| The
inevitable downpour of Oregon rain, and
she tells me of wicked desires. Her beauty
is a calm current, coming to me in waves.
Raindrops drum against the windshield. Her
fingers touch her lips in a secret, guarded
smile. I love her.
As she ponders her relationship,
her orientation, I ponder these things as
well. I ponder her movements, body language.
I respond with inane, ten-cent words. I
regret them. I want to say, “Don’t
marry him! You can’t! Be with me!”
I want to scream it. I want to cry, to shed
the tears of my frustration.
She says she thinks
about me before she sleeps. Every night.
She parks the car instead of slowing. What
does she want from me? What can I give her,
without pushing her away? I want to kiss
her both softly and vehemently. My heartbeat
quickens. I rest my head on the top of the
bucket seat and close my eyes. I want to
stop dying.
When I open my eyes
again, we are in Missouri. We are speeding
away from a banquet hall, where she is supposed
to be the guest of honor. Almost a year
has passed now, and she will soon be someone
else’s wife. A rehearsal lunch had
driven her to tears, and she had asked me,
making her way to the exit, “You wanna
come with me?” I didn’t think
twice about it. In her car, I light a cigarette
as she says, “I just want to run away.
I don’t want to go back.” I
know in my logical mind that we are on our
way to her friend’s house to change
our clothes. But for just a moment, my mind
contemplates the ramifications this moment
could hold if this really was a “getaway”.
I have to scold myself: I thought I’d
stopped these foolish thought patterns from
occurring. After all, I do love Johnny,
my new boyfriend. So why dwell on such impractical
romantic notions as running away with the
bride on her wedding day?
Then I begin to realize
that it’s not exactly romantic. It’s
ill-conceived, poorly-timed, and, above
all, rude. I also realize that all of the
reasons I had given myself in the past for
disliking her fiancé were not solely
based on her happiness and the possible
lack thereof, but on my own selfish wishes.
And even after my intense love for her had
faded into a comfortable memory, I had kept
my guard up around her groom.
I suddenly remember
how I got to Missouri. There was a plane
ride from Portland to Chicago, a train ride
the next day to Iowa, and then her car met
me at the station. We had slept in a small
town in Iowa, not very far from the Missouri
border. The bride and groom were from the
Midwest, but I had never seen it. Never
seen so much flat land stretching out infinitely.
In our hotel room, I
told her about a dream I’d had in
Chicago. Not the first dream I’d had
about her, and certainly not the best one.
In the dream, I had been at a party. She
was there, and she lured me into a stranger’s
darkened bedroom. She began to undress,
clothes falling softly and slowly to the
ground like petals.
|
 |
They could have landed on an ashtray that
was holding my perpetually lit cigarette,
causing them to immolate and set the entire
place on fire – it wouldn’t
have fazed me.
I was engrossed by her
flesh, an aspect of her kept hidden from
me for the last year. She lay down next
to me on the bed, and explained, “I
have something to tell you. I knew I wouldn’t
be able to remember it all, so I wrote it
down on my leg.” I glanced at her
thigh, and sure enough there were words
written all over it, all fancy-font and
spiraling and spilling over into the mysterious
ravine between her legs. As she began to
read, the scene began to turn sour like
a bad trip. Her eyes seemed larger than
usual, while her mouth became smaller, her
lips tighter and thinner. Her legs were
suddenly way too thin to support her body.
Luckily she was still lying on the bed.
The most terrifying distortion was a darkness
which suddenly corrupted her veins, making
them visible through the skin of her entire
body.
They looked like vines
which had grown over her (or out of her).
It looked like a strange disease. Her voice
became shaky and breathless as she tried
desperately to get to the point, which was
that she wanted to sleep with me before
she got married. Before I could respond,
she vanished, and someone new appeared her
in place, like some horrible miscast in
a film. It was Johnny, looking confused
as hell, though probably not nearly as perplexed
as I was.
When I told her of this
dream, she laughed, and recalled how several
times she had suggested that we have sex,
just once. I also laughed, and told her
I thought it might make a good wedding gift.
She agreed. Our laughter melted into sighs
and stares, concentrated gazes in the direction
of nowhere. It was a place we often visited
together. We resigned ourselves to sleeping
in separate beds, in separate rooms. I lay
in my lonely bed awake for hours, until
finally allowing my fingers to wander. I
pleasured myself quietly and gently, imagining
that it was not my own hand, my fingertips
rough and almost masculine. Instead, I was
being stroked by those long, beautiful fingers
that belonged to my best friend. The one
who was getting married in approximately
fifteen hours.
Now, here, in this car,
on this empty Missouri highway, I must not
let myself think such things. She interrupts
my thoughts with her own lament: “God
does not want this to happen!” You
know how hysterical a bride can be on her
wedding day. I turn to her somberly and
say, “Aw, honey, you know there is
no God.” We share a brief, much needed
laugh.
An hour has passed,
and we are back at the banquet hall. Late.
The wedding goes smoothly. It’s time
for me to sink into a drunken stupor. I
watch the bride and groom dance, and feel
that I can let go of all of this now. I
leave to catch a cab to another hotel room,
where I sleep before catching a bus to another
airport. But not before giving her husband
a warm hug, and saying, “Congratulations.” |
