Flashes of a wayward dance
Not phase, nor chance but so deeply ingrained in the way I move
That I wonder...
Should I even wish for these pangs to leave.
Shoulders thrown back, though falsely
Arms clutching at wrought iron, still falsely
Quiet moans and louder breaths, all lies.
Not all waltzes spin the same
And sometimes the shame gets to me,
But it's been years since the last time I've cried myself to sleep,
Still suffocating in perfume that reeks wrongly.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing impure in faking an orgasm.
But the chasms between that young man and I,
With his soft lashes that kiss my cheek as I bite his round lips
But when he looked up at me and said to me those words
So familiar
Their sting ran to me across ten years to bite into me again
My flesh was theirs, and for a time last night
My body did not belong to me again.
I did bad yesterday, I think. I don't know. Maybe I was tired and the atmosphere was off. I *know* I'm being melodramatic.
But for once, in all these games of promiscuity that the venerable Mr. Heinlein would have been proud of, I made a mistake and played a game the way I used to play them.
I met some guy in a bar this weekend. We got together, fucked like fiends for 'fuck-a-stranger-day' on Valentine's day. He's a nice guy, does charity work. Takes his neighbour's kids ice-skating.
But I was back in high school in that bed. Empty. Wrong. Outcast...
He even has the same lazy whine to his voice that the boys who jeered at me in the hallways and called me 'freak' probably still do... Lying against blood red sheets and black satin draped on a canopy bed that no one I went to high school with has ever seen... Somehow he managed to bring those ghosts flooding back at me.
I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me.
"UR a freak" he said at me on icq that afternoon.
I know I am. And I remember the day when I decided that I was proud of it, too. I remember the day I discovered the other voices and fists raised in the night against the smothering onrush of sheep in city streets. Sheep, dressed in each other's expensive wool coats.
I remember the day I learned that being 'a freak' meant that you could love more and live more and feel more... And I never looked back, not seriously... I just counted the epiphany amongst a million others, and though sometimes I still feel alone, never like that. Never, ever like that anymore.
I should've backed off the minute he called me a nice jewish girl. I heard it there, in his voice, that quiet conformity that only rears it's head if I don't play nice girl.
I remember now why I did what I did and played what I played and fought who I fought and all those horrible things... So painfully clear these flashes that I'm blind to the world today. I remember swearing in blood that we would all be dead by 19. I remember when weapons weren't allowed in gang fights and the dishounoured would be dealt with by his own family.
I remember...
And I remember the facelessness, too.
The way sex felt wrong until I learned to just enjoy the thrill.
Thank you, CHOM boy. That angle, over your shoulder, staring at the wall... Wondering when I'd be able to get up and go back to what I was doing. The way you asked me when our next session would be.
One moment I was enjoying the clean convenience of a one night stand, two people looking for the same thing (or more, really, three or four people works wonderfully too ;), on the same wavelength.
Not this time. He's too much like they were.
And what really bothers me is that I thought I was immune. I thought I'd gone past there. It's irrational, it's stupid. That some stranger should be throwing those stinging memories back at me, just because he wears the same perfume and used the fated words.
All this hubris. Everything I've learned since then... The person they ridiculed and cast aside, that's not supposed to be me anymore. I practiced my smile in the mirror in CEGEP. I got married and learned for the first time that I could be loved. I learned how to tell a joke and make people laugh and not be afraid to make conversation.
I learned a few of the lesser kept secrets of charm and I'm still working on grace, I started to build a career and put together a lifestyle that I adore, completely different from everyone I went to high school with. I can roll sushi. ALl the petty pains, I learned to avoid, and avoid doing them myself.
Is this making any sense to you? Are you still with me, even? I don't know why I'm telling you this.
It just hurt for a moment, last night, that's all. Last night, for the first time in 7 years, but for the millionth time in my life, I cried myself to sleep, the dry-eyed knifing tears that I didn't want my roommate to hear.
And you know what? Now I'm *sure* I'm never going to forget who I am or where I've been, and that makes me feel so much better...
I needed to make this mistake. Thank you, Telly, for reminding me... That I don't live in this boardroom, and that there's a reason I came here.
To stop other people from having to inspect the tear in the wallpaper like I did.