Personal Space
You treated me well. You made sure I enjoyed myself, and you kissed me afterwards, and now here you are spending the night beside me. I didn’t even ask you to, you asked me if you could. I think I’ll sleep with you again.
Honestly, I don’t usually like sex, especially not good sex. I like bad sex better because it doesn’t pull me away from it all so much, it doesn’t take me away to that other place far from the stress and the worry and the hating myself. Bad sex keeps me right where I am—and don’t get me wrong, it’s nice getting away from it all, it really is, but when it’s over it’s like this horrible concrete slap and all of me is just sludge pouring down the sides of my face, turned away so the other person can’t see it—and it really really is just so nice getting away from it all, but if this is how it feels coming back, I think maybe I’d rather have just never left in the first place, you know?—but with you, it didn’t hurt so much coming back because you kissed me when we were done and now here you are spending the night, fast asleep. I’ll definitely sleep with you again, I’ve decided.
The only problem is I can’t see you anymore. I tried nudging your shoulder a few minutes ago to wake you up, because I wasn’t sure a few minutes ago if I wanted to have sex with you again and I supposed the best way to figure it out was to wake you up and have sex with you again and see how I felt about it, but when I reached out to nudge your shoulder, all that happened was my hand became all cold and tingling, suddenly, like I’d just plunged it straight into ice-water, and when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything at all on your half of the bed, on your side of the room—nothing at all, not the empty mattress, not even the absence of you, just a wall of perfect black, like my eyes were still closed, like I was blind or like it was just a hole in the world. I could see my own hands, though, and the sheets around me, and the moonlight was still drip-drip-dropping in through the window behind me—it was just you and your half of the room that was dark. The edges of you were twisting, roiling like smoke.
I don’t know if you always transform into an impenetrable cloud of blackness during the night, or if this is just something that’s been happening to you recently. I suppose it’s possible that you don’t even know, that no one has told you. You did say that you haven’t slept with anyone in a while, so who would have told you, right? Funny thing is, though, I remember Alicia from two cubicles down telling me a story last week about how one time she slept with a guy and something exactly like this happened, where he turned into an impenetrable cloud of blackness afterwards, and I asked her who it was and she said oh, it was no one I would have met—and when I asked her this afternoon if she’d ever slept with you—because I’ve always suspected that she’s been sleeping with you and I didn’t want to invite you here if that was true—she told me she hadn’t, and I mean Alicia isn’t the sort of person I really want to believe about things, but you are, because you really took the time to make sure I enjoyed myself tonight, so I guess she must have been talking about some other guy.
Maybe lots of guys have been having this problem, lately. Maybe it’s a thing that’s been going around. I’m not going to make a big deal about it.
My mom, though… My mom would be having a field day right now, seeing this. She’d be going on and on and on: “What did I tell you Patricia? You’ve always had terrible taste in men, you’re always winding up with the wrong men. That’s what I’m always telling you, Patricia!!” She didn’t like Clark and she didn’t like Doug and she didn’t like Mike—and how could anyone not have liked Mike? The only one she ever liked was Perry.
How funny is that? It’s funny.
It’s funny, you know what I think about sometimes is how the past is a part of us, isn’t it? The past is a part of us just like our fingers and our toes and our noses and our tits and all the rest of it, the past is a part of us, and what I think about sometimes is how it’s funny that you can take a knife and cut off your fingers or your toes or your nose or your tits and sure it’ll hurt like hell and sure it’s dangerous if you’re not careful about it, you can lose a lot of blood or get an infection, but if you do it right, if you follow all the steps and disinfect everything and apply bandages and tourniquets you can cut off your fingers or your toes or your nose or your tits and after a while the skin will heal over and they’ll just be gone, not a part of you anymore. Sometimes I think about how people really ought to be able to take a knife and cut off bits of their past. I ought to be able to take a knife and cut off all of it up until maybe two months before now, when we first started talking, you and I—I ought to be able to cut away all of that and of course I’ll disinfect it and wrap it up tight with gauze so not too much of me is left bleeding out into the air, and after a while, the story of my life will heal over, and everything will have started two months ago, that’ll be my chapter one, and none of the anything before that will be a part of me anymore.
The fog that is you is rolling in, rolling over me, ice-cold and damp and tingling, you fill my nostrils, you clamp my mouth and you pry your way between my lips and you go wriggling down my throat, and you slip up the legs of my pajama shorts and you suffocate me from both ends, you choke me and you crush me, heavier and heavier, and my eyes are open and I can’t see anything in any direction anymore, there’s only pitch-black spilt across my face and everywhere, but I’m not too worried. I’ll wake up in the morning after. I always do. Alicia’s still around, isn’t she?—for better or worse. I’ll wake up in the morning, and you’ll be back to your usual self with skin and all that, and I’ll make you a nice breakfast, or maybe you won’t be back to your usual self, maybe you’ll still be this cloud of impenetrable black ether, or maybe you’ll be more of a very dark, rich blue in the light of day. A beautiful blue. We’ll just have to make it work. I’ll do my best to gather you up in a jar and I’ll tuck you into the passenger-seat beside me after I’m done with my coffee and toast. I’ll put the buckle snug across you and everything, just to be safe. We can carpool.
Or do you think people will notice us arriving together? Do you think they’ll start to talk?
So what if they do?
