Have You Ever Loved A Girl So Much?

Love as you currently understand it, of course, we haven’t gone very deep into the red thread, sex and drugs and rock and roll and all that bollocks. Never mind them. The bollocks.

Never Mind The Bollocks*

She felt perfect from the moment she waved me over. “Do you want to come over here…” I’m still thinking about her. The qualities of the imagination she ignited. The stripper, that is.

What is it about youth that intoxicates us so? Is it the energy? Some imaginative delaying of our own aging, mortality, sexual decline. Cause, it’s all about the sex at the moment. As they say on FetLife, “any hole will do.” Was that too dark? This isn’t meant to be a family show.

I am noticing my own ennui at the moment. Even in this most perfect of snow/ice days. The heat is working. The cats are restless and seeking warmth next to my body, but I’m restless. Moving.

Quiet.

The chupacabra is away. Complaining about the weather, his hunger, and would I order some food for him from Uber Eats. Um. “I’m too busy. Overwhelmed.”

I forwarded him a copy of the “overdrawn” email from my bank.

Sorry.

He meant about asking for the order, not about my money issues. We have money issues, both of us. His is more flexible. Mine is dire, should I not continue pulling rabbits out hats. So close. So many opening doors.

What I need is a benefactor.

An altered path for cash. An alternative supply of intoxicating kisses. I can’t pay for lap dances or food deliveries for my twenty-five year old son. It is five or six days until February, and a whole new round of bills arrives.

She is not going to be my salvation. Her money or lack of money. I will need to meet her on neutral ground. Among friends. At an event. Dance, perhaps. A modern dancer, yes. Like Emily Blunt in Adjustment Bureau. That’s the idea.

The young remind us of our youth. I was not a source of future prosperity for April, the stripper, in fact, just the opposite. I showed my naivete and inexperience with the newer club, post plague strip clubs. Things are different. More expensive. Controlled. Two drink minimum and $25 cover charge. Who the fuck does that go to?

Or an hour massage from the Asian mall massage business, “no happy ending, don’t even ask.” Either or. About $100 post tip. Each slightly guilty pleasure, simple and transactional.

With the icing of the city, it’s just me and the cats tonight. April and her kind will have to get by on the kindness and attention of others. This is all the attention she’s going to get from me. I don’t need to find an obsession, or a fix.

Alone. Alone. And more alone. Drive time for the next chapter of my life to begin. It doesn’t happen by magic or accident. It’s also no arranged by god like some master plan. “God will only give you what you can handle” bullshit, not now.

God isn’t on the playing field, you are. I am.

The next right move is up to me. The next word, that’s me as well. The next right woman will not be a stripper or a real estate agent. She may not even be in this country at the moment. I’ve been giving some thought to renting my house and spending time in Spain for a few years. Or Paris in speakeasys with real absinthe.

Escape. I just want an escape. But the trap I’m in, the position I’m in, the chair I’m writing from, are all quiet pleasent and unbothered. The fear is in my mind, a gift from my anxious mother. Worry worry, never really helps.

A therapist told me once, pay attention to the nightmare. It doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to happen, but it might point you in a good direction for emotional work.

She’s done a lot of work on herself. She’s an artist or athelete of some sort. She’s not looking for a partner, but when she meets me everything recalibrates for both of us.

I’m not looking, in the same way I want her to not be looking. I don’t need a relationship. I want one. Big difference. I can keep the two separate for now. If too much time passes, I might need to top off my touch needs with April or an available massage therapist.

return to index | this is a chapter of a novel** in progress: