As The Spring Came

We all know how it feels when the spring starts to settle in. I recall it feeling then similar then to how it feels now. I would walk out to the bus stop with the sun still traveling over that short horizon, a soft breeze blowing through my hair, sweaters being banished to the closets for the next 6 months. My pictures, which were already pretty risqué, were getting even more so. Ruben constantly wanted more pictures, more outfits, more settings, more props, more experimentation; and I was constantly encouraging his requests, following through with almost every detail. This often caused me to lose sleep, which one would think would cause my grades to slip but inadvertently made them rise. I didn’t want there to be any question from my parents about why my grades were slipping (not that they really would’ve asked but I was nevertheless cautious) or why I was falling asleep in class. I tried extra hard to do everything perfectly.

            Every chance I got, I was buying more outfits for Ruben. New stockings, skirts, gloves, even hair dye. I was willing to do almost anything to keep him perfectly entertained until I was able to visit him again and finally have him fully and completely. Sometimes I would even send him pictures without having been requested to do so. Usually these pictures were taken in front of the big mirror. It wasn’t huge, just relatively large; because it wasn’t exactly nailed to anything, I would sometimes drag it to my room or the bathroom from my mother’s bathroom. She never once questioned what was going on behind closed doors. Typically, she would assume I was texting or Facebooking when I took my phone with me when I went to take baths. Granted, I carried it everywhere with me for fear that someone might pick it up and see what was going on within the confines of my relatively inexpensive flip phone. Of course, I had a lock on the camera, as well as a completely separate lock on the phone itself. It was pretty darn safe; not once did anyone suspect the possibility of me taking dirty pictures for anyone, much less Ruben.

            But this isn’t about how risky I began to get, how trusting; this is about reading “Lolita” for the first time. I remember going to the school library and asking the librarian for it. He gave me a strange look, told me he could order it from another high school for me, and then proceeded to “inform” me of the contents of the book. He said it was about rape, incest, prostitution, and various other horrid things one would never expect to read about in a book. Of course, I told him that I didn’t know that incest and prostitution were included, but he pointed out that the book was about a girl whose father rapes her and prostitutes her to other men. There were various reasons I didn’t believe this.

One of the reasons I didn’t believe what the librarian was telling me had a great deal to do with an excerpt I had read online, the excerpt which I have linked here for you to read as well:

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/nabokov/lo_excerpt.html

            The content of it simply did not give me the impression that this book was to be narrated by a man who was talking about his daughter or a girl he would be prostituting out to other men. Another reason I didn’t believe this was the simple fact that Ruben had compared me to the character, which was probably inappropriate to begin with, but would’ve been worse if this girl was the man’s daughter and/or he was whoring her out. Ruben had described it to me as “a book about a young girl who seduces an older man.”

            One final reason I didn’t believe what the librarian had told me about the book was that I had looked it up several times online before asking for it. “Lolita” had been dubbed “the only convincing love story of this or any generation.” Critics wouldn’t call a book “the only convincing love story of its or any generation” if it was about a man raping and whoring out his daughter.

            So, as somewhat a summary for those of you who have or have not read the book, it’s basically about a 40 year old man who falls obsessively in love with a 12 year old girl. Now, for those of you who haven’t read the book, I’m sure you’re probably thinking that it’s pretty fucked up for a book like that to be considered a “convincing love story” above all others. I urge any of the readers of this blog to read that book. It tells a very disturbing yet beautiful story of what some will call love, but most probably will not. It’s extremely well written, a fact that absolutely no one can deny.

            Humbert Humbert is the main character in this story. In the beginning of the book, as you’ll read in the excerpt I linked, Humbert falls in love with a girl he meets at the beach when he is 13 years old. The few beginning chapters sound suspiciously like they were based off of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabel Lee” poem. The setting is near the ocean, they’re children who fall in love deeply and passionately, the young girl’s name is Annabel Leigh, and she dies shortly after their summer together. After all, Nabokov literally uses the term “princedom by the sea”. Anyway, after this short, yet uneventful young love affair, Humbert becomes absolutely obsessed with young girls he calls “nymphets”. Despite this, he manages to keep his hands off until final meeting young Delores, “Lolita” Haze who he claims looks exactly like his former childhood love.

            He meets Lolita (who goes by many names: Dolly, Lola, Lo, etc.) when moving to America to stay with an uncle whose home burns to the ground before he arrives. Humbert is forced to board at the Haze house, which he almost considers not renting a room in until he sees little Lolita lying in the garden reading a book. He instantly falls in love with her and forever obsesses over every short second they spend together.

            I’m just going to cut into my own summary lest I find myself rambling to say that, by some sheer form of crazy luck for Humbert, Lolita’s mother dies and he is able to claim guardianship over her by pretending to be her father. He rapes her every day for two years. The first time they ever have sex though, it seems almost playful, and he claims that it was she who seduced him. Long story short, they’re together for 2 years until she runs off with another man around the same age as Humbert. This man tries to force her into a porno with several other people and kicks her out when she refuses to do this and Humbert finally finds her at age 17, living with her husband and pregnant.

            Though I may have just ruined the ending for those of you who planned on reading the book, I want you to know that quite a bit of the events in this book will become extremely relevant to the story you are currently reading now…

It All Started With A Christmas Gift

Leaving Ruben for “bumfuck middle America” as he called it meant that I had to keep in touch the only way I could: email. I didn’t have a cell phone, and my stepfather wasn’t about to let me use his computer to do, well, anything. On top of that, what little I could use the computer for was closely monitored by my stepfather checking the history and shouting at me for any little thing I did in addition to any homework or research my mother practically had to beg him to allow me to do. I’m not going to go into detail because it’s not important, but using my stepdad’s home computer was obviously out of the question.

            Email wasn’t difficult to access at school; thankfully, it was one of the few sites that weren’t blocked by filtering. Inadvertently though, the librarians at the front had a computer from which they could not only view everything we were doing, but click on our screens and forcibly exit us out of the site we were on that we weren’t supposed to be on. When they did this, they would usually block internet access from that specific user. This happened to me several times before I got into the habit of choosing a computer close enough for me to watch the librarian and make my move whenever she happened to step away from her desk or tend to someone checking out a book. Through this technique, I was able to email Ruben almost everyday. Of course, he wasn’t able to do the same thing, so on a normal day I would check my email and only message Ruben if he messaged me. I say this now, but I remember messaging him as often as I possibly could.

            I recall one particular message I sent him:

                        Every morning, I have to get up at 5, leave the house at 6:30, and be at school before the bell rings at 7:30. Just as I’m walking out the door, it’s still nighttime, the stars are still out, and it makes me think a lot of you. And all the nights we used to sit outside the perk talking, and me looking up at the city lights and all the buildings surrounding us…it was always so beautiful. It helps me take my mind off the bullshit day ahead of me, the assholes I have to deal with, the homework, all the background; it ceases to exist for a short 10 minutes of my morning when it’s just me walking out on the empty, lonely sidewalk, only you and the city on my mind…..

            I thought of that when I was walking to my bus stop to go to school. His response to it was this:

                        Those same thoughts invade me when im at the perk and im waiting around at the end of it all, and theres no one to take home, no one to talk to on the ride away fromn downtown,,,i think of you too, and i miss you...

            One of few messages between him and I that had no sexual references in it. I guess that’s what made it mean so much to me, what made me want to share it with my readers….

            So I would sometimes send him pictures. I’d take my mother’s phone into the bathroom and take as provocative a picture as I could manage without her noticing I was trying to terribly hard to do so. I would obviously always delete them immediately after, but I didn’t want to take the chance of her somehow being able to retrieve the pictures and find out what I was doing. This obviously doesn’t sound good. Every time I would send a picture or two, Ruben would ask me to get a little more “risqué” with my picture-taking

when are you gonna send me naughty pics?

What you gonna be for Halloween, and are you gonna send me pics?

I will be waiting for your next letter and also for those elusive pix!

I think I’ve made my point here. Of course, that’s not all he would talk about. It’s simply the fact that almost every message between me and Ruben led back to something sexual, most often an inquiry in when I was going to send him more pictures and could I please try getting a little more risky with them? But I’m not completely innocent here. I gave in to these requests. I wanted to keep him happy; I wanted to hear him tell me how beautiful and sexy I was. Often he would say other things as well, such as how tremendously he missed me, or how strange and difficult it was for him to go about his poetic business without me there. I would sometimes play out old scenes in my mind, wondering if he was reenacting those same things in his. And I held onto every single word he typed into his computer, sending me messages, plucking particular words out of every message that might have meant love. And did they?? Well…

Well, I once asked him how he saw our future. Did he see us together? Did he ever imagine seeing me again?

            the future is a mixed blessing, because we hope for so much and sometimes we are delivered so little, or too much, in our future i see us always being friends, and perhaps more, perhaps lovers, perhaps more...i really like you, and i want you to pursue whatever the future brings, i cannot think to see you grounded in one place, but constantly moving, always growing and going and seeing whatthe world has to offer, and if im able to get to ride with you on occasion then it wouldbe fantastic, just know that i'll always be here to lend an ear or to voice an opinion...our future at the moment is going in two different directions, but once it is all said and done, who knows what else might happen...but your life is yours and no one elses, never get subdued into someone else's life, especially men, because men are very selfish and never do they listen to what a woman wants or needs...this includes me, i can say it openly because i have accepted my asshole-itude, is that a word?

I can remember crying a little when I read this. I wasn’t sure if he said what he meant as if to tell me to give up on the possibility of us ever truly being together, or if he simply meant that he truly didn’t want me to put too terribly much hope in him because I shouldn’t devote myself completely to him. At any rate though, I suppose I understood what he meant to some degree. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine us together somehow, someway…

We had discussed my pictures getting a little more risqué, and he constantly said he couldn’t wait until I finally had my own phone so I could send him much better pictures. Well, as a Christmas gift Romero, a great friend since 8^th grade, sent me a phone so it would be easier for him to talk to me. I sent him a Bluetooth for Christmas. I received my first cell phone ever the day after Christmas. I emailed him my number and received a text back later that evening. When I asked who it was, he replied “A famous poet.” I immediately knew it was him and had responded with “OMG Ruben!!” Had that not actually been him, I would have been screwed, but I knew that though Ruben was somewhat of a hometown hero, and many people knew him, he was one of few poets I knew with such a large ego.

The reason receiving this Christmas gift is so relevant in the story is because of the fact that it is such a significant tool in explaining how this first text message between Ruben and me was the beginning of what became a spiral downward. This spiral would almost be the support beam to the relationship Ruben and I shared; the support beam that not only held us up, but would eventually bring us down…

   In my next post, I’ll discuss reading “Lolita” and what the name meant to me, especially when that spring came around…

Leaving The City

I left that week. I had Ruben’s notebook by my side every mile of that journey; I read his poems over and over, envisioning him sitting at his coffee table at his house, papers strewn about and empty cups sitting quietly, brushed aside and forgotten. There would be an empty Loko can or 2 somewhere in the area, papers under the table and a few comic books piled on top of each other on a side table near his sofa and maybe a few of his choice books. Of course, this may very well not be at all what his house looks like, but the possibilities are endless; I’d never been to his house, so I simply imagined what I thought Ruben’s living room would look like based on what I knew about him as a person.

            As the miles dragged on, I began writing my own poems in his notebook. The first poem I wrote was actually written the last night I saw him. Both guilt and sorrow brought about this poem; I felt that it was somewhat wrong to basically force the words “I love you” out of someone just to make myself feel better about leaving, so I could somewhat imagine that somehow, maybe he did. So, for your reading enjoyment, and only because I happened to still have this poem in my email history as well as an example as to how my poetry had changed over that period of time:

“I love you.”

Tainted words forced on by a child

“say it.”

“Lie to me.”

“I need it.”

And then the waiting

The anticipation of some sort of satisfaction

Because you said it.

You meant it?

No.

Like I’m 12 years old,

Demanding sweetness to save me

From my own bitter taste

That won’t leave my tongue.

Not enough.

 No, not even close to enough

If it was the satisfaction

Nowhere near what I was looking for.

And yes…

You were right

Why ask for something knowing it isn’t meant

Rather than wait until it is.

Am I begging you to break my heart?

 Of course not

It helped right?

Helped me hold back tears

You weren’t supposed to see.

Swallow words

That I didn’t want you to hear.

Clearly,

Clearly

I was wrong.

And now all I have is a reminder

That someone here is a liar.

I just can’t remember who,

Was it really me?

Or you?

 All night,

Okay, I lied.

But I can say I heard it

At least twice.

Baby,

Baby.

Little bastard child literally begging for a lie of love

Baby.

Eating up the words

Like I couldn’t swallow them fast enough.

Baby

Like Claudia & Louie

Like the butterfly and crow

But who’s chasing who?

I thought I was the butterfly,

But now I’m just confused.

 Who are we?

And what are we doing here?

And why can’t you give in to my temptation?

And let me drag you with me

Straight to hell?

 I’ve got a dark alley and a big secret that says:

You’re the only guy I’ve ever thrown myself at,

So why don’t you take me?

You looked like you would miss me

Or were you just faking?

Mistaking me for a woman

Not just a girl, not just a baby.

 Take me back to virgin times

And say that you’re my first

Say it’s not the worst thing I could’ve done,

To fall all over you and become 14 again.

 Never tasted those lips

Or longer for the pleasure, pressure

Of those fingertips.

Never

 Become what I became,

Love sick and falling all over you.

** [explicit] **

And, you know, I’ve only ever loved it the way you say it.

** [explicit] **

 Abandoned child clinging to you

And seeking just one word in desperation

Love.

Willing to do anything

Just to hear you say it.

 Let me mark it on my list of firsts,

My list of wrongs, my list of worsts.

I broke my own heart

So I could blame it on you,

 It just, didn’t work.

So I’m just a broken-hearted kid,

And now I don’t know what to do.

*As any genius can probably tell, those aren’t really explicit words I’m covering up in the poem; it’s obviously my real name. I would have replaced it with my screen name but it really wouldn’t have sounded that good so I omitted that too.

            As you can probably see, I still wasn’t that great of a poet at that time either. What I learned from the poets affected me the most after I had left them because that’s when I had the time to really absorb all that they had taught me. Without Ruben to focus my attention on, I turned to other things, but this is significantly later in the story.

            It was while I was leaving when I sent Ruben one of the first pictures of me he ever got, a picture of me in a blue butterfly shirt after my aunt had taken me to get a haircut. I’m obviously not going to include that photo here, but will allow you a look at what the whopping 2 messages between us said. Bit of an update, I had been complaining about how much I hated the trip so far, and how much I missed him. They are as follows:

Me:      I sent u a pic of my new haircut.....u MUST gv me an opinion! i want to kno the truth cuz that lady did it nothing like wat i asked....i still liked it though :)

Ruben:                       I know its shitty, I know its grueling, but it wil get better, youve gotta make itbetter...I do miss you...didnt think i would miss you this much!

Ilike your new do by the way,and that pic you sent me...you can see how much more youve matured...

and hoe delicious you look now....hahahaha!

            The fact that he misspelled the word “how” and accidentally wrote the word “hoe” should hopefully have no bearing over your opinions of him, me, or this whole incident. Like I said, I’m trying to edit these messages as little as I possibly can. I don’t want to be the one to leave anything out.

            The reason I’ve included talking about this picture I took of my new haircut at the time is because it was one of the first I sent which would lead to a whole downward spiraling situation which is what really makes up the entire mood of this story. This story isn’t here to make anyone look like a bad person; it’s to express what happened and what went wrong in a relationship that never really should have happened. And this is one of the things I cannot stress enough. I was 16 at this point; he was 35. You can obviously see what went wrong here. Things like this are not supposed to happen in normal situations, but the terrible fact is that do…more often than some people would like to think they do.

            I’m not blaming Ruben entirely for what happens in this story; I know that I’m about as much at fault as he is. While I’ve probably skipped some scenes here and there without meaning to, this story is just about as true as it gets. I want to give you all an idea of just how this whole situation was for me; that’s why I’m being as honest as I can possibly be about it. Feel free to ask any questions you’d like by commenting on my page; we’ve still got quite a journey ahead of us…

            My next post will be a bit of a summary of the next few months. It was September when I left the city; September 7^th (to be exact) when I last saw Ruben. I can almost skip my way through to after Christmas because I’m almost completely sure that my readers don’t want to sit here and read the most boring part of the story which is the messages between Ruben and that were somewhat less than daily….

The Last Night

                               My stepdad got a job in another state on the other side of the country. Perfectly convenient given the summer I had just spent with the very amazing, very captivating Ruben Ramirez. I received this information when I returned home on the second day of school. What could one do but accept the grueling terrors of my parents’ decisions that I believed would ruin my life? That’s sarcasm of course. I cried, I told her to let me stay with my friend Charlyze, my friend Kat, anyone so that I could finish out the school year in my home, the first place I ever truly felt I belonged. I told her about the poets, and how much opportunity I had if she would just let me stay. As it turns out, never in my life would staying with my parents really have any benefit on my creative talents in any way whatsoever.

            It was decided that I would leave. Out of a couple hundred guys lined up to take the job; my stepdad had to be one of roughly 5 or 6 who would actually earn it. The entire reason we had moved in the first place was because he had gotten a better job than he originally had, now, after a mere 3 years, he was doing the same thing again. There was nothing I could do but cry and pray for a miracle, and of course make every promise in the world to return to the city to make my living and be closer to my dear Ruben and all of that cheesy nonsense that really never ends up happening even in the loveliest of love stories.

            It was devastating to know that not only would I be leaving the city, but that I would be leaving the city while also holding on tip the strings that had attached me to it in the first place: the poets. They had taught me all I wanted to know while I was there. They had helped me grow into the person I was now becoming. Because of that, I knew that, in my state of growth, I must now move on.

            Ruben made promises; he would see me during the weekend, we’d get to be alone together for a short while. He wanted to feel how “tight” I was. He had also requested a final gift before I left the city. He wanted me to write poetry on a pair of (ahem) panties and give it to him as a gift. Awkward as the suggestion was, I obliged him, if only to leave him with something to remember me by. Now, I can’t remember precisely what poem I wrote on this pair of panties, but I do recall writing it with a black marker, and I wrote something about the difficulties in saying goodbye to someone so dear, and how difficult it would be to move on without him. For a pair of panties, I thought it was all quite nice to be perfectly honest.

            I recall talking to Fritz about leaving even though he didn’t have me as a student anymore. He was a great teacher, a good person at heart. A student like me couldn’t help but seek wisdom from someone like him. He told me never to return to the city, not even to visit. “This place sucks you in. If you don’t get out immediately, you never will.” He knew what had been going on throughout my summer, it was almost obvious. When I admitted to him who it had been that I fallen in love with over the summer, he nodded at the word Ruben. “I know.” I was appalled to hear that. But after a little bit of advice from him, and a short sharing of stories of love, he told me something I’ll never forget hearing. “You may not think he’s taking advantage of you, but people sometimes do it to others without really realizing that they’re doing it or even that they’re doing something wrong. Break it off. You’ll be happier to know that you had the summer, but don’t drag it on, because you’ll just end up hurting both of you.”

            Oh Fritz, if only you could see me now. And you actually used to rather like Ruben and his work from what I remember.

            Despite Ruben’s “efforts”, I didn’t get to see him the weekend before the final poetry read; I didn’t get to talk to him very much at all. I showed up a little overdone: my very favorite purple lip gloss, short skirt(of course that’s only after my mother dropped me off and I changed out of my black capris which had a fresh new button sewn on), tank top, and a pair of tall-heeled sandals that were severely difficult to walk in. I arrived almost an hour before anyone else because my mother had a series of errands she needed to run off and take care of. I drank a coffee while I waited for someone, anyone else to show up.

            I hung around with a few of the other poets (poets that, while wonderful friends during that summer, had nothing to do with this situation or, for that matter, me after things with Ruben and I blew up) until Ruben arrived. His car was screwed up and he had gotten a ride from Jess and her boyfriend. He showed up almost an hour late.

            We took the first chance we got to be alone together. At first, we just stood outside to talk for a moment while he smoked a cigarette, but he snuck to the bathroom with me some time into the poetry read, which was actually going pretty well. If Ruben hadn’t been there, I still would have enjoyed the visiting poets. We walked down through an empty stairwell leading to nowhere important because we stood at the mid-section of the staircase and didn’t bother to hide any further than that. I remember how it felt to have his hands wrapped around me, like the rest of the world wasn’t important, like I could almost believe he loved me more than anything.

            To be honest, nothing too terribly interesting happened in that stairwell. I leaned back onto the stairs, pulling him down with me, wishing, hoping and at the same time not. I wanted to have his love, completely and entirely, but in my heart I knew I might never truly have it and that nothing I did would ever really make him give it to me. Alas, I’m getting a bit too far ahead of myself.

            We tried, god how we tried to get alone with each other that night. As many times as we ended up alone, we finally gave up on our final attempts for me to give what I knew he wanted to have. He told me that, in the end, he would want me more with each passing day that he didn’t have me. Ruben would be willing to wait it out for me; he wanted me more when he knew he couldn’t have me. Later, Ruben would say that it took all he had in him not to take me that very night, and thinking back now I wonder if he should have. Would that have ended our summer long infatuation? Would we have been caught that very night and been unable to see each other ever again? Who knows…

            I gave him his gift, and he gave me mine, a gift that I had suspected, but had not completely expected from him. He gave me a beautiful notebook with a Japanese drawing of waves on it. In fact, this is the exact drawing it had on it:                                                                                            

            Yeah. It was really pretty. He handed it to me casually and said, “I expect to get this back full.” I almost cried. I haven’t been able to find one like it since that day. There was a Canadian poetry slam sticker on the inside of it, and about 3 or 4 of Ruben’s own poems in it, a few on the front and a couple on the back, upside down. I was going through his black notebook when he handed it to me and told me to take one; I couldn’t morally do it. I loved all of his poems, my favorite being one of the longest he had in there. Instead I took the shortest one he had, a 2 page love poem I had once heard him read at school.

            The poetry read ended a lot sooner than I had hoped it would. We stood outside to talk as everyone else gathered their things and prepared to leave. We were talking, I was leaning against the brick wall outside the shop when Ruben looked over my shoulder and told me that a friend of his was watching. Of course, I gave myself completely away by turning around and looking over at him after Ruben said this. That guy blocked me on Facebook shortly after that day.

            I remember looking at him and wishing for one last beautiful, endearing assurance that this would not be the last time I saw him. I wanted something strong enough for me to hold on to; I wanted love. I looked up at him, asked him for one final request before I had to leave the comfort of the city, the beauty in our short moments together. “Lie to me.” I said. There was no beating around the bush, no tip-toeing around what I wanted from him; he knew what was being asked of him.

            “Lie? But why? Why not wait until I mean it, until there’s more to this than what we have?” He rocked a bit on his heels, looking around some, but never really taking his attention off the matter at hand.

            “I need this. I need to be able to leave knowing that something more happened here than the imaginative crush of a 16 year old girl who is never going to be in this position again.”

            “If I wasn’t in the situation I’m in…” He trailed off, looked around some more. He looked at me with a look on his face that would have made someone think he was proposing sex to me if they had looked out the window of the coffee shop. “I love you.”

            He didn’t say it loud; he probably didn’t even mean it. But I jumped into his arms and kissed him one last time, the last time my lips ever came in contact with his. He pulled me off immediately, asking if I was crazy. We were almost caught, probably seen by the guy who worked at the coffee shop in fact. I would’ve cared if I wasn’t absolutely sure this would be the last time I saw him. This was the night; the first time I ever heard that word slip passed his lips like he was breathing it into mine, “Lolita”.

            Ruben said that I made him think of her because of the way I talked, the way I behaved in conversation with him. The way I bit my lip sometimes when I wanted him… I had never seen the movie, never read the book. He told me I had some studying to do then, and that I should read the book sometime.

            I couldn’t kiss him goodbye, couldn’t tell him how much I loved him, or make my promises to see him again. I could only hug him like everyone else as I left; make arms lingered a second longer around him than around anyone else, my body pressed against his only a moment longer than against anyone else. He could say only that he would miss me and that we’d see each other again real soon and advise me to find a poetry slam where I was moving or create one myself. Oh Ruben, if only you knew how far I’ve come. If you only knew the things I’ve done since I left you, the hurt and happiness I’ve faced since that final terrible day…

            My mother came for me; the song “Happy” by Leona Lewis was playing in the car. For those of you who have never heard it before, here is the link:

              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSTYgeor9k8&ob=av2n

            I can’t say I didn’t cry, didn’t curse my mother for taking me away from the city right when I had found my place and right when I had decided I was truly happy. But this, though it was the last time I would ever see Ruben or the other poets again, was not the end. Had I ended things here, at this moment, I might have saved myself what heartache this relationship caused me. I might have continued to love Ruben as I once did. I might have, in fact, even possibly been able to see him again when I made my summer trip to the city. One can only things would have been different, but the what ifs can never change the now….

The Terrible Half-Ass Part before the Ultimate End...if you'd like to call it that

            Looking over that last post a second time, I remember last night when I was lying in bed about to go to sleep and suddenly thought about that night. I remember looking up at him at one point, wondering how I ended up in his arms, amazed at the idea that something like this came so easily. He looked back at me, “What?” And then I kissed him, deeply, because I didn’t think words would be appropriate to get the point across to him. “Oh, that.” He smiled…

            I guess the real highlight of that night for me was the fact that I wanted him so bad, but he said that he had too much respect for me to ever let things happened that way. Just thinking that he actually said he respected me…

            I’m not going to drag this on too much farther, so I’ll tell you all about the night I got drunk while babysitting. It really isn’t as bad as it sounds. I was babysitting with my friend at a neighbor’s house. When they came home, after the children had been put down for the night, they brought back Four Lokos. Not only that, but there mother, Mindy, wanted me to taste some vanilla vodka she had hidden in the fridge. Ruben was at a poetry competition out of state during this time.

            After a few drinks, when I couldn’t find him online, I saw his friend and fellow poet (one of the founders of their poetry group, and very out-spoken, feminist poet), Jess online. Now, with the drinking I had been doing, I was also beginning to feel rather guilty for what was going on between Ruben and myself. I clicked on Facebook chat. Now, once again, because Facebook didn’t save those at the time, I, once again, cannot necessarily describe exactly what went on during this conversation, so a brief description will have to do. At first, I asked who all she was with and, as it turned out, she was with all of the poets who had gone to competition that summer. I basically told her that I had done something terrible and that she was going to hate me forever and I felt so guilty. She asked what was wrong, and told me that she and all the poets still had tons of love for me, and I told her that I was having an inappropriate relationship with an older guy. I’m pretty sure it was obvious enough that I had been drinking.

            Jess told me to quit tip-toeing around the subject because she didn’t like games. Eventually though, the conversation turned gears round and round until she decided that she had to go to bed. I said okay and that I was sorry for irritating the hell out of her. Just as she got offline, Ruben came online. I knew that I was obviously in for it.

            He was forgiving enough, probably because he had been drinking at the time as well. I told him how sorry I was for talking to Jess and that I needed to get together with him at some point to talk to him about what was going on between us.

            Long story short, mostly because I was drunk, I basically told him that I was starting to fall in love with him. He said that there was no way it could ever work out for us, fed me a bunch of bullshit about waiting until I was 17, the Texas state age of consent when we could be around each other without worrying about what people thought. I almost laughed at this. People who had seen me with him had usually thought he was my dad…

            I’m not going to go too far into detail of what all happened, but in the end, I told him that he was a really difficult person not to love. He told me that I was too.

            I guess the whole reason I had begun feeling like that after drinking a bit was just the fact that he had said many times the last night we were together that he really liked me. At the moment, I had felt as if he were trying to hold back from admitting he loved me, but alas, I was probably wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. But that night, he decided to be perfectly honest with me – so he told me that he had lied to me previously about his age, which I had originally thought was 30. It was, in fact, actually 35; a year older than my stepfather.

            He laughed when I told him this, explained that it didn’t matter to him as long as I wasn’t bothered by it, and we left it at that. I tried not to dwell on this somewhat disgusting fact; I was young and carefree as one would call it. And I believed that true love knew no boundaries, none whatsoever. I never wanted Ruben to think I was uncomfortable with anything that went on between the two of us because I thought it seemed immature for some reason. Being uncomfortable with Ruben’s age was like telling him that I didn’t want to see him anymore, and I was completely intent on keeping Ruben around as long as I possibly could.

            Many could say that I wanted him because he was a writer, or because he worked for a comic book publishing company, and had published a bit of his own work, because he defeated the odds so to speak. But it wasn’t that, not at all. He was a poet, he was the type of person I had always imagined myself ending up with.

            I wouldn’t see him again until September 7^th for the very last time.

Never Want To Let It Go

            I can’t really say what all happened between that time and the next time we saw each other. We chatted a few times on FB chat but as I believe I mentioned in a previous post, that was quite a bit before Facebook started saving chat messages. I can say honestly that I thought about what had happened every day until I saw him again. After all, 2 weeks isn’t exactly that long to go without seeing someone.

            Is the poetry read really all that important when it comes to this? I considered the possibility of a skirt, but decided against it because my excuse to my mother was that I was staying the night at Ruben’s house to babysit. I wore a black and red checkered halter top/almost corset type shirt that tied behind the neck with a short sleeve black shirt underneath it so I wouldn’t look like I was showing too much. With that, I also wore a pair of light blue denim capris and my chucks sent to me by my dad as a birthday gift earlier in the year. It was July now and he would be leaving soon for an event held exclusively for poets which would have him gone for a few weeks.

            He actually asked permission to sit next to me on the sofa in the café. I said yes, and he complimented a choker I was wearing. I tried not to blush and acted fairly casual as the poetry read commenced. He made fun of my love for My Chemical Romance, a band who I still support almost fully though they aren’t quite as good anymore without their drummer, Bob Bryar. Off on another subject though. Ruben and the other poets did their poetry; I remember reading a poem with a title to the extent of “I Don’t Love You”. I remember reading it and one of the poets who had hosted that particular read (a close friend of Ruben’s) looking over at him after I was done and jokingly saying “Yeah Ruben! She doesn’t love you!” I laughed just as Ruben laughed, but turned red and was unable to think of anything other than how horrifying it had been that he had said that. For a moment I almost thought that he and I were done for.

            But alas, we weren’t and when the poetry read ended, we were once again left alone outside waiting for my mother who would never come. I remember the way the city looked; the bank across the street, where I would always look up and wonder what was going on in those offices, the bright lights all around that seemed to make the night look like a dimly lit day. I loved it; this was where I wanted to spend the rest of my career, the rest of my life…

            Ruben took me to a park he knew of. It was on the side of the mountain. It was small, had two benches, and an iron fence up where the edge of a somewhat tall cliff stood. I looked down at the house below and imagined myself sitting or even leaning against this fence. I looked out at the city where the lights were like millions of tiny multi-colored (but mostly yellow) dots and wondered how my life in this city would be. I remembered Fritz once calling it a black hole that sucked you in if you weren’t careful. He told me to take my life and run the moment I had a chance because if I didn’t, I never would. There was no way someone could see the city in such a way. It had been what I had dreamed about spending my life in before I had ever actually moved there; it wasn’t too big, just big enough downtown to satisfy one’s ever changing interests, and most importantly, it was my home. Why would anyone want to give that up?

            I was reflecting on this as I stared out into the lights, imaging myself being absorbed by them, blanketed in their warmth, their experience, the good and bad and whispering to Ruben how beautiful it was when he pulled me to him and asked to check out my choker. He gently brushed my hair back away from my neck and kissed it, making me sigh as he moved up higher to my mouth. When he kissed me, I took in an image of the two of us standing there in the middle of that tiny over-look park, the lights gleaming behind us. There was something about it that wasn’t simply thrilling, it was beautiful in my eyes, we were beautiful in my eyes. I never wanted to have to let go of that. There was nothing like it, and I must admit, I don’t think there ever really will be.

            Ruben sat down on the concrete against the iron gate. “I’m going to be a dirty old man now. Come here little girl and sit in my lap.”

            I laughed at him when he said this. But I sat in his lap and kissed him deeply. He tasted like coffee and cigarettes, a taste that was almost sweet to me. I looked at him, held his stubble-bearded face in my hand, ran my fingers through his black slicked back hair. I wanted the moment to last a lifetime. Sometimes in my mind, it did, there was nothing else but that moment. At other times, it almost never existed. I turned away from him as he gently unbuttoned my capris and slid his fingers down into them. He never put his fingers inside me necessarily, only moved them up and down gently, maybe wishful thinking….

            He asked me to stand up so he could have a better look at me. “I love that you have your own little style going there.”

            I remember the smell of the grass that day, and the way the night seemed to surround us, as if the day would never torment us again and we could stay in this moment forever. But neither of us was that lucky. I knew that what was happening here was wrong, but I didn’t care, I wanted Ruben, fully and affectionately I wanted nothing but him.

            There was a slight warm breeze, and words hanging in the air that neither of us cared to notice, we were at peace and nothing at that moment could break it. But I suppose he decided that where we were was not the particular place he wanted to be, so we left. He took my hand; I slipped it out of his hand to adjust. It was odd. To me, holding hands is like a dance, the man should lead; so when I hold someone’s hand, I’m most comfortable with my thumb on the bottom. He wrinkled his brow, grinning at my awkward explanation, but he led me down the hill.

            He walked along the sidewalk, talking and staring at the empty street. I remember once being out with friends in the middle of the night and laying out on the middle of the street probably because it was so full of danger yet so void of it all at once. Now, walking with Ruben, I got this same feeling, the feeling to lay out somewhere and connect my body with the road, give it my warmth, something slightly different from the day to day. I’m not sure if I voiced this awkward feeling to Ruben, but I wanted to lie there, or somewhere, anywhere really too just look up at the summer stars and think.           

            I was thinking about this when I heard him say “duck”. Now, because I knew there were quite a few people who actually owned ducks where we lived (not for any particular reason, I don’t think, after all, it was a pretty dry place), I said “where”. In turn, I was almost hit in the face with a branch. I blushed and laughed a little at this embarrassing moment, but otherwise brushed it off.

            We arrived at another park, somewhat different from the one we had just left, a park with a children’s play area. There was a jungle gym in a sand box walled in with a 2 foot tall concrete ring around the entire area. I sat down on the concrete, one leg on either side and leaned back to look up at the sky. Ruben sat opposite to me. I remember looking at him and wishing more than anything that he would kiss me again. But he didn’t.

            Instead, he talked to me, simply talked. He talked to me about his son, and about his odd living arrangement with his ex. Apparently, because we were in a recession, no one moved out upon their breakup, but one simply moved into a different room. But because I didn’t want to pry into his private affairs. After all, we had both agreed that what we were doing was simply just for fun, and because I didn’t want to lose what I had hoped would grow, I didn’t want to be angry with him. I wanted to believe that he was being perfectly honest with me. He told me about his son, and what it was like to have him, what it was like to be a father, and how hard he was trying to be there for him. I told him about my parents and how, even when there’s a parent who’s out of the picture, there’s always going to be a little bit of resentment for it, but that it always eventually fades once you begin to really understand your parents as well as yourself.

            We ended up talking for well over an hour, but eventually realized we were off on a tangent and finally, he looked at me and asked how we even got on the subject we were on (which I, for one reason or another, have forgotten and would rather not take the time to attempt remembering) and he scooted closer to me. I scooted closer to him, and well, did exactly what I had wished he would’ve done earlier. I remember the fluttering in my heart, my stomach, everywhere that I had gotten when I kissed him, the feeling I wanted back again with an aching desire.

            I pressed my body against his, slowly lifting my legs so that he was holding me in his lap, hugging him to me almost as if to push so close together that we’d become one. He pushed my face to the side with his and kissed my neck softly, barely touching my skin to his lips. Obviously he knew that if he left any marks on me, my parents would immediately know that I wasn’t out babysitting with him. But there was something else, something about the fact that he was just barely touching me that made me want him more, made me wish we could be more alone together, made me almost wish he would love me like he sometimes seemed to.

            At one point he stopped and stared over at the jungle gym. Before I could ask what he was thinking, he picked me up and carried me over to it, placing me on it I was sitting on it and he was standing, still able to reach my face. I remember hearing him whisper “you know, I really like you”. He said that so many times that night… And I remember how it felt to hear him tell me that, it was almost as good as if he was actually saying he loved me. I felt like I could fly, like I was flying.

            What I want more than anything here is to make you, my readers to understand how it felt to be in that position. It was more intense than anything I’d ever felt before in my life, this was the way he made me feel. I never wanted him to leave, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to handle walking away from him.

            He kissed my cheek and whispered to me to lean back. He kissed forehead, my neck, and I think you know where this is going. Ruben unbuttoned my capris, and I remember the feeling of his lips on my stomach, smoothly running down my body. This was our summer, my summer. I remember hearing him whisper to me about how sweet I was, how small… When he was done, he asked if I had ever done it in a park before, I said no. Then he told me he respected me too much to do that to me.

            I remember trying so hard to stop him from taking me home, to make him stay with me for just a few more hours, a few more moments, anything to stop the night from ending. Orion’s constellation was glistening in the sky, and I looked up at it, remembering summers before this one, summers before when I had imagined being in love so intensely that I there was little to keep me from drifting off into the stars. This was that intense love.

            I kissed him intensely before he left me, kissed him like I would never see him again. And as I watched his car fade into the dust, I called this love; I called this the greatest thing that could ever happen to both our lives…

            You know, I think about these things now, and never forget what he said that night. “I respect you too much to do that to you…” No one had ever said something like that to me before. When he said that, I believed it with everything I had in me…

  As he was leaving, I told myself that i would never forget this night, never let go of the time I spent with him, even if I moved to the other side of the world. I never wanted to let it go...

Take Me Home

            Ruben and I were walking back into the Perk at the end of our walk when he opened the door for me and I leaned in close to him and whispered that he should drive me home. He grinned and I convinced Kat to leave a few minutes before me with her mother. The rest of the poetry read went as one would assume. I recall Kat reading a poem she had written about her older sister’s husband who once kissed her, a poem about hurting someone of your own blood. It was actually rather sad. Kat always had this mysterious seductive quality that one simply could not resist.

            Anyway, Ruben and I were alone outside with two other poets whom I had just barely met that day waiting for my mother to come pick me up when he asked me if I would like a ride so that he wouldn’t have to wait outside with me all night. I accepted. As we walked away, I thought about how cheesy he had sounded but didn’t really dwell on the awkwardness of other people standing outside and watching me and Ruben.

            Now, I’m going to point out that during this time, there was another girl interested in Ruben. I’m not going to say her name because I’m both too lazy to come up with a fitting pseudonym for her, and she’s not really all that relevant in this story. But she was a poet. She was also a lot closer to Ruben’s age than I was, in fact, I do believe she had one or two children somewhere between ages five and nine. Anyway, I hadn’t known her very long, but we were nevertheless pretty friendly toward each other. Not full on friends, or even Facebook friendly, but acquaintance friendly. She was interested, but Ruben wasn’t; she apparently wasn’t his type. His type was the 16 year old girl he was giving a ride home with the excuse that her mother wasn’t coming for her.                                                                                                                                                                 No, that’s not fair. Not all of this is his fault. I was the one making the decisions for me, and nothing anyone else would’ve said to me about it would have stopped me. This is just the way things happened. As once put in a poem by Ruben: “We are all products of our own decisions.” And admittedly, he was right; of course, there would be quite a few things later on that he would say that would turn out to be completely true and right, but completely out of context of what he would say but that’s a different part of our story.

            I lived in a fairly secluded part of the city, out in the desert away from civilization. The closest thing to my house was an empty stable from when an old man named Sid had died and his son had sold the horses. Ruben drove past my house to a dead end near those stables. I can’t necessarily say what happened before we got out of his car, but it probably wouldn’t have been as important as what happened after anyway. I recall looking up at the night sky with the song “Airplanes” from that summer playing through my head.

            I kissed him. My lips trembled against his. We held each other close. I imagined the sun coming up and the night disintegrating before us to reveal nothing left of these moments, of anything we had just had. I didn’t believe Ruben was kissing me. His hands wandered, struggled to undo my bra, his mouth softly wrapping around my nipple…

            I remember him struggling to undo the black capris I was wearing, and ripping the button completely off by accident. I remember hearing it hit the gravel and disappearing beneath our feet before he plunged his hand into me, gently sliding his fingers up and down. I remember holding his rod in my hand. And I remember pretending that he loved me, that I meant something to him during all of this.

            I kissed him and imagined us somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t the gravel desert road near my house.  I remember him once gently trying to push my head down. I told him no, no, I couldn’t give him so much on the first night…

                         I’m sorry; I can’t give much more than that except to say that he took me home when he was done. We didn’t have sex, and I enjoyed it at the time and would later miss that brief meeting terribly, but it’s one of the hardest things for me to go back to and admit that I did. This really isn’t so easy….