Lee`s Diary!

Lee`s Diary!

We met as teenagers; I was 16 going on 17, she was 15 going on 16. I was a Night-rider, one who led a mysterious life at night, and a student in school during the day. I with my black hair and piercings stood out against the other students in our school. She was quiet, a plain Jane (at least to her). She dressed normally as normal goes, though to me Allison stood out. Something was different about her, even if she didn't know it! Her closest friends were people she knew since early childhood. Now in high school, things change; people change, friendships become different.

Everyone goes through new stages in life, like dating, and parties, getting drunk, their first hangover, and even the opportunity to try drugs; all this mixed in with how most have sex for the first time as well as we creep towards the end of our High School Days, is part of what I saw differently about HER! Not Allison, not her: she was not like that life so many of us are exposed to in our high school years, she was still innocent, wholesome (without being naive), pure, still untouched in so many of these ways. It was like she wore this invisible halo over her head, that at times I swear I could see. It would seem by the grace of the unforeseen love and kindness of the invisible forces of good around us in this Universe that ALLISON had this guardian Angel protecting her from these things!

Popularity was never really her game. Allison just wanted to be different, to feel special from everyone else in some way. What she was looking for was some deeper kind of treasure, that she just couldn't ever see was right there. We couldn't have been more opposite as opposites go. I had long since been an expert in all those things in life that these people I was going to school with were just getting started in. Though in the first year of our friendship, Allison would inevitably be given a taste of some things that I couldn't shield her from, even if I wanted to, she continued to go safely through life unscathed by it though.

At 16 I worked nights and had bills to pay and food to put on the table for myself and whoever was living with me at the time (which changed frequently for someone like me). I didn’t live at home with normal parents like my classmates did. I had this tough guy persona, (the underdog), I could get laid anytime I liked with just about anyone of my choosing. If it was drugs you wanted it was drugs I could get you any kind, any amount! You name it I was within reach of it. Allison had this long golden straight hair and this naturalness to her that I loved and admired. She didn’t need to wear any make-up at all. She had the kind of face where just putting on a simple pair of nice glasses looked good on her. She never saw it that way, it seems only I did!

Allison opened up to me so easily right from the first time we met. She had no problem disclosing her troubles of how she couldn’t get a boyfriend, and I of course was always there eager to listen and try and help her through everything that bothered her. I myself could never see why she would ever have a problem finding a boyfriend, but she just couldn’t. This amazing person just couldn’t even get a first date with a boy from school. The guys just didn’t seem to ask her. She didn’t seem to know what her type of guy was, and I guess in some subconscious way it worked as some kind of repellent with the guys at school since it wasn’t her looks that was keeping them away.

I must have in some way always been entertaining the idea, in my dreams or someplace, that I would forget on a conscious level, that I could be with her. That it could be me! That maybe there was something more than what met the eye. Why shouldn’t it be? Why couldn’t it be me? To be the one to take her, with her heart so carefully held in my hand, and let her experience how special she wanted to feel: A coming together like she would never forget! I could introduce her to the idea of the possibility of another realm, that maybe just maybe she was different in a way she didn’t ever suspect!

* * * * *

The Diary continues…

I was the kind of girl that most guys dreamed of giving it up to, at least once before they grew up and fell in love and got married. I was the girl they would make all those promises to, that they would someday keep ‘alright’, only with the simple nice girls who grew up in the kind of life as my Allison did, my lifeline to the other side, my best friend! Allison was the kind of girl any one of those so-called good guys who took her home would be warmly accepted with open arms by their families. The kind of girl that any family would be proud of their sons for making (her) their wife! She would be the wife that could happily raise children in a healthy and functioning home environment, one like I never knew.

Maybe I was more jealous of Allison than I had ever known, and so that is why I started thinking about her in this kind of way. Maybe I was looking for a way to take at least one girl out of the grasps of those boys who were so willing to give it up to sleep with a girl like me, so that maybe I could have it all, instead of it being one of them? The idea of just once changing that outcome, that fate, and go whirling and twirling with her in another direction, into another world one that Allison may not have wanted to find her way out of? I could have, I should have, but I didn't, and now she is out there, alone somewhere, trying to find her place in the world. Would it have really done so much harm to have gone that way once with our friendship?

It's not like Allison would have fallen for me, it's not like it would have been me she’d have wanted to be with, or that I could have been the one to win her heart. In all the years of our friendship sexuality was the one topic or issue that never came up, though it could have; things between us were open enough, it just never surfaced.

11 years is a long time to have a friendship with someone, and this kind of honesty and truth, it is worthy of, so I am not going to let it slip by without mentioning it when I see her again. And I will see her again, she will come back because home is where her heart is, and Allison`s home is and has always been here with me! When we last were together she finally had a boyfriend to call her own, but she could never bring herself to introduce him to me. Looking back on it now I’m wondering why? On that particular visit she told me that I was a very powerful kind of person and that when I walked into a room I would take it over, as though there was no space for anyone else outside of those of whom I wanted there; and Allison didn’t know if that was something she could have her guy around?

I never thought twice about all that at the time, but I wonder now if there was a deeper meaning, a deeper level, an underlying message in it all? I mean really, how could I just be in the same room as her boyfriend and scare him off like that or something: so, I'm left to wonder now if maybe she was at that point in her life wondering about herself in that way, and whether or not it was true?

Or if maybe how at home I was in her life, gave me away, only rather than say anything to me, instead kept me away from someone who might have seen something, and wouldn't have thought twice about speaking out over what they (he) saw? Maybe she was looking to hide it from me knowing that if I saw her not feeling at home around her boyfriend, or not looking truly happy to be with him, that I would say something to her? Only never wanting to be the cause or the culprit, (at least not on a conscious level), I never allowed myself to see the signs; I just always wanted to be her friend, a genuine friend, and didn’t want to risk losing that, from what kind of distasteful disaster something of this nature could mean if I were to have guessed wrong!

I can think of all too many times where Allison spent the night in my home, sleeping like an Angel on my futon, while I would lie awake in my room, trying to keep thoughts from crossing my conscious mind! But now that we are so much older I’m not afraid of it anymore, but I still don’t know how far Allison would go, or if in fact she has ever entertained the idea of being with another woman, or if it has always just been me? If she has thought about it, why should I have the Audacity to think that in her mind she would let her first time, her first time for everything and anything that along with doing this could mean, be with me?

What this would do to our friendship I do not know? I just know that I would like to show her my great love and deep appreciation and admiration that I have for her and our friendship that we have had for so many years, in the only way I know how. I don't know what this will say or mean to Allison about me and what we've had all these years? I just hope I don't lose our friendship trying to find out?!

With a deep breath, Allison looks up from the pages of her best-friend's diary. She just can't bring herself to read anymore!

* * * * *

Allison!

All Allison could think now, was why? Why had she picked up Lee's diary and read it? "A woman's diary is her own," she said to herself. " I know better than to do something like this!" Allison said as she placed the diary back on the table, trying to place it in exactly the same spot Lee left it in. Allison then swiftly got up from her chair and headed towards the bathroom. Halfway down the hall, she could hear Lee's shower was still going, telling her Lee was still in it. So she quickly returned to the kitchen, where she looked for and found a pen.

She then frantically shuffled through piles of paper trying to find a blank piece that she could write on. Unable to find something and worried that Lee would be coming out of the bathroom at any moment now, she picked up Lee's diary and opened it to the back of the book, and carefully tore out a blank page. She then scribbled out a note to excuse herself, put the pen down next to it, turned around, and grabbed her keys off the kitchen counter, and left Lee's Apt.

It was just too much to digest; Allison knew that she just wouldn't have been able to look at Lee much less keep her composure, if she had stayed. " I need time!" Allison said, out loud to herself as she was getting off the elevator and running out the front doors to her car…

"Time!"

* * * * *

Lee!

Lee stepped out of the shower and grabbed her towel from the rack, then wrapped herself in it; walked over and opened her bathroom door and walked down the hall towards Allison whom she knew was waiting for her, only to Lee's surprise, Allison wasn't in the living room, so she went and checked the kitchen; where she found a note on the table instead of Allison!? Lee sat down, picked up the note and started to read it. It read:

Lee,

Sorry I couldn't stay. My brother phoned me and it seems something has come up that he needs my help with. I will explain further when we speak next on the phone.

Allison.

Lee placed the note back on the table and stood up and unconsciously moved to her living room to give herself space between her and her diary at this moment. "It sure must have been urgent," Lee said to herself? "It's not like Allison to just leave a note?" They had long since grown accustomed to one another; so the two of them sharing one bathroom together was not unusual, lots of girls do that! It was a habit of Lee's to leave the bathroom door unlocked whenever Allison was over. Known for her politeness Allison has said many times over the years, that a note simply doesn't do, it's just not good enough; so for Allison it was a custom to inform Lee personally when something came up calling her away. "Well, I had better not make too much of this, there is always a first time for everything," Lee said, as she walked away from where she was then drying herself off with the towel and headed to her room to get dressed.

Halfway to her room, Lee stopped dead in her tracks, turned around and went back to the kitchen table and picked up the note. And took a closer look at the piece of paper. In the hallway it had hit Lee suddenly that the paper the note was written on looked awfully familiar. Then without a second thought she remembered having left her diary on the table.

Lee picked up her diary and flipped through the empty pages till she found at the back of the book where a page had been carefully torn from. She fit the note to the tears in the book knowing they would be a perfect fit, then closed the book. Had Allison read her diary? And all that Lee had written about her, thinking her private thoughts were safe? Lee quickly went over to the phone, picked up the receiver and dialed star 69 to hear the number of the last incoming call. It wasn't Allison's brother!

With nauseating disbelief, Lee hung up the receiver. " This can't be happening, not now, not like this!" She remarked out loud to herself. " Of course not, this isn't what it looks like, Allison would never read my diary!" But Lee's inner voice had more to say on the matter. If Allison thought you two shared everything with one another and saw your diary sitting there, why would she think there was anything wrong with reading it, reading about stuff she already knew? Would you honestly if you saw her diary alone in the same room as you (have) the strength to resist reading about all those good and bad times you've both shared together?

If you were so careless enough to leave your diary lying where Allison could see it, why wouldn't she have believed that you probably wouldn't mind, otherwise why would you have left her alone in the same room with it? " THAT'S ENOUGH!" Lee managed to stammer loudly to herself. Then telling herself that Allison would never do that, she'd never think like that. Not with the kind of mannerisms she has. I'm quite simply just over- reacting, and that's that! She just couldn't find any paper to write on that’s all! Lee told herself.

Lee, sure now that Allison would have a reasonable explanation, put the note back down on the table and walked away from where she had been sitting and reading it for the last few minutes; going over everything in her head confused and as a ball of emotions still wrapped in her towel, went to her room to finally get dressed!

* * * * *

Allison`s Time: Revealed!

Allison knew that she had to do something about it, she couldn’t leave things the way they are, it had been a few days now and Lee hadn’t tried to call her so, either Lee had no idea, or worse she had figured it out? So, Allison walked over to her desk and pulled open her top drawer and bent over and started shuffling through everything in it, looking for her writing work and the writing work she’d collected of Lee’s over the last decade that they were friends, and put the books on top of her desk!

She pulled her chair back and sat down in front of the books and took a breath knowing with this time of quick review that it meant if they were in fact going to come to terms with what’s always been right in front of them both and this time now that they were in their 20’s and a little older, hold nothing back and allow themselves the time to explore without further hesitation; ‘full steam ahead as the saying goes’ that it’s now or never! Allison took a deep breath and opened the pages to both books the one written by Lee, was under a different name Allison had learned quickly to understand the duality of Lee and having a 2 sided life, and in order to keep some semblance of order and privacy she knew why Lee felt she had to do things the way she did!

She never brought it up, she never rocked the boat, and she was also almost never at any of the events Lee ever performed at, when there were open mic nights, or poetry readings etc… and it was only NOW that Allison was understanding WHY Lee NEVER BROUGHT IT UP, NEVER MENTIONED IT, NEVER ASKED Allison… “Why don’t I ever see you in the audience when I look out over the crowd from the stages I take a stand on?” But Allison now knew that Lee could tell her side of the story without worry or judgment or outcome or response and reaction from Allison had she heard anything that was ever written that she might have suspected, thought or just outright known had been written about her, or about the both of them if she had indeed been there at any of those events!

Allison was grateful for finally being able to explain so much to Lee, she felt terrible about what it was, that she had betrayed, a simple trust of knowing you don’t read another person’s diary in order to get to this moment and time and place in their lives, in their story between each other as the reason for what made this happen, but she was nonetheless still grateful that it was finally going to happen!

But before closing both the books she couldn’t resist reading a few pieces and reminiscing over the days in which they were either first written, performed and or read by Allison at her shows, back in the beginning of it all!

~ Morning Dew~

A drop of morning dew

taste like honey;

is what I knew

it should have been with you,

from just that gentle

smooth, soft, subtle

shared in that untested

kiss;

never finished

with you!

~ Place and Time ~

Dancing in the world

Divorcing all the signs,

Understanding what is wrong

With this place and time

Nothing left to be said,

Except to silence the voice

In my head;

As I climb under the covers

Into bed again

Without you!

~ She ~

For all those years

that I lived in that lifestyle,

you were that hit...

that fit...

The ‘one’ wearing the clothes

that described the way I felt inside

before,

turning over to a life of learning new love;

A kindness and solitude that doesn’t need

push and shove.

softer touches... orgasms without pain,

to love someone... ‘saying’ there name;

not to punish and be cruel

to get that hit... and feel that fix...

over the angrier life forced upon us to live;

from damage in our youth... which goes unspoken...

a choice between, living or dying for Good or Evil!

What can we do about the separation between us two?

It’s all about being real,

when needing something to feel.

Looking back on it all now

I shake my head,

as I confront the truth

and my point of view

over the attraction I had towards you!

When she was done reading she grabbed for her special hand-made soft book bag and carefully put the books in there and closed the lid and did the flap up by pushing the large round wooden button through the hole in the closing part of the bag's lid made just for it. She threw the strap around her neck while getting up from the chair and headed to where her keys were, grabbed them and her jacket turned out the lights and left her home, closed and locked the door, and looked back at it for just a brief pause, taking a big breath for what she knew would be the last time of her life as it is RIGHT NOW, for knowing that she would never return home to that life ever being the same. Then she turned and moved ahead taking those steps forward towards her car determined to complete the mission she had settled on in her head and the outcome to which she wanted over what she learned and came to understand within herself over having read Lee`s diary just a few days earlier!

As she started her car she knew it was only moment’s away what the future would be of where her side of the confession will go, and how Lee will choose to EMBRACE what should have been told and shared in this way with her many years ago! Finally revealed in an experience wanted and needed between them? Allison was excited at the same time as she was anxious, she really did hope this would FIX IT ALL for Lee, (including the awkward silence left between them in these last few days) she thought to herself, as she drove her car forward towards a New Beginning that was waiting for her just around the bend which she and the car she was now in turned her drivers wheel in the direction of and disappeared into!

The End!

Written by,

Jennifer Cooley!