"Don't it always seem to go that don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"
Joni Mitchell, from "Big Yellow Taxi"
"But that's the third time that you've broken one of our dinner dates in the past two weeks." I tugged on Ben's sleeve playfully, I thought, and teased him. "If you don't start paying more attention to me, I'm going to start thinking that you met some hot, new guy at the gym. You don't want me to get jealous, do you?"
He shrugged me off and replied, "I'd be surprised if you even noticed. Aren't you going out with Brian or one of your friends tonight?"
He grabbed his gym bag--the one that seemed to be surgically attached to his hand at all times--and strode out of the room in what I can only call a huff. I was standing there, dumbfounded, in one of those frozen moments when your mind replays the last thing it heard or saw and tries to figure out how to move forward--like when a tape cassette gets stuck in the player. My tape was unraveling.
When we first met together, everything was topsy-turvy. Everyone around me had an opinion or a warning.
Be careful.
Don't get hurt.
What if...?
There was all the drama in the world when we first got together, enough to make a good soap opera--or a bad one. But the drama settled. Everyone who thought it was their business backed off. Ben and I stayed together and even moved in. The moving in brought its own brand of soapy roughness, but then that settled down, too. We became comfortable faster than I would ever have imagined. Cooking, laundry, showering, and sleeping were all things that we'd once done separately. Now it didn't feel as right unless we did them together. We weren't inseparable. We were just happier together.
Though he is busy and so am I, we didn't want to lose that spark. No matter what my best friend, Brian, might say, it's not really my goal to be a complacent housewife. Not that there's anything wrong about being a housewife, if you're a woman, but even if you are, who wants to be complacent? So we started having 'dates'--just the two of us cooking something special. No phones, no TV, no radio, and no distractions allowed. The doorbell didn't get answered and the cell phones were on silent mode. It's amazing how much you can learn about someone when you spend time completely focused on them. I found my heart pounding and my palms sweating before those dates because they were so intense. And the sex afterwards is mind blowing. There's nothing like climbing into someone's soul for an aphrodisiac.
I miss those dates. I hear the door slam as he walks out. I walk to the kitchen to turn off the stove before the sauce scalds the pot. On my way to the kitchen, I turn on the living room lights so it's not so dark, and turn on the TV so its not so quiet.
I watched him stride away from me. Again. How many times has he done that this month? It's the worst kind of dismissal. It's, "Fuck you. You're not worth talking to. Fuck you. You're not even worth the time to say good-bye."
He parted the crowd like a steamroller and then he was gone. I turned back to the bar. They were staring at me, wondering what was going on--Ted, Emmett, and Brian. I wanted to talk to someone about it, but just this once, I didn't feel like whining. I didn't feel like seeing the pitying "I told you so" looks. Not that Brian does pity. He'd just raise one eyebrow, take a sip of his drink, and say something sarcastic. Sometimes that's exactly what I need. Sometimes he says, "Fuck you right back," when I can't say it myself.
Tonight is different, though I don't know why exactly. Maybe it's because I thought Ben and I were different. I thought we'd gotten past all the bullshit--that we could talk. I never had that with anyone but Brian. I thought I had it with David, but I realize now that with David, there was always a secret fear of saying the wrong thing, of looking stupid. Sometimes the fear was big and I let it out. David would try to make me feel better by telling me not to feel that way--why I was wrong to feel that way. That almost never helped. Most of the time, I kept it to myself and tried to work past it on my own. That almost never worked.
With Ben, I could talk about me--the real me--without any of those fears. It's partly because of who he is: thoughtful, generous, loving. But the bigger part is who I've become: stronger, more self-assured. So I can talk, but maybe he hasn't been listening.
Maybe I haven't been listening to him either. I thought I was, but I've only been listening to what he says. I've been ignoring all the things he hasn't said. I don't know how I could have missed it because his silence has been so loud--as deafening as a hundred jet engines starting at once. I looked at his face before he walked away and I saw a wild-eyed stranger. The Ben I knew and loved had been replaced by somoeone whose ups and downs made me dizzy and sick.
Un-Zen. It's not a real word, I don't think. But it describes Ben almost perfectly these past few weeks. Even more perfect is anti-Zen. The stranger with his face touched me like Ben always does, said passionate words that Ben might say, and, in a snap, became someone who honestly scared the shit out of me.
And then he walked away, silently saying, "Fuck you. I'm leaving."
I wake up to find him touching me again. He had come home earlier and hopped in the shower immediately. He left me sitting on the couch, watching some stupid sitcom about a bunch of stupid people. He left me. After he got out of the shower, he came back to the couch and tried to throw himself all over me, but I wasn't in the mood.
Jesus, I'm an idiot! He's so sexy it hurts my stomach to look at him sometimes. All that brawn, the sheer solidness of him, the utter maleness--all of it usually does things to my insides that should be illegal. And he's here, next to me, dressed only in a damp towel and a semi-smile. I should be in the mood, but I'm not.
It's that smile that does it. It's not real. It's not happy. It's like his mind is telling him which muscles to move to make a smile--as if he'd never done it before and it was just practice. It doesn't reach his eyes and that scares me because he's hiding from me. I was kidding about the hot, new man, but what if it's true? I hate all this fucking insecurity. It's gotten so old, but I can't help it when he looks right through me like I'm becoming invisible--as if there's somewhere else he'd rather be.
And now I wake up and he's touching me. I wonder, for a moment, if he's dreaming about someone else. His hands are running over me, burning my skin with their heat. His mouth and lips and tongue are everywhere: on my mouth, sucking on my neck, licking my chest, blowing hot breath across my stomach, swallowing my cock, mouthing my balls, penetrating my hole. I should be happy, right? But I can't help but wonder: if I slipped out of the bed, would he even notice? Because it's all about him--like he's fucking himself and not me. His eyes are closed so he doesn't see me. He ignores me when I speak as if my presence annoys him. The lights are off. No one is home except Ben and...Ben.
Mindless passion sounds nice. Mindless passion IS nice, but I'm spoiled, now. I want it all--the way he looks at me with those intense blue eyes, the way he says my name like there's only me, the way he's always touching me so that we're always connected.
I want love. I want connection. I want caring. I want communication. I want everything we used to have.
I miss all that and I wonder where it went.
I watch him do it. I watch him pull out a syringe and stick it in his hip. I watch him and all the blinders fall off.
How could I not have seen it coming from a mile away? He practically posted it on a highway billboard.
I wade through all my options.
Storm in, snatch the fucking syringe out of his hand, and slap the shit out of him.
Stomp out, get drunk, and whine to my friends until they tell me to shut the hell up and do something.
Cry my eyes out like a little baby because I'm so terrified for him that I can't think straight.
Forget I saw it. Maybe it was a trick of the eye. Maybe it was a new medicine that his doctor had added to his HIV cocktail.
Slink in and let him lie to me about it--let him tell me that I didn't understand or that I misunderstood.
In the end, The sixth option chooses me: Stand there in another frozen moment and try to put my head together. Reserve all other options for a future date.