(2013)
I know this is a mistake the minute I walk through the door and
into the bar, where I see all my work friends having a ball.
Many give me an odd look as if wondering how I had nerve to
show up.
Most – thanks to our office gossips – know something about what
goes on between her and me, putting most of the blame on my shoulders where it
most likely belongs.
I’m even surprised I’ve come, and maybe only because I want
to see how good she looks – and still fantasize about getting to fuck her, even
though I had a chance and blew it, and never will get a chance like that again.
So, I have to get a glimpse of her, just to punish myself,
knowing my feelings haven’t diminished in the least.
And she looks THAT good!
Wearing THAT dress, the same one or one like it, she wore those
times she sang up north, so tight it took none of my imagination to see what
she looks like without it, every aspect of her like the thorn of rose, poking
me in all the wrong places, making me bleed all over again, especially between
my legs.
She looks as good as my dreams made her out to be, as good
as all those things I’d imagined about her even before we briefly got involved.
She fits in this place, a queen bee to which the rest of us
are drones, there to serve her even if we do not completely decern that’s what
we are.
Even she might not know how much power she has over the rest
of us.
How stupid am I for doing this, coming here, knowing exactly
how I would feel, stirring up inside me all those hormones I’ve taken weeks to suppress,
feeling even more intensely here in her world than I have at the office where I
only have to endure these feelings once a week and only for a few hours –
although sitting across the table from her at the meetings, all this stuff
stirring up inside me, is not easy either.
I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the chest by a horse, worse,
by the horse I rode in on.
I try not too look at her, at her lips, her tits, her hips, but
most especially her eyes.
Fortunately, she does not seem to see me, the dark bar, the
parade of other people, admirers hanging all over her (the way I wish I could.)
I am not without friends, even here (although her claim that
everybody loves me is bullshit). Yet I’ve worked at the office for long enough,
longer than she has, long before she floated in on her gossamer wings and
seduced everybody.
Some of these people wave over the bar where they offer to
buy me drinks and I accept – needing something to numb this nagging going on
inside my head.
The bar is dank enough to make me almost invisible, and I
stash myself in the corner with Mike, who is already pretty sloshed.
“Welcome to the nightmare,” Mike says, slurring his words,
although I strongly suspect he might be drinking for the same reasons I am. “It’s
rather a surprise seeing you here.”
“I’m a glutton for punishment,” I tell him, only half
joking.
The hard part, I think, is trying not to remember what it feels
like being as close to her as other people are now, not to remember how sweet
she smells, how good she tastes when kissed, and how soft her softer parts feel
back when I still had permission to do so.
By far, the worst part is remembering her eyes – not so much
how she looks at me (these days with fear and hate), but how lost I get when I
look into them, like falling down into a black hole, the gravity of which
leaves no escape.
“Ut Oh,” Mike says, nudging my elbow so I nearly spill the
drink I am sipping. “The boss is calling you.”
I look up and see the man’s balding head shimmering with the
bar lights, and his stare telling me he’s deliberately calling me out, exposing
me, knowing how painful the next moment will be, since he knows better than
anybody all that has gone on between me and her and wants to rub it in, humiliate
me as to eliminate me as competition, when, in fact, I can’t compete. I am the
low man on this totem pole with no power to give her anything but grief.
He's made love to her; I’ve only tried. He thinks I want to try
again. And he’s right. He wants to make sure I don’t get the chance, a move
that is completely unnecessary since I am the last man on earth she would
invite again into her bed – a fact made evident when she finally sees me,
glaring at me as if she would like to drive a stake through my heart.
And seeing me, finally, she makes a point of pressing
herself against the boss, as if to say, “I’m with him. You could have had me,
but you blew it.”
Something I am well aware of, though I can’t scrub the
memory of those early nights out of my mind, the feel of her, her scent, the
tenderness of her kisses, all made more painful by my later stupidity when she
moved on.
Suddenly, the room isn’t big enough or crowded enough, and I
feel utterly exposed, trapped where I am, fearful if I move the situation would
get worse, others noticing my discomfort, some laughing at me just as I think
she is.
Mike catches a bit of this drift and sticks another drink
under my nose.
“We need to get drunk” he says.
“You already are.”
“Then, you’ll have to catch up;.”
“That’s not going to solve anything.”
“No, but it may ease the pain.”
So, I drink, and he drinks, until we are both drunk enough
to laugh, well, actually giggle, but even this seems to annoy her across the
room, maybe she thinking we’re making fun of her, when we’re not.
It is her discomfort more than the booze that lifts my
spirits a little. I may not be happy, but I am numb, and can better tolerate thoughts
of what it must be like to make love with her again, how amazing her breasts
feel when I cup them in my hands, how wonderful her kisses taste, how tempting her
legs look all the way up to her thighs.
Mike and others ease close, we all buying each other drinks,
patting each other’s backs, telling each other how we are survivors, and I feel
a little less like a stranger in a strange land, thinking she can’t control
this world, even if she’s more adept in weaving through its social webs.
Yet when I look over at her, I cease laughing. She seems truly
enraged, and lets the men around her buy her drinks, and the more she inebriated
she gets, the more she flirts, not just with the boss, but with any of the
entourage of horny men around her, glancing at me from the corner of her eyes,
almost gleeful at my discomfort, a discomfort that grows and grows, especially
when she kisses the boss, turning the bar into the chamber of horrors that I
suspected it might be before I came,
Her eyes glisten with satisfaction,
Then, I get angry. Not at her so much as the whole stupid
scene. I’m better than this. I should not let myself be degraded by being here.
I clutch Mike’s arm and whisper: “I need to get some air.”
“Are you sure you can walk?”
I slip off the stool and nearly fall.
“Maybe you should help me,” I say, and he does, guiding me
through the crowd to the door and then into the darkness outside.
I glance back through the window to see if she’s noticed my
leaving, and she has. She looks confused, not angry, and maybe a little
wounded, as if she sees me as abandoning her at the bar yet again.
Mike leans me against a light pole.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.
“Definitely not,” I say and giggle.
“Then, we’ll have to call you a cab.”
“Certainly, I’m Cab Sullivan.”
Mike moans, and then pulls out his phone, but while he’s
making the call, she comes outside, too, still queen-like, still absolutely
beautiful, still a torture for me to look at without wishing things had gone
another way.
She is surrounded by her minions, from which she will select
someone lucky to take her home – and thinking about this, even as drunk as I
am, stings.
The booze has turned me inside out. I cannot stop imagining
being with her and feel even worse standing drunk and alone in the chilly night
air.
When the cab arrives, Mike pushes me into the back seat,
instructing the driver where to take me. He even dolls out the cash for the
fair.
“Don’t let her get too deep inside your head,” he tells me just
as the cab starts away. “She’s not worth it.”
He’s wrong, I think, as the whole scene fades behind me in
the dark. She is worth it. That’s the problem.
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