Originally authored in spring 1989
((I wrote this for a creative writing class I took as an undergrad at U of I. It's the earliest piece I could find.))
We achieve a clumsy tenderness with our awkward adolescent bodies. She warms me better than the most expensive fur lined blanket. It is our first time, a magical moment, just like in the movies.
I love you.
She stands with Him at the end of the aisle. The veil cascades down her shoulders like a waterfall emptying into a pool of white ruffles and hand-sewn pearls. Her father jumps into the center of the pathway to take a picture of the three of them: Her, Him, the Priest. Standing nest to me, a friend slowly shakes his head back and forth as She swears her obedience.
"Oh, harsh."
I do…
"I'm so happy for you both."
I smell her hair, her skin, Her, as we embrace our last time. The starch of her gown repels me. I turn to Him and extend my hand.
"Congratulations." You measly little fucker.
He smiles. Uncertainty adds a quiver to his lips. He doesn't know just what to make of me.
Yes, I've slept with your new wife. How does that make you feel, you shit?
"Thank you," he stammers. "Thank you for coming."
Don't worry. I won't drink too much or make a scene. Today I aim to disappoint the crowd. My date gives my hand a squeeze after noticing my agitation. She thinks she knows me. I think I know me. We are both idiots.
--
The happy couple is en route to a honeymoon hide-away at a remote Floridian condo. The Group gathers to celebrate/morn Her passage into reality. I stand on the porch, separated from Them by a thick plane of glass. I watch them as they dip into the smooth flow of communication. In there, They try to recapture the past, predict the future.
"I remember when…"
"Well, I'm planning on…"
I think back to that
Tenderness
night, our
Warmth
first time.
My hands outgrew my adolescent heart. I fumble my caresses. Tenderness does not come so easily now. I shiver slightly in the chill. My fingers clumsily work the latch on the sliding door. I enter the room seeking warmth in a sea of conversation.
I take a seat on the floor near the end a couch. I listen to the rolling waves of their sentences, the calms of their pauses. In time, one of Them turns to me.
"So, what about you?"
The time comes for me to cast my oracle, to spin the tale of my future.
"Well, you know I want…"
I have no words for my hopes and dreams. Even to myself they remain amorphous, indefinable. I close my mouth, pause, open it again. I look to Them. Do They possess an understanding that I do not? I look away. I am sinking. I check my watch, make an excuse about the time, and leave, date in tow.
--
I am sitting on the floor, watching the stranger on the bed. We've only been dating for a few months. Bits of conversation between work, sex, and sleep do not lend themselves to a thorough examination of each other. Not like days together would. Not like long summer vacation days of lying there, holding and talking, dreading the time when her parents would come home, would.
I look again and see a corpse on the bed, tightly wrapped in the white sheets of a funeral shroud. With my years I've engaged in some form of living necrophilia. I don't let the spark of my life through. We rub and rub against one another, but two dead bodies can't create the warmth I need. Not like those summer vacation days long ago, when I was alive and my hands more delicate.
The stranger on the bed stirs, opens her eye, and notices me, distant. She pulls the sheet off her body, exposing herself to me, offering herself to me. As if after the day's realizations I could find comfort in wax paper sex. She gestures. I turn my head away, down to look at my hands.
Crippled as they are, they can still give pleasure. Encased in a dead shell of a body, my soul still feels the warm flare of desire, of need, when a lover softly whispers my name, her hands clenching my back. I look back to the bed, feeling her need, my own. It's not love, but maybe I can find it there. Maybe.
Knowing I will fail, I raise myself to my knees and crawl to the bed.
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