The taste of cigarettes fills my mouth yet again. But this time I'm not guilty of the charge. I haven't been smoking for a while... a short while perhaps. Most probably, it is still at the beginning of the semester.
I've been drinking with friends... But currently, they are absent. They have left. It is me and a soon-to-be-western-thinker in the room, alone. We're awfully close to each other and I don't really understand why everything is in slow motion. I know it's not the alcohol, because usually that would only speed things up. We're sitting awfully close to each other, and I'm thinking about when the dramatic and emotional cheek-to-cheek phase will be over. Not that I mind romance... I just don't like lingering.
As it has happened many times before, I pull the first move. Yes, I kiss him. He responds like a nice boy would, gentle and slow on his moves. His mouth feels slightly weird, but being a great kisser myself, the two of us figure out a way to get around the problem of an extremely thin and high upper lip -his-. These are hard to deal with.
After a -short- while, I get tired of making out. I feel like this often. I haven't yet found enough competition in this area. But I wasn't looking for a match at that time, anyway. So I lead him to my room and it becomes apparent to me that a friend of mine -I shall call her Georgia for the time being- has taken the liberty of passing out in the top part of my bunk bed. This is alright. I wasn't going to sleep with him anyways.
I change and tell him that he can and should stay over. He takes off most of his clothes. For a moment, I'm sad that I've missed the sight; I always think that the way men take their t-shirts off is coarse, almost ape like and, hence, intriguing. You'll never see a woman who pulls her t-shirt off by grabbing onto it on the back of the neck and shoulders and simply pulling it up and off. We can't do this, because we have boobs. The t-shirt will surely get stuck on the chest for any woman with breasts of decent size.
I wear my usual set of pajamas: a comfortable bra, sweatpants and to top it off my pink night gown. I slip into bed next to him. He's warm and almost naked, like men are in bed. But I don't like the warmth. Warmth is good in bed when you've known a person for a while. Otherwise, it's disturbing; like guava juice that's too thick to drink. You have to dilute it a little right before dinner. But, unfortunately, you cannot dilute the heat content of a man right before bed. One has to deal with it.
We kiss a little bit more. A very affectionate man... a good sign perhaps. But eventually, we need to fall asleep. He deals well with this need. Me, not so much... I have problems falling asleep next to a man. They take too much space, produce too much heat and most of the time, they snore. I am a picky sleeper. Throughout the night, I retreat to my side of the bed as affection chases me across the vast space towards the wall. I can no longer move. There is an arm over my torso, affectionately laid there, possibly instinctually. I stay half awake throughout the night and have the singular option of stillness supported by a mind of iron. I manage to suffer quietly throughout the night, silent and motionless enough not to wake him up.
He's a senior with curly hair. He also happens to be one of the smartest men I've met in college. This, I find surprising given that he's American. My opinion of the average American boy with their American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch wardrobe isn't very high. Not that the rest of the world is any different. Average men all around the world (as far as I've observed) have their variable clothing brands and attitudes, but usually the point of convergence is the transparency of the area right above the eyes...
Curly reads, Curly writes, Curly knows much that I don't, but seems to be one of the rare people that have an even gentler grip on life than me. Complications of life puncture many hearts and damage many minds. But it's not hard to separate the special ones. The ones that had lives with a notch lower than the others, the ones that weren't popular in high school, the ones that were silenced, the ones that discovered drugs a little too early, the ones that were physically hurt, the ones that were mentally damaged... We made two of them... and that was probably why he was in my bed that night.
We had talked about existentialism, Nietzsche, Nick Cave, monogamy, school and love, already. I liked the attention and also, his tattoos. I'm a sucker for tattoos. Not when it's overdone, but when it's well done. When a man has way too many tattoos, it looks like a sad cry for attention and love, even if they're one of those dark dark goths who almost never smile at girls like me who don't take care enough to decorate their closets with stricly black clothes. But maybe, it's just that they never smile.
On the other hand, a man that has a couple of tattoos that are where they belong, it's more like a wink, a subtle handsome call. This was what he had. The wink... Much later we would have an incident of me calling him "emo" and him threatening me with pushing me off the statue that we were occupying at the time.
At this point in college, I had pretty much reached the one-night stand mentality level of a frat boy, except that mine included the aftereffects of guilt, depression and the accursed feeling of having been led astray. I could do it, but the recovery from one took several weeks, and in worse scenarios, months. But having respect for this rare type of man that I had found, I let it be -for a while- something a little more than a one night stand.
He stayed over at my place several times. He brought his toothbrush and backpack. The toothbrush... Maybe it was only twice that he stayed over. My cell phone started being utilized more often than usual and soon, I had a pretty clear picture of what was happening. I had led him on too much.
Now, I'm not one to claim much virtue at the art of picking my targets right, as I have been mixed in dramas involving other girlfriends, or men claiming that "We are trees growing at different rates," or even man of post-communist countries... But one thing is for sure, that the hardest is dealing with being the heart breaker. I, personally, have a very ineffective method. I wait. I wait as it'll go away on its own, as if the situation will sublime away. Fake it, till you make it. But this doesn't work, I have learned, since eventually the person -if they care enough and unfortunately in my case, they usually do- will call you. Then it is time to face up to it and fulfill the requirements of a clean cut, yet sensitive break up. Of course, hearing someone say that they are willing to put everything they have on the relationship for the given amount of time before graduation does not help. But also, it is not enough to make one give it a shot when the Umph is missing. Can I get an amen?
