|
|||||||||
| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
|
Chexting
|
|||||||||
|
Living in Hawaii, I have no shortage of guests. I went to the University of Washington in Seattle; I hated the rain, but I made a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with. And whenever they need to get out of the wet, they get on a plane and sleep on my couch in the den. I’d wanted to get a leather couch, but Christine talked me out of it; a leather couch, in Hawaii, where no one believes in wearing shirts? She was completely right about that.
So instead there’s a pull-out sofa/couch (I feel like a bad lesbian for not knowing the difference/if there is one) that spends more time as a bed then pushed-in. But Chris and I love company, so that’s great, and most of our guests are gay, too, so it gives us excuses to check out the new clubs where we’d probably otherwise just not. But a few of my girl friends from college are that kind of girlfriend (where it’s one word), and Chris is actually weirdly cool about that. I know we’re into that comfortable phase of our relationship, but it’s strange because she was so fiercely jealous when we first started dating that it’s hard to imagine how she came this far in the other direction (though I try not to read too much into it, lest I become a neurotic lesbian stereotype). Right now one of those girlfriends is staying on our couch. She’s Cass, and when her and Chris met this morning they smiled, then looked at me, and Cass said, “She has a thing for C-words.” But after Chris had left for work, Cass kissed me. I want to say something about that, because it’s so easy for people to latch onto something like that and say, “See, lesbians are whores,” as if saying that girls might hook up faster is somehow proof that two girls hooking up is deviant and therefore wrong. It’s a phenomenon I’ve tried to (and failed to) explain to many of my straight friends. But I think there’s a… momentum to gay love. You can spend literally years without meeting a quality person you’re attracted to, so when you do, it feels like it might be the last time, your last chance to be happy, and suddenly you’re just pushed over a hill and rolling, and tumbling, and it’s awkward and bumpy but it’s kind of exhilarating, too. Maybe that’s what straight love’s like, too, but I think that’s different. It seems like most of the time you can’t throw a rock without hitting a straight person (not that I advocate throwing rocks at straight people). Anyway I had to go to work, so I left Cass there to stew in her juices. I had a lousy, low-productivity day, because I couldn’t not think about Seattle, and how much fun I had with Cass- and I couldn’t keep myself from comparing the drudgery of an actual, honest to God relationship with Chris to that (even though I knew it wasn’t really a fair or even reasonable comparison). Then I went to lunch with my friend (okay, really not, she’s just a girl I off and on crush on, and we eat together, it’s a weird ritual kind of thing) who blogs at Grace Like Kelly and listened to the whole thing, and when I’d finished, when I wanted answers, she just looked at me, and said we should have dessert. And I don’t blame her at all; I’ve done the same to her, too. That’s why I say we’re not exactly friends; we’re eating colleagues. But sometimes, a lot of the time, you need someone who listens and will split a cheesecake with you more than someone to tell you how to live your life. I got a little more work done after lunch, or at least it seemed that way, since I was food-hungover. By the time I got home, Chris was already home. Cass met me in the front room; she’d lost that mischievous twinkle in her eye, and actually looked a bit sheepish. She was cupping Chris’ phone in her hand, afraid to show it to me. “I” her voice trembled, and it took her a second to find it; “I wanted to screw around with you,” she stopped herself, “but in a couple of days I’ll be back in the states,” I bit my tongue to keep from correcting her by saying, “the mainland.” “I mean, I didn’t want to mess up your relationship. But this…” She handed me Chris’ phone. There was a text message on it from her boss. “Can’t stop thinking about your body. I want to tongue it.” That didn’t seem like a one-off proposition; there was context behind it. Sure enough, there were other texts, all incoming, no responses- positive or negative- and that lack of response had obviously egged them on. Chris’ boss was hot, in that kind of Portia de Rossi in Better Off Ted way, with a too-tight bun and a suit she’s just begging to be torn out of (Ellen is such a lucky bitch); I mean, I knew her boss flirted with her, and that she really liked it, but… My girlfriend had been chexting on me (I know, I hate that word, too). I set the phone down on the counter, and stomped into the kitchen; Cass mumbled something about catching a movie and bolted for the front door. Chris was reading the paper, and looked up with a raised eyebrow, and I flashed to Portia, then to her boss, then to the both of them writhing around and- oh my fucking God. I grabbed that bitch by her fake-ass weave and drug her out to the pool; I wanted to try drowning her, but I cooled off after throwing her in. I so wish. No, instead I sat down and we had a long-ass talk, one of those tearful, bitchy things where we take turns being catty then vulnerable. And you know, I totally get it. I mean, who hasn’t been there? Talking too much with an old girlfriend on Facebook, spending too much time email-flirting when things suddenly get too personal. Or maybe I can forgive her because nothing had a chance to happen. I’m not Sandra Bullock, here- and I don’t have to think I could have been. I can tell myself she’d have put on the brakes before anything actually happened. And maybe that’s true. I mean, I probably wasn’t going to let anything happen with Cass; it’s just fun to feel noticed, and appreciated, and sexy; someone who knows you, and sees you every morning before you look even remotely human, they know you too well to think you’re pretty, or not to notice when you’ve started getting fat. But that’s why I stay; why Chris stays, I think, too. At some point, you get tired of sucking in your gut, tired of having to brush your hair before turning on the bedroom lights, tired of all the fake little things we do to convince people we’re more like who we want to be than we are. And maybe that’s why I’m not more pissed off. Because that’s exactly what she told me, and I don’t know if I’ve ever loved her more. |
|||||||||