Sunday
Feb032013
Lipstick Lesbian
Feb 3, 2013
I roll over and take my thousandth peek at the alarm clock mocking me from the nightstand on his side of the bed. The red digital numbers glow menacingly. 1:50 AM. That bastard.
Who does he think he is? Who does he think I am that I will put up with this shit? I give the clock my back and burrow deeper under the comforter. He’s obviously trying to goad me into some sort of dramatic reaction, I tell myself. Well he can prod all night. I don’t care where he is.
Aaaah! I fling off the bed covers and stomp down the hall toward the living room. Maybe a rousing episode of Elimidate during which angry blondes with fake tits fight over some dimwitted idiot with over-sized muscles will take my mind off the pathetic fact that my boyfriend still isn’t home at two o’clock in the morning on a Thursday night.
Fuck it! I snatch my cell from the coffee table and dial Casey.
“Yeah?”
“What the fuck are you doing?” All the pent up anger from the past three hours floods into the question, venom from my bared fangs.
“What?” He asks innocently, like I’m just calling to say hello at lunch hour.
“It’s TWO IN THE MORNING, that’s what! Where are you?”
“Tim’s house.”
“What are you trying to prove, what point are you making here?”
“Dunno.. Just didn’t want to come home” is his apathetic answer.
“What are you doing? Who are you doing?”
“Listening to music.” He is being curt just to piss me off.
“Just you and Tim?” As if on cue a shriek of laughter erupts in the background like a string of firecrackers. An unmistakably girlish giggle.
I click off my cell phone and throw it across the room. It slams into the wall then clatters to the floor, innards spilling out of its shell like a cracked egg. Batteries roll across the hardwood and come to rest against the coffee table leg. Fuck.
I knew the relationship was in critical condition. We had both tried to resuscitate our languishing love at various times in the past six months of living together. Now only a medical miracle could save us. And I’m not even sure I wanted it. Casey scared me. He had a violent streak even the dumbest of girls would recognize as a red flag.
“You drive me crazy, Monica. I’ve never been like this with any other woman. You make me wild.”
In the beginning I was flattered. Eager to believe his overwhelming love for me could reduce him to a caveman. I was pleased by what I assumed was my obviously beguiling behavior could drive men violent over their love for me. Until he kicked in my car door.
We had a fight over some trivial matter at a sushi restaurant a couple miles from our apartment. Ultimately I stormed out in typical dramatic fashion and called a cab to take me home. As I was waiting his jeep rocketed out of the parking lot and squealed around the corner. I took the cab home and we eventually made up.
A few days later I was visiting my Mom at her house. She was walking me to my car as I was leaving when she noticed a huge dent smack in the center of the passenger door of my black Dodge Neon. We bent down to inspect what we assumed to be the result of an errant shopping cart. But right in the center of the crease was the distinct impression of a shoe sole. A perfect shoe print. The impression of squares and lines rising from the dirt the shoe left behind.
“Somebody kicked your car! Who would kick your car?”
“I don’t know. How strange. Maybe they got the wrong car.” I lied. I was immediately suspicious of the man who shared my bed and didn’t want Mom knowing the depths to which my damaged relationship had sunk.
“Casey? You home?” The minute I got home I tore into the apartment, slammed open his closet in search of the leather Hugo Boss shoes Casey and I had purchased together a month prior. I located the shoes and, fear climbing my throat like bile, carried one out to my damaged car. Hand shaking I compared the sole of the shoe to the imprint adorning my car. A perfect match.
“How could you do that? That’s insane behavior!” I confronted Casey. I told him it was over. I told him I couldn’t possibly be with someone capable of such viciousness regardless of the fact that once, during a relationship break instigated by yours truly I had climbed the Fire Escape that bypassed his bedroom window to confront him and another woman having sex.
Of course he cried. Begged for forgiveness.
“I love you so much. You drive me wild”. Same old excuse. And I bought it, secretly thrilled that I was obviously an irresistible minx that no man could possibly be sane around all the time. I mean c’mon lets face it - I am fabulous. But the incident lodged in my heart like an icicle and never melted.
Tonight, as he blatantly humiliates me and mocks what’s left of our mangled relationship by not coming home, something snaps. Fissures through my chest like a knife wound. There is a moment in every woman’s life when she decides rational behavior is for victims. She feeds her brain to the birds and lets her inner bitch out of its cage.
My bitch is hurling herself against the latch, begging for release and I oblige by grabbing my keys and rushing into the downpour in nothing but pajamas. I roar around corners on two wheels, driving at dangerous speeds toward Tim’s downtown apartment. It feels good to be doing something. To have a goal even if it is the unfortunate objective of catching my boyfriend with another woman.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror and nearly grin. My face a ghostly white, blonde hair a wild mane of snarls, eyes wide and maniacal. I give into the drama always bubbling near the surface, submersing myself in its comforting swells. I dodge slower cars like Mario Andretti, stomp the gas pedal at traffic lights, screaming through as yellow turns red. Ten minutes later my car skids to a noisy stop outside Tim’s apartment complex.
Tim lives on the fifth floor of a secure building in the heart of Salt Lake City. No doorman, but a lobby that requires a pin number to enter. At this time of night, in this rain, my chances of slipping in behind a resident in my usual stalker fashion are slim to none. I pace around in the downpour for a few moments, bare feet splashing in chilly puddles as I give lucid thinking my best shot.
Rational thought has learned to avoid me when The Bitch wants out. If I’d been conducting any sort of clear thinking I wouldn’t be pacing in my skivvies outside an apartment building at two thirty on a Thursday morning in the first place.
Alllll riiiighty then. Lets just do this up in pure psycho style.
Psycho is such a default term men call women. If a man shows up at a woman’s apartment at two in the morning it’s considered a romantic gesture. If a woman does the same she’s psycho. Or a slut. Damn double standards. As it so happens I know just the person to deal with pesky double standards. I unlock the cage and release The Bitch. She immediately assesses the situation, snarls into action, taking matters into her own nail bitten claws.
The Bitch presses Tim’s buzzer and waits, cherry red painted toenails impatiently tapping wet cement in anticipation of the scene she is about to make. After a minute or two with no answer I press the button and hold it down. Then it occurs to me that Casey may have driven home, our vehicles passing on the dark, stormy night. In which case I am rudely pressing Tim’s buzzer as he tries to sleep. The Bitch may be insane, but she is never rude without reason, for the most part.
I spend the next half hour circling the complex searching for Casey’s green jeep. I am sopping wet, crying, tears mingling with rain as I stumble through ankle deep puddles of freezing water. I am just about to give up and drive my sorry self home to the welcoming embrace of a steamy shower when I spot the jeep. I can’t believe it. He is still inside. I was actually beginning to believe he had already driven home and was at this very moment frantic with worry over my whereabouts.
I storm back to the lobby and press the buzzer.
“What!” Tim’s voice bounces off cement walls and echoes into the night.
“Get Casey!” I order, dispensing with pleasantries.
“He’s not here.”
“Bullshit Tim. I just saw his jeep.” I snarl into the intercom, fully aware I could star in my own episode of Jerry Springer.
The intercom clicks to silence. It is maddeningly frustrating standing out here. I cannot believe I’ve been reduced to this behavior. Truth be told, I reduced myself to this behavior. Ever since Older Married Dude had cheated on me with his wife, I’d subconsciously expected all subsequent relationships to end in a similar fashion. In fact, it was almost a relief now that the end had finally arrived as expected. I could tell myself ‘see, I told you so’ and use this latest failing as an excuse to sink into depression, overeat, and proclaim that ‘I am through with men!’
The sane portion of my brain urges me to climb in my car and go home. I agree, intelligently recognizing it to be the wisest option, one that will have more affect on Casey than this soggy showdown. But the other side of me wants to have it out. Wants a dramatic scene. Needs the dysfunctional drama as evidence he still loves me. This desire is spurred on by Casey’s cavalier attitude toward my phone call. Had he been begging for forgiveness, ashamed at being caught, I calmly would have told him to fuck himself and driven myself home and had the locks changed. But this.. this blatant disregard for what was left of our relationship. It has me shivering with rage.
I feel helpless. I desperately want to call a girlfriend to talk me off my metaphorical edge, but I’d left my phone at home where I threw it after hanging up on Casey. Unable to stop myself, I buzz again frantically.
“Monica?” It is Casey.
“What the fuck is going on? Did Tim have to pull you out of a bedroom you fucking fuck!” I explode in a series of obscenities and incoherent accusations.
“No. Stop it. Calm down.” Finally. At least he is trying to placate me.
“I heard girls there.” I sob, instantly leaping from rage to despair. Ah, the range of emotion we women have at our fingertips.
“It’s Tim’s roommate and her friend.”
“Your lying!" I scream. "Tim doesn’t have a roommate! What are you doing at three in the morning in an apartment with two women?”
“Stop yelling, someone will call the police.”
“I DON’T CARE!” I shriek dramatically.
“I’m coming down.”
The second he utters those words and clicks off I wonder what in god’s name I am doing. It’s all suddenly so ridiculous. The fact that Casey wasn’t interested in assuaging me had driven me onward. Now that I was sailing toward the familiar waters of apology I wasn’t interested. Winning back the man I didn’t really want ushers the return of sanity. The Bitch retreats to her cage and falls into exhausted slumber.
I peer through the glass doors of the lobby as the elevator doors slide open and spit out Casey, Tim and two girls. I immediately give my presumed competition the once over. Face, hair, boobs, legs, shoes and back to face and am horrified at their beauty.
The girls stare at me in embarrassment, for them or for me I don’t know. I fold my arms across my chest and try to muster as much dignity as possible This proves to be rather difficult considering I am only wearing pajama bottoms and a stretched out freebie tee-shirt given to me when I purchased my latest cell phone. My dripping hair is plastered to my forehead, knotted strands snaking down my face in clumps as red, puffy eyes peer between.
Tim walks the women to their car and stands talking with them. All three cast furtive glances in my direction, as if I might jump them, or pull out a pistol and fire. Which, lets be honest here, is a very real possibility.
Casey approaches me uncertainly then stops a safe distance away.
“Let me drive you to your car then I’ll follow you home.” He says quietly. I say nothing in response. On the drive to my car, or later when we get home.
Despite my desire to climb into bed and salvage what was left of the night I sit sullenly on our couch, happy to have a reason to be angry instead of the silent inexplicable rage that had been gnawing on my insides for the past four months.
I had loved Casey once. I believe he has a good heart, is a good man. But it was as plain as the black roots on my head that we were mismatched and both of us were suffering, dissolving into shadows of our former selves. Neither wanting to leave when the other initiated a break up, more out of pride than any real love.
I did not love him anymore. But the possibility of him fooling around with a younger woman wreaked havoc on my pride and spurred me into claiming him for myself once again. I think it’s a Chinese proverb; Man’s value increases ten-fold with every woman attracted to him. Translation: we always want what we think we can’t have.
Over the next few days Casey and I stategically manage to avoid discussing the demise of our relationship and the inevitable splitting of belongings and moving out by working late and watching copious amounts of shit television. I’d get home from the news station and he’d be watching TV. I’d go to bed and he’d climb in after I was asleep. We’d get up, he’d shower for nearly and hour and I’d watch TV until he left for work. I watch us from the outside like a soap opera, shocked at how quickly lovers can disintegrate into roommates.
The next Saturday my good friend Alexis, a pot loving, tree huggng, Bush hating (the president, not the vagina) coworker of mine invites me to a party at her house. Anxious to get away from the thick-as-pea-soup tension in my home and the gloomy specter of yet another failed relationship I readily agree.
Casey left our apartment early that Saturday evening, claiming to be headed for a move with his friend John. Soon after I drove to Alexis’ and immersed myself in pretending not to care about the sorry state of my relationship.
About an hour into my revelry Casey’s friend Tim saunters through the door.
“Hey Monica.” He drawls in his perpetually stoned fashion.
“Hey Tim. You fuck. How are you?”
“Why am I a fuck?”
“Umm setting my boyfriend up with women at your apartment. Ring a bell? OR A BUZZER?”
“Oh yeah. He wanted to stay. Nobody made him.”
“Yeah well. I know how you get, you big pot bully.”
Liquor soon greased the creaky joints of awkward conversation and we were easily chatting.
“So that girl from the other night. Is she really your roommate?”
“Yup.”
“She looks so young! How did you meet her?”
“She’s 21. Not so young. You’re only 23. She’s a stylist at my salon and needed a place to crash.”
“So is she like, into Casey?”
“Monica, she’s a lesbian.”
“Really? But she’s so hot!”
“Lesbians can be hot.”
“No they can’t. Aside from Ani DiFranco I’ve never seen a sexy lesbian. And I might not think Ani is sexy if it weren’t for the music. Porn lesbians don’t count.”
“What about Portia De Rossi? The blonde lawyer from Alley McBeal?” Sasha pipes up.
“She’s a lesbian?”
“Yep. Read it somewhere.”
“Well that’s the second sexy lesbian I’m aware of.” I slurp a shot of Jagermeister and giggle.
Tim watches with amused eyes. “Well, Nicole is a full on rug muncher.” He sucks the last of his joint like he’s finishing off an extra thick milkshake, holds the smoke in his lungs and raises his eyebrows at me.
“Don’t say that, it’s crude.” I slap his leg.
“No it’s not. No more than cocksucker. That’s a pretty common word.”
“Common and crude!”
“Either way, she’s a lesbian.” He releases the smoke and it swirls lazily around his head in a dizzying cloud, tinted pink from the red light bulb in the lamp next to his head.
“Interesting”. I mumble. So she isn’t into Casey. I’m certain he was up to something though or he wouldn’t have stayed at Tim’s so late. Probably couldn’t resist the challenge of converting a lesbian. Either way, I was curious about this lipstick lesbian.
I’d engaged in the obligatory drunk girl on girl make-out sessions in college. I’d actually enjoyed both incidents enough to briefly wonder if I was bisexual. But being raised in a church that regularly tries to counsel homosexuals into heterosexuals and a home where terms like rug muncher and carpet licker were casually bandied about by homophobic brothers, I never really allowed myself to entertain the notion. Just chalked it up to coming of age in an era where Girls Gone Wild programming dominates late night television and every boyfriend’s VCR.
“Hey!” Tim mumbles between sucks on his freshly rolled joint. “Wanna come back to my place for an after party party?“
“Absolutely! Let me see if Alexis and Sasha want to come.”
Two shots of Jagermeister later I, along with Tim, Alexis, and another friend of ours, Sasha, sneak out of the party and stumble into the chilly November night. The stars dazzle like diamonds nestled in black velvet. We dash down the sidewalk, laughter and marijuana smoke trailing after us, the perfume of partiers.
“Where’s Casey?” Tim asks.
“At a movie with John.”
“Ah. So you’re flying solo tonight.”
“This isn’t Top Gun, but yes, I’m on my own tonight.”
Tim lives a block away from Alexis. Within five minutes we are riding the elevator up to his apartment. Tim drops his keys twice before managing to fumble his door unlocked and push it inward.
“Drunk bastard.” Sasha giggles and marches into the kitchen. What’s to eat in here? I’m starving!”
“Don’t have much, haven’t gone shopping in awhile.”
“Figures.” Alexis mutters. “You’re such a stoner.”
“That’s why you like me.” Tim pulls himself up onto the counter, leans his back against the wall then stretches his long legs down the countertop’s length while Sasha scavenges his empty cupboards
“Dry pasta noodles! That’s all I can find in this degenerate’s cupboards!” Sasha laughs. “Who wants some?”
We pass the dried noodles and a fresh joint.
“Which do you want Monica? Noodles or pot?”
“Noodles. Pot too. Both!” Crunching and conversing.
By the time the joint is making it’s fourth lap around the room heads have turned into helium balloons. Gigantic, floating parade novelties attached to string necks. Their mouths move and I selectively listen. Tuning in an out of the conversation and my private thoughts like a radio knob dialing in different stations.
“Tim. Where’s your roommate?” I ask ten minutes or what could have been two hours later.
“Huh? Oh, Nicole. In her room I guess.”
“I’m going to introduce myself as the crazy girl from the lobby.” I set my handful of dry spaghetti noodles on the counter, pull my feet from their spot in the kitchen sink and jump to the tiled floor. The others are engrossed in a heated debate on the better breakfast cereal between Trix and Cocoa Puffs and barely acknowledge my departure.
I walk nervously toward the bedroom of the girl I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me with. Her door is slightly ajar so I peek inside. It’s dark save for the moonlight creeping around the blinds illuminating a pair of lean, muscular legs twined around a tangled sheet.
“Nicole?” I stage whisper, playing up the drunk to alleviate accountability later. Her face is cast in shadow.
“Hi. I’m Monica. You awake? I came to say hello.” I giggle for drunk appearances' sake and because I am suddenly very nervous.
“I’m drunk.” She moans. Her voice is low and scratchy. Sexy in a hoarse Sheryl Crow kind of way.
“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Suddenly she sits up. Moonlight shattered by slats from the blinds over the window casts her face in alternating light and dark, like a zebra.
It’s a small, pixie face with limpid eyes. Clear, tropical ocean, green high beams rimmed with a thick black fringe of lashes. Her eye make up is smudged from sleep in the fashion of magazine models attempting smoky, sex kitten peepers. Her short, chocolate brown hair is punk. A tousled mess, it sticks out crazily in chunky tufts. She is indeed a sexy lesbian.
“Here, let me help you to the bathroom.” I place my hand on the back of her tank top. It’s a filmy, girly undershirt with a tiny, pink rosebud in the center of her slight cleavage. Like my old training bra, I think to myself. As I help her stand, moonbeams trickle across her body like water bathing her back in gentle, white light. I glimpse an expansive stretch of luscious, olive colored skin with delicate shoulder bones protruding like baby bird wings.
I support most of Nicole’s minimal weight as we cross the hall to the bathroom. She swoons against me and I half carry her the final few feet. She staggers to the toilet and immediately begins retching. I close the door and stand outside waiting for her to finish. When the heaving finally subsides I wait a moment. When I hear no sound behind the door I tap gently.
“Nicole? You okay?” I feel strange. I just met the girl and we’re already engaged in the intimate dance of drunken friends taking care of each other during a violent session with the porcelain god.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor facing the toilet. Her sinewy limbs are flung across the seat, her head resting on her right forearm. I flush the toilet, startling her. She raises her head and for the first time looks at me, really looks at me. And smiles. A tired, embarrassed grin she innocently manages to make look simultaneously sweet and sexy.
“I need to brush my teeth” she says breathily. I make a move to retreat to the hall and close the door.
“Don’t go.” She flaps her hand in a stay here gesture. “Stay.” I lean against the door, tongue-tied. What is going on? Certainly I am curious about lesbians. Not the truck driving, spikey hair, flannel shirt wearing kind. The sexy girls who like girls. But I've only really given the subject consideration after terrible break-ups when women seemed like my only viable option for a happy relationship.
Now, at two in the morning, alcohol racing through my bloodstream, weed making wicked work of rational thought, the abstract concept of lesbianism was now staring me in the face. And it had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. As she squeezes toothpaste onto her toothbrush, I could see Nicole sizing me up, wondering about my motives and perhaps my sexual inclinations.
She brushes her teeth unabashedly, watching me in the mirror as she scrubs her teeth then her tongue. She rinses and spits, something I can’t stand watching Casey do at home, yet I cannot turn away from her hypnotic gaze.
“Aaah!” She noisily sucks air through her teeth and smacks her lips. “Much better. Come on.” She pulls me back to her bedroom. “Your Casey’s girlfriend, right? I remember you from the other night. Lay down with me until I fall asleep. I’m having trouble adjusting to my new bedroom.” Wordlessly I oblige, stumbling after her into the dark bedrooom.
We lay in silence, the traffic below a soundtrack to my erratic and somewhat erotic thoughts. My mind mulls over the unfamiliar maze I have found myself wandering through. A week ago Casey was in this very apartment, perhaps this very bedroom while I cried in the rain five stories below. Now here I was in her bed.
“Did Casey flirt with you the other night?” I finally ask.
“Yes” she answers without hesitation.
“Did you flirt back? Did anything happen?”
She laughs. “Nope, not interested. It was mild flirting. Mostly testing my lesbian boundaries, I think. Happens a lot.”
We are quiet again. I keep waiting for her to try something, anything, foolishly assuming the fact of my gender earned me an attempt at flirtation from her. Maybe a hand on my arm, rubbing my leg with her foot… Something. After about a half hour of nothing I take offense. Am I not pretty enough I wonder? Maybe she doesn’t find me attractive. The slight was as stinging as it would have been were I to share the bed with a man who ignored me.
I am nearly asleep when Nicole’s bedroom door creaks open. Our weight on her bed shifts slightly as someone sits down near our feet. I breathe louder to feign sleep and after a minute risk a peek. It is Tim. What is he doing? He puts a hand on my leg. Oh. That. But WHAT IS HE DOING? I’m his best friend’s girlfriend.
Tim begins rubbing his hand across the back of my leg. It takes every ounce of self- control not to kick him squarely in the choppers and bolt from the room. Although that would feel gratifying in the moment it would only complicate the issue by creating some sticky long-term problems. Our relationship would morph from casual banter to awkward fumbling. Would I tell Casey? Would it ruin their friendship? Would he think it was I who came onto Tim? After all, I was at his apartment at three o’clock in the morning. Tim was probably just really stoned. Maybe he didn’t realize who I was or what he was doing.
Suddenly Nicole’s hand finds mine underneath the comforter. She grabs and squeezes. My eyes pop open and I am staring directly into her wide, moss colored eyes. She raises her eyebrows and I answer with an imperceptible shrug.
Tim’s busy hand chose this moment to leap from the relatively innocent territory of my calf to the much riskier thigh region. Sensing my distress Nicole releases my hand and begins thrashing about on the bed.
“So sick!” She slurs sleepily. Immediately Tim snatches his hand from my leg. “Gotta puke!” Nicole tosses off the comforter and darts for the bathroom, zigging and zagging for drunken effect, ignoring Tim’s strange presence in her bedroom. I hear the bathroom door slam shut and a ferocious spray of water splash into the porcelain sink.
Startled at the sudden turn of events, Tim hovers uncertainly over the bed. I moan as if disturbed in the depths of dreamland and keep my eyes squeezed shut.
“Good night Tim, honey.” Nicole is ushering Tim out of the bedroom and twisting the lock in the door. I watch as her lithe body pads across the patchwork of lights and darks on the floor and hops back into bed. She immediately snuggles up to me until our noses are nearly touching.
“Nice one” I say. “I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that.” She smiles, lips pursed, dimples deepening and says nothing. We stay that way for a few minutes. Foreheads pressed together, noses nearly touching, exchanging hot breath. Then she runs her hand tenderly along my cheek.
“You are beautiful, you know.” It’s a statement not a question. Our faces are so close we only have to pucker our lips slightly and we are kissing.
“Soft” I manage to sigh. And it was the softest, sweetest kiss I’d ever shared up until this moment. No awkward fumbling for lip placement, no tight lips with no give, no loose rubbery kisses.
“I’m kissing a girl” floats across my mind. “Feels just like kissing a boy only nicer in some ways.” She pulls back and looks at me, eyes searching for confirmation. I imagine my face was a series of O’s. Round, saucer eyes, mouth rounded in surprise. She must have seen what she was looking for because she smiles gently then leans forward and sensuously licks my bottom lip. I gasp.
Okay. Time out! I am not a lesbian. Am I? I was enjoying this as much as I’d every enjoyed any snog. In many ways it was superior. More comfortable. Familiar. Easy.
We continue kissing. I simply cannot stop myself. But I can’t close my eyes. I luxuriate in the landscape of her gently sloping forehead, delicately arched eyebrows, the tender skin of her eyelids and the thick lash that dusts her cheeks.
The kissing progresses, as kissing often does, to the exploration of body parts other than mouths, although her mouth continues to play a leading role. Her lips find the velvety softness of my earlobe, her lips discover the contours of my neck, thin skin stretched across tendons.
As her mouth snacks on my neck her hair tickles my cheek like a feather duster. Then it taunts my naked chest and finally it’s tickling my stomach as her tongue continues it’s southern trek sending shockwaves rippling through my skin.
In seconds I am no longer pondering lesbianism or any sexuality. I have no thoughts. My mind is blessedly blank. It’s my body doing all the thinking.
She is on top of me two hours later when a line from Ani DiFranco’s song ‘Shameless’ whips through my mind. “I’ve got to rub up against it ‘til I break the skin.”
“Jesus!” I gasp, taking in her sculpture of a body. “Half of me is jealous of your amazing body and the other half wants to ravage you.” She tosses her head back and laughs, her emerald eyes sparkling in the morning sunlight. Fuck! It’s morning!
“I have to go.” I finallly say.
“Okay.”
“Um.. should I call you?” I ask uncertainly. The situation is no less uncomfortable because we are both women. It’s still the awkward early morning moments at the tail end of a one-night stand. Do I acknowledge what I hope we both know or do I pretend I’ll call? Suddenly I know how all guys feel at the end of a one-off. And so I do what all guys I know do after engaging in a night of meaningless sex with a woman they just met. I ask for her phone number with no intention of calling and say goodbye.
Who does he think he is? Who does he think I am that I will put up with this shit? I give the clock my back and burrow deeper under the comforter. He’s obviously trying to goad me into some sort of dramatic reaction, I tell myself. Well he can prod all night. I don’t care where he is.
Aaaah! I fling off the bed covers and stomp down the hall toward the living room. Maybe a rousing episode of Elimidate during which angry blondes with fake tits fight over some dimwitted idiot with over-sized muscles will take my mind off the pathetic fact that my boyfriend still isn’t home at two o’clock in the morning on a Thursday night.
Fuck it! I snatch my cell from the coffee table and dial Casey.
“Yeah?”
“What the fuck are you doing?” All the pent up anger from the past three hours floods into the question, venom from my bared fangs.
“What?” He asks innocently, like I’m just calling to say hello at lunch hour.
“It’s TWO IN THE MORNING, that’s what! Where are you?”
“Tim’s house.”
“What are you trying to prove, what point are you making here?”
“Dunno.. Just didn’t want to come home” is his apathetic answer.
“What are you doing? Who are you doing?”
“Listening to music.” He is being curt just to piss me off.
“Just you and Tim?” As if on cue a shriek of laughter erupts in the background like a string of firecrackers. An unmistakably girlish giggle.
I click off my cell phone and throw it across the room. It slams into the wall then clatters to the floor, innards spilling out of its shell like a cracked egg. Batteries roll across the hardwood and come to rest against the coffee table leg. Fuck.
I knew the relationship was in critical condition. We had both tried to resuscitate our languishing love at various times in the past six months of living together. Now only a medical miracle could save us. And I’m not even sure I wanted it. Casey scared me. He had a violent streak even the dumbest of girls would recognize as a red flag.
“You drive me crazy, Monica. I’ve never been like this with any other woman. You make me wild.”
In the beginning I was flattered. Eager to believe his overwhelming love for me could reduce him to a caveman. I was pleased by what I assumed was my obviously beguiling behavior could drive men violent over their love for me. Until he kicked in my car door.
We had a fight over some trivial matter at a sushi restaurant a couple miles from our apartment. Ultimately I stormed out in typical dramatic fashion and called a cab to take me home. As I was waiting his jeep rocketed out of the parking lot and squealed around the corner. I took the cab home and we eventually made up.
A few days later I was visiting my Mom at her house. She was walking me to my car as I was leaving when she noticed a huge dent smack in the center of the passenger door of my black Dodge Neon. We bent down to inspect what we assumed to be the result of an errant shopping cart. But right in the center of the crease was the distinct impression of a shoe sole. A perfect shoe print. The impression of squares and lines rising from the dirt the shoe left behind.
“Somebody kicked your car! Who would kick your car?”
“I don’t know. How strange. Maybe they got the wrong car.” I lied. I was immediately suspicious of the man who shared my bed and didn’t want Mom knowing the depths to which my damaged relationship had sunk.
“Casey? You home?” The minute I got home I tore into the apartment, slammed open his closet in search of the leather Hugo Boss shoes Casey and I had purchased together a month prior. I located the shoes and, fear climbing my throat like bile, carried one out to my damaged car. Hand shaking I compared the sole of the shoe to the imprint adorning my car. A perfect match.
“How could you do that? That’s insane behavior!” I confronted Casey. I told him it was over. I told him I couldn’t possibly be with someone capable of such viciousness regardless of the fact that once, during a relationship break instigated by yours truly I had climbed the Fire Escape that bypassed his bedroom window to confront him and another woman having sex.
Of course he cried. Begged for forgiveness.
“I love you so much. You drive me wild”. Same old excuse. And I bought it, secretly thrilled that I was obviously an irresistible minx that no man could possibly be sane around all the time. I mean c’mon lets face it - I am fabulous. But the incident lodged in my heart like an icicle and never melted.
Tonight, as he blatantly humiliates me and mocks what’s left of our mangled relationship by not coming home, something snaps. Fissures through my chest like a knife wound. There is a moment in every woman’s life when she decides rational behavior is for victims. She feeds her brain to the birds and lets her inner bitch out of its cage.
My bitch is hurling herself against the latch, begging for release and I oblige by grabbing my keys and rushing into the downpour in nothing but pajamas. I roar around corners on two wheels, driving at dangerous speeds toward Tim’s downtown apartment. It feels good to be doing something. To have a goal even if it is the unfortunate objective of catching my boyfriend with another woman.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror and nearly grin. My face a ghostly white, blonde hair a wild mane of snarls, eyes wide and maniacal. I give into the drama always bubbling near the surface, submersing myself in its comforting swells. I dodge slower cars like Mario Andretti, stomp the gas pedal at traffic lights, screaming through as yellow turns red. Ten minutes later my car skids to a noisy stop outside Tim’s apartment complex.
Tim lives on the fifth floor of a secure building in the heart of Salt Lake City. No doorman, but a lobby that requires a pin number to enter. At this time of night, in this rain, my chances of slipping in behind a resident in my usual stalker fashion are slim to none. I pace around in the downpour for a few moments, bare feet splashing in chilly puddles as I give lucid thinking my best shot.
Rational thought has learned to avoid me when The Bitch wants out. If I’d been conducting any sort of clear thinking I wouldn’t be pacing in my skivvies outside an apartment building at two thirty on a Thursday morning in the first place.
Alllll riiiighty then. Lets just do this up in pure psycho style.
Psycho is such a default term men call women. If a man shows up at a woman’s apartment at two in the morning it’s considered a romantic gesture. If a woman does the same she’s psycho. Or a slut. Damn double standards. As it so happens I know just the person to deal with pesky double standards. I unlock the cage and release The Bitch. She immediately assesses the situation, snarls into action, taking matters into her own nail bitten claws.
The Bitch presses Tim’s buzzer and waits, cherry red painted toenails impatiently tapping wet cement in anticipation of the scene she is about to make. After a minute or two with no answer I press the button and hold it down. Then it occurs to me that Casey may have driven home, our vehicles passing on the dark, stormy night. In which case I am rudely pressing Tim’s buzzer as he tries to sleep. The Bitch may be insane, but she is never rude without reason, for the most part.
I spend the next half hour circling the complex searching for Casey’s green jeep. I am sopping wet, crying, tears mingling with rain as I stumble through ankle deep puddles of freezing water. I am just about to give up and drive my sorry self home to the welcoming embrace of a steamy shower when I spot the jeep. I can’t believe it. He is still inside. I was actually beginning to believe he had already driven home and was at this very moment frantic with worry over my whereabouts.
I storm back to the lobby and press the buzzer.
“What!” Tim’s voice bounces off cement walls and echoes into the night.
“Get Casey!” I order, dispensing with pleasantries.
“He’s not here.”
“Bullshit Tim. I just saw his jeep.” I snarl into the intercom, fully aware I could star in my own episode of Jerry Springer.
The intercom clicks to silence. It is maddeningly frustrating standing out here. I cannot believe I’ve been reduced to this behavior. Truth be told, I reduced myself to this behavior. Ever since Older Married Dude had cheated on me with his wife, I’d subconsciously expected all subsequent relationships to end in a similar fashion. In fact, it was almost a relief now that the end had finally arrived as expected. I could tell myself ‘see, I told you so’ and use this latest failing as an excuse to sink into depression, overeat, and proclaim that ‘I am through with men!’
The sane portion of my brain urges me to climb in my car and go home. I agree, intelligently recognizing it to be the wisest option, one that will have more affect on Casey than this soggy showdown. But the other side of me wants to have it out. Wants a dramatic scene. Needs the dysfunctional drama as evidence he still loves me. This desire is spurred on by Casey’s cavalier attitude toward my phone call. Had he been begging for forgiveness, ashamed at being caught, I calmly would have told him to fuck himself and driven myself home and had the locks changed. But this.. this blatant disregard for what was left of our relationship. It has me shivering with rage.
I feel helpless. I desperately want to call a girlfriend to talk me off my metaphorical edge, but I’d left my phone at home where I threw it after hanging up on Casey. Unable to stop myself, I buzz again frantically.
“Monica?” It is Casey.
“What the fuck is going on? Did Tim have to pull you out of a bedroom you fucking fuck!” I explode in a series of obscenities and incoherent accusations.
“No. Stop it. Calm down.” Finally. At least he is trying to placate me.
“I heard girls there.” I sob, instantly leaping from rage to despair. Ah, the range of emotion we women have at our fingertips.
“It’s Tim’s roommate and her friend.”
“Your lying!" I scream. "Tim doesn’t have a roommate! What are you doing at three in the morning in an apartment with two women?”
“Stop yelling, someone will call the police.”
“I DON’T CARE!” I shriek dramatically.
“I’m coming down.”
The second he utters those words and clicks off I wonder what in god’s name I am doing. It’s all suddenly so ridiculous. The fact that Casey wasn’t interested in assuaging me had driven me onward. Now that I was sailing toward the familiar waters of apology I wasn’t interested. Winning back the man I didn’t really want ushers the return of sanity. The Bitch retreats to her cage and falls into exhausted slumber.
I peer through the glass doors of the lobby as the elevator doors slide open and spit out Casey, Tim and two girls. I immediately give my presumed competition the once over. Face, hair, boobs, legs, shoes and back to face and am horrified at their beauty.
The girls stare at me in embarrassment, for them or for me I don’t know. I fold my arms across my chest and try to muster as much dignity as possible This proves to be rather difficult considering I am only wearing pajama bottoms and a stretched out freebie tee-shirt given to me when I purchased my latest cell phone. My dripping hair is plastered to my forehead, knotted strands snaking down my face in clumps as red, puffy eyes peer between.
Tim walks the women to their car and stands talking with them. All three cast furtive glances in my direction, as if I might jump them, or pull out a pistol and fire. Which, lets be honest here, is a very real possibility.
Casey approaches me uncertainly then stops a safe distance away.
“Let me drive you to your car then I’ll follow you home.” He says quietly. I say nothing in response. On the drive to my car, or later when we get home.
Despite my desire to climb into bed and salvage what was left of the night I sit sullenly on our couch, happy to have a reason to be angry instead of the silent inexplicable rage that had been gnawing on my insides for the past four months.
I had loved Casey once. I believe he has a good heart, is a good man. But it was as plain as the black roots on my head that we were mismatched and both of us were suffering, dissolving into shadows of our former selves. Neither wanting to leave when the other initiated a break up, more out of pride than any real love.
I did not love him anymore. But the possibility of him fooling around with a younger woman wreaked havoc on my pride and spurred me into claiming him for myself once again. I think it’s a Chinese proverb; Man’s value increases ten-fold with every woman attracted to him. Translation: we always want what we think we can’t have.
Over the next few days Casey and I stategically manage to avoid discussing the demise of our relationship and the inevitable splitting of belongings and moving out by working late and watching copious amounts of shit television. I’d get home from the news station and he’d be watching TV. I’d go to bed and he’d climb in after I was asleep. We’d get up, he’d shower for nearly and hour and I’d watch TV until he left for work. I watch us from the outside like a soap opera, shocked at how quickly lovers can disintegrate into roommates.
The next Saturday my good friend Alexis, a pot loving, tree huggng, Bush hating (the president, not the vagina) coworker of mine invites me to a party at her house. Anxious to get away from the thick-as-pea-soup tension in my home and the gloomy specter of yet another failed relationship I readily agree.
Casey left our apartment early that Saturday evening, claiming to be headed for a move with his friend John. Soon after I drove to Alexis’ and immersed myself in pretending not to care about the sorry state of my relationship.
About an hour into my revelry Casey’s friend Tim saunters through the door.
“Hey Monica.” He drawls in his perpetually stoned fashion.
“Hey Tim. You fuck. How are you?”
“Why am I a fuck?”
“Umm setting my boyfriend up with women at your apartment. Ring a bell? OR A BUZZER?”
“Oh yeah. He wanted to stay. Nobody made him.”
“Yeah well. I know how you get, you big pot bully.”
Liquor soon greased the creaky joints of awkward conversation and we were easily chatting.
“So that girl from the other night. Is she really your roommate?”
“Yup.”
“She looks so young! How did you meet her?”
“She’s 21. Not so young. You’re only 23. She’s a stylist at my salon and needed a place to crash.”
“So is she like, into Casey?”
“Monica, she’s a lesbian.”
“Really? But she’s so hot!”
“Lesbians can be hot.”
“No they can’t. Aside from Ani DiFranco I’ve never seen a sexy lesbian. And I might not think Ani is sexy if it weren’t for the music. Porn lesbians don’t count.”
“What about Portia De Rossi? The blonde lawyer from Alley McBeal?” Sasha pipes up.
“She’s a lesbian?”
“Yep. Read it somewhere.”
“Well that’s the second sexy lesbian I’m aware of.” I slurp a shot of Jagermeister and giggle.
Tim watches with amused eyes. “Well, Nicole is a full on rug muncher.” He sucks the last of his joint like he’s finishing off an extra thick milkshake, holds the smoke in his lungs and raises his eyebrows at me.
“Don’t say that, it’s crude.” I slap his leg.
“No it’s not. No more than cocksucker. That’s a pretty common word.”
“Common and crude!”
“Either way, she’s a lesbian.” He releases the smoke and it swirls lazily around his head in a dizzying cloud, tinted pink from the red light bulb in the lamp next to his head.
“Interesting”. I mumble. So she isn’t into Casey. I’m certain he was up to something though or he wouldn’t have stayed at Tim’s so late. Probably couldn’t resist the challenge of converting a lesbian. Either way, I was curious about this lipstick lesbian.
I’d engaged in the obligatory drunk girl on girl make-out sessions in college. I’d actually enjoyed both incidents enough to briefly wonder if I was bisexual. But being raised in a church that regularly tries to counsel homosexuals into heterosexuals and a home where terms like rug muncher and carpet licker were casually bandied about by homophobic brothers, I never really allowed myself to entertain the notion. Just chalked it up to coming of age in an era where Girls Gone Wild programming dominates late night television and every boyfriend’s VCR.
“Hey!” Tim mumbles between sucks on his freshly rolled joint. “Wanna come back to my place for an after party party?“
“Absolutely! Let me see if Alexis and Sasha want to come.”
Two shots of Jagermeister later I, along with Tim, Alexis, and another friend of ours, Sasha, sneak out of the party and stumble into the chilly November night. The stars dazzle like diamonds nestled in black velvet. We dash down the sidewalk, laughter and marijuana smoke trailing after us, the perfume of partiers.
“Where’s Casey?” Tim asks.
“At a movie with John.”
“Ah. So you’re flying solo tonight.”
“This isn’t Top Gun, but yes, I’m on my own tonight.”
Tim lives a block away from Alexis. Within five minutes we are riding the elevator up to his apartment. Tim drops his keys twice before managing to fumble his door unlocked and push it inward.
“Drunk bastard.” Sasha giggles and marches into the kitchen. What’s to eat in here? I’m starving!”
“Don’t have much, haven’t gone shopping in awhile.”
“Figures.” Alexis mutters. “You’re such a stoner.”
“That’s why you like me.” Tim pulls himself up onto the counter, leans his back against the wall then stretches his long legs down the countertop’s length while Sasha scavenges his empty cupboards
“Dry pasta noodles! That’s all I can find in this degenerate’s cupboards!” Sasha laughs. “Who wants some?”
We pass the dried noodles and a fresh joint.
“Which do you want Monica? Noodles or pot?”
“Noodles. Pot too. Both!” Crunching and conversing.
By the time the joint is making it’s fourth lap around the room heads have turned into helium balloons. Gigantic, floating parade novelties attached to string necks. Their mouths move and I selectively listen. Tuning in an out of the conversation and my private thoughts like a radio knob dialing in different stations.
“Tim. Where’s your roommate?” I ask ten minutes or what could have been two hours later.
“Huh? Oh, Nicole. In her room I guess.”
“I’m going to introduce myself as the crazy girl from the lobby.” I set my handful of dry spaghetti noodles on the counter, pull my feet from their spot in the kitchen sink and jump to the tiled floor. The others are engrossed in a heated debate on the better breakfast cereal between Trix and Cocoa Puffs and barely acknowledge my departure.
I walk nervously toward the bedroom of the girl I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me with. Her door is slightly ajar so I peek inside. It’s dark save for the moonlight creeping around the blinds illuminating a pair of lean, muscular legs twined around a tangled sheet.
“Nicole?” I stage whisper, playing up the drunk to alleviate accountability later. Her face is cast in shadow.
“Hi. I’m Monica. You awake? I came to say hello.” I giggle for drunk appearances' sake and because I am suddenly very nervous.
“I’m drunk.” She moans. Her voice is low and scratchy. Sexy in a hoarse Sheryl Crow kind of way.
“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Suddenly she sits up. Moonlight shattered by slats from the blinds over the window casts her face in alternating light and dark, like a zebra.
It’s a small, pixie face with limpid eyes. Clear, tropical ocean, green high beams rimmed with a thick black fringe of lashes. Her eye make up is smudged from sleep in the fashion of magazine models attempting smoky, sex kitten peepers. Her short, chocolate brown hair is punk. A tousled mess, it sticks out crazily in chunky tufts. She is indeed a sexy lesbian.
“Here, let me help you to the bathroom.” I place my hand on the back of her tank top. It’s a filmy, girly undershirt with a tiny, pink rosebud in the center of her slight cleavage. Like my old training bra, I think to myself. As I help her stand, moonbeams trickle across her body like water bathing her back in gentle, white light. I glimpse an expansive stretch of luscious, olive colored skin with delicate shoulder bones protruding like baby bird wings.
I support most of Nicole’s minimal weight as we cross the hall to the bathroom. She swoons against me and I half carry her the final few feet. She staggers to the toilet and immediately begins retching. I close the door and stand outside waiting for her to finish. When the heaving finally subsides I wait a moment. When I hear no sound behind the door I tap gently.
“Nicole? You okay?” I feel strange. I just met the girl and we’re already engaged in the intimate dance of drunken friends taking care of each other during a violent session with the porcelain god.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor facing the toilet. Her sinewy limbs are flung across the seat, her head resting on her right forearm. I flush the toilet, startling her. She raises her head and for the first time looks at me, really looks at me. And smiles. A tired, embarrassed grin she innocently manages to make look simultaneously sweet and sexy.
“I need to brush my teeth” she says breathily. I make a move to retreat to the hall and close the door.
“Don’t go.” She flaps her hand in a stay here gesture. “Stay.” I lean against the door, tongue-tied. What is going on? Certainly I am curious about lesbians. Not the truck driving, spikey hair, flannel shirt wearing kind. The sexy girls who like girls. But I've only really given the subject consideration after terrible break-ups when women seemed like my only viable option for a happy relationship.
Now, at two in the morning, alcohol racing through my bloodstream, weed making wicked work of rational thought, the abstract concept of lesbianism was now staring me in the face. And it had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. As she squeezes toothpaste onto her toothbrush, I could see Nicole sizing me up, wondering about my motives and perhaps my sexual inclinations.
She brushes her teeth unabashedly, watching me in the mirror as she scrubs her teeth then her tongue. She rinses and spits, something I can’t stand watching Casey do at home, yet I cannot turn away from her hypnotic gaze.
“Aaah!” She noisily sucks air through her teeth and smacks her lips. “Much better. Come on.” She pulls me back to her bedroom. “Your Casey’s girlfriend, right? I remember you from the other night. Lay down with me until I fall asleep. I’m having trouble adjusting to my new bedroom.” Wordlessly I oblige, stumbling after her into the dark bedrooom.
We lay in silence, the traffic below a soundtrack to my erratic and somewhat erotic thoughts. My mind mulls over the unfamiliar maze I have found myself wandering through. A week ago Casey was in this very apartment, perhaps this very bedroom while I cried in the rain five stories below. Now here I was in her bed.
“Did Casey flirt with you the other night?” I finally ask.
“Yes” she answers without hesitation.
“Did you flirt back? Did anything happen?”
She laughs. “Nope, not interested. It was mild flirting. Mostly testing my lesbian boundaries, I think. Happens a lot.”
We are quiet again. I keep waiting for her to try something, anything, foolishly assuming the fact of my gender earned me an attempt at flirtation from her. Maybe a hand on my arm, rubbing my leg with her foot… Something. After about a half hour of nothing I take offense. Am I not pretty enough I wonder? Maybe she doesn’t find me attractive. The slight was as stinging as it would have been were I to share the bed with a man who ignored me.
I am nearly asleep when Nicole’s bedroom door creaks open. Our weight on her bed shifts slightly as someone sits down near our feet. I breathe louder to feign sleep and after a minute risk a peek. It is Tim. What is he doing? He puts a hand on my leg. Oh. That. But WHAT IS HE DOING? I’m his best friend’s girlfriend.
Tim begins rubbing his hand across the back of my leg. It takes every ounce of self- control not to kick him squarely in the choppers and bolt from the room. Although that would feel gratifying in the moment it would only complicate the issue by creating some sticky long-term problems. Our relationship would morph from casual banter to awkward fumbling. Would I tell Casey? Would it ruin their friendship? Would he think it was I who came onto Tim? After all, I was at his apartment at three o’clock in the morning. Tim was probably just really stoned. Maybe he didn’t realize who I was or what he was doing.
Suddenly Nicole’s hand finds mine underneath the comforter. She grabs and squeezes. My eyes pop open and I am staring directly into her wide, moss colored eyes. She raises her eyebrows and I answer with an imperceptible shrug.
Tim’s busy hand chose this moment to leap from the relatively innocent territory of my calf to the much riskier thigh region. Sensing my distress Nicole releases my hand and begins thrashing about on the bed.
“So sick!” She slurs sleepily. Immediately Tim snatches his hand from my leg. “Gotta puke!” Nicole tosses off the comforter and darts for the bathroom, zigging and zagging for drunken effect, ignoring Tim’s strange presence in her bedroom. I hear the bathroom door slam shut and a ferocious spray of water splash into the porcelain sink.
Startled at the sudden turn of events, Tim hovers uncertainly over the bed. I moan as if disturbed in the depths of dreamland and keep my eyes squeezed shut.
“Good night Tim, honey.” Nicole is ushering Tim out of the bedroom and twisting the lock in the door. I watch as her lithe body pads across the patchwork of lights and darks on the floor and hops back into bed. She immediately snuggles up to me until our noses are nearly touching.
“Nice one” I say. “I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that.” She smiles, lips pursed, dimples deepening and says nothing. We stay that way for a few minutes. Foreheads pressed together, noses nearly touching, exchanging hot breath. Then she runs her hand tenderly along my cheek.
“You are beautiful, you know.” It’s a statement not a question. Our faces are so close we only have to pucker our lips slightly and we are kissing.
“Soft” I manage to sigh. And it was the softest, sweetest kiss I’d ever shared up until this moment. No awkward fumbling for lip placement, no tight lips with no give, no loose rubbery kisses.
“I’m kissing a girl” floats across my mind. “Feels just like kissing a boy only nicer in some ways.” She pulls back and looks at me, eyes searching for confirmation. I imagine my face was a series of O’s. Round, saucer eyes, mouth rounded in surprise. She must have seen what she was looking for because she smiles gently then leans forward and sensuously licks my bottom lip. I gasp.
Okay. Time out! I am not a lesbian. Am I? I was enjoying this as much as I’d every enjoyed any snog. In many ways it was superior. More comfortable. Familiar. Easy.
We continue kissing. I simply cannot stop myself. But I can’t close my eyes. I luxuriate in the landscape of her gently sloping forehead, delicately arched eyebrows, the tender skin of her eyelids and the thick lash that dusts her cheeks.
The kissing progresses, as kissing often does, to the exploration of body parts other than mouths, although her mouth continues to play a leading role. Her lips find the velvety softness of my earlobe, her lips discover the contours of my neck, thin skin stretched across tendons.
As her mouth snacks on my neck her hair tickles my cheek like a feather duster. Then it taunts my naked chest and finally it’s tickling my stomach as her tongue continues it’s southern trek sending shockwaves rippling through my skin.
In seconds I am no longer pondering lesbianism or any sexuality. I have no thoughts. My mind is blessedly blank. It’s my body doing all the thinking.
She is on top of me two hours later when a line from Ani DiFranco’s song ‘Shameless’ whips through my mind. “I’ve got to rub up against it ‘til I break the skin.”
“Jesus!” I gasp, taking in her sculpture of a body. “Half of me is jealous of your amazing body and the other half wants to ravage you.” She tosses her head back and laughs, her emerald eyes sparkling in the morning sunlight. Fuck! It’s morning!
“I have to go.” I finallly say.
“Okay.”
“Um.. should I call you?” I ask uncertainly. The situation is no less uncomfortable because we are both women. It’s still the awkward early morning moments at the tail end of a one-night stand. Do I acknowledge what I hope we both know or do I pretend I’ll call? Suddenly I know how all guys feel at the end of a one-off. And so I do what all guys I know do after engaging in a night of meaningless sex with a woman they just met. I ask for her phone number with no intention of calling and say goodbye.
Reader Comments (4)
CChild
-- T. H. White
that's a really beautiful story. I like it better than I like the film "The Dreamers"
have you seen it?
You should.