Authors: Nate Allen
Cut a bit from the same cloth it would seem, she had made certain to arrive early herself, and she watched from a safe distance with the interest of a voyeur who hopes to catch a glimpse of the unguarded man, leaving herself the option to abort if need be, after all, it was still in the conceptual phase, but she liked what she saw. She was reminded of a phrase her grandmother would use when her grandfather would strut around taking delight in surveying the 100+ acres of farmland they owned, the old woman chiding him lovingly about “priding around like a Bantam rooster,” and in similarly appealing fashion, Jake strode up like the “cock of the walk” unaware of his audience, but much like she had been that first night, she was attracted to him, and the
relevant
humidity began rising between her stonewashed thighs.
It had been an unusually long time for a man with a short attention span, between point A: (Leon’s) and now point B: (A small neighborhood park in west Raleigh). He had revisited the communications between them, and the absence of detail and brevity left him halfway expecting this woman to try and sell him some of her daughter’s fundraiser cookies, or a year supply of toilet tissue. It seemed like he had met her a month ago, but only eleven days had passed and he needed to be reminded of why he was even there, but then he saw her, and all hell quietly broke loose within the man.
Only in North Carolina can it be 30° one day in November, and 70° the next. She sauntered up wearing a faded pair of vintage jeans, with the appropriate well-earned fray, an
Abercrombie & Fitch
t-shirt and one of her sons’ baseball cap with a short ponytail pulled through the back, her brunette hair now shimmering with a hint of auburn, and no makeup, she didn’t need it …God help him. He would have probably agreed to murder for hire right then and there, figuratively of course, or at least offered up the contents of his wallet for the opportunity to unwrap her. He had the look on his face of a man about to go over the waterfall and knows there’s nothing he can do to avoid it. Life had slowed such that seconds seemed like minutes. His sudden self-awareness of weakness where she was concerned, seemingly announced in his smiling eyes and bashful grin. If this doesn’t work out I can always pursue stalking, he joked to himself.
Ivey who? No disrespect intended, the young woman would have her well-deserved and rightfully distinguished place in that heart-shaped box of amorous events, but right now the name conjured up nothing more than the image of
Hedera Helix
, which was not a Cuban singer, but the scientific name for common English ivy as it was known at the plant nurseries he did business with …something else he had planted with great success. The experience had been unbelievable,
truly
unbelievable, like a beautiful
mirage
unbelievable, but he was now staring at a potential
oasis
, which like one of those tricky damn SAT questions:
Reason is to Excuse as; A) Oasis is to Mirage…
i.e., one is real, the other is not, and he could only think about the possibility of the refreshment it might offer him if he played this right.
He rose to greet her, a simple handshake seemed formal and impolite but would have to suffice for now he decided in the half-second before things got awkward, after all they were in a public place, and at best like prison pen pals gathering to discuss …her escape, a conjugal visit or what? She would resolve the dilemma, extending her hand first, with a “
Hey you, nice to see you again. I bet you forgot what I looked like, sorry to show up looking such a mess.
” A damn hot mess he told himself, and like the night at the club, he felt himself slowly turning into Billy Bob Thornton in
Sling Blade
, as if he might start speaking in monosyllabic utterances about “
biscuits and mustard,
” and “
liking some French fried potaters
,” when she unfairly flashed that wicked grin, touched him on the hand, and fucked his head up momentarily.
Bypassing any small talk because her schedule didn’t allow for it, she sat down across from him, her legs crossed, and seamlessly began to lay out her situation succinctly like a CEO who had a plane to catch. What was absent from her marriage, what wasn’t, what she ideally wanted from him, what was acceptable/unacceptable, what he could expect in return, the deal and the deal-breakers so to speak. In short it sounded a lot like a sexual 401k plan to her marriage, to supplement the physical aspects. “
Are we good, what do ya think?”
“
Sound like something you’d be interested in?
”
Like any well-deserving applicant, he had some questions he had prepared for the “interview” regarding the nature of her marriage, i.e., was it “open,” “polyamorous”…did they dress up like the butler and French maid and chase each other around the house, but she had essentially covered all of that, and all he could think to ask was “
Is your husband the jealous type? Does he own a gun?
” It was a genuine concern he thought considering his one past experience. “
No …
and
no,
” she laughed. “
In fact I’m starting to believe he wouldn’t notice you if you were sitting at the dinner table with us.
”
Two barely acquainted strangers meeting like a cop and a confidential informant in the middle of the day to conspire to do naughty things with each other at the first available opportunity. This is great he thought, and incredibly bizarre, as in “too good to be true” bizarre …I must be getting punk’d …where’s Ashton and the cameras? And then she pulled up the calendar on her smart-phone, and discussed availabilities with him. The weekend after Thanksgiving was open for her, the boys would be with Frank, Glen would be leaving for a conference at UVa, and Natalie at her parents. It was still two and a half weeks away and he didn’t readily know what his schedule was like, he never had to plan that far ahead, but he would make sure it was open.
They dispensed with a small amount of chitchat, commented on the beautiful day, discussed how they would communicate in the interim regarding the details of the event, the possibility of changes as they always existed with her potential plans, and exchanged phone numbers. She wanted the option to speak when the opportunity arose. Did he have a girlfriend, was it okay for her to call, if so, when? “
No girlfriend, yes you can call, and anytime is fine, leave a message if I don’t pick up.
” was the response. It was okay for him to call as well, and she hoped he would, but she preferred a private or blocked number,
daytime
only during the week. And at this point, no texts since her kids often used her phone, beyond that email was still fine. He winked and nodded showing his understanding. He didn’t need to take notes.
She gathered herself up, removed the hat, and stuffed it in her big Mommy purse she had brought which was big enough to hold all the things a mommy might need, as opposed to a “hoochie” purse the hoochies at the nightclubs carry, big enough for only the cash, ID’s, cigarettes, and condoms, etc., they might require. She undid the ponytail and shook out her hair like Eva Longoria in one of those “Because I’m Worth It” shampoo commercials, told him to walk her to her Suburban, and the gentleman that he was followed suit. He opened the door for her, taking note of all the kids’ stuff inside, and smiling at the all too familiar clutter.
He wanted to get inside and go with her. She gave him a hug like an old friend might, a hug that was publicly appropriate, and yet he still had to discreetly adjust his emerging member. They looked at each other with the intensity and curiosity that people must who are party to a mutually agreeable arranged marriage, or perhaps more accurately, like two strangers on the set of an amateur porn video awaiting their call to duty, “lights, camera,
FORNICATION
!!
” Neither knowing quite what to expect, but the sexual tension increasingly apparent to them both. He thought himself to be fully capable of assisting her with her “needs,” and she sensed it. Unless something unexpected came up, in little more than two weeks time they’d be “rubbing bellies” together.
.
He was a cute boy who had been disfigured by the mean-spirited intentions of an asshole older neighbor at the age of six, eating a fastball at close range, hit with the “ugly stick” so to speak, and he would endure five years of buckteeth before his parents discovered orthodontics, and another five years of braces. Time doesn’t really heal all wounds, its more like a car rolling down the highway past a sign, as we glance back it simply occupies less and less of the landscape with distance, the indentations the wounds have made however are permanent, and sometimes even late in life, we still feel the pain, each of us merely children grown older.
At an age when children are perhaps their meanest, he was stuck in what seemed like a decade long game of tag, and was “it” the entire time. It is a time in our development when we are developing friendships and honing social skills, and he was emotionally relegated to standing with his nose in the corner, while others were recognizing aptitudes and abilities and defining their image of self, his image in the school picture was not the image of the cute boy it had been, and the internal disagreement between the innately confident kid, and the unattractive one in the mirror damaged him beyond his appearance and would have long lasting effects in terms of self-confidence years after these events were in the rearview mirror, out of the conscious and even subconscious mind, but weaved into the fiber of his being, the insecurities of the boy residing somewhere deep inside the man. It would make him more durable and empathetic though, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger …or cripples you.
Those are the years that shape us. The clay of our DNA material sculpted into the raw form of the individuals we will be the rest of our lives, decide the paths available to us, reveal our natural predispositions, and affect how we will live our lives, the roads we will take, and how we feel about ourselves along the way. It wasn’t fair, life isn’t. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, but from sad beginnings come happy endings, or so the fortune cookie said, and that was his mantra. There is no doubt truth to the saying “Children learn what they live,” and he had learned that while you can domesticate an animal, an element of the wild in the animal still remains, and in his teenage years, as the orthodontist’s braces came off, so did the psychological restraints, and as biology continued its work he would leave the cage and go on a rampage, making up for lost time and refusing to be denied what he thought to be his rightful happiness, even if it required some occasional artificial assistance.
He met a girl, fell in love, and it had all the beauty and tenderness that a first love should, and as the song goes, “
The first cut is the deepest
.” But he wound up being unfaithful to her, not because she wasn’t all the things he wanted her to be, but because at that point in his life, all the pent up need for acceptance was more than he could strangle. His infidelity had unwittingly invited a stranger into the relationship, guilt. And guilt is a rude houseguest, while the young woman never expressed any knowledge of it, the secret created an invisible third party to the intimacy of their relationship that tortured him, and like an iceberg breaking apart from the glacier, he watched as she floated away, a young man’s pride and the damn guilt prohibiting him from trying to stop her. But there’s a reason they’re called first loves, and that’s because we usually have subsequent ones and this one left the watermark on his heart by which he would come to measure every other relationship he had. And while he would be aloof, he would never be unfaithful to a lover again.
He found himself to be the hedonistic pleasure-seeking monkey continually pushing the button for whatever it offered in that caveman mentality of “Pain BAD, Pleasure GOOOD,” but he had grown up in a generation that was surrounded and defined by experimentation. And in that regard he was the rule and not the exception, at an early age he began to use drugs and alcohol. For a time they appeared to be the bridge between who he was and who he wanted to be, disabling his inhibitions, but he had not grown up in an environment of moderation, but one of extremes and like many such things, they were prone to abuse, and eventually, the things that gave him some strength and courage, became his kryptonite, not a remedy, but another source of woe, and trouble would find him frequently as a teenager and young man. He developed a reputation, and ironically was all at once the boy your mom warned you about, and yet the one she hoped you’d meet.
Labels were applied as is typical, but sometimes labeling individuals and behavior is inappropriate and ill-advised, as they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it seemed the associations and negative connotations were ascribed to him by others so they could make sense of it in a safe, convenient way, when the truth was he was just a young man who came to the realization he had made some bad decisions as a kid, and decided it was not in his best interest to do so anymore. It worked for him. What more can you ask for? His relationship with his girlfriend was an unfortunate casualty of the period, and he left for Raleigh because he needed a place where people didn’t have preconceived notions about him, and he could discover, if not reinvent himself.
At about the same time his ego and confidence would be slowly catching up to the strength and physical aspects of the man, the inside not yet matching the now handsome exterior, but he had begun to have some success romantically, and by the time he moved to Raleigh at the age of twenty-three, he didn’t need to be too damn confident, women were beginning to present their intentions, and like a sisterhood of the falling pants, or pussy-mafia, they would make him offers “he could not refuse,” and he didn’t, like a malnourished dog prone to gorging when the opportunity presented itself and making up for lost time. In the scheme of things his game so to speak was that he was not a player, intelligence, a clever sense of humor, gentleness, and chameleon-like ability to adapt to the situation, his informal teammates. The shy self-conscious kid grew into the
ultimate boy-next-door experience
and an unassuming panty-dropping rainmaker, but as was to be expected the journey would be characterized by potholes, self-inflicted wounds, peaks and valleys, floods and droughts and long stretches of nothing in between, except his ever present passenger and companion …the
static
.