I could tell you all the reasons I went ahead with the inevitable. I could tell you about my parents alternately calling me with their break-up woes, stretching my compassion out between them. I could tell you that I was lonely, isolated and had no one else in the world. I could tell you I lost my job and The Troll and the Roommate moved out and that there were no one bedroom apartments available in the complex and that while the landlord was compassionate about my situation she was holding me to the lease agreement. I could tell you how worried I was about being homeless again. I could tell you how I wasn't in me anymore, how I was the flaky dried up bits left when a flower dies, a puff of air so easily crumbling me into a fine gray powder. I could tell you I wanted it to be worse. I could tell you nothing happening was yet bad enough to match the way I felt inside, I could tell you I tempted the flames closer, wanting to burn to nothing, to be nothing, to feel nothing if it wasn't You.
I could tell you all that. But usually, when people ask, (and they do ask) what on earth I was thinking to sleep with him I just say: "He rubbed my feet". Because he did. He rubbed my feet and then started up my calves. He said "friends do this", and "Let me make love to you." and he did and he was decent at it. And once I had done it there wasn't any reason not to keep doing it. And then he said "I want to marry you and have babies" and "this is all I've ever wanted" and "I love you" and it seemed that I must be an idiot not to feel it, to be nothing and ungrateful for this gift. But I was. I refused to call him my boyfriend, shoved his hand off my thigh on a bus, and told him to his face that he would never really have me. He laughed and said I would get over it, that I would grow up.
By day reasons for how wrong it all was kept right on popping up. His drinking, the age difference, the messages on the machine from his parole officer, the nights he disappeared next door, bizarre flares of temper that were somehow always my fault, his possessive nature. I continued to push him away denying what everyone around us knew. Then the sun would go down and my body would betray me, unfold under me, rebelling against my heart and common sense. I started to believe him. The world closed in and was only as big as that apartment. The walls were streaked with his opinions, the blinds that had once let in rays of light were shut, the cupboards bare of anything. I shuffled around in a daze, silent and broken.
Meanwhile Crispy and Amigo were still around, but they were "our" friends now. Amigo was always in the middle of any fighting, pestering me, cajoling me, feeding off every bit of drama. She and The Sandwich were very much buddy-buddy, always on the phone, or at the apartment, or begging him to come get her, to entertain her. In a rare bit of honesty she confided she hated being married, thought she was too young to have a family and all the responsibility that came with it. "How can you say that? You mooned over Crispy all through high school he's a great guy, you have a baby together." I asked her and she shrugged, not knowing herself. Crispy was his usual self and brought groceries over to the apartment, mortifying me for all eternity.
Thanksgiving came, my niece was born and Christmas passed with a few awkward family gatherings in my parents separate places. New Years came and I turned twenty. The Sandwich disappeared for a few hours and returned with a basket of items suspiciously pocket-size. I didn't say a word. He was pissed I wasn't saying thank you and gushing over it, saying "it's impossible to give you anything" and the same old fight about how stiff and unemotional I was began again. His behavior was increasingly erratic. The crazier he was the less anything I was, I became the wall he bounced off of, the floor he stomped on, the empty room he needed to come back to. And he hated it. He screamed at me to "be the person he saw flashes of when he met me" but I couldn't find her, or didn't want to, or she was gone.
I remember the night that we made her. I remember realizing he didn't know any more than I did, that his gut wasn't any more fine tuned just because he had experienced more people. Suddenly all the vibes and doubts and thoughts I had had all along became concrete in a way that made me know I was reading him at least as well as he could read me. I met him moment to moment, anticipating his turns and making him wait, making sure I made him come when I wanted him to. Our bodies communed and, I took something back then. I knew I would never escape him. That I had foolishly let myself be chosen again and again would have to give something irreplaceable up in exchange for my escape.
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