Decadence (37 page)

The stubborn romantic
who lived inside of me encouraged me to contact Rigoberto. That part of me told me that I should have been with Rigoberto from the start. That part of me conjectured how different my life would have been. It showed me that if I had been with him since college, there would have been less pain. No relationship came without pain. None without trials and none without tribulations. I imagined how different I would have been if I had lived in the Netherlands with him. That could have been a wonderful season. Living there, loving, writing, maybe having a child. But the realist inside of me told me to refrain from playing once upon a time with my life. It was too late to travel down that road. I would look into Rigoberto's eyes and see the same thing; over and over I would see the same thing. I would remember his kindness. His energy. I might even remember his love letters. Especially the latest one, the last one. In an age when everyone communicated by Facebook and texting, he had taken the time to pen me a letter. A letter that had no errors. I would adore him for that. But more importantly, unfortunately I'd remember that horrible day. I'd remember being broken down. I would remember that day that I walked in on Chris and Siobhán. I would remember being kicked out of the dorms. Rigoberto had hugged me as I cried. He had found me inside of my dorm room crying, angry, confused, and in pain. He had taken me away from my dorm room, away from the embarrassment, away from the humiliation. Whenever I saw him I would remember that which I needed to forget. I would always live in the past.

Rigoberto sent me a request on Facebook. He asked for entry into my world. He asked for permission to reenter my life.

There were two choices: CONFIRM
or DELETE
REQUEST. Still I moved the mouse over CONFIRM. But I knew that he knew about Chris and Siobhán before I had. He might have known about M&M. He and Chris were best friends.
Tigres
. Men held the secrets of men as women held the secrets of women. With the mouse, I moved the arrow across CONFIRM
and stopped over DELETE.

Rigoberto had been a beautiful dream inside of a horrible nightmare. I would not be able to be around him and not feel that nightmare again and again.

I engaged the DELETE
button.

Rigoberto. My knight in shining armor. Chris. The king who destroyed my once-perfect kingdom. Best friends. I imagined that one day in the future their paths would cross again. I think that it was in their destiny to run into each other again. The world was not that large. They had much in common. They both liked sports. They were both intelligent. Maybe they would end up at some function.

That was too simple. Both loved sports, but had moved beyond that era in their lives.

They were worldly men, each in their own way. They would be in Europe. Off the beaten path. In Turkey. On the Turkish Aegean coast. I˙zmir province. In Dikili. At a remote location. Chris would be vacationing at the Dikili Sunset Hotel, a two-hour ride from the nearest airport. A long way from civilization as he knew it. He would have spent the day swimming at eight different beaches. If Siobhán were with him, she would have been swimming with the fish or engaging in a decadent mud bath. Or they would have been out on sea bikes. But I imagined that she wouldn't be there. It would be off-season.

Rigoberto would be out seeing the world, driving from Bulgaria to Bodrum, a port city in Mug˘la province, in the southwestern Aegean region of Turkey, a city of only a few thousand people. The Asian side of Turkey would be breathtaking. He would have been on the road for eleven hours and would see the four-story hotel, a hotel that had thirty rooms on three floors, rooms with balconies that overlooked the beach and allowed a view of the marvelous sunset behind the neighboring Greek island of Lesbos. Being a weary traveler, a romantic man, he would decide to stop and get a room with a sea view. And he would plan to see a crater lake in Merdivenli and the ancient caverns in both the Demirtas and Delitas villages, all that and maybe the Merkez Mosque, a wooden structure that was built without using a single nail. He would travel as a man did when he had not found a love that would be returned. He would have had lovers along the way, but none would have touched his heart in a way that made him want to promise always and forever. Carrying a backpack he would enter the lobby and ask if any rooms were available.

It was off-season. There were plenty of rooms. The hotel would be practically empty. Chris would enter the hotel lobby, a place that he was planning to stay a fortnight. Rigoberto would be there, checking in. Maybe he was being handed his room key, or maybe he was asking the concierge for information about taking an excursion to Ataneus or Garip Island, possibly chatting about European Turkey, Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles. He would hear someone enter the nearly vacant hotel and turn and look and stop his conversation midsentence, mid-smile. Rigoberto would see Chris the moment that Chris saw Rigoberto. The man from Belize would see the man from the Dominican Republic. They would see each other at the same time.

And the world would stop rotating on its axis.

In one version I imagined them as I had seen them now, at this age.

In another version, I imagined them as older men, maybe middle-aged, both with hints of gray at their temples, maybe the same signs of maturity in their beards. Older men who had once been younger men, and as younger men, the best of friends. They were men who were supposed to be the best man at each other's wedding. Men who had known that one would be a pallbearer at the other's funeral.

Maybe Siobhán would be there. Maybe Chris's wife would be there. She would exit the elevator. She would be fat and wobble across the room looking like Miss Piggy on steroids.

Petty, I know.

But I was still a woman.

I was still of flesh and blood and emotions.

Maybe Rigoberto wouldn't be alone either. He would be with a beautiful woman. Brown skinned. She would have brown skin, the hue of an island girl. She would resemble me, would look the same as I had looked when I was in college.

No, this was about the men.

Their friendship.

No women.

Just the two men.

Just the
tigres
. Staring at each other. Remembering.

They would walk toward each other.

I abandoned the dream right there. I abated fiction and returned to reality. After I denied Rigoberto a chance at a reunion, I deleted Chris. After Chris was deleted, I deleted M&M. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Five stages of grief had come and now they could be on their way to the next person. I had done my time. I had completed the cycle. The chains were gone. I stretched, yawned, and now I could move on with my life. The good. The bad. The memories. I left those days sealed in that tattered U-Haul box. I left that group behind, inside of its own compartment. With a black Sharpie I wrote large and bold letters across the top. PANDORA
'
S
BOX. That part of my learning, that era of the education of Nia Simone Bijou, was finished.

With Bret,
I was not a woman, but a girl. I was not Louboutins and extravagant makeup; I was running shoes, lip gloss, and ponytail. He took me on another mud run, but the next one was more of a challenge. It was a triathlon that included hurdles, pole-vaulting, and an almost one-mile sprint. I went from being on red carpets around the world to being in a muddied world that existed on the other side of the barbed wire, running, crawling through filth, climbing over rocks, a 3.1 mile obstacle course. I finished first in my division. I hadn't been first at anything in a long time. It felt good. We went to the range and I learned how to use a firearm. When he had time we drove past Helen and hiked the mountain in Georgia. He was the father of two children, a responsible man, so his time was limited. I respected that. I respected him in a way that I would never respect Chris. Projects were due. I spent days writing, spent weeks working on multiple projects, spent weeks stressed, but when I was in Bret's company it all went away. Short lunches. Early movies. With him, I remained a girl who loved to have fun. I had been frustrated with him, was ready to dismiss him, but I realized that he allowed me to be me, and did it without asking questions. Sometimes he held my hand. Most of the time he didn't. It was fine. He didn't judge me. He wasn't jealous. He wasn't possessive. He appealed to me. I had been busy. I had traveled the world and returned and he still appealed to me. He had always appealed to a very important part of me. Part of me needed Decadence, but part of me needed Bret, and it needed to be nourished as well.

Time had marched on. My mother had come to Atlanta and gone. She had spent a week helping me unpack. She hated me for that. My stepfather had come and stayed with me for a weekend, a weekend of speaking only French. I promised him that after the summer I would come to Paris and stay awhile. It had been too long since I had visited.

I had friends and acquaintances all over the world now.

It was almost summer, a transitional point of time, during the hours that existed between astrological signs, a division between houses, days before the season of my sign. Maybe I was on the cusp of love. Summer always made me feel the heat of love, always made my heat expand, and rise.

We were eight miles into a twenty-two-mile run on the Silver Comet Trail, the austral sun peeking through the trees that cast much-needed shade on the trail during the early morning hours. The pollen count wasn't as high as it had been the week before, but we endured both the pollen and the humidity.

Bret ran with no shirt on, running shorts, sweat draining over his heroic frame. I wore running shorts and a sports bra. I had added highlights to my hair, had given myself a new look for a new season. And my workout gear was cardinal and gold, the colors of USC, my grad school, and maybe where I would eventually obtain my PhD.

My blue and white days, my Pirate season was behind me.

I would always be a Pirate in my heart, but now I was a Trojan.

Bret said, “I'm going back into the military.”

“Serious?”

“It's my best option at this point.”

“When?”

“In about six months. If I re-up for Afghanistan, Iraq, or Kuwait, I can get a bonus of ninety thousand dollars. I won't have to pay as much in taxes. I can do more for my kids. I have the custody issue settled, for now. But things like that never end. It exhausted the money I had. Not a lot of good work for a former soldier and Uncle Sam is waiting with open arms. So, I'll leave in about six months.”

“You'll be gone for a year. I'm going to be sad.”

“Didn't think that you would care one way or the other.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Just did. Nothing seems to faze you.”

“Well, it matters. Everything matters to me, but I can't afford to let it show.”

“It matters to me too. Hard for me to say that, but it matters to me.”

“Will I get to spend time with you before you leave?”

“Of course. I'd like to see you every day, but I know that's not possible.”

“You'd slit your wrists if you saw me every day.”

“Probably.”

We laughed.

He said, “To be honest, I enjoy your company. You send me places I have no right being.”

“Wow. For real?”

“You make me feel things, make me think about things.”

“All I ever do is run with you.”

“You're powerful. I think that you know what I'm trying to say. Not good at this sort of thing.”

“Well, you tempt me too. You make me feel things too. Thought about you while I was gone.”

“When you were gone to L
A and Europe and Trinidad, to be honest, I was pretty lonely for you. When you texted me that you were going to Hawaii for a week with some friends, then from there you went to Sweden for research, wanted to call you all the time. I've never been like that with any woman. It was really hard being around you for a while, to be honest. I guess my feelings were getting too strong.”

“If that's the case, if you felt something, why haven't you tried to be intimate with me?”

“Wanted to. Believe me. I wanted to.”

“What was wrong in Tampa? Was my body language wrong? Did my breath stink?”

“I knew that night changed everything between us. You distanced yourself after that.”

“I did. I hated you for that. You know I wanted you. You rejected me.”

“I didn't reject you. I thought that you were happy with us being a one-off in that department.”

“I came to your room. Naked. I was in bed with you. Naked. I let my hair down. Do you know what it means when a woman lets her hair down? Naked. In your bed. Hair down. How do you spell rejection?”

“I opened the door between our rooms. I saw you had opened yours. You looked so sexy when you were sleeping. Swear to God, I wanted to climb on top of you and get inside of you.”

“What was the problem?”

“You have a boyfriend. If you're single and doing your thing, you see whoever you want to see and do whatever you do, and that's fine. Nobody can start a quarrel or have the right to engage in a personal war. But when a woman has a boyfriend, I'm not really comfortable crossing that line. That could be dark territory. That's a two-man war that usually ends with a man being put in the ground. I enjoy your company, but if there was ever a time that your boyfriend and I crossed paths, I would want to be able to look him in the eye and tell him man-to-man that I am attracted to you, but we are platonic. I want to be able to shake his hand and buy him a beer, if that's what needs to happen.”

“You're honorable.”

“To a certain degree. I'll take it outside, but only when I need to take it outside. I'll go man-to-man and toe-to-toe. But I have kids at home. I have to reconsider how I do things. I'm not eighteen, so I can't behave as if I am still eighteen. I have to grow up and look down the road before I do things.”

“Where were you when I was in college?”

“Probably wishing that I was still in college.”

“Look, Bret, I don't have a boyfriend.”

“Prada? You've been seeing him, right? He flies in from London to see you, right?”

“Haven't seen him in a very long time. If he was my boyfriend, it lasted about three hours.”

“While you were gone, I assumed that you were flying all over the world with him.”

“Long gone. We ended that a while ago. We don't communicate at all.”

We ran some more, our pace almost eight-minute miles, slow for us. We ran by Rollerbladers, bikers, and joggers. The world was green now. Everything was blooming, growing, coming back to life.

Bret asked, “What do you want to do for your birthday?”

“You remember my birthday?”

“I remember everything about you, pretty much.”

“Wait. To be sure, was that an offer to take me out on a date?”

“It was. I would love to take you out. I'll pick you up at your front door, if you want. Just tell me ahead of time what you'd like to do.”

“Anything I want?”

“Anything within my budget.”

I told Bret, “I want to have sex over twenty-one times.”

“More than twenty-one times?”

“Over a weekend. That's been on my mind for years. That fantasy is stuck in my head.”

“With whom?”

“With you. Just us two. Just you and me. Unless you want to find a third party. But I would prefer for it to just be me and you. Just us.”

He paused before he asked me, “Which weekend?”

“My birthday weekend. Or any weekend you're available and it works for me.”

“Which hotel?”

“If it's just you and me, my place. We can be at my place. If we have a unicorn, then the W.”

“You're serious?”

“Very. As a heart attack.”

“Sure. It would almost be a year to the day that we met.”

“Pretty much. I guess that we could celebrate our special friendship as well.”

“Let me arrange a babysitter.”

I smiled. “You should come by my townhome after we run. You've never seen my place.”

“I'll need to go home and shower.”

“Do I need to be direct with you? Is that what it is? We can't be shy and coy and get anywhere.”

“I'm a soldier. We don't do indirect. We don't do shy. We don't do vague.”

“I want you in my bed, soldier. I want to make you come, then send you off to have a good day.”

“I still need to shower.”

“I have water. I have soap. I have towels.”

“Can't stay long. I'll have to get my kids soon. They're in Macon with their mother.”

“I'll be quick. I just want to suck you.”

He slowed his pace and wiped sweat from his brow. “We could always turn around now.”

We turned around. Today would be the day that I broke the six-minute mile.

I had motivation. Today I craved normal things. I missed normal.

•   •   •

Altoids.
Tea. Honey.

After I had tied his hands, after I had tied his ankles, after I had blindfolded my soldier, I whispered, “Lay back, Bret. Relax. Keep your eyes closed. Enjoy. Enjoy me as I enjoy you.”

With Bret I was not a woman, but a girl. I was a naughty girl who loved to have fun.

As the woman had done at Decadence, first I filled my mouth with honey, then I sipped hot tea to melt the sweetness. I took him inside of my orifice of speech. Tried to take all of him. He jerked. He tensed. He panted. I sucked his lingam. Hot water and the stickiness of honey on his flesh made him weep and convulse and struggle to catch his breath like I had never seen a man weep and convulse and struggle to catch his breath before. He pulled at his restraints. He whispered my name over and over, then called to God and sweet baby Jesus. I took him too close to orgasm, backed away, took him to the edge, backed away, did that over and over and over. He was dying. Then I delivered him from his agony. His muscular contraction, his spasms, his facial contortions, his change in breathing, the contraction in his lingam, then the moment of inevitability, the point of no return, his orgasm. His orgasm sounded like stress leaving his body. I watched him as he returned to normal. I watched him and his smile of astonishment.

I said, “You taste good. So damn good. One more time, if it's okay.”

“I'll be a little late and right now that's fine by me.”

I touched him, kissed him, and massaged him until his refractory period had ended. When he was capable, ready to rise again, I used the Altoids. I crunched on four, let those dissolve as I grinned at him.

I told him, “This might take a while. There are one hundred Altoids in the box.”

When I was done, when I had made him jerk and strain and come again, when I had freed my slave from his bondage, he came to me, kissed me, put me on my back, then he tied me to the bed.

He told me that I was a queen, a ruler, a sensual goddess walking amongst mere mortals. Once again the warrior told me that.

He whispered, “Bowl. Towels. Scissors.”

“Oh God. Yes, yes, yes.”

I told him where they were.

“Okay to cut your towels?”

I nodded. I didn't care if he cut slits in the best towels that I had. He filled a bowl with hot water. He put hand towels inside. He put me on my back with my knees bent, legs open. He wrung out one of the steaming washcloths. Bret found scissors on my dresser and cut slits in the towels like the slit of a yoni. I swallowed. I twitched. He put the hot washcloth on me, put its heat on top of my sex, lined the slit from the washcloth up with the opening that nature had given me. You didn't become a good writer by leading a bland, cookie-cutter life. At some point I will understand what drives me. And maybe as I take pen to paper and continue to write the honest and explicit pages of
Abnormal Desires
, as I pen my life and include this wonderful moment, as I include all of my experiences, my life until now
unbowdlerized
, as I include truths that may be shocking or unpleasant to some, as I refused to weaken my existence and my experiences to make someone like me more, maybe I will stop and count and see both the gains and losses I have incurred because of my chosen lifestyle, losses and gains that were small or large, obvious or subtle.

Once it had been written, only then could it be viewed deeply.

The eye could not see itself.

Bret blindfolded me. I wiggled. Anticipated. Craved. The steamy towels against my anxious sex felt amazing. Bret eased his organ of taste through the slit in the towel. He moved through the opening of the towel into my opening, held his tongue inside of me. I moaned, tensed, and pulled at my restraints. He took the tin of Altoids and chewed four. He chewed them until his tongue was saturated with the mint. Then he started over, moved his tongue across my sex, around my sex, up and down my sex. As it had been in my dream he painted from my glans clitoris across my labia minora to my meatus. He pushed his tongue inside of me, inside of my yoni. He ran his tongue up and down, painted me from my clitoris across my labia to my opening. I loved tongue. His tongue, his organ of taste moved like he had missed me. Up and down and up and down and then in circles. Soon his tongue opened me up again. His tongue moved back inside of me. Deep, deep, deep inside of me. I counted the ups. The downs. The ins. The outs.