"Come home with me," I softly whispered as I lifted my head from the nook between your neck and shoulder, bringing my eyes slowly up to meet yours.
"I know I said we shouldn't sleep together anymore, but come home with me just for tonight," I continued as I pressed my body closer to you, inching my mouth towards a kiss.
I took your hand and tugged it in the direction of my apartment; once I got you across the street, I thought, I'd have you all night.
"I can't," you said, "we shouldn't." Your feet were planted, but your hand was still in mine.
You were just playing coy, just being hard-to-get. I had hurt you pretty bad recently and you didn't want to let me off that easy. I just had to let you go through these motions and we would soon be safe and warm in my bed.
I took you in my arms again, doing my best drunken sexy-seductress impression, heavy sighs and light kisses would surely put you in the mood. "You know how hard it is to say no to you," you groaned and then returned a kiss or two, before resisting again. "I'm drunk, I can't," you pleaded.
I stepped back suddenly, dramatically throwing my arms up in question. "Why not!?"I blurted out, the bruise on my ego beginning to show the black and blue pooling to the surface in my reaction.
"I'm seeing someone," you muttered quietly, eyes dodging mine.
I was visibly shocked as my infamous jaw-drop-face made a unwanted appearance. I immediately considered throwing up the white flag and plotting my retreat; "for how long, I mean since when?" I managed to squeak out.
And then you said the thing that sent me down a very flawed slippery-slope, turning me from a desperate siren, to the captain of the Duke Lacrosse team.
"About a week," you mumbled out and I could see it on your face that it sounded just as ridiculous to say as it was to hear.
With those three words, I was no longer looking for a night of comfort with a man I'd been consistently in love with for seven years, now I was on a mission. My mission, as I chose to accept it, was to conquer you, coerce you into sleeping with me and make you feel the pain of defeat in every shameful step of your walk home in the morning.
My Dr. Jekyll reaction was to laugh in your face, "a week?" I chuckled, before stating matter-of-factly, "you're coming home with me." This was a good move, in my sick, intoxicated mind. I was breaking you down, so that I could build you back up and then you would sleep with me and I would win. This was me grabbing the reins of a situation I could control, because the thoughts of loss, heartache and confusion that were exploding violently in my brain were just too painful to manage instead.
As we lingered there on the corner for minutes that seemed like hours, my internal dialogue was trying to make sense of it all. "A week? As in today is Sunday and you met this person when then-- approximately last Sunday!? This doesn't make sense. We talked on the phone for over an hour on Monday, and nearly an hour again on Tuesday, we exchanged texts on Wednesday and on Thursday you were busy, but you replied on Friday morning that you were excited to see me on Sunday, as in today, as in one week from last Sunday, which is the day before the Monday that we talked on the phone for more than an hour," the wheels of my inebriated logic turned.
Choosing to ignore how utterly wrong and pathetic my actions were becoming, I stuck to the policy that rejection was not an option.
The holding tight-kissing-resisting-more kissing seduction scenario finally made its way across the street where I pulled you forcefully to the entrance of my building. We continued there with more "I shouldn'ts" from you and more aggressive groping from me. The scene then escalated in the hallway on the way to my door, where you called me a "temptress" and I knew for sure I would soon have you in the sack and victory in the bag.
From the moment I turned the lock behind my closed apartment door, the rest of the night becomes a sort of tragic haze. I don't know if I got too cocky, too ahead of myself or maybe the normal, sane me with a conscience was beginning to override my evil plot, because as I straddled you, defiantly unbuttoning your plaid flannel shirt, you stared up at me from my bed and said "no" one last time and I finally conceded.
The thirty minutes that followed looked something like the first few stages of grief playing out in hyper-speed. I was shocked by what had just happened. I was in denial that when you said no the first time on the street, it really meant no. I was angry at you for not giving me what I wanted, not just that night, but throughout our entire relationship. I bargained for love, for forgiveness, to settle the terms, to get some solid answers; trying to negotiate a way for us both to benefit from this twisted situation. Depression and loneliness overwhelmed me as you matched two words to each of my 200. I could see that my efforts, like you and me, were going no where.
As I continued to sob myself into a puddle of self-pity, you just stood there. "I just can't commit to you, to anyone, right now," you declared. Then you let me cry and hug you for just a little while longer, before making your escape.
Still very drunk, I sat alone looking at the spot where you were just standing and felt the intense rush of shame and remorse. If a man had done what I had spent the better part of the last hour trying to do, he could be thrown in jail and yet there I was, never to hear another word of it. My only punishment, if you can call it one, is that he likely wouldn't talk to me again for a few weeks or maybe this is what it took to finally break us up forever. I'm still struggling with the idea that I so easily, accidently stumbled into the villain's role of a situation that can only be defined as attempted date rape. I can only hope that the next time I am the one saying "no," that the recipient takes my word for it the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment