It Was Her First

something about him was awfully strange.

“so I guess you’ve never been with a real man?” he scoffed with an arrogant smirk.

he sat up, the blanket covering his nude lower half. good for me. i could barely swallow the repulsion; it clogged my throat.

this statement made me realize I hated him. i wasn’t used to hate. i ran my fingers across my lips shakily & shrugged, half full of life.

i know I’m supposed to say something about the vodka in my system or how I went back to thinking about my ex. the validation that made me seem not so hypocritical. hooking up with a man I quite clearly despised?

a reason worthy of speaking had to be summoned.

truly I don’t have any excuses though. seeing him & slowing to his words as they scorched a groove in my brain didn’t make any sense to the audience. i simply knew the delicate reasoning behind every act as the main character, though. & my sense of pride ate this up happily.

my walk home was frantic. my shoes barely touched the pavement as my speed quickened with every demanding thought. i could barely understand it now. sex used to be meaningful. now it felt silly, as I’d done the act with someone of his nature. sex sells though, the sex & drug stories made everyone listen more than anything else. i had to write the plot for what was trending. otherwise it might sink into irrelevance.

to shut up my mind was a relief but it would be vulnerable. hushed thoughts behind every loud thought. struggle.

shhh. all the thoughts tumbling.

the text was there, ofcourse. one step into my apartment bathroom & my phone was already in my left hand.

i felt my eyes could be bleeding as the familiar, “you home now or what;)” sat stagnant at the top of my messages. shutting off my phone. why couldn’t I. hitting Block Contact. why would that cause me feverish guilt .

it has been there for 2 months now. everytime. & even now that we’d crossed the most passionate boundary to be crossed & id gave myself to him, the text didn’t change even a letter. sleazy or humorous, I’d never figured it out. maybe the winky face made it not abusive or demanding. maybe I had to recognize this time, I knew hatred & I was abusing myself.

as midnight ate into 2 AM, I became slightly homocidal. that frightened me into falling into dreams of mental institutions & jail bars. I woke up every hour after that to fall into the same type of nightmares.

something about him was so odd.

in every kind of sense. he worked as a doctor. he had money but no future. he had good insides but didn’t know how to use them even if it cost him his very life. he had mild attractiveness but overused that. he spoke richness of ache & I pretended I was accepting of that. of the 6 years I’d know him he’d been background murmur. now he was the ugly song you can’t get out of your head yet the world loves it as the media becomes filthy in their profit off it.

& his fingers nor eyes never grazed my skin or body until I gave him permission to tear into it. a man like him usually acts the opposite way.

but a man like him, knew grief. he was grieving.

i took my panic with me involuntarily as i sped towards his house that evening to speak about grief.

his front door was open. i waved shyly as he smiled at me hungrily.

I fell into his sofa. i used to love the sofa. now it felt like bricks. it felt cold & vacant even when full.

“let’s talk Tyler,” I said abruptly. maybe too abruptly.

startled he laughed. a forced chuckle. his hands came to rest on my thighs as he slammed a chair across from me & lazily sunk into it.

homicidal thoughts. i told my thoughts to off themselves as my desire to stay confident & calm during this moment grew rapidly.

“okay so,” he said, gaze directly into my eyes, “ you couldn’t believe how incredible you felt last night & you came to apologize for making me wait so long for that?”

i pushed his hands off my thighs.

“Tyler, we’re both grieving. losing your sister 3 months ago was the worst thing we’d both experienced. I think what you & I have is simply an attempt to cover up that grief.”

another forced laugh from him.

“you think my sister dying has anything to do with the love shit we got between us? are you insane?”

this time I laughed. shortly & pained.

“ I think,” I spoke carefully, “I came to being with you to replace what I lost. as she was your sister, you’re the closest thing to her. you even smell like her. your voice sounds the same. you share the same childhood memories. think about it. while dating her, I barely noticed you other than as her twin brother. now we’re somehow madly in love & no longer grieving & I know you too well.”

i left his house with no response to that but his arms yanking me off the sofa & out the door. the slam & click of a lock behind me felt like freedom.

grief. how it demands the most of us.

i played the innocent lover of a sickened man to drive my own sickness into oblivion by doing the same with his.

this time, Block Contact felt effortless. this time, solitude greeted me for the next year like a old best friend.

homocidal as I fell asleep in his Tshirt 3 years later.

as I drove to his house in my new car, thoughts of caskets & drowning eased my brain to blocking out the rationality.