by Ryan Kamstra
(03/19/03)
Maybe I fall for anyone I kiss, as terrible as this sounds. I am shaking, literally trembling for her mouth tonight.
The world goes by so fast, but then not fast at all. I think of the last serious relationship I had, and then the last few days of it. The slamming of doors, reconciliation, the phone calls, the lost ground, the tentative promises, the ultimate hard words. Words you walk away from, but never really do.
I am at my apartment now, and probably will call.
I fell into conversation with her the other night, when out among mutual friends. We had not met before. Our table was sharing a pitcher and I was feeling light-headed. The two of us were smiling a lot, saying polite, interesting things. I was aware that whenever she looked my way my body felt transparent. I continued drinking and smiling and talking.
The night wore on, waitstaff passed, and aside from looking at her, I glanced maybe once or twice at the television above the bar. By then we were quite drunk, and exchanging mutual university stories, work stories, and laughing like old friends. A lot of our table had left by then.
She had brown eyes, nearly black, and when not conscious of smiling, her default expression was really quite serious. Her face carried light from a nearby ATM. A ragged woman had come in with a story, and was canvassing customers for change, only to be escorted out by two bar staff. The jukebox was playing mostly Pop or Country. Clank of pints against the bar. Her eyes grew more and more black, and despite their outward confidence, seemed always nervous. She had short, impish hair.
She put her hand on my shoulder with casual bravado and said,
-- It was really good meeting you. Really. I gotta get going though, work tomorrow. I'm just up the street though, wanna walk with me?
Losing control of the effect of words on situations, I overstated the event.
-- I would be delighted.
So we walked. The traffic, street cars, pedestrians, wall of buildings seemed continuously to dilate. We were still laughing, but less. We were talking, but about what I don't know.
As I walked her to her door, she turned to face me under the buzzing light.
She said with a slight smile,
-- Isn't it awful, all the people you meet in this world, and you never go past a conversation.
Stupidly, I hesitated, thinking of no intelligent response. What to do? You ask for phone numbers, you make plans for coffee sometimes, you promise to keep in touch -- it is exhausting. Life, like a line at a turnstile, keeps filing by. I could think of nothing more. Her mouth kept moving, awkwardly, waiting for my line, or at least a polite goodbye.
The touch of her lips was soft, unadorned. She kept her eyes open while I kissed her.
Burrowed her hands in my jacket.
-- Um, wanna come in for coffee? she asked, releasing, slightly stammering, smiling.
-- Sorry, I....
-- Come up for coffee, she said.
I followed her upstairs; she unlocked the door to her apartment, clicked the switch. Immediately she had her hands under my jacket, holding my waist.
-- You always this smooth with the girls? she laughed.
-- Sorry, but no, I told her. Truthfully, for the last year or so, I've only been with men.
Coming closer to the mouth, she smiled.
-- You don't seem like a fag.
Her bed looked almost unslept in. Her dishes hadn't been done in a while. Her apartment was one room with an attached bathroom. The magazines on her table were open at curious pages, like at ads, or articles on global warming. Her television was by her bed.
-- I'm not. Well, not completely, I told her.
She brushed the surface of my jeans.
Then took my hand, walking backwards towards the bed. Let go somewhere midstream. It was a take it or leave it sort of gesture.
-- Can I get you anything? she asked, now flipping her hair back.
Already my mouth was on hers. It was happening, and it was fleeting, and all the more powerful because of that. Her face in profile, our nervous barrage of words, days without event, a world without contact.
The tension of mouth against mouth acknowledges every word unspoken. You want too much, you have more than everything, the lack is awful. Nothing guides you when the exposed life of your motives first touches another's face.
I held her like necessity, and embarrassed by that, eased up. She felt her hands over my hands in return. How do you tell someone you've never been with how truly lost you are? Two bodies open onto another like a wound at an orifice. Maybe this is the reason we feel the need to say anything at all.
She took off her shirt, and immediately, scars that were unfamiliar, posture of skin against mine, strange textures, how many other circumstances, without commentary, trying to silence mine. She went on her bed while I sat there. Took her mouth to my lips again.
Her skin was musty and dry, and when she raised her arms she smelt like talcum powder. She reclined. Her neck tapered to her navel and her breathing was understated.
I lose moments then. They fell, exactly like words that retain nothing. They remain in her apartment, in those exact gestures. Fucking from within, it is like a beast with two hearts.
I kept falling against her mouth, trying to hold on to an initial impulse, instead being pulled under her tongue deep and deeper. There are moments when all your dreams lie shattered about you, and yet for a pulse it feels like your heart could rhyme with anyone's, again, as they retain the same tablature over time. Against her lips, the fullness and resistance and wanting more. There are protocols for moments like these. Like never tell them how lost you are. They know.
