Chapter 5: I was writing from Chad's POV. I like it but I'm not a guy, I couldn't finish. |
So - my story's changed a lot since I first started writing it - I got to the sex scene and had a very hard time writing it from a guy's point of view. . . so that's when I quit working on it and instead shifted to her view. Poor Chad has serious issues and this is his first time dating and having sex in almost 20 years. _____________________________________________________________________________ A date with Vee. Wow—how juvenile. Me, date? I thought that maybe if I stopped thinking of it as a date I’d be better off. I didn’t imagine how on earth this was going to go well…at all. What if I had an episode during dinner? What if she asked too many questions? God, what if I made a total fool out of myself? What if I did something stupid like cough into her food or order something that tasted like dogshit and I couldn’t eat it? I could choke, sneeze, vomit. My stomach was definitely not settled—just a little bit more unease and I’d reverse my damned fortune. Oh, that’s a laugh—what fortune? I didn’t feel fortunate at all. I met an intriguing woman who I wanted to get to know, and she was beautiful on top of that, and I was clinically insane—not officially but I was sure I was pretty close at this point—muddying the waters between right and wrong. What if my worst fears came true and I ended up chasing her down the alley or out into the street? I clenched my teeth, roughed my hands over my thighs to rub off the sweat. All in my head—all in my head. I chanted my newfound mantra as if it would ward off evil and bless my soul with some sort of decency. I wouldn’t do that—I had never done that, not even with my mother who I was with for years before finally being able to leave. I didn’t want to be like this, if there was a price to pay—I would pay it—just to make it go away. I was not all fucked up and after all these years I deserved some sort of—something. Something other than what I’ve been living. I focused on this positive thought—willing it to be true, at least for tonight. The more hours that ticked by on the clock the worse off I was. By the end of the night I had worked myself up so thoroughly that I was wishing I had her phone number so I could call and tell her how sick I was and cancel—go home, and drown myself in the safety of my own home. My energy was slowly leeching out of my body. Out of nowhere, though, it occurred to be that I could just arrive early and park down the street, feed the meter, and sit in my car waiting for her to show. Let the unavoidable episode work itself through. Tada. Well, no, it wasn’t that simple but something along those lines. *** All that worrying and self-awareness and questioning and junk was pointless because she never showed. I sat and waited—and waited. I suddenly wished I had more of a sense to do in this situation. My first supposed date in—well—ever, and I had no clue how to handle whatever this was. What do people call it? Being put-up? No, being stood-off. No, that’s not quite it either—something like that. Anyway, that’s what I was. That’s what this was. Now, I had thought just a few hours earlier, several times, thought that I wanted more than anything to get out of this date. I worked myself up into a worried mess over this whole thing but now that it wasn’t going to happen I was just hurt. I shouldn’t have been but I was. I knew I was wrong. Wrong for her, wrong for anyone. But I had let myself think for the smallest amount of time that I wasn’t wrong, that I could at least try to have something with someone. Apparently that wasn’t in the cards. After a time of sitting at the unfed meter I took a few cleansing breathes to chase away my mix of emotions before I drove home. Back to my crappy house that I use to like, my flat screen TV that might as well have been broken because I couldn’t remember the last time I watched it, and a TV dinner that without the TV aspect had just become frozen crap on a plate—and I worried that I’d order something I couldn’t stomach. Standing there in my doorway, not even wanting to take a step inside because I just couldn’t bear to be there anymore. I was overcome by a rush of self-hate. This is what I had whittled my life too—what a waste. At what point did things go totally shithole for me like this? Why was I like this when, thinking back, I never wanted to be? Why did I give it and just let it rule my life? Here I was—a 30-something grown man hiding in a closet afraid of the boogie man. I couldn’t even remember the last time I was here—I looked around and suddenly my home felt distant and odd like I was looking at a snapshot of my life through a telescope that was dug up out of the sand. This—was not my life. This was someone else’s life and if I could just figure out whose it was I could shove it back down their throat so they could shit it down a toilet for me. Yes, it was time to go—time to do something. Quit and move. But even as that realization crossed my mind I knew how full of shit that was. No—I couldn’t just quit and move, quit and move, quit and move. Relive the endless cycle-over and over. I’d have to stay and fix it. That, now, seemed like the only way to end it. For the first time I felt confident in my decisions—I was veering off my beaten path but the possibility of finally ending it gave me solidity. Now what? *** Hours later, it was sometime after midnight—I knew that much. I still had yet to figure out what I needed to do. It’s one thing to want to change and another thing to actually make it happen. Why she didn’t show ate at me—I kept waffling between hurt and concern. I kept trying to convince myself it didn’t matter—maybe she was sick? She didn’t have my phone number just as I didn’t have hers so who knows—could be anything. Didn’t have to be personal. Maybe she had the same issues I did. I had to leave—get out. Didn’t matter where to but I just couldn’t stay here anymore. My home was no longer welcoming and I couldn’t help but feel like I just didn’t belong, like I had broken into someone else’s home and was squatting in the cabinet under the stairs. Any moment now and the person who lived here would key the lock and walk in. I’d be caught, red handed, and forever branded a criminal. In a rush I scooped my wallet and phone off the stand—and fished my keys out of my pocket. Only, my keys weren’t in my pocket. I padded all of my pockets down—no keys. Down on my hands and knees I was searching for them. Did they fall out of my pocket? Fall off the stand and onto the floor? The longer I looked the more pissed I got. I soon found myself cursing under my breath. My head began to throb, my vision pulsed. After searching outside in the grass, peering through the windows of my car I gave up; resigned, I went to my computer desk to pull out my spare keys. I figured I was just too occupied by my own angry thoughts to recall much of anything, I must have kicked them under something with all the pacing I had done. I bumped the drawer shut and left. I didn’t know where I was going—I was just driving. It was sometime in the middle of the night, the roads were nearly void of people out in the suburbs. I drove aimlessly, mindlessly, not paying any attention to the music on the radio or the rain that pelted down—I felt unhinged, simmering with confusion and frustration. My mind wandered aimlessly, in a void. *** I woke to find my head was throbbing and I was laying on the carpet. My head was throbbing, my vision pulsed and my stomach churned. The last time I felt like this I had the flu—I fell absolutely horrid. I rolled onto my back and my hips screamed in pain at me. I must have been laying on the floor of my room all night. I had to force my eyes open and fight against the stabbing pain that came with the sunlight beaming straight into my eyes, like a squiring, glowing hot poker that was shoved into my retinas. I needed aspirin—anything—to get the pulsating agony to stop. My heart leapt out of my chest and into my throat, nearly choking me. My mouth went dry when I was finally able to focus my eyes and see through the torture that the morning brought me. This was not my room. I knew it wasn’t because I didn’t have smoke-scented scrubby brown carpet with a sculpted 80’s swirling leafy pattern worked into the pile. I didn’t have sunlight shine through my window boiling the fluid out of my eyes. I definitely did not have these things in my room. What the fuck did I do last night? I laid there struggling to focus, to recall my night. I couldn’t—not beyond getting in the car and driving around aimlessly—I think in the rain. Did I break down on the side of the road and get to a hotel or something? Did I run out of gas and have to shack up at some old lady’s hovel? I balked at the thought, I prayed to God that’s not what happened. I looked around—a bed with a blue blanket sort of tussled around and spilling over the sides, a cut-rate desk like what you’d find sold in a place like Wal-Mart or a flea market, and a door propped open that led somewhere. No—this was no hotel room. I jumped up, fought the churning of my stomach. Next to the door were my shoes and a pile of fabric. God, was I fucking naked? I looked down, sure enough. I was wearing nothing but my boxers. I felt the blood drain from my face like my veins were all on a faucet and someone had just turned it on. Holy shit—this cannot be happening. Who does this shit but dumb punk teens in crappy movies? I dressed myself quickly. The faster I dressed the better, I even considered just scooping up my shoes and shit and heading out the door—to hell with staying in here and getting them on. My mind was racing, my fingers were stiff, clammy and shaky as I fumbled over simple things like my zipper and laces. Christ, I can’t believe this is happening to me. My heart was beating so wildly I swear you could hear it in the room—a frantic, crazed rhythm. And then my heart just stopped—like I just up and died—when I heard footsteps out the door, coming down the hall. Coming towards me. I froze like a rabbit in the snow—as if stillness would save me from the stalking leopard, or the T-Rex. Any moment now and some raging juiced burl of a male was going to find me in his guest bedroom and come after me with a hatchet and hack my head off. Or maybe it was the cops—maybe someone already saw me laying here in their room like a psycho pervert rapist and called the cops on me already. Maybe I was moments away from getting my head blown off with a shotgun. I nearly pissed myself out of fear. The steps stopped just outside the door. My heart beat so loudly in the room it was thrumming off the walls like a drum in a cavern. A light knock—a faint rapping on the wall—at the doorframe slowed the racing of my panicked thoughts. “I brought you orange juice and some Tylenol for your headache.” Relief washed over me. Familiarity. My limbs felt weak with relief. She walked into the room. God, my heart stopped again all for another reason—she was in nothing but a t-shirt and little shorts. Well, she was fully dressed but it wasn’t much. No bra and I bet you she wasn’t wearing panties under her shorts, either. Of all the nights to take an absence of leave from situational awareness. “Chad, are you ok?” She walked slowly to an end-stand next to the bed and put down the dishes she was carrying. I was speechless, the pathway from my thought-center to my speech-center and then to my mouth must have fallen away with the fear and panic that had swept over me. She stood there eyeing me warily. “You had an awful headache and so you came here.” She took a step towards me, cautiously, her arms folded across her chest, hunched into herself like the first day we met. “You ok? I was hoping that you’d feel better by morning.” No—I absolutely did not remember. I didn’t have whatever I needed to say anything, though. I was still trying to wrap my head around this whole—thing. No words. “Ok, well, you can go whenever you want.” She motioned to the bedroom door. I swallowed, muscled down the lump in my throat—I was relieved but my body hadn’t followed suit. I was beyond confused. I was completely lost. She left the room, left me standing in the middle of the room, silent like the dead. Moments passed, I stayed frozen in place. Eventually my body loosened, the throbbing in my head eased. I looked around the room—my was so neck stiff it hurt to flex. I scrubbed my hands vigorously on my face to work myself out of my stupor. Because that’s what this was, a dumb sinking stupor like a derelict bum on the street corner. Now what? I didn’t know—I didn’t have a clue now what. Obviously I came here at some point and obviously I stayed here for some reason and—well—what the fuck? Thinking about it only made my head hurt more so I quit that. I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually I loosened my mind up enough to think through the process of taking some Tylenol. I even ate a bite of food, eggs and toast—now cold. I sat on the bed, thinking through my options. What to do? Well, it was simple—I either left with a quick thank you and a goodbye, head home—get ready for work. As if nothing ever happened. Or, I stay and talk and at least find out just what exactly happened. Eventually thoughts like ‘did we have sex’ and ‘was it good’ came into my mind. Damn, for all the times to forget or just not even be here for it—in the back of my mind I wondered how many times this had happened before and I didn’t have the slightest clue. I hope this wasn’t a sign that I was falling completely into my psycho-pit. Because normal-nice-sane guys don’t do this kind of senseless shit. No, we don’t. At some point I started to just feel stupid, maybe it was when I realized I had to use the bathroom. I was in her home, God knows what I said or what I did when I got here. My nervousness and stupidity was fading to pure embarrassment. At some point I was going to have to leave this room and deal with whatever I’ve done. Like a nervous cat I peered around the frame of the door, left, right. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. Looking for the bathroom? Scoping the place out? I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing, here. None at all. More dirty brown sculpted carpet, blue walls and popcorn white ceilings. “I was wondering when you’d come out of there.” My head snapped around to the direction of her voice. She was wearing the same clothes and God if she didn’t look stunning just standing there. She looked radiant with the sunlight shining in through some window in the other room, her long hair just a tussled mess falling over her shoulders. She made me think of cinnamon, ginger and cream—like a—like a—I don’t know. Something wonderful and comforting. Her smile made me smile; a deep, genuine smile that made me forget about my doubts and issue and fucked-upedness for a moment. “Good thing I was here when you showed up, hunh?” She leaned against the wall, eyeing my legs with a sideways smile. I had never felt so exposed with clothes on before—my earlier question about us having sex crept up. “I really don’t know what to say right now.” I stepped out of the room. “I normally don’t do—stuff—like this.” She laughed, a bright, sparkly, cheery laugh. “Well that makes two of us.” My cheeks ached a little when I smiled, “Yeah, I guess it does.” Turning, she walked out of the hallway, I followed—into her kitchen. Morning coffee, cold cereal and a bagel—a 5-star breakfast. We sat across from each other on mismatched barstools at a little melamine breakfast bar as we ate and talked. I watched her lips forming a little moon crescent of foam on the rim of her mug as she sipped her coffee, and the way her throat would tense as she swallowed, and how her tongue flicked out just slightly to lick a drip off of the corner of her upper lip. The longer we sat there the more I thought about it, my mind was quickly going into the gutter again. I didn’t want to be a creep but I guess at this point I was just well beyond that point. I couldn’t help but eye the flesh of her tits that was showing just above her shirt-collar. Which, really, it wasn’t even a collar with it being so low cut, it was more like a loose swath of fabric. A swath of the most delicate and alluring fabric that draped and clung to her skin. After months of fantasies and horrid nightmares and vain efforts to flush her out of my mind here I was sitting just two feet away from her while she wore next to nothing. Just some woven threads. Maybe I was still asleep and actually having some sort of normalish dream fantasy thing instead? Like a normal guy. “You’re really not going to get in any trouble at work for skipping?” When I raised my eyes from her satin flesh to meet hers she was blushing a vivid scarlet with a shy smile. Suddenly, my issues were shoveled aside like a furrow of icy snow. She was there and I was here—and at this point I figured it was just plain obvious I found her attractive. Why hide it? I laughed, “I’m the boss. I can do whatever I want. I guess today I’m playing hooky. I’ll call them sometime and tell them, ah, something.” I shrugged, I was smiling so much my cheeks were starting to hurt. I never before was so content to ditch work and just not care what problems it caused. “That’s, right, I suppose you are.” She got up to rinse her bowl out in the sink, mid wash she turned towards me, “Did you—you know—really mean what you said last night?” Ah yes—me and my complete void of a memory. I didn’t know how to get into this issues. I just knew that whatever I said next probably wouldn’t help anything out. Honesty—I reminded myself—I have to be upfront about things if I’m going to get anywhere. I pushed my bowl of cereal out of the way and leaned onto the counter wishing I could conjure back up some memory to help me fill in the gap. Just willing it to happen didn’t make it happen at all. “You know, about last night—I honestly don’t remember. Anything. I hope that’s not terrible—it probably makes me look like a schmuck. I don’t even remember showing up here, even. I just remember leaving my house in my car.” She frowned at me with a look of what—incredulity? Her brow wrinkled. Well, of course, even I had a hard time imagining that I didn’t remember any of it. “I’m sorry. Believe me, I wish I could—and I bet you I will remember, just right now my mind seems sort of—shot. I’ve never had this happen, before.” Was I making the situation better or worse? The look on her face didn’t fade. “So, what, you remember going to work but that’s it?” “What? No—I remember going to work and all that. I remember you coming into the office and the rest of the day.” Her frown only deepened. I felt like I was digging a hole for myself. “What?” “You don’t remember going out last night at all?” Her voice was getting sharp—no, I definitely was not improving anything. “Yes I remember going out—I remember going out and I waited for you to show but you never did.” I felt my facial expression shift to match hers—confused and frustrated. “Oh—wow.” Her eyes widened with, what? Shock, surprise? “What?” “We ate dinner together last night—and you don’t remember?” “Well, no, I—” I what? I didn’t know. My head started to throb, again. I looked at her—studied her like maybe the solution was tattooed onto her flesh—how could I have actually gone out with her and then forgot? I felt confusion sweep back over me and it sent my heart racing again. I tried to concentrate, think back—searching for something, anything. A single clue that would bring it back to me and straight it all out. But nothing came. I thought back through everything—I tried to remember some sort of this-whole-eating-dinner-with-Vee-thing; leaving work, sitting in my car, wishing I had her phone number. No—that’s all I remembered. Over and over, but nothing came to me, not a hint or a single clue as to when my memory became faulty. Maybe gaps in my memory were a new problem for me? Maybe I had serious issues beyond my nightmarish episodes. I started to wonder if anything I remembered was clear. If she wasn’t here telling me otherwise face to face I wouldn’t believe I had forgotten anything. Up until I started to get a headache while driving I really didn’t imagine how I could have just forgotten—just like that. In the back of my mind the thought that I was being put on or set up for one of those shitty joke TV shows stirred a little. Any moment now and I’d be told I was on Candid Camera. Maybe Ada had set me up to address the issue she thought I had. Anything would have made more sense that the fact that I just forgot. But evidently that’s exactly what happened. I forgot and dreamed the gap-filler—only, it didn’t feel like a dream. I remember quite clearly going home and pacing around my house not wanting to be there, I remembered crawling around on my floor looking for something and being pissed that I couldn’t find it—whatever it was. But who was I to say that—I dreamed I was a serial killer of women for fuck’s sake. I realized that I didn’t have as much of a grasp on reality like I thought. What else did I not have a handle on? “That headache of yours must have really done you in.” She sat at the counter, again. “Maybe you need to go see someone about them.” That’s one conversation I wasn’t going to have—she definitely knew what to say to distract me from my mental raking. No, there’d be no talk of seeing someone—because I knew where that would lead. This, here, was bad enough. “Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that. Well I didn’t think that. Well, you know.” Jesus, why did everything I tried to say sound so stupid and hokey—like I was a bad actor in a shitty movie, one destined for the dollar-bin and not with any sort of cult following? ‘It’s just that my dream last night felt so real.’ Thinking it in my head was one thing, but I was use to thinking so many things in my head that no one would ever want to say out loud. She gave a little amused laugh, “Maybe it was a nightmare—after all, I stood you up.” Her smile helped me put aside my worries again. “Yeah, maybe so.” “So, now I’m curious. Instead of dinner with me what did you do?” Now it was my turn to laugh, “I went home, and I didn’t want to be there because my life is complete crap and it’s a bit depressing…and I wanted to leave my house but I couldn’t find my keys.” My amusement fell away as I figured out what I couldn’t remember of my pseudo-reality; I was on the floor looking for my keys. “Well that does sound horrid. You want to know what I did last night?” “Yes, what did you do last night?” “I met up with a hot guy I met a while ago at a restaurant and we had a nice dinner together. Only, he got a little sick—must have been the undercooked steak—.” She raised an eyebrow. “I swear, he said he liked it bloody. Who the hell likes their food like that? Well. The evening was fine until he got a headache and couldn’t even drive himself home.” Now I was amused again, a hot guy? “So, what did you talk about?” I guess I needed more than just an empty void for a memory—it all left too much up for the imagination and mine was completely shot along with my nerves. This kind of thing wasn’t going over well with someone so attune to stability as me. I was fooling myself with the thought that I was stable at all, wasn’t I? I was just pretending—and in the last few months that pretending was failing me miserably. It was becoming obvious I was seriously fucked up. “Well, we talked about all sorts of things. He’s from Iowa, apparently. And hasn’t been in a relationship since he was a teenager. He’s a Dr Pepper addict and his employees think he needs to take a vacation…” At some point during those few sentences she had come over to my side of the counter but I was too busy reeling in the jarring truth of her statements that I didn’t notice. With those two tidbits of what must have been a deep and intense conversation with her over apparently undercooked food it was all so undeniable. I really did have dinner with her—and I was so far mentally gone that I had no recollection of it. Even now, as she told me about it. Maybe every time I had a fucking headache I went out and became some sort of social party animal or something. The implications were endless. I didn’t even notice how close she was to me until she touched me—one hand on my upper arm. I could feel the heat of her skin through my shirt as if I wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. All the while, in the back of my mind, I was still running a line of thought that expected an episode to surface—it didn’t when I first saw her, it didn’t when she was pouring me a cup of coffee, and even now—it still hadn’t come. She told me this and that and I’d answer with a ‘hmm’ and a ‘mhmm’ but really I was more tuned into her lips as she talked, the way she shaped her mouth when she said the word ‘robust’ and ‘nowhere’ She was asking something like, ‘you really don’t remember, do you?’ but the only response I had for her was to lean forward and press my lips to hers. A taste, what I wanted to do for months. When I opened my eyes to look at her she still had hers closed. She was so still—like a statuette. A statuette with smooth flesh over her cheekbones. Like cinnamon and cream—and something else. The pink of her cheeks made me think of pale baby face roses my Mom grew in her garden when I was nine and how much my mother loved to clip them with their too-short stems and fill wine glasses with them and put them around the house. This is how it was supposed to be. Me; with someone to touch, kiss and be with. I was supposed to be with someone, like this, I knew it. Caring and loving and all that stuff that Rucker was doing and Ada use to do. I’d put aside things I worked hard for just to reclaim this stolen part of my life. Without an episode interrupting my so-far day with Vee I began to feel like it might actually be possible. For the first time in all these years I didn’t feel afraid of myself—I wasn’t haunted with untamed images and wild ravings of an insane man. That kiss—that kiss sparked a whole host of other untamed images and wild thoughts. Mattie Spitzner was the last woman I had ever touched and that, sure, was blinding lust—but with Vee, no, with Vee I felt like I was suddenly turned loose from a cage. A moment later her mouth was back to mine—kissing me with a wild frenzy. I could taste her lips and her tongue, hot and wet, sending jolts through my body like buzzes of electricity. Pulsating and throbbing. I didn’t even know at what point my cock first went hard but it throbbed with the beat of my racing heart like I had just come through a solid, hard workout. I got rid of the swaths of fabric that barely covered her before but now seemed like miles and miles of canvas in my way. I trailed my fingers around her breasts—as if her supple flesh was going to cure me from my disease through intimate contact. My hands were like they had a mind of their own, roaming and groping and feeling. The curve of her waist and round of her ass, the thick of her thighs as I guided one leg of hers around my hip, pulling her closer to me, pressing her onto me like she was a warming blanket and I was a chilled victim pulled from icy waters. When she made a deep moaning half-word half-groan sound into my mouth I nearly lost control of myself. I separated from her only just enough to take my own clothes off. My hands shaky and fumbling over buttons and zipper, everything seemed to be moving in slow-motion, I couldn’t move my fingers or my legs fast enough to get out of my clothes and close the distance that felt like a cavernous expanse of depressing nothing. I kissed her wherever I could reach her while leaning this way and that, not wanting to entirely let contact with her go even if to make it a little easier. She seemed all too willing; slipping her fingers under my collar, tugging my sleeves over my hands, pushing my pants and boxers down off my hips. The thought of hurting her or being too rough never crossed my mind, she seemed as needy and desperate as I was to get there. We kissed each other with a blinding, fiery intensity as we sunk down to the floor, arms and legs tangled together. I ran one hand down between her legs, slicking my fingers in the hot wetness of her cunt. Feeling her so wet, seeing her so needy, only made my cock harder. With her on her back, her calves wrapped around my waist, I guided my cock into her pussy with one long strong stroke. Her eyes flew open, her hands gripped my hair, nearing pain but I didn’t care. All I felt was the tight warmth of her pussy as I drove my cock in and out with an intense rhythm. I watched the flesh of her tits bounce with the force of each thrust as my feet and knees pushed into the carpet pile. I grunted with each stroke and when drops of sweat fell from my face onto her cheek and lips—I licked it off. When I slid one hand under the round firmness of her ass and lifted her off the floor she arched her back just a little and that only seemed to send her over—over the top of pleasure and into orgasm. I knew because she screamed out the words ‘I’m coming’ over and over between deep, guttural groans as she dug her fingernails into my arms. Watching her entirely undone, muscles tense, gripped with orgasm and feeling her grip tight around my cock sent me over with her. I came so hard it was near pain. My ears rung and my vision blurred, I collapsed over her. Half-arched to the side, completely spent, my head was spinning and my chest ached, I was completely drenched with sweat and out of breath. I never felt so good. |