Monday, October 23, 2023

Scared to death May 1, 2012

 

 

I was so scared my teeth chattered the whole ride north, and my hands shook as I tried at each traffic light to text her back.

“Where are you?” she repeatedly texted, and I replied with a street by street report, each time I stopped.

My whole body shook in expectation of what might happen when I finally arrived.

As stirred up from those few drinks we had, and the kiss I stole when she drove me up the hill before my walk home, a kiss that stirred her up, too, I later learned, when she reported her need to find another man to fulfill the promise I never kept, a promise I knew I would have to keep this time.

I got scared, too out of practice for far too long, fasting as I had fasted does not make the hear grown fonder, a matter I soon discovered to be all too true when I got there, unable to do what I had come to do, needing desperately for it to b real, when all I could offer was a touch, inside/out, not what she said she needed when I asked her once if she was gay, and she said how she loved that but also definitely needed a man.

Needed that one thing that defines manhood.

Or are we destined for something else, something inadequate, unable to fulfil what we promised and ultimately let down even ourselves, even when we feel intense need, the humiliation carried out on our shoulders when we leave the field of battle, conquered by my own fear and sense of inadequacy, knowing well this will influence the future, and turn all that seemed promising into a massive disappointment, as it indeed did.

 


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