The thing about writing my story out in this way, through the blog medium, is that it's difficult to go back. I mean, I could look back and edit what I've already written and "published," but it seems disloyal and fickle. Thus, I choose not to retract my thoughts about allowing the narrative to branch out. They were important thoughts for me to work through and, I think, work to illuminate some of the limitations of a story told by one. I like to think of a group of people sitting around a camp-fire, shadows leering from the shadowy night-forest around, logs grumbling below us, mossy with countless untold stories. One person might tell a story that thrills and ignites, and we might throw more wood on the fire to keep the narrative going. However, think of the story told by many voices, all recounting different aspects of the general narrative. Wouldn't it be that much more fulfilling? For the multitude of voices twining together like embers rising to the night sky, that is the dream towards which I write. It seems it is not to be fulfilled here, with this story, but know that it is one of the sparks that resides, informing the direction and flow of my heart. Hence, I continue forth alone, a single sighing ember through which hopefully you'll be able to rekindle the life of fire.
After leaving Sarah's, I walked around Brookline. My footsteps felt numb and the buildings that outlined my walk looked on numbly. My stomach was the only part of me that felt alive. It growled at me angrily for letting it get so late. I found a familiar place and ate something familiar. It might've been a burger, I don't remember. Usually I don't eat the same thing twice a day, but I was so out of sorts. The bar was a jumble of colors, greens and blues and browns slipping in and out of each other. I thought about the things Mike had said. Go back to Ohio? Not likely. Go to work on Monday? Probably. What should I do 'til then? I didn't really want to go back to Mike's, not so much because I didn't want to ask for more hospitality but more so because it would be a kind of admission that I was buying into his philosophies, moving on, doing something towards something else like some kind of twisted, blind progression. But where was I going?I wanted to talk to Rafi, that was sure, but it could, should, wait 'til the next day. I shouldn't have been so adamant leaving Sarah's. It had been suffocating there, and I had desperately sought escape. It seemed silly in brief retrospect, this urgent need to leave, this childish refusal to go to bed with my problems. I had been like a leaf floating on the surface of a pond that spilled out into a stream, but slowly the spilling had become a trickle and there was no way out and I could taste the water becoming stagnant, filling with ancient algae, choking into my lungs. Perhaps I was a leaf floating on the air just above this pond, and I had chosen the wind to pick me up and batter me to pieces, rather than drown in the water that was looming below with its threat of going bad. I exhaled deeply, trying to empty myself. Not back, then. Not to Mike's. Or Rafi. Moira kept coming up the verdict. But I felt awkward going there. Out of place. It was like a music box or a snow globe there, and I nothing but a pair of grubby hands stirring things up uselessly.
I took my time getting there. Maybe I should just find a hotel, I thought. That would've been, perhaps, the epitome of melodrama. Why did I care about not succumbing to my melodramatic tendencies, though? It had been something Sarah had tried to wean me of. This, then, was the rebuttal of her temperance. I would go all out! Paint the town red! A red hand glared at me at a cross-walk, and the light swam in my eyes. I would go to a hotel and then I would go and find a prostitute! I would get drunk and buy drugs! I would fall asleep in the gutter and slip away, washed out by the morning street sweepers, a piece of garbage to keep from the eyes of Sunday morning church-goers. Maybe there was something to temperance, I thought sheepishly. Something to prudence, as old fashioned as it sounds. I didn't really know how I'd feel tomorrow, and all those ridiculous schemes took money. Without a permanent place to stay, I'd probably want to watch how I spent.
I was really running through those scenarios in order to distract myself. I wasn't ready to face Moira. I don't know what I was afraid of. What was the worst that could happen? She'd turn me away and I'd have to find somewhere else to sleep? She'd think less of me for...what? Needing someone? I knew these fears were senseless and trivial and Moira was my friend and one of the most gracious people I'd ever known, but still I was afraid. Maybe I was afraid of myself. Or maybe I was afraid of not feeling afraid, worried that this was coming too easily. It wasn't like I was happy. It wasn't like I'd wanted this. But what if Moira welcomed me with open arms? I mean, I'd woken up in the same bed as her this morning! What would that mean? What would it say about me? What would it say about me and Sarah if I could "move on" this easily? That our time together hadn't meant anything?I shuddered as I faced the intercom of her building. The night had turned cool and clear. Above me, the stars had taken the place of the clouds, twinkling silently and distantly with laughter at my mortal concerns. I almost didn't want to interrupt the stark quiet of the night. The intercom would buzz and crackle to let me in. It seemed an excessive interruption. And it was late. What if I woke her up? I wished I had watched Mike more closely when he had dialed in the code this morning. Luckily, my most minor of problems was solved for me. There was a soft click and someone strode out of the building. He held the door open for me. I ducked my gratitude and walked quickly up the stairs. I don't know if it was the lighting or what, but I felt like I was in a bad noir film, a Dick Tracy pantomime replete with swinging cones of light outlining my cloak-and-stagger-lee.
All of a sudden, tripping over myself and my thoughts and all the embarrassing things I'd ever done that Moira might know about or that no one might know about but that I'd done regardless and knowing I didn't want to add this moment to that mortifying memory list, I was in front of her door. My body and mind cleared off all movement and I stood there, thoughtless and still. My mind reached up to grab the key like Mike had done and I didn't know if my body did it too. I'm not sure that I touched the door, but I remember thinking the wood looked cool, alive and moving, changing like ice, not like something that used to be a tree. Somehow feeling the door, an unpleasant thought burst like a star in my head. What if she was with someone?
Moira was more private than the rest of us. We always joked when she wasn't around that she was probably seeing someone without telling us, or half-a-dozen someones. I always thought Moira's understated demeanor didn't belie a separate persona away from us, just a pleasant lack of Sophie-like verbal exhibitionism. It was one of the things I liked about her. Still waters run deep, right? I imagined myself a leaf or a pebble or a raindrop. The slightest touch or the existence-altering plunge. Either resulted in the quiet ripple across the surface. What of the waters below? Would the leaf, drowned, become an amphibian, webbed-toes, a missing link between life and love, water and air, floating and sinking? I reached up and grabbed the key. I slid it slowly but with certainty into the lock, feeling as its tumblers tripped into place, as each little contour of the key reached into the corresponding recess and the metallic sigh as everything fit just right.I thought about knocking, but it was too late. The key was already in the lock. I turned it and opened the door. The apartment was dark. I exhaled in relief. Closing the door gingerly, I padded through the dimly-lit living room, careful not to step on the spot where I thought my morning's dilemma had occurred. My toes dug quietly into the carpet. "Moira?" I said. I pushed open the door to her bedroom. It was as I remembered it, like a pearl in the moonlight. "Momo?" I used her infrequent nickname, feeling it was more appropriate. She stirred and murmured my name. She turned towards me and looked at me and recognized it was me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--" Out of nowhere, her arms were drawing me to her. I resisted at first, anxious at her ready acceptance. But then I let her pull me into her bed. I was warmed, thawed, by her; she cuddled into me. "Wake you," I finished softly. "Hi." "Hi," she whispered into my chest. "Where were you all day?" I wasn't sure. "Oh, around." I took in the smell of her, her hair pressed to my face as it was. It was different from Sarah, who was more like a spring day, corn fields, the sun. This was more hushed, like the smell after a fleeting rain or what the smell of a brisk, cold night would be like if you paused it, slowed it down, like lilacs. "Thanks for having me." She made a low noise, muffled by sheets and the slow twining of our bodies, a noise that was not quite a chuckle and not quite a giggle. "Does anyone really have you, Dub?" She paused before calling me Dub. She made the noise again. I could almost feel her smile against my chest. "Did you really call me, Momo? I like that." I breathed, exhaled, my agreement, something deeper and more contented than a sigh.
"Momo. Momo." I said, trailing off to a low hum, a sound emanating from deep within my chest. She felt like a snow-white kitten rubbing against my purring, tracing her whiskers across my gently thrumming body. I stroked her hair. It was silky like a painting of the night. She turned to cradle her back against my front. My mouth filled slowly, inexorably with saliva. I tried to stop it but did not possess those thoughts. I tried to swallow as quietly as possible. She seemed not to notice. Her breathing was long and even, which was good because I was trying to breathe as gradually as possible, hoping I could still the desperate inhalations and increasingly ragged exhalations. She reached back and pulled my arm around her. I moved my hand slowly on her stomach, my pinky trailing along her waist until I came to a rest at her hip. The material under my fingers and palm felt like normally t-shirt material after a first wash, except it was incredibly smooth. It was as if the material was supposed to be a normal sunset, but it turned out to be one of those special ones with splashes of fuchsia laughing out from behind the normal puffs of white painted pink. I wished I could see the night sky so I could laugh at the stars and clouds; they weren't feeling anything close to this.
My hand contracted slightly, feeling for the smallest of details. Then it moved up her side, curling my arm around her arm so that my hand was rubbing her shoulder from the front. "Mmm...rub my neck too," she said. I slid my fingers under her hair and let it slide towards the pillow between her head and mine. Her neck was long and so fair I could have traced each individual vein running parallel to her spinal chord, the knuckles pressing the skin up as if even they wanted to touch her skin. I don't even know if people have veins in the back of their necks, but she would have and I would have seen them if there had been more moonlight. I wanted to kiss her so badly.
I leaned my head forward, resting my forehead and nose against the back of her head. I inhaled, not deeply but the scent was intoxicating. Right then I knew I was lost. I inched up and kissed her just below her ear. I felt her stiffen. I nudged her ear with my nose and murmured, "Hey. Okay?" She made a quiet sound of assent. Something in the back of my mind was telling me to stop, but my body had taken control. I nuzzled her earlobe, and then she turned and kissed me. Her lips were soft and cool despite the warm night. And oh were they pliable!
But too soon she pulled away. I gasped at the sudden break. "Dub. Dub, wait. I don't want--" I exhaled, trying to suppress the deep, keening yearning I felt. "Not tonight, okay?" Taking a few breaths, composing myself, I nodded in the dark. "Just hold me," she said. "Just stay the night." Numb, I just nodded again. I felt like I'd tasted the sweet juice of divine fruit and abruptly had it torn from my lips, cast away to lie in the garden, convulsing but not yet banished.
I held her, and I stroked her hair. Soon she was asleep, but I was wide awake. I lay there for what felt like hours and then slipped from her bed. I couldn't sleep. That nap earlier had not put me in the right place for that. I wanted to stay with her, but it was hard lying there, trying not to move, trying not to feel how much of her I was feeling. I had to get up, had to walk. Stretch my legs. Along those lines, I got down on the carpet and actually stretched my legs like I was going for a run. I was working myself up and I knew it, but it was hard to stop. I'd had this problem in the past. Not exactly insomnia, but a difficulty sleeping in the same bed or even the same room as someone else. I paced to her fridge. No milk I could warm up. No beer. Nothing to put me to sleep. I knew from other times, with other women, that it was unpleasant to go to sleep with someone in your bed and wake-up to the realization that they weren't actually sharing your sleep with you, sleep that had felt so beautiful but now somehow felt oddly tainted. I couldn't just crash on the couch. There was no happy medium. I could wait 'til I was calm enough and sleepy enough to drop into slumber next to her.
I shook my head. I was too tense for this, for waiting. The feeling of idiocy remained. I felt an inescapable need to escape lodged in my chest, filling my throat with its nervous, bilious, backed-up air. I couldn't breathe, couldn't clear my head. I had to get out. Had to. Frustrated, I was beside myself, almost hopping from one foot to the other in the kitchen. I gulped down a glass of water. A semblance of calm slowly wound its way through my body, leaving uneasy pockets of tension. I sighed and rubbed my neck. It was the right decision. I shouldn't have come here in the first place, and I definitely shouldn't have kissed her. Now I had one more thing to deal with. What a mess. She would think I was a pig in the morning. I came into her apartment without an invitation and just push myself into her bed? What was I thinking?
I went back to look at her. She looked peaceful. I tore my gaze away from her regretfully to search for my cell phone. It lay next to the bed. Squatting to grab it, I saw Moira's nightie had pulled up, exposing a perfectly formed thight. I stared. My hand reached out. My fingers brushed across the line of the material, and I pulled it down, gently covering her up. I kissed my fingers and placed them on the bed next to her. Then, stuffing my phone in my pocket, I straightened and moved toward the door. I couldn't believe I was leaving this apartment twice in one day without having to be dragged screaming with yearning. I chided myself under my breath as I left. I should have gone to Michael's place before anything else. I hoped he was home.
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