Intimacy. Love, Lust (A Journey to Feeling)

A Story by BChristopher

On the journey to discovering love, one must encounter obstacles, lust, and self. This is my story.

Intimacy.

Love,

Lust

(A Journey to Feeling)

The Filmmaker…

Blatantly unapologetic, he wore his lust for me as a pendant, enticing and hypnotic. It was dominate in its authority, curbing our hellos into briefness while sloth colored our goodbyes. With his touch, I naturally surrendered weak limbed and exhale heavied. Voyeuristic were the thresholds as the linoleum acquired our clothing. Bodies tangled, I blindly trusted his intuitive direction as we navigated the rooms. I had no need for eyes. I had his. I wish I could hide behind a slow courtship, manipulating my judgment, but I loved him instantaneously. Offering generously my possessions of wrapped thighs and buried fingertips. Every arch of back confessed, “I love you”, and I took refuge in my honesty however unspoken it was.

When words joined us under sheets, he wooed me unknowingly. Casual in his monologued Portuguese text and Spanish poetry delivered from memory. He aroused my gullible thirst for romance. So I would lay, head on chest, and listen as foreign worlds were painted, pretending just for me. With the vibrations of his voice my mind joined him at his canvas. I sprinkled myself through his apartment. Decorating the walls with photographs of our travels, and fragranced the kitchen with our meals. I organized our union with things that nestled together in closets and drawers. I even made room for our children. In his arms, under the safety of my night imagination, we lived a whole life. However, just as the moon was returning the sky to the sun, I too returned what was only mine momentarily. All the “ours” were once again “his”.

Daylight, capturing so many of my lover’s goodbyes, feels far too proud of its collection…

Chapter 1

It took practice, but I mastered the walk of shame. Perfected the creaky floor tiptoe to front doors, and the night- vision underwear searches. I buckled, laced, combed, and zipped in stairways and elevators between floors with precision only gained from experience. Sometimes the outside met me with such a lateness that I walked the streets alone. Unstoned by pedestrian eyes that always seemed to know, in vivid detail, my previous whereabouts. Eventually the brownstones even gawked with judgment, so I avoided their window eyes and front stoop mouths as well. The key was to keep my gaze with pepped direction. The ease of the pep depended significantly on the encounter prior, but it never actually happened naturally. I pretended not to be aware of this. Regardless of the weather I always wrapped into myself with crossed arms or pocketed hands, reclaiming my own touch to make sure that the flesh was still mine, then resenting the confirmation.

My exits, with their how’s conditioned into me, only had the why’s that I could not fathom. The perpetual confusion in gifting myself so openly, only to be received with dim lit rooms and mouth-less kisses. A reception that with mocking indifference to my presence became his masturbation.

I am not sure if I have ever enjoyed sex. I have often felt the act completely invasive, dirty, and requiring too much preparation. My promiscuity had little to do with physical pleasure. I lusted for passion, connection, and subconsciously I just needed to feel desired. It was my belief that sex, if good, promised all of those things. So with every new set of sheets I befriended, I worked diligently to prove it as truth. My flaw lied in my inability to dissociate flesh from self, so with every new partner I took on, they received a piece of my MEness. Searching for reciprocity so often proved senseless, yet stubborn by nature, I persevered.

The notion of why still baffling, I fabricated countless self-mutilating conclusions. The voices that asked me why the shadowed men never loved me enough for daylight were the same voices that told me to blame myself. This of course was conceal by my ever-flirtatious demeanor and willingness to please my lovers. High-fiving myself every time I convinced one of them that I wasn’t too damaged to take home. The truth is, I knew that the men would not, could not love me. Not the way I had always hoped. Maybe I was more transparent than I thought, more damage than I could hide. My trick to the “walk of shame” was simply to keep walking, and it became a chorographic circle. If only I had mastered the shame instead.