As his hands slid up and down my back, scratching and circling and I stared into the distance at nothing, I wondered
what is he waiting for?
When his hands slid inside my shirt, I knew he wasn’t really waiting. Just nervous. While his fingers flexed and gripped parts of me that are usually reserved merely for gentle massages, and his tongue barely tasted the terrain that begs for deep exploration, I thought
why am I doing this?
I didn’t have an answer. I knew I’d been thinking about doing it for a while, plotting half-consciously, eyeing the merchandise, considering whether the prize would fit in my coat closet. But I didn’t know why. I knew that I was on automatic, that the program got rebooted the first moment that a lingering smile met my body, then face.
RidingYourWayToHappiness version 2.69 is an application with a lot of bugs in it. Eventually, with even occasional use, the end user is left frazzled, distracted and with a need for a complete memory wipe in the form of bourbon, vodka or whiskey. The cheap kind that burns your throat and the pictures in your head.
I’ve never wanted to be that girl, and time and again, I have been. The one that perceives an interest and walks her way into a lap so as to, what? Quench the oft-overwhelming self-hatred that speaks louder than any other personality facet. To silence the mantra
you are never good enough and you never will be, except for when you’re making some other person feel as if their shit is hot and you can’t resist it.
It sucks, being a slut.
I’ve been good, possibly you could call it, not fucking outside of the box. Waiting until there was a definitive maybe instead of an unspoken temporary. I don’t know why I might have backtracked, since I wasn’t facing a drought, weight gain or wrath of my father’s.
I shut down almost immediately. As I was pulling him into me, I was pushing him and myself away. This was purely a physical thing and there was no room for thoughts, feelings or sensitivity. The foreplay was unnecessary and the mind-play ahead of it was, too. The brain had been turned off long before his hands finally found their way into my bra. I think he needed to think that I needed him to talk and caress me; most have. But the whole time I was pondering
how much longer can I do this before his hands getting to know me means he knows too much? When will the award ceremony no longer be worth the pre-show?
I don’t kiss, you see. It’s too close. Too much. Too heavy a potential for tragedy and feelings, more than lust and less than marriage. I don’t kiss, you see.
But I did.
And then, dirty, ashamed, wondering why I fell off the wagon and when the next meeting was, and why my sponsor wasn’t calling me back, I walked. I walked for miles and simply breathed in one mouthful of tobacco-laden air after the next. I slipped into a place I used to when I was younger, an alternate reality wherein I am not myself, I’m putting on a show.
I shut down.
Because of that, because I didn’t simply address it within myself and make steps to correct it. Because I laughed off my indiscretion as simply that – an oops – because I thought that everyone stumbles and it’s okay that I did, too. There I was, merely a bit later, with my dress around my waist, my stilettos cha-chaing against the tiled floor, and unwilling to look at myself in the mirror as I bit my bottom lip harder with each successive climax. I wondered
who am I?
