x

by

Preston Kullingher

 

I woke up around 12 a.m. as usual. I took the phone and I did not believe it. There were two videos called her. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, could have been a mistake, these apps often fail. But not. It was real. She had actually called me, and twice in a row. At the time I don’t mind, I brushed my teeth and put something on an empty stomach.

Useless. It was pounding my head all through the morning, actually all day. But what did she want with me? Thousands of reasons ran through my mind, some absurd. Money? Sexual favors? Maybe a reunion? A turn? No, very unlikely. We were with other people now. We were together for a little while, months. And it had been three years since everyone had gone to your side and followed your shit life. Hers a little more than mine because of the financial factor, I guess. Not that I was rich, far from it. I had only an old car and a little money that would allow me to eat tasty shit that will one day clog my veins.  I had not been much drinking because of the damn reflux.

At night, I could not bear it and sent  a message. She answered. The conversation started strange. I asked if she had called me and she replied that it had been a mistake. Coward!. Or perhaps the question had sounded to her a little harsh or coarse, and so she preferred to be on the defensive for fear of opening her guard and going into open-chest combat. We continue with the scrip conversation, the one in which we ask about how healthy parents, siblings, grandparents (if they have not died!) And if they still work in the same place, and if they still live in the same house. Obviously we are not interested in any of this. Not to let the conversation die I asked about her cousin, whom I had met the day we first met, and who had almost crush with her. I had danced with both  and, see, I dance very badly, and to be able to make myself go to dance is because I have to be very interested in the person. I ended up staying with her instead of her cousin. I had been in love with her from the beginning, since the first time I saw her. Our relationship was kind of crooked from the start and ended up in a not-so-cool way for me. But these are mistakes of the past that young people commit and that they have to commit even. It is a poetic freedom of youth. Live and let  live. Carpe diem. We are still young and we can commit nonsense with our current boyfriends, who one day we may regret, as she did a few months ago when she sent me a crude, sincere, multi-line message, an honest apology, courageous.

And now this video call. The conversation was coming to an end, cold and shallow. When I wanted to see the photo she was displaying in the app clumsy I starting a video call for her. I managed to switch off. Seconds later she would return the call. When the image of her lying on the bed appeared on the screen was like an old taste of home-cooked food, like going to visit the grandmother in the south. She was well, very well. It had not changed at the time we were together. I made a point of saying this because all of my ex were obese and had children to raise. She laughed and liked the compliment. He took the line and asked me if I had married. I told her I was far from that. The conversation flowed naturally, tasty. The barriers had been set aside. I asked again where her cousin was, and she did not miss the opportunity to say that I always had a crush on her. We laughed. I did not deny it. Her cousin was beautiful, but she was more. Beauty and attitude in a strong face with slight indigenous features. It was easy to be attracted to her. At that moment I imagined making love to her again. Love not, I imagined myself fucking her vigorously. All that I had not done when we were together. We only made love once and it sucked. It was fast, I was not on a very good day and she was not in the mood to do it. She invented the old, mangled excuse of the headache and wanted to go home. All lie. A week later I discovered that she cheated on me with an older guy, rich . She was fucking probably every fucking single day with him and for me gave  poor excuses. But, I was not idiot, and long before I discovered the her betrayal  I was back on  track with my ex. Actually today I do not know who cheat who. It’s confusing, I confess. If she thought back then that I would wait for her goodwill to want to fuck me, she missed. Every woman should know that any normal man, real man , not these fresh boys fed up with sensitive, whiny and feminine nowadays, can not stay a week without sex. And we had been dating for over three months. It was close to the fourth month when it rolled, and a week later I discovered her betrayal.

At the time she did not cry,  not showed  repentance, stood firmly supporting her position. I am not against betrayal, far from me, I defend the ideology that people have to do what they need to because life is too short to impose limits: social, ethical, religious. You only live once, so do it well. But I am an alpha dog, and at that moment I had to impose myself as such: I cursed her of all possible words, I did not let her speak for a minute to expound her motives. Fuck the motives, they doesn’t matter to me. We talked on the phone and she wanted to see me in person to talk better and explain what had happened, but such was my anger that I threatened to punch her in the face if I saw her in front of me. (I would never do that! But at that moment this is what I said.). She was scared. A scare half as suspicious as she wanted to pay to see. This time she must have gotten totally wet. She liked this kind of men, raw, uncontrolled in fury and she had not yet seen this side of me.

I’m a peaceful guy, almost a Zen Buddhist, but it’s all the medicine’s fault, they soothe the ravenous hungry wolf inside me.
Weeks after the end she asked for her cousin (the same one I danced and who was crushing), call me. She did not have the courage . I knew she was aside listening to the conversation so I talk to both listen. I simply told the truth. I was a nice boyfriend and she had betrayed me because she wanted to try new things, she was not sorry, it was just remorse and shame that her farce was discovered. I called her a fucking kind of whore, something out there. But all this is past. And I can not hold anyone’s grudge, my anger goes away in a few weeks. Then, I do not even remember what happened. For me it becomes a great bullshit.

Days after the video call conversation she called me again. She came in with a soft little chat about what I was doing and I realized what she looking for and I got right to the point. We meet in a square near her house. She got in the car, greeted me with her “What’s up boy?” As she always said. I looked right at her face and I put my right hand behind her head and pulled it down with a big French kiss, my left hand caressing her legs. Her breath was already breathless, and my left hand was no more just on legs. I noticed she was already on the point and headed for the first motel nearby. It was sensational. She was on clouds: sweaty, exhausted, devastated.

I was not to come. I don’t know why.

I took a shower as I always do, to clear the soul and mind. I went back to the bedroom and dressed and sat in an armchair facing her. I watched her for a few minutes until she realized she was being watched and covered herself shame with the sheet . My mind was far away. Three years ago on time. Against my will, came the memory of that fateful day, of betrayal and how the days after were very difficult to control a wounded ego. She said something to me from the bed, but I did not hear. Images ran through my head devastatingly. I got out of the armchair and left the money for the motel and the taxi, and I never sought it again, nor did she look for me.