jack_babalon | (no subject)

She was my room mate for awhile. She had a taste for Blake, Waits, Irish whiskey, drunk dancing and surprise car rides to the middle of nowhere. Most nights she would lock herself in her room to paint robust acrylic goddesses until dawn, stripped down to her bra and panties, chain smoking until she was lighting up butts from the ashtray and singing along to some distant radio station that crackled through a veil of static. I would lay there in the next room over on those long nights, listening to her footsteps creak along the hardwood floors as she paced before her latest piece and drifted off to sleep to the sound of her voice muffled through the walls. Some nights, however, she would polish off a bottle of Irish Rose to fall asleep in front of old Law & Order reruns on the couch. She was too heavy to lift back to her room, too mean to wake up from anywhere within striking distance and so I would unfold a blanket over her, put up the remains of her bottle and kill the TV.

It was during one of these nights, while I was draping a quilt over her shoulder, that she suddenly grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down to take a seat on the couch next to her. She looked up at me, mumbled something about the past, smiled sweetly, snuggled up to rest her head in my lap and called me by another man's name before falling into a steady rhythmic snoring.

I just sat there awkwardly not knowing what to do at that moment. I settled on stealing cigarettes from her pack and flipped through coffee table magazines until I passed out. When I woke up it was morning and she was nudging me with the tip of her big toe in the leg, holding a plate of scrambled eggs in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. I rose up and took both from her, muttered something that could only be loosely translated as a cross-between a 'thank you' and a 'good morning' before she smiled at me and told me - "You owe me a pack of cigarettes, you Fucker" - before heading back into the kitchen to fix her own breakfast.

I knew then every feeling I had denied myself for her. Watching her move around the kitchen, singing Edith Pilaf in this ridiculous accent and winking at me playfully when she caught me staring. I also knew to my shame, my lasting regret that I could never be 'the one' for her. That I would be consigned to being her friend instead, doomed to sit on the sidelines as she offered a perfect love to the perfectly wrong man.

It didn't matter. Life didn't work like in the movies. There wasn't some happy go quirky accident waiting to happen that would bring her into my arms at the end of some half hearted adventure. Instead I worked it off, burying myself in as many strange beds as I could - faces with names I didn't bother to pretend to remember would snarl down at me in defiance, cold hands would wrap around my throat, southern scented whispers would drift around me from the darkness to curse my name, the rake of black painted nails scraped across my back, a growl muffled with a bite across a plump shoulder.

At times I would call her name under my breath with the fever of a prayer... muttered between laps of my tongue or in grunts between casual lashes to the back.

And it would be enough to get me by. A "walking around lay" to stave off the zero-pussy jitters. By morning I would be packed away in a cab with a goodbye kiss and lent a twenty dollar bill that they'd never see again. I arrived in a stumble back home... hung-over and well spent... to find her waiting, the perfect woman, who would greet me with a big hug hello and demand back-rubs over a bottle of red wine she managed to sneak into her artists budget.

I would smile then and patiently listen to her tell me about her night, about so and so from back in the day, about the latest heart break and the newest hope of an gallery opening. I trained myself not to look too long at her when she spoke, to look behind her eyes instead of into them, to recognize, instead of admiring, the bounty of her curves and in silence I drowned the sparks I felt when my fingers would work the knots out of her back.

In time she would leave for the open road, loading canvases and last minute packed luggage into the back of a VW van running on the ghost of luck and the promise of better times to come. When we hugged goodbye I lingered, I almost broke down, I almost gave the game away and told her. Sensing something wrong she pushed back from me and looked at me strangely.

She almost saw it in me, the awkward sadness and open mouth gave it away. Instead I winked and handed her the pack of cigarettes I owed her from our only night together, wished her luck, made her promise to stay in touch and shrugged my way back inside.

The van rumbled down the driveway and around the corner.

Life went on.