could be one of those women who comes after you. With
a knife, a restraining
order, a trumped-up charge of rape. I could make you pay for your
lies, instead of having had them for free, like the curly fries
you get complimentary at a diner when you make enough fuss about
how bad the service is. You never really want the curly fries,
just the thrill of having gotten away with something you know you
shouldn’t have, because the service wasn’t really that
bad. I could be one of those women.
But I won’t. Because that’s common. And I’m
nothing if not original.
“That’s what I love most about you, baby,” you
murmured one lazy Sunday morning while you twirled a long brunette
strand of my hair around your finger. “You are an original.
Can’t just go to a department store and pick up another
one of you. No way.” You knew my one pride, my one weakness.
Then you made love to me to cement a truth that didn’t
exist. Finishing touches on a building you had plans to demolish.
No, I’ll take out my rage in more imaginative ways. I’ll
take it out on a battlefield you have no jurisdiction over. The
one thing you can’t control, anymore.
Me.
I’ll sleep with men I don’t care about, men I don’t
even like. I’ll overeat. I’ll cut.
Razors will sing as they are given at last the pleasure of my
flesh. They have sat, benumbed with jealousy, on my dresser as
they watched you have what they knew they deserved. More than
you. Now I know, too.
I’ll start with a slanted cut, on my forearm. Slanted
in honor of the way you looked at me when we first met, waiting
in line for our slices at Papa’s Pizzeria on 34th. It will
be long, for the way your eyes held mine, electric, longer than
should have been comfortable between strangers, indicating that
we would be anything but.
And I won’t stop there.
Josh, this guy in my building who doesn’t merit my attention,
not really, will get more of it than he can handle, more than
he could ever imagine. While I run my hands ruthlessly through
his thinning hair and over his expanding midsection, I’ll
think of your thick brown locks and tight chest and I’ll
groan louder knowing that somehow, you can feel what I’m
doing right now. And it hurts.
aby, I’m just not as serious about this as you
are. It isn’t fair to you,” you said to me over the
eggs I made for you with vodka after a night of lovemaking that
was limpid as all our nights have grown.
“You don’t know what’s fair for me,” I
delivered, cool as ice as if I’d been expecting it all
day. As if I’d been sitting on the knowledge and trumped
you with my foresight.
“Cassie, you haven’t exactly been stable since your
dad died. I think maybe I do know what’s best for you right
now.”
“What does that bastard have to do with it?” You
flinch at the word ‘bastard.’ We’ve been together
6 months, he’s been dead 3 months, and still you won’t
acknowledge my righteous anger. If you’d been raised by
the asshole you’d be calling him that too.
“What does he have to do with it?” I repeat. I’m a
drill sergeant in white silk.
You rise from the cute little black-and-white checkered table,
my table, our table, that we picked out together. I was so careful
not to like what you didn’t, to make sure we fit. The fact
that a red formica almost grabbed my arm and tore my sleeve with
its desire to be mine was irrelevant. The fact that red was my
favorite color, that you wouldn’t have cared which table
I got, these were incidentals. Casualties in my war for approval.
Which I believed I was winning.
As you run your dish, barely used, under the tap water slightly
tinged brown but we are assured by the authorities that a little
iron in your water is good for you, you say, “Cass, we’ve
talked about this. I think you need help. And I’m not it.”
The lines on my face, again. The muscles stalwart. I’m
ready. Ready for blows that won’t come. But they might.
I never know. So I’m always ready. Always.
I rush to the sink to meet you, but slow, languid. I could take
all day, it doesn’t matter if I ever get there. I can’t
let you see me frantic, I won’t. As you turn, I catch your
shoulder with my hand, then my mouth. I press all of me against
you, longing that I summon from depths within, that has nothing
to do with you. And you know it. And I know it. And that doesn’t
change it.
But it changes you.
“Cass, I won’t do this anymore.” You pull
away from me at so many levels at once that the room spins. My
life spins. A coin, that no one cares to catch to see whether
they’ve won or lost. Because we all know I’ve lost. “It
isn’t helping you. It isn’t good for you. And.”
You hesitate, and I sense your weakness.
“I’m not enjoying it anymore.”
So we get to the heart of the matter.
hat
I could do: I could sink back into bitterness, a bitterness so
dark and thick it would envelop me, insulate me, it would own me. Another
long sleep in the middle of a mattress instead of on it.
Bitterness could be my new master, where you have failed.
I could bring it cookies in bed, massage its back, suck its
dick. What I no longer do for you I can do for it. Maybe bitterness
will be a man who deserves me.
he movers are thick men with hair on their backs. I can see
this because it’s July and they’re in undershirts
stained with sweat even before they arrive.
“Jared, you don’t have to do this.” I am full
of dignity now. “Are you trying to punish me?”
“Cassie, I knew it was a bad idea for me to move in so
soon. There’s too much we didn’t know about each
other yet. It’s just that you were so sexy, so alluring.…” I
see your eyes dart to my waist, 24 inches and a perfect fit to
my bust and hips, both 36. It was a fact I told you on our first
date. I know that men always have to find out for themselves
when I tell them that. I let my eyes soften. Maybe we’ll
pay these guys for their effort in coming down here on such a
hot day, and we’ll go back into the bedroom and work out
these problems the way we always have, the way that works for
us….
“I’m sorry, Cassie. This isn’t working.” You
start to wrap your expensive Mayan replicas that I so generously
refrained from breaking in hopes that they would be staying,
along with you. “This isn’t going to work.”
I stare. I think. I have to act fast. The movers, excessive
in number at two for the small amount of possessions that you
have, are working more quickly than I expected. Already your
couch is gone and computer is being packed. There isn’t
much left, of your possessions, or my life.
“Jared, don’t go. Please, please don’t go.
I’ll be better, I promise I will. I won’t….” I
stop, realizing I can’t think of anything I’ve done
wrong, that I could do better. But there must be something. There
has to be something.
“Just tell me what to do. Please, Jared. I’ll do
anything.”
“Cassie, I’ve told you. You need help. I can’t
deal with your mood swings, your…neediness. I’m suffocating.
This isn’t fun anymore. And I don’t need to deal
with it. You do.”
My hands go on auto. They’re not part of me right now,
they have their own will. Their own plan. If they’d asked
me, I would have told them this wasn’t the right approach.
If they’d consulted with me, I would have stopped them.
But they didn’t.
The filmy paper wrapped around your replicas, given to you by
your beloved thesis advisor in the Archeology department as he
was dying, did nothing to protect them from me. It did not cushion
their fate, the unfortunate children caught in their parent’s
divorce. When they hit the wall of my apartment, solid enough
to absorb their weight though not designed to, they were not
immune to the same shearing force that now held my heart. They
broke, like I was breaking. The only thing the paper did was
keep the scene clean, at least physically.
I got 5 out of 8 of them done before you were able to subdue
me.
The movers had stopped what they were doing to watch the spectacle. ‘I
should be charging them,’ I thought, clear somewhere amidst
the chaos. ‘This must be better than a movie.’
“Cassie, what the hell are you doing?” you scream.
I can see rage in your eyes now. You want to hit me. I can see
you considering it. “It’s only been a few months,
what makes you think you even have a right to be so angry, let
alone…. These are irreplaceable. You’re not.”
That’s the last I hear from you. You finish packing guardedly,
protectively. You ask one of the moving men to watch your stuff
if you have to leave the room. And you’re gone.
nd then there will be the platitudes. Friends will say, “You
deserve better.” “At least you found out now rather
than later, what he’s really like.” “There
are plenty of other fish in the sea.” But I know the truth.
There are no fish in the sea. They’re all barracudas. Like
you.
On our second date you asked me if I believed in destiny. I
smiled, pleased at the depth of the question, and replied without
the need to consider, “Of course.” “Well,” you
replied, “I believe that we are destined to be together.”
And now. You renege.
You can't go back on destiny and get away with it.
You won't.
A little strychnine in the cereal boxes you took back with
you. Destiny's answer.
[END]
© 2004 Sarina Singhi - Contributor's
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