happy,” I start, not sure where I am going to go with that thought.  “But it doesn’t stop you from feeling crummy when they’re with someone else instead of you, even if you know they are coming back.”

I twist and flop down on my back, my head pointed toward her so I have to lean my neck back if I want to look at her.  It gives me a moment to look at the ceiling instead, the little mold spots in the corner of my vision.  Her legs are next to my face, and I can feel the heat from them like I can feel her grin at my lack of logic.  I knew I wasn’t going to win on the logic front with her, was going to have to rely on the emotional.  It makes me feel like I lost.

“But you only feel this way with her.  You don’t feel it with yourself or others.”

I move my head back, looking at her from upside down.  I couldn’t read her expression.  “What do you mean?”

“You want her to only sleep with you, but you want to sleep with others.  And your other lovers see other people.”

“Yeah.” My voice sounds flat, and I readjust my head, and turn over onto my side, pressing my cheek against her leg.  One of her hands comes down from where it was folded across her chest and begins to absent-mindedly stroke my hair.  I soak in the touch, craving it.  I wonder how much longer it will be before she’ll kiss me and we’ll end up naked.  Our pattern of talking while we both worked up the courage to move to…other activities…was well established at this point.  “I don’t mind it in others.”

It’s said for her benefit.  I wanted her to only sleep with me, to only want my body, to only crave my company.  I don’t say those things to her though; I knew when I had started dating her all those months ago that I was never going to be the only girl in her life.  I wasn’t even the most important; there was a girlfriend living in another city, a beautiful red head with a sharp mind and a wind-chime laugh.  Taking a deep breath, I can smell the dryness of the fibers of her pants and the scent of hers that I associated with a mix of dust and blood with hints of Cajun peppers.

“So then it’s unfair for you to treat Hannah any different.”

I look up at Amy, my cheek running across her thigh.  She said my other lover’s name more readily than my own sometimes, but it still sounded weird to me.  Like the two of them had to be separated, strictly kept apart and kept quiet.  Having two girlfriends still felt like cheating to me, even when both were aware of one another and quite alright with the open manner of our relationships.  It seemed like I was the only one who was struggling with the concept of poly-amory.

 “Yeah, I know.  I’ll get over it.” I say, dismissingly.  Her hand pauses a moment when I adjust to get comfortable, and then starts running itself over my hair again.  “I just feel crummy about her seeing another girl is all.”

I can feel her smirk.

Jealously,
Eve

In a Reflection (Explicit!)

I still want to add one more scene before I am satisfied with this, but...

She’s sprawled out on my bed, chest heaving, legs spread in that most undignified manner that is the most animalistic characteristic of all female humans.  Sweat glistens on her skin –how did I not notice how hot it had gotten until now? - and the collar around her neck is still a little tight.  I loosen that as I crawl up to her level, but I don’t undo the handcuffs around her wrists, or the leash connecting the collar to the bed frame.  Instead I lay down on top of her, skin to skin, our sweat mingling in an uncomfortable layer of moisture between us.  She wraps her legs, the only unbound part of her, around mine, stroking her foot down my calf reassuringly as she rides out the aftermath.  She shivers a bit, and after a few moments shifts uncomfortably; this is when I unlock the handcuffs and take off the collar, letting them hang from the metal frame like decorations.  Her arms follow the example of her legs, fingers running over my shoulders and back gently.

I want to turn my head to see if she’s looking at me, but I know her eyes are closed, so instead I bury my head in her shoulder.  The heat, the sweat, it’s all becoming a little too much, but I love the smell of her after these sessions.  Her brown curls become wet silk against the pillow, spreading out all around us and wrapped up in the blankets – how did she get it down to her waist when the longest I could ever get mine was to my shoulders?- and the sweat pushes the smell of her vanilla lotion off of her skin and into the air.  She smells like sex and sugar cookies, everything forbidden mixed with everything comforting.  I sink into her smell for only a moment longer before rolling off of her.  She continues to lay there, breasts bare to the air and nipples hardening against the cold but chest no longer moving so rapidly.

“You okay?” I ask.  She smiles indulgently at me, and then rolls over long enough to kiss me on the cheek.  Her lips feel sticky against my face, and our hands glue together as one of hers intertwines with mine.  “Everything’s green,” she whispers in her sing-song voice, the common code for BDSM participants, but also our secret code that would mean she was content and fulfilled from the encounter.  Usually green meant everything was fine, yellow that things were getting too intense, red meaning that the ‘bottom’ wanted the encounter to stop immediately.  Sometimes, though, she’d make up her own colors.  “Emerald green,” her sparkling voice whistles in my ear, the sound of glass wind chimes dancing.  “Greener than all the Queen’s jewels.”

I grin, pleased, and kiss her on top of her head.  Her green eyes look up at me, corners wrinkled as she smiles, but then she closes them.  Her fun for the night is over, but mine is just beginning.  As she drifts off to sleep, I gather her close to me, holding her tiny body against mine.  Even with the wetness from sweat and sex between us, I don’t let her go until I too fall asleep.  In the night we rest like this, coming together for a while and then drawing apart, two waves unable to make up their minds whether to travel together or rush away.  I’ll wake up in the morning with her curled up against my side, head tucked against my ribcage, her spine curled almost in a perfect C.  And I might curl into her, gather her up again; but then again, I may have gotten too hot by then, and seek refuge on my side of the bed.

*                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

We met as I imagine all lesbian dominants and submissives met; at a Starbucks in the middle of spring.

My ex and I had split the summer before after six years together.  The sex then had been pretty vanilla, too vanilla for her it appeared; how a twenty two year old became more experienced than a twenty six year old was beyond me.  She decided she needed something different, mostly in the form of two or three different affairs with men named things like “Ace” and “Benji”, whose facebook pages showed pictures of them holding their iPhones up to bathroom mirrors with their shirts off.  Not that I looked; I just imagined that’s what those kind of guys were like.  When I found out, I calmly asked her to pack up her things and go home to her mother’s, telling her she didn’t need to bother paying the rent –I would figure out something- and just go.  I cried an hour after she closed the door, just to make sure she didn’t come back.

Sal, short for Sally, which was an unfortunately name in this day and age, had left her dominant when the sex had gotten stale.  There hadn’t been much between them, she said while sipping her chai latte, just a mutual understanding that it was hard to find people open to kink so at least they had each other.  She asked me how long I had been involved with BDSM, and I felt tempted to lie and tell her a few years, I knew all the ropes- bad pun- and all that jazz.  But her green eyes disarmed me, and I admitted that the closest I had ever gotten was the Leather and Lace night at a local club.  She smiled, and said we’d take it slow.

With that and with the blessing of our mutual friends who had set us up on this blind date in the first place, we submerged ourselves in the subculture the rest of the world ignored as hard as it could.  I never knew a sex movement that could be so much about free expression could also be so rigidly ruled, with protocols and commandments just as unbreakable as the shackles being used.  Words and phrases like total power exchange and St. Andrew’s cross and blood play flew through my head like little butterflies; sometimes I could catch them and studying them and understand them, but other concepts were so new and foreign I couldn’t wrap my mental hand around them.  Sal stood like a reassuring stone at my side, merely grinning at my ignorance but not in a cruel way as she held my hand in sections of the bookstore I never knew even existed.  It looked like there was more to being a dominant than merely tying a good knot; anatomy, physiology, where the whip should hit and were it shouldn’t, where it was safe to cut and where it wasn’t and how deep was okay…it was like learning to be a doctor, finding a balance between creating the desired result and not letting too much blood get on the floor.

But I read the books, and we kept it light, moving through the sex in little baby steps as my knowledge grew.  The first time we didn’t do anything extreme; it was plain vanilla lesbian sex in every way, the usual awkward fondling and hormone laden kisses I knew since high school.  Then we moved to light restraints, me holding her or pinning her, then ropes, then maybe my arm around her neck and lightly blocking her airway as my other arm did equally sacrilegious things to her body.  We met once a week, sometimes twice if we could both get away from real life long enough, and she tutored me in things I would blush at if I talked about them in the light of day.  But with a tutor so beautiful, with her full little pink lips stuck in a permanent pout and her fair skin and that little cut above her top lip, how could I have minded the embarrassing lessons?

One day she showed up at my apartment with a gift box, about the size of a book, with a blood red ribbon wrapped around the black box.  I laughed at the dramatics of it, especially the little silver handcuffs attached to the ribbon, their little shackles no bigger in diameter than one of my fingers.  I expected, from the size, another book, but was surprised when I opened it up and pulled out a thin leather collar, the leather nice and soft but the buckle made of new, shining silver.

“Aren’t  I supposed to give this to you?” I heard myself say smoothly, even though inside I was shaken.  Collars were presented by dominants to their submissive as a sign of ownership and control; they could also have the same significance as a ring might in an everyday relationship.  And like rings they came in stages; the first ring started a formal relationship, the second an engagement of sorts, and the third a lifelong commitment, complete with contracts and a demonstration in front of open minded friends.  Those demonstrations could take “fear of commitment” to a whole new level sometimes, as it was quite standard for an EMT crew to be standing nearby when they went on.

But then she smiled that little smile of hers, and was holding up her hair and turning her back to me.  I slipped the collar around her little neck and slid the little prong into a hole that left the collar loose but firm across her unblemished skin.

*                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

Dinner with my mother.  Oh the horror.

Maria sat across from me, her blond hair cut short by her cheek bones but fluffed up by hairspray in a way that reminded me of senators’ wives and women twice her age who were trying to look younger.   Forty five, though, looked better on my mother than twenty six looked on me, and like everything she did she carried it with a dignified grace.  Dignified grace complete with a periwinkle blue power suit and a strand a little pearls given to her by her ex-husband- not my father- around her neck.  She would cut her food with her little finger up, cup her wine glass in just the right way, and stare at me from the top of her eyeglasses with just the right amount of loving contempt.  I tried not to fidget in my jeans and blouse, somehow aware than even if these jeans were the nice ones without holes and the blouse was bought at full price instead of clearance, they were still not good enough for Maria.

“How is your job going, honey?” She asked sweetly in her voice, graveled from smoking, which she had renounced when I was a teenager because it was such a dirty habit.  She never called it ‘work’, always my ‘job’, because for Maria job implied temporary and at some point I would come to my senses and get a real career like her, spitting out insurance quotes and telling other people that their money wasn’t good enough.  I never told her that I had made project manager at the little non-profit charity I had worked at since starting college, people’s generous donations now paying a real salary for me as I helped families find housing after theirs burned to the ground or were overrun with toxic molds.  After disasters befell good, honest people, my mother told them all about the money they wouldn’t be eligible for because of all the loopholes they had fallen through when their roofs came down, while I scrambled to find them anything at all they could grab onto.  I made manager about a year ago.

“It’s going well,” I said pleasantly, sliding a piece of roast- how typical- into my mouth so I didn’t have to say more.  At least Maria was a regular drill sergeant about manners, so I could use a full mouth as an excuse not to speak to her.  But after a while, the silence became too oppressive even for me.  “And, I’m seeing someone.”

“Oh?” The little sound from her mouth, the way she set down her folk with a sudden sharpness, the way her icy eyes finally looked up at me and took in the feminine blouse and the little bit of eyeliner I had struggled to put on in the mirror this morning, all of it was telling.  Telling her surprise, her hopeful thought process- please, please let it be a man this time, you’re twenty six for Christ sake, when I was your age you were already born and I was struggling to find a husband rich enough to take care of the two of us, stop this silly ‘lifestyle’ nonsense and settle down-, telling her disdain for my ex and every girlfriend I had brought home since the first one my junior year of high school.  It was the most attention I had gotten from her all night.

“Her name is Sally,” I tried not to choke on my lover’s name as I watched my mother’s shoulders deflate just that little bit.  I was hoping that ‘Sally’ would be better than ‘Sal’, that maybe a womanly girlfriend with long hair who wore make-up and heels and could cook and clean might be more acceptable than some motorcycle riding bull dyke with a buzz cut and who refused to wear a bra- I had only ever brought home one of those, but she had never forgiven me for it.  No such luck though; the lack of a penis was always a deal-breaker for Maria.  “She’s in school to be a teacher, elementary school children,” I said, my words rushed as I tried to gain some ground with my mother but knowing I was losing quickly.  When her eyes went back to her plate, I knew I was defeated.  “She’s really bright,” I added weakly.

“She sounds delightful.”  The fork was picked up again, scooping up a little portion of mashed potatoes.

“Yeah, she is.”  I was surprised how sad my voice sounded, but my mother never noticed.  I slumped a little in my chair, looking across the dining room table at her- long, but not so long as to lose that family feel, she had said when she picked it out of the catalogue- to see if she noticed my dejected look.  She never did.

‘Oh yeah, and I regularly beat her when we have sex.’ The words boiled on my tongue, bouncing around in my throat like little goblins causing mischief.  ‘We use whips and chains, and sometimes I tie her up on my apartment wall and fuck her, and if you could only hear the noises she makes and the way she begs and the way she bites her lip until it bleeds.  And sometimes it’s me who can’t walk when we’re done, because even though she’s the one being fucked, those sweet little noises she makes undo me so much…’

I pick up my own fork again, none of this said.  Sometimes, simply because you love them, you keep things from your parents.  They are content in their own little world, the world where your prince charming will come along someday and you’ll grow out your hair and end up slaving over a stove top, pregnant and bare-footed.  And the hairy-assed plumber that might beat you when he gets too drunk- and not in the pleasurable way of beating someone- will always be better for their little princess than the sweat little school teacher who happens to have a pair of amazing tits.  Sometimes you have to protect your parents, because they gave birth to you and you love them for it, if for that reason alone.

*                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

There’s blood on the sheets.  I stare at the little stream of blood running down her thigh and onto the fabric, going from a sharp, smooth line into a blot of messy red.  ‘Where did that come from?’ my mind asks, and I stare dumbly at the pocket knife in my hand.  She’s on her back again, arms chained to the bed frame again, legs spread open unashamed again as her chest heaves, over and over, breaths forced through her wide open mouth as she pants.  My fingers are wrapped tightly around the knife’s handle, the pull out for the corkscrew digging into my palm, as I stare blindly at the blade and the blood and her, and it registers that I am turned on and it’s oh so wrong that I should be- she’s bleeding, for Christ sake- but I have never felt so confused and horny since puberty hit…

I drop the knife onto the blankets, and scramble up, grabbing the key to the handcuffs with shaking hands and unlocking her.  I catch sight of her confused expression right before I scoot over to the side of the bed, staring at my trembling hands as I feel my body begin to shake.  There’s the tiniest brush stroke of red on the inside of my pointer finger, probably from dropping the knife, and I run my hands frantically over my bare legs in an attempt to wipe it off.  I’m not sure if I do though; I am too afraid to look at my hands and see if they’re stained.

“Babe?” comes her sing-song voice, and I feel the bed move as she comes up behind me, one leg to each side as her hands settle on my shoulder.  This makes it worse, because out of the corner of my eye I can see the mark on her leg, like a line drawn in the sand and then lined with plastics that never came from nature and had no right to be there.  I screw my eyes shut, pushing my palms into them as if to push the image back into my head and out the other side, but it only leave little white bubbles on the insides of my eyelids.  I feel her fingers stroking my hair, her voice whispering ‘it’s okay, everything’s green, what’s the matter?’ in a voice half way between reassuring and panicked.  And then I’m crying, and turning around and holding her desperately, sobbing into her breast as she continued to pet my head and pull the blankets around us.  There’s a heavy ‘thunk’ as the pocket knife falls off the edge of the bed and hits the wood floors.

The next morning, we sit at my kitchen counter, a coffee cup each as we sip our daily caffeine and try to figure out where to start.  She’s brushed out her long hair and pulled on the old sweats she kept in my closet, her little cherub face bunched up in an expression of contemplation.  She asks me the usual awkward questions- are you okay, did I do something wrong, what happened last night- but I don’t have any answers for her, so I stay quiet.  I feel like a petulant child, sitting there sulking into my coffee and refusing to provide anything beyond a confirming grunt or denying huff.  After a while her shoulders slump, and for the first time I feel a little annoyance leak over from her side of the counter to mine.  I just try to sink further into the wood stool I’m balanced upon, wishing I had a hood to pull over my head.

“Look, stuff like this can’t happen.”  It’s the worst thing she can say, and she realizes it the moment she says it, but the words can’t be grabbed out of the air and forced back down her throat.  Still, I know what she means.  We can’t afford for me to freak out in the middle of sex, for me to be unstable.  What we have is too different, too bizarre, too freakish and dangerous and deranged.  I have to be in control, I have to be comfortable with myself; in other words, I can’t be in love with her and suffer the normal human self-consciousness, at least not while there’s a blade in my hand and she can’t defend herself.

“We both have to be comfortable with this,” she says, her voice a little less sharp and more soothing.  She may not be able to pull the earlier words out of the air, but she can try to paint over them with other ones.  “I don’t want you to do anything you can’t handle.  We can always leave the other stuff-” she says other stuff with an unneeded amount of emphasis- “for when you feel up to it.”

I still don’t say anything.  The steam has stopped rising from my coffee and I absent-mindedly wonder how much long I have to drink it until it gets cold.  I can still feel the tenseness in her shoulders, the annoyance and the anger and the sadness and the helplessly rolling off of her in waves.  I wonder what I send to her, what little motions in my fidgeting fingers or tenseness of my legs braced against the chair say.  I wonder if she’ll leave, if she’ll pack up her books and her old PJs and the little strainer she brought over since I didn’t have one, and she’ll disappear while I’m at work.  I wonder if she go back to her apartment down by the university, she’ll plop her bag down on the couch and tell her roommate she’s home FOR GOOD this time, and she’ll dive into her school work so she can ignore her phone vibrating as I desperately call.  I wonder what I’ll feel when she doesn’t pick up, if I’ll cry, or if I will wait again like I did before until I was sure she wasn’t going to show up at the door or return my call.

But then she surprises me.  Even with the frustration and the hurt, her hand leaves her coffee cup and reaches over to mine, pulling my fingers away from the cooling porcelain and into hers.  And she holds my hand, intertwining her fingers in mind as our sweaty palms rub together, and sips her drink while staring at the microwave.  I stare with her, seeing our reflection in the black plastic, and try not to cry again.

Feeling the pain,

Eve

And You May Die

Half fiction, half not...

I walk out of her back door into the snow. Sometime during the night the heavens let lose their wails in the form of frozen water, raining down thick clumps of white onto the street. It wasn’t the first snow of the season, in fact it was one of many, but it covered over the parts that had gone gray from car exhaust. When I walk outside, it’s like being hit in the face and my hat does little to protect me. It goes from warm to bone chilling, dark to bright white, in a matter of seconds. Everything is pristine, clean, new, unlike the dirty linoleum floors and dust bunny sanctuary I just came from. It’s like dying, opening your eyes not too reality but to some cold, white wonderland.
I wait on the back porch as she follows me out and locks the door. I don’t look at her, but at this point we are so in sync I can feel her moving. She lifts the edge of her long leather coat, pulling on the chain at her waist that leads to her keys, and then flips through the countless number to find the right one. She’s a medieval dungeon master, locking away her house and all the secrets of the things we did in it. Locking away last night’s date, the food, the smells, the sex. Soon as I start down the street we’ll be out of sync again, and everything will be locked away for only her to see until the next time I come.
If I come again.
I shift my backpack from one shoulder to another as I watch an adventurous squirrel dart around in the snow. The backpack is not perceivably light, weighted down by books and notebooks and my old beat-up laptop, but I imagine that it is lighter. It is one book short, after all; a skinny little play written between yellow covers, but a book all the same. Its absence makes my heart ache in a way it has no right to.
It was our second date when she gave me the first book. We hadn’t been sleeping together yet, but the tension was thick in the air like the heat was turned up too high. It was mid-October; we had stopped for Indian food that was too spicy for me but too mild for her, followed by drinks at the bar next door. She had a beer and water; I had two glasses of wine. I drove her back to her place because at the time I had a car, and she came out with a tiny white book with frayed edges. Her nickname was on a piece of green tape on the back cover, and the names of the plays on the front were just as foreign to me. But I read the little book that night, and then again, and then again.
And our dates continued. We would still maintain the illusion of getting dinner at a restaurant, or ordering pizza, or going to see a movie. But eventually we ended back at her little two bedroom house, avoiding her roommate (or he avoided us, I am not quite sure which), and into her bedroom. She wanted to see my tattoo, so I had to take my shirt off. I wanted to see the scars from her injured shoulder, so she took hers off. She wore no bra because her nipples were pierced, and while I had always loved women, her body was as different to me as the books she gave me. Unshaved, strong, muscular, like a man’s, but not a man’s at the same time. With the first layer of clothes off, the rest were soon to follow, and we became lovers. By then my car was gone, so there was no excuse for me not to spend the night
The mornings after I would inevitably have to leave, either for school or work, and she had to pack up for work. We didn’t speak of the fact she had a girlfriend already, or what I was to her, although sometimes I would politely ask after the other girl and try not to choke on the jealousy as my lover smiled so sweetly at the thought of her. Some mornings we would wake up early enough to explore each other in the sunlight, or at least I would pretend I had the luxury to catch a later bus so I could touch her. But we always ended up at the back porch, her locking the door and then turning to give me a kiss somewhere between indifferent and passionate, and I would walk toward campus while she drove away, a new book in my backpack.
But not this time. She hadn’t given me a new book this time.
I fought the bitterness that began to surface, the sorrow and anger that were battling it out to see who could climb up my throat the fastest. Instead I focused on the snow, perfect white until it reached the street where cars had already turned it black. The words lesbian, poly-amourous, girlfriend, lover, mistress, and casual sex all boiled on my tongue like food that was too hot, burning my mouth with their exotic flavors. What happened to the simple words, like love, commitment, marriage, kids, family, trust? But those words belonged to straight couples, where things were clear-cut, where you had one lover for your whole life until a second lover tore everything to shreds, a world I no longer could claim membership to. And I cursed the heavens, because at some point to be lesbian meant to be the lover of a girl with a girlfriend, and having to clamp down on your jealousy like it was a bad thing and pretended you were fine with the girl you were in love with sleeping with someone else. Somewhere, the sexual revolution and keeping an open mind took a wrong turn.
“Oh shit,” I heard her mumble in her deep voice, and I took a moment to listen to the keys jingle as I turned to her and froze my face in the mask of pleasant confusion. The expectation between us, the unwritten rule, did not allow for me to burn, so I pretended I was ice and snow as I looked up at her. Already her cheeks were glowing red from the cold, her purple hair sticking up from the wind. “I forgot something, stay here.”
“Yup,” I heard myself reply, cheerfully. As she darted back inside, I let my eyes wander again. She’s used to my lack of attention though, and is graceful enough not to acknowledge it when I am trying to hide my feelings from her. She knew when I got distracted it was when I’m trying not to think of her, trying not to love her, but at least she didn’t point it out. It almost made it worse. I jumped when I heard her come out again, and turned back to watch the muscles in her shoulders move as she locked the door.
But then she turns around, and shoves a little black book with red letters on the front into my hands. We have our kiss that is somewhere between indifferent and passionate, and she drives off as I walk to school, crying.
* * * * *
We met on an online dating site. Welcome to the 21st century.
My ex and I had split six months before, after nearly five years together. Perhaps split, though, was not the right word; I wish I could say the night I found out she was cheating stood out to me as a defining point in my life, but quite honestly between the tears and the emotions and the hurt, it became a black spot in my memory. I spent a few months being dragged from gay bar to gay bar by my closest friends, who hadn’t yet realized that I wasn’t going to jump in the sack with some stranger in order to feel better. After a while the martinis became too sweet, the bass too loud; I started burying myself in work and school so I would have an excuse not to tag along. But that didn’t make life any less lonely; I turned to dating sites because at least then I could emphasize my loneliness from the comfort of my own home.
I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I read her profile. Her picture was her holding a gun pointed at the screen, her glasses and purple hair just out of focus in the background. I had always had a weakness for glasses, and she was no exception. As I read on I became more and more intrigued. 17 piercings in one ear alone. Makes chain mail. Works as a software designer, but does theater lighting as a side project. Loves metal music, but used to lead a swing band. Gay. Five feet seven, plays soccer competitively. Did I mention the glasses? The dating site offered stupid little tests, and under her tab were a bunch that pointed to geeky sci-fi shows and obscure books.
Only one flaw. Listed not as “single” but “available”.
I knew in my head what that meant. I knew all about poly lifestyle, could justify it in my head but spoke venomously against it whenever asked. Dating two or more people, or having a “primary” partner but sleeping with strangers. Why not just stay single and be friends with benefits with your intended partner? And how could you not call someone your girlfriend and then get ridiculously jealous as she gave herself to someone else? Ridiculous, I would say. Casual sex happens, it’s fine, a movement between two consenting adults; I was not such a prude as to argue that. But poly-amorous love? Bah, impossible. My ex had seen to it that I found the idea of sharing my partner with another woman more detestable than any other weird or disturbing fetish. I could never date poly, as it was termed.
But I sent her a message, a bull-shit conversation starter about onions and mushrooms on pizza and asking about soccer. A week later she wrote me back.
* * * * *
She never wrote back as often as I did, so it was a game for me to decide when it was appropriate to reply to her. Was the day I saw the little red mail icon too soon; how about the day after, or the day after that? How much interest did I show in her life, how many questions did I ask and how personal could they be? How was I supposed to respond when she gave that little smile of hers while talking about her girlfriend, or when her voice got tight in her throat about mentioning her deceased father? What topics were okay? Where did I have to draw the line so as to keep my place as the casual sex partner, the maybe-a-friend if I was lucky, and not overstep my boundaries?
The books made it more difficult. The books meant that our encounters couldn’t just end. I couldn’t just get a girlfriend, slip into a monogamous relationship and cut off contact with her. I couldn’t decide to move on, to start looking again for someone to share my life with exclusively, and simply type up some pathetic reason for not meeting with her anymore. No, I had to keep seeing her, if only to give her books back. After all, these were plays with lighting notes scribbled on the margins, or novels with random lines highlighted in classic yellow; these were books from precious college years, these weren’t books she could just replace. These had meaning, power beyond the already overwhelming strength of written word. These were precious, sacred in a way; I had to fight the urge to cleanse my hands just to touch them, so keeping them was pure blasphemy.
One night I was sitting on her bed, absent-mindedly tracing the patterns on her comforter, as she wandered around her living room with her cell phone glued to one ear. She was talking to her still living grandmother about plans for the New Year, me only half listening and missing the other half thanks to her closed door. Her comforter was soft, stitched together from all the different production shirts from her university theater, and I curled up into a ball on the top of it, letting the tee-shirt material stroke the side of my face. Across from me was her beat-up dresser, the top of it covered in an indiscernible mass of papers, toys, and other small objects. Nailed to her wall was the only decoration in the entire room, and it simply a single sheet of paper, yellowed to look old. “The World Could End Tomorrow and You May Die” was typed up on it, made to look like a newspaper headline.
Her room was like the books she gave me, and together they told me more about her than my questions would ever get me or she would ever grant me. At first glance the bedroom was a mess, the whole room having this feeling like it was beaten into submission by the piles of dust, and books, and clothes and who-the-hell-knows-what-else. Then you noticed the obvious; the four book shelves crammed into a small space they had no business fitting themselves into, the giant metal framed bed, the beat-up dresser, the aged cardboard box that sat away from all the mess like it was too good for everything else in the room. Then more detail; there were D-rings welded onto one of the bookshelves, another was caving under the weight of the books on it, the comforter with the strange names on it and the hand-drawn designs, the closet door that was always half open because it was always too full to close. And then the details had details; the sign proclaiming the end of the world was too small to have come from an actual newspaper, there was a section on the book shelves that was only children’s books, the scratch marks on the floor from the bed shifting.
And like the books, I understood some of the finer points but not all of them. The cardboard box held either legos or her father’s broken pottery, and she was too scared to open it to see which. The too big furniture was from when she moved from the larger bedroom in the house to the smaller one, not because of the roommate but because of her charming ex-girlfriend, who ended up moving out only a month after. The dust because she only came home to sleep, and once in a while to see me, but was otherwise out in the world working or playing soccer or in the bed of another woman who wasn’t her girlfriend either. These things I could piece together, and I wondered what other reader knew what other details.
After a while though, my hand had stopped moving and I was just curled up. This was how she found me, when I was so busy studying the details with half-open eyes that I didn’t realize her voice had gone quiet. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, and I must have heard that, but I think I was too distracted and didn’t understand what it meant. But I did feel the bed dip under her weight, and I jumped a little and looked up at her.
“You should have told me if you were feeling sick again.” I hated how her voice could sound so accusatory sometimes, especially when she was doing something so sweet as to push my bangs away from my face. Her eyes behind her glasses were a murky brown, somewhere between amber and green, but I thought they were stunning even if they sort of looked like dirty water. She looked concerned. I took a moment, feeling out my body; I did feel dizzy, slightly feverish. I wondered how much of that was her.
“You were talking with grandma,” I heard myself say. Her grandmother, not mine. Although sometimes I called my lover “grandma”, because it was easy to tease her about the difference in our ages, and I often couldn’t think of anything wittier to tease her about. “Grandma comes first.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat, and physically lifted me up. She was about eight inches taller than me, and a great deal more muscle from all that soccer practice, whereas I lived the student life and it was only stress keeping me thin instead of an active lifestyle. A few seconds later, and I was lying against her chest as she rested against the headboard, bracing her neck against the wider metal pole that ran across it. One of my ears was pressing on the collar of her shirt, half of it sticking to her skin; I could hear her heart beat, a steady and deep bass line from beneath her rib cage.
“I’m sorry.” She hated it when I apologized, but I always did it anyway. For a moment I wondered if her girlfriend got to lie like this, wrapped up in the tee-shirt comforter and strong arms, listening to a heart-beat song that was older than time but still only twenty-nine years old. But I guess I knew the girlfriend did; the girlfriend got everything I got plus more, more than I could imagine because I already felt like what I got was beyond what I was entitled to. “I’m fine, really.”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t expect her to be. “When was the last time you had dialysis?”
I pressed my lips together tightly and went silent, trying to think. When was the last time I had gone to my doctors? I was supposed to go weekly, but there was school, work, seeing her…more than a month ago, at least. “Uh…maybe last week?”
She made a little snorting noise through her nose, and her arms tightened. My ear was now completely against her skin, sticking to it, and I hoped my earring wasn’t cutting her. But I didn’t move, I stayed still in her arm, listening to the thump-thump-thump that pushed life through her body. After a while she shifted us so that she was lying down as well, but my ear remained pressed to her chest, glued there. I struggled against sleep, not wanting to waste our alone time, but I could only pout when I felt the little spasms go through her body that meant she was sinking into sleep herself. So I listened to her heart slow, my own battle quickly being lost as I felt my eyes droop closed.
“The world may end tomorrow, and you may die…” my mind whispered. I was in that half-awake, half-asleep world where thoughts became messy and disconnected. “Which is all well and good, because you could be dead tomorrow anyway.”
* * * * *
Another morning. Spring has come, and the ground outside her back door is a mess of mud and grass that hasn’t made up its mind whether it wants to be brown or turn green. There are more squirrels now, darting around like lunatics, shaking water from the trees and power lines onto the unsuspecting people below. The neighborhood wakens around this time, students off to class, new families off to day cares, actual adults off to work. There’s a fence and a line of hedges protecting us from everyone’s view, but from the raised porch I can see them going. She’s locking the door behind us.
It’s one of those rare days where I don’t have work until late, and no classes beckon me toward the campus. But rather than take the time to spend more time with her, she has an actual, honest to goodness, nine-to-five job that cuts our date short. And it’s a Monday, meaning she actually has to be to work on time for the weekly meeting. I feel bad when our dates come up on Sunday, knowing she won’t get much sleep before that early meeting, but sometimes it’s the only night I can get. Monday and Thursday nights are Soccer, Tuesday is a night with friends, Wednesday goes to her girlfriend, Friday and Saturday spent in bars hunting for a warm bed. So I get Sundays, every other week. I secretly wonder what it means that I see her half as much as her girlfriend, but all the other girls only see her for a night, maybe two if they’re super cute.
It’s nice out, but I’m still wearing a coat and it causes my purse to keep sliding off my shoulder. In my coat pocket I can hear a piece of paper rustling, and I smile when I remember what it is. I walk toward the edge of the porch as she messes with the door, bracing my hands against the wooden railing and breathing in spring. Kidney function within normal range, liver performance optimal. Congratulations, the letter says. You are going to live. Keep exercising, maintain a good diet, remember to brush your teeth and listen to your mother, blah blah blah, and you will live, the letter says. As I watch the squirrels, I feel her come up behind me, bracing her hands on the railing beside mine as she kisses the top of my head and leans into me. I smile wider.
“So what are you going to do with your free time?” She asks, teasingly. She still has her leather coat on, and it makes a funny noise as she moves her hands and wraps her arms around her. I sink into the feeling, knowing her girlfriend’s birthday is next week so it might be a while before I see her again. Part of me is disappointed; another part is too happy. “Drink coffee where that cute barista works?”
“Ah, I think she might actually be straight. I’m totally heartbroken,” I say, mockingly. Contrary to popular belief, it could be hard to tell who was lesbian and who wasn’t; gay-dar was a myth. So was recruiting, although that never stopped us from trying. “However, there is this one at the book store on State…”
I feel her laugh before I even hear it, and release my hold on the railing so I can lean back against her, putting my hands on her arms. She’s warm, and I’m starting to sweat, but I don’t move. At this rate she’s going to be late to work, but I don’t want to let her go. “So…” she whispers into my ear, “if you don’t get anywhere with the book-keeper, would you maybe want to catch dinner with me and Gina on Wednesday?”
Gina. The girlfriend. I don’t think I go still, but I must have because her arms tighten. I can’t imagine she’s nervous, but I know I am. Images go racing through my head; the few pictures I had seen of Gina, scenarios playing out where she hates me or- even worse- where she doesn’t, kissing her, hitting her, her hitting me, yelling, fighting, and- oh please no- even sex. What if I ended up having a threesome with my lover and her girlfriend? How horrible would that be? But she’s waiting for my answer, and for once I can feel that she might be kind of nervous to see how I am going to respond.
“Sure, that would be great.” I turn in her arms, and kiss her lightly. All bubbles, all smiles; my eyes are slightly distracted, but I’m not ice this time. Nor am I burning. “But hey, I got something for you!”
She lets me go so I can dig around in my purse. It takes a moment- I am always so messy- until I pull out a small paperback. She takes it from me, looking over it in curiosity; the binding is white with big bold black letters, and there’s a piece of blue tape on the back with a name scribbled across it. I take her hand and we head toward the car, and I kiss her at the driver’s side in a way that’s somewhere between passionate and comfortable. We finalize our plans for Wednesday, she kisses me this time, and drives off. I walk toward campus, secretly pleased my purse is a little lighter because one of my favorite books is sitting on her passenger seat between her coat and her lunch bag.

Somewhere between ice and fire,
Eve

Thrown Away

The Original: Forgotten


New:

You can’t help but hate her.

She floats through a world on gentle breezes of perfume, always smelling sweet but never too sweet, only just a trace but never too much.  If you look close enough you can see the little strands of hair on the top of her head that are out of place, but only if you look closely enough that you have to admit you are paying attention.  From afar she looks polished, the cliché god-like perfection made reality, hair and make-up all put together, clothes the same ones you buy but somehow different on her.  Everything lines up for her in a way they only can in television shows and really bad country music songs.  She plays for the school volleyball team- preppy, girly, but still a legitimate sport- and gets good grades while struggling just the right amount through math class that no one resents her A.  She makes the world look easy but never too easy, enough personality flaws and awkward moments to make her real and not a living Barbie, and this somehow makes it worse because at least with the doll you can point at it and say “this isn’t right”.  You know she isn’t right, but you can’t point at her without everyone else pointing back at you.

You, on the other hand, are not like her.  You trudge along with the rest, knowing you could do well in school but being simply too lazy to really apply yourself.  You look fine, you have your good days and your bad days, your clothes fit right but they aren’t spectacular.  You walk the middle path, representing everything that is normal, everything that is mediocre.   Decent family, decent grades, decent friends, decent life.  Nothing special.  You aren’t extreme enough or disturbed enough to be one of the outcasts, but neither are you perfect like her and among the exalted.  You are just you; middle road, normal, mediocre.  Unnoticed but not in the tragic way, but in the way that there’s nothing worth noting about you; your sole function is to be a comparison to people like her, so people can point at you and say “normal” and then point at her and say “ideal”.  You dare not complain, even if it would earn you some fleeting attention, because in reality what is there to complain about?

So it just makes it worse when you find her in the bathrooms that day after lunch, and you two meet eyes as she comes out of the stall because you know what she’s doing and she knows you know and it’s awkward because what do you even do in that situation?  Nothing.  She simply ducks her head shyly, not able to say anything, and washes out her mouth and quiet leaves.  And you hate her more, because isn’t it just god-damn-bloody-perfect that Miss Perfect has an eating disorder.  And you hate that you can’t hate her for that, because that’s not how it works and you are supposed to feel sympathy for her and empathize with her girl-to-girl and blame society for the images they force on women.  So either way you are supposed to feel angry, but you aren’t sure who to be angry at and anger is an emotion that needs focus, so you decide to be angry at yourself.

A few weeks pass by in the flurry of high school drama, of homework and stupid teachers, of sitting at home alone at night and wondering where these “awesome parties” you always hear about actually happen because you’ve never witnessed one.  You catch her at it a few more times, and wonder how much she must be doing it that you keep seeing her.  But neither of you say anything, you just go about your business in a tense awkwardness.  What are you supposed to do?  Tell someone?  Hope one of her other perfect friends tells?  Confront her?  And when did it become mandatory that you care?  What happened to the good old days, which never really existed, where you could just leave someone with an eating disorder to their fate and there wasn’t all this pushing to be “aware” and to “care”?

But she, of course, has the answers for you.  One day you are sitting in English class, trying really hard not to glare at the back of her perfect head of golden-red hair, when she reaches back and puts a note on your desk corner.  The movement is totally smooth, well rehearsed, a scene straight out of a prime time teen drama.  And you, ever a slave to the predictability of the universe, snatch it up with a little less grace and shove it in your pocket.  When class is over you read it, and it’s the answer to your dilemma spelled out in broken English; “thnx for not telling any1, i‘m gonna get help.”

So you don’t say anything.  After all, you wouldn’t want to get in the way of her self-empowerment and all that jazz.  And two weeks later she commits suicide, and the entire school is engulfed in grief.  Now what?

There’s guilt, of course.  Sadness, tears.  After all, you are only human; any time someone you know the name of dies, there’s a sense of responsibility and “what if” and “if only”.  That’s what they mean when they say that names have power; you might not be able to cast magic spells with them or use them to force people to love you, but a name can cast a spell over you to force you to care.  Suddenly it’s not Miss Perfect anymore, it’s Ashley and the name tastes like copper pennies on your tongue.  And you just so happen to be the one with some actual responsibility, the one who could have done something but didn’t.  You hear the “what ifs” and “if onlys” from the teachers and students, but you were the only one who actually could have seen the signs and done something.  It’s not teenage angst, it’s not the demons of depression talking; her death is quite literally your fault.

More weeks go by and the pain begins to fade.  Things go back to a strange sort of normal, people wanting to move on but feelings like it’s too soon to act happy.  The school sponsors the usual memorial, a little plaque in the front hall and a tree planted out by the football field.  The volleyball team frames her jersey and hangs it in the hallway between the locker rooms.  The other Ashleys have to deal with everyone looking away from them whenever their names are called, but they take the unease with a gracious air of empathy.  There are fewer “what would Ashley think if…” and more “what do you think of this…”, fewer tears and more smiles.  Wounds heal.  Some carry scars, others only healing scratches.  The world realigns itself when they swore it would never be right again.  And in a few years, when everyone is getting drunk in college and crying over boyfriends, she’ll only be a passing thought.

And if this were one of those stupid made-for-TV movies or horribly bad country songs, you would have saved the note.  You would keep it in a box under your bed, or shoved into your wallet, and you would pull it out in quiet moments and contemplate what the world would be like if Ashley was still in it.  This would be the defining moment in your life, the one that would either change you into a living saint or into a cruel bitch, and you could blame all your future behaviors on.  The girl you sort of knew in high school that you caught puking in the bathrooms would be the reason for your loveless marriage, your issues with your mother, you dissatisfaction with your job, your need to finally write that novel, the reason for everything.

But this isn’t a made-for-TV movie, it’s reality.  And in reality, you found the note about a year later while cleaning out your room for college.  You look at it briefly, remembering who it was from only after a few moments of stumped confusion.  But you remember, and frown a little.  Then, with a movement that is so smooth and so well rehearsed it could have been straight out of a TV show, you throw it away.

Talk about way different...
Eve