I could use…

A girls that crawls in bed next to me, says “aw baby that sucks,” after a bad day, then kisses me on the cheek while pulling the blanket over our heads to do things that would make the neighbours blush.

And then he kissed me

We talked about random things.  We talked about silly things and got to know each other.  He was nice and kind and inquisitive but not creepy.  He was equally interested in knowing things about me than he was talking about himself.  He wasn’t secretive or evasive.  It was a great first conversation and I left it smiling.

Then we talked about what we were doing.  What we like to do and where we’ve been.  We talked about the past and things we’d love to do in the future.  Some of the things he’s done that I’d love to do.  We joked about doing the same thing but at different times in the same place.  We reminisced and fantasized along the same plane of existence.

After that we talked about our actions.  Things we do and ways we act.  Various likes and dislikes and how we can’t understand how other people don’t share our likes or dislikes.  We came up with cutesy nicknames for each other based on these and teased each other based on others.  The words adorable and cute were bandied about in my direction and I told him to stop making me smile so much because my cheeks are starting to hurt.

Eventually the conversations led to something slightly more risque.  It was hot and I was hot and he seemed hot.  I was more empirically hot in the sense that I was sweating from the heat, while I found him more and more appealing with every conversation we had.  I looked forward to them.  When he would text me and say hello I would light up.  I had to contain myself slightly because I didn’t want to seem too eager and come off as desperate.
He asked what I was doing and I told him, purposefully, that I was folding laundry in slightly more than no clothing.  His attention was always readily available but his tone changed.  His words went from fun and flirty to flirty and suggestive.  I suggested just as much and we suggested each other doing very suggestive things.
We slipped back, comfortably, into our usual conversation of silly and fun to goodnight and in bed.  A smile permanently plastered on my face as I drifted off to sleep.  

Soon after we decided to get together to test the chemistry and physics, to see if the pull was just as strong and the reactions at the same intensity.  We met and we shared a drink.  We smiled and laughed.  The laughs were genuine and held in reserve for fear of looking too comfortable.  I don’t know why.
The drinks turned into more drinks which turned into a bit of food.  I can eat in front of him?  Wow.
Hours might have gone by, or just a single one I’m not really sure.  It was a great time, just as good as our texting and then better on top of it.  Better because I could see his blue eyes behind his glasses.  I could watch his smile when I did something dumb that he said was adorable.  There was even that moment I got to feel his hand along mine while his fingers dragged over my palm to see if he could make me shiver.  It was amazing and I didn’t want it to end, but it had to.

We got to my car, because he walked me to my car.  We smiled our goodbyes and hugged our regrets behind them.  We stood under the streetlight which, itself, was under the stars.  The busy, warm night was all around us and even though it couldn’t have gone any better I wish it wouldn’t have stopped and was a little sad that it was ending.  Would this be the best night we had together and it only just began?  I’m always so negative.

And then he kissed me.

Do you see me?

“This is basically like a menu for people.”

She wasn’t wrong.  Dating had become a strange phenomenon.  There wasn’t any spark or meet cute involved anymore.  Now it was similar to the way a couple picks a sperm donor or, as Melody said, the way a person picks their food off of a menu.

“Yeah, but Mel, attraction plays a role things anyway right?  I mean, come on, when you’re seeing someone from across the room, as all the songs say, you’re only noticing them because of their looks right?  So, here you are.  Seeing someone from across the city.”

“Not the same,” she was still a romantic.

“Of course it is,” I wasn’t.

She shook her head in response, “no it isn’t.  Not even close.  You can’t get that feeling from a picture of a person you’ve never known before.  Someone you’ve never seen before.  It’s not the same.”

“Fine, tell me why then.”

She turned towards me with her hands in front of her.  They were pointing at me like arrows and she was attacking my assumption that online dating and meeting someone in the real world for the first time are the same.  She was riding her horse and she was going to die on it in battle.

“So many reasons!”

“Such as?”

“Pictures lie, for starters.  Its a snapshot of a person.  They might be pretty but what if they have a terrible voice.  What if they walk funny.  What if they smell bad?”

I laughed, “so you’re reason why online dating isn’t as good is even more superficial than online dating?  Wow Mel.  Wow.”

“No!”  She laughed and pushed me, “it’s the reality.  The reality of all of your senses telling you that someone is the one.  Or, potentially.  You can watch the way they interact with other people.  You can see the way their smile slowly creeps across their face.  The sound of their laugh, a genuine laugh, when someone says something funny.”

She stopped for a second and dropped her eyes from my face and looked at her shoes.

“The way your body trembles the first time they brush up against you in the slightest way and you catch the scent of them whether its cologne or the soap they use or just their natural smell.”

She paused again and fidgeted.

“You remember those things.  They mean something.  They develop in your head and fester until you become obsessed with them.  You make up fake conversations that you have with them about the first time you noticed them and you pretend they noticed you for the first time then too.  It’s a story you create in your head because the reality is they don’t know you exist and you’re too afraid they won’t care when they find out you do.”

Melody wiped her eyes and sniffled then picked her head up and smiled at me.

“Why would you want to deprive yourself of that by meeting someone online, huh?  Isn’t it grand?  Doesn’t it sound wonderful?”

She tried to laugh it off and turn to the computer.  She clicked through a few profiles.  She found someone who looked nice.  He wasn’t too attractive but he wasn’t someone who spent most of their life in dark hallways either.

“He’ll do I guess.”

“I guess?”  I looked at her with my forehead making all kinds of squiggly lines.

“Yeah I don’t know.  He seems nice.”

“Mel, you don’t want someone who seems nice.  You want someone who seems amazing.  You want-,” I stopped this time.  She picked her head up and looked me in the eyes with tears floating on the brink of escape and I stopped talking just to stare at her.

You don’t always remember the moment you really noticed someone.  You always knew them and who they were and you looked at them hundreds, if not thousands of time, but you never can remember the moment when you first noticed something specific about them.  Like the way they smile or the motion they wave their hand in when they pull their hair behind their ear.

Right then I noticed the way she looked at me with her teary, reddened eyes and I looked back at her and my mind spoke up out of turn and asked if I had ever noticed how beautiful she was when she cried.

I shook my head.  I couldn’t answer.  I couldn’t say out loud that I hadn’t and talk to myself like a psycho, but I did notice.  I saw her looking at me and staring into my eyes and she was so beautiful that I wanted to kiss her.

I didn’t though.  I couldn’t.  I didn’t even know what that was.  Why was I looking at her like that after all of these years of knowing her?  It didn’t make sense.

I shook my head and mumbled something.  She turned away and we decided that online dating would have to wait.  We went out for ice cream instead and sat on a bench until the sun fell and the moon splashed stars across the sky.  We talked and laughed and sat in silence.  It was one of the best days of that summer and I’ll never forget it.  It was the day that I realized I liked her.  It was the day when I truly understood what she meant about online dating.  It was the day I saw how beautiful she was when she cried and when I vowed to never see her cry again.

Worse than missing you

There are plenty of bad things in the world.  Horrible things that dwarf any kind of silly, minuscule problem that most people deal with on a daily basis, but sometimes that doesn’t matter.  Sometimes there is only the problem in front of you and the feelings inside of you that you’re experiencing.  So, right now, deep inside of me, the worst thing in the world I can think of is living the rest of my life and never knowing what it feels like to kiss your lips.

How time flies

I don’t like the way you make me feel.

I don’t like the way I am when you’re around.

I don’t like how I act because of what you say.

I don’t like what I think when you talk.

I don’t like what I’m becoming because of the way you’ve treated me for so long.

I don’t like who I am when I’m with you.

I don’t know what to do

but I do know

it’s been a long time

since I liked anything to do with you.

When you have no thoughts for thinking

Let’s make this about a girl.

What better motivation is there than the kind of girl that takes over your mind and won’t let it go?  It wraps around her wrist and swings along with her walk, taking you for the ride as long as you can hold on.  Everything she does is noteworthy and you don’t have to strain to find magnificence in the way she bats her eyes or hums a tune.

She doesn’t need you to force it, either.  It’s natural.  It’s not something she tries to do or you try to do, it just happens.
It happens when you see her face for the first time in the morning.  It happens when you’re missing her at night.  It happens when her legs are wrapped around your waist and your lips are finding new ways to press against her skin.  There is nothing unnatural about the way you fit with the girl.  You’re a circle spinning on top of a circle.

You can dance.  You can sing.  You can do things you never thought you could before, and even if you can’t do them well you lose the fear of looking like a fool.
Why?
Because she doesn’t care.  All you need is her smile and when she points it at you all of the dumb things you’ve done are just there for laughter and dammit if he doesn’t have the best laugh around.

Let’s make her everything.
It’s dangerous and rarely ends well but while you’re in it, its worth it.
She’s worth it.

 

Maybe I’m Not A Fraud

Do you ever have moments in your writing where you think, “damn.  Maybe I’ve actually got a smidgen of talent,” and the possibility of what you’re doing is made a little brighter on the horizon?

That’s why I keep this blog.  It’s a snapshot of my writing.  As I originally wrote in my About section I used to write silly little things in the margins of newspapers or in magazines and on random napkins and leave them wherever they were.  After a while I ended up missing the chance at keeping those random writings and having them to look back on.  The stories in my head were gone and I’d never read them again.  So here I am now.

I was reading back through some of my past writings of the last couple of weeks.  I came across a few that I remember enjoying when they were done and I gave them another scan.  I smiled.

“These aren’t that bad,” I said to myself, “actually they’re pretty good.”

Then I kept reading.  I read two or three more and then I got to one that I didn’t really remember what it was about and I opened it to read.  It was short, not even a thousand words but the further I read into it the more excited I got.

It wasn’t a great story or amazing surprise but I felt like it was really good writing.  The flow was good.  The descriptions made me feel.  I put myself back into the character, the narrator, and I could feel it.

Of course I’ve instantly gone into anti-ego mode and told myself that it was easy to get back into the character because the character is me.  Someone else might not find it as easy, but I still liked the writing.  I enjoyed the description.  I felt something and that’s what I always try and do with what I write.  I’m not a great plot organizer or twist ending writing type, but I think I have the ability to write things that can make the reader feel what the characters are feeling.

I hope that’s enough because it’s always enough for me.

I’m stuck

I wish the way you used to look at me was a drug I could overdose on, then I could get lost in the only world I want to be a part of.  The world where your stare was the reason my body could move.  The world where your lips was the reason I could breathe.  The world where you were the reason I lived lives and spoke words.

I wish I could over dose into your stare and never come back.  Don’t ever keep your eyes from me, the withdrawal could destroy me.

Hey

I’m in bed with you.

Again. Because we always end up in bed.

It doesn’t matter if we argue or feign indifference, we always find our way out of our clothes and against each other’s skin.

I’m going to drift off to sleep in a few minutes but I wanted to capture this moment. You’re asleep, freshly fucked until my legs burned with quit but I refused. I never tap out first.

I wanted to save this moment in my mind at how beautiful you are and what I would give to be lying next to you, just like this in 30 years thinking these same thoughts. Hips worse for wear. Legs would be burned out long before I’d want them to, but you still there next to me to watch sleep afterwards.

So goodnight, gorgeous. I hope your legs are as sore as mine will be in the morning, and I hope you never leave my bed.