Ten Tiny Love Stories Page #9

I've slept with him

in lean years and good years,

in sickness and in health.

I never think of him but for that,

sometimes not for years at a time.

Is Matthew a boyfriend

orjust a kissing cousin?

He's got a 10-year-old daughter

I've never met,

and a wife

I saw once at their wedding.

I can't even remember

if I liked her.

After all this time,

Mathew's practically a stranger,

but I could sleep with him

like I could slip on a pair of shoes.

Is Matthew a boyfriend?

Who cares?

The pattern with real boyfriends

was always the same.

If they could make me laugh,

they were off to a good start.

If they had a girlfriend,

that gave me a tingling sensation.

Younger than me was always

better than older,

like the lean over the heavy-set,

and the short over the tall.

I never slept

with them right away.

I liked

to hold out a little.

There's nothing more fun

than discovering a person's

sexual personality.

And the longer I could tease myself

with that, the better.

They all lasted about

the same amount of time... two months.

What is it

about two months anyway?

A change in the weather?

Two periods.

A trimming of your hair,

and then

that desire to move on.

And I never let them

into my life.

Those boys were an aspect

of my life, but not in my life.

That's what I wanted.

That made sense to me.

Sooner or later,

they all became little to me,

they were small

and not enough.

I wanted a man who could possess me.

They weren't it.

I wanted a man

who could defy me,

put me in my place.

I used to have this dream...

literally...

that two men made love to me

at the same time.

In the dream,

they looked alike, like brothers,

but I knew

they were the same man.

with 5:
00 shadows.

And they were effeminate.

In the dream, I liked that.

They had manicured nails.

And while they're...

f***ing me...

there's no other way

to put it...

they only look at each other,

and never at me.

And it's that fact

that turns me on

in the dream.

That's what makes the dream

so hot and vivid.

Unforgettable.

That and the smell

of flour.

Their hands smell

like they've been baking.

I had that dream for years,

since I was 14.

I never told a man

that dream, not even Roy.

Some things you can't share.

You know what?

In the dream,

it's not those men who are

the strangers. I am the stranger.

In the dream, I'm a blank,

and I love that.

In the dream,

I'm free of the need

to be understood

and the desire to share.

I'm a blank.

Those men are ravaging me.

I'm being had.

I always knew that dream was about

wanting to be worthless,

about wanting

to be nothing.

None of us matters anyway, and the

things that can help us realize that,

they're a great relief.

What I learned

from my husband Roy wasn't love.

I knew love already.

I loved my sister and my father.

I loved my mother with the kind

of love mothers and daughters share,

the mother-daughter thing.

Roy gave me

roots and wings.

My family wasn't roots

but an anchor.

And I had no wings

before Roy.

All I had was the burden

of my dreams.

Roy taught me to build a bridge

between my dreams and who I am.

Let me say that again.

We must build a bridge

between our dreams and who we are.

That's why most people

never find love.

Because our dreams

get in the way.

Love is about acceptance.

It's about settling.

Settling is

the real triumph of love.

It's easy to love a great man

if you find one and he loves you.

But real love

for real people,

that means, loving despite.

My friend Charlene left a man

because he bought too small a dog.

And Sylvia left

because a man was too quiet.

Joan bailed because

he huffed and puffed during sex.

Christine left a man

because his feet were too white.

And Sonia left

because he wouldn't diet.

Roy died in a fall.

He was...

on the roof of a building in Pasadena

with another contractor.

He stood

too close to the edge

and a gust of wind

caused him to lose his balance.

He fell 16 floors.

That is the worst

kind of death

because you have the time

to realize what happened

and to hate yourself for it.

You did it to yourself,

and you have ample time

to realize the horror.

In college, I read a short story

about a man who committed suicide

by jumping off a building,

and as he falls,

he looks through the windows

in the apartments

and the people that he sees,

the lives that he sees,

cause him

to change his mind.

He wished he hadn'tjumped.

I didn't like

that story even back then,

because I knew regret

was a woman's field.

You're writing a story about regret

and your hero's a man,

you got it wrong.

Regret is a woman's field.

That and disappointment.

In those fields,

we make a buck fifty

for every dollar a man makes.

After Roy died,

I couldn't get out of bed.

I kept thinking,

if only we'd had children,

I would have somebody

to share the horror with.

Our friends tried to help,

my family...

they meant nothing

to me then.

Their efforts were...

lame and useless.

These words I remember from a story,

lame and useless.

And then, something happened.

I woke up one day

and went back to work.

I came home...

and the next day,

I went to work again.

And one day

followed another...

and another...

and before you knew it,

I was okay.

I missed Roy. Sure I did,

but the sadness was gone.

And it was okay.

It made sense to me.

Not his death. Not that,

but the way things get left behind,

the way things get out of you.

Like some things pinch your skin,

they cling to you forever.

But others just wash away

without a rinse.

People, things, places,

they can just wash away,

and what's left

is a sense of peacefulness,

and the feeling that we're all alone.

And that's okay.

That's a relief too.

It's a relief to know

that the wind will blow us away,

leaving nothing,

not even a trace,

and it's good to be nothing,

and it's good to have nothing.

If only we wanted nothing

while we were here.

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