Tired for a moment, I retreat from my company to join the smokers. I stand and lean against a wooden post. A couple pass me and enter with his arm around her waist. I think of stepping inside and tempting her. I consider that all I am capable of is aggressive pursuit and cold pleasantries. I am not patient enough for the rules. A poorly socialized but attractive specimen.
Recent events rekindle me. The annoyance, the frustration. Markers of a brief attempt at a relationship. Reminders of my inability to make her mine from a distance. Too far and not eloquent enough to keep her coming back for more. I think in rationalities and feel in aggressive possessiveness. Even now, more aware of the lies surrounding us, I desire her, as was her goal: To be desired and enveloped in a wonderful shroud of attention. For a time, I thought this would be alright. They can desire her. She is mine. But, as became evident, I was surrounded by others, all possessed by their gullibility. I was one of several and chose not to see it until there had been declarations of lust and love. In the end, only one man possessed her. An eternal rival. His anonymous face a blank soul.
So I wonder how you—You—feel about that. A man out here in the world who thinks of the quiver of your lips as he looks out on this traffic. The feel of your chin and smell of your inner thighs. Your gut-wrenching moisture. The eagerness with which you part your legs. Yours was the pussy my soul desired from that innate place you wove yourself into. Even now I think of you lying in my bed, still dressed but for the lace panties peeled off and thrown to the ground. Dancing for me and playing the guitar. Reading and singing to you. All the happiness in the world lies before you and for me there’s lust, love, and the possibility of never moving on. It becomes my fuel, something to replace the bitterness. I think of the women since the autumn, how I have fucked them with a fraction of the tenderness that I reserved for you. Yours was a lifetime of being possessed and pushed to be strong. My love was simmering, waiting. The time with them was a hollow satisfaction.
If so, if this is how life is going to be, I pray for those I will be led toward by this unbridled obsession. I pray for myself. I want to kiss full lips, roam over dark hair, be lusted after by destructive eyes. They will be made to open their cage and let loose the animal inside them. Relentless submission. Make them want me the way a man wants things, with hunger and desperation. At thirty, forty, fifty. Temporary loves that never quite live up to the hesitant voice I carry with me.
I await my equal, if not you.