J----

why is it that every time we’ve met it’s been spontaneous? one of us picks up the phone and the other comes running. i don’t think we’ve ever gotten together more than an hour after the idea is suggested.

i remember that time i was with [omitted] when she was house sitting. we were both drunk and she wanted to be chunkered so she asked me to spend the night. i didn’t answer right away and she said she was “gonna pee while you think about it.”

i put some leonard cohen on the stereo and picked up the phone. i checked my messages and there you were. you’d called at about midnight and sang onto my machine, using all 3 minutes and being cut off in the middle of “you”. i sat there on the radiator, playing the message over and over.

[omitted] came out of the bathroom. she had taken everything off except her t-shirt. it was white, with a smidgen of red wine on it from a clumsy advance she’d made earlier in the night. it was weird seeing her like that while your voice was in my ear. she stopped two feet in front of me and swayed her hips slightly as she turned to give me the full view of her near-nakedness. it was moving how beautiful she was: her short, slender legs and cute, firm ass; her bra-less A cup breasts--nipples ripe from contact with the fabric--

she took steps toward me, silent on the plush carpet. she placed her hands on my hips and slid down to her knees and started to undo my pants. i pushed 1 twice on the phone and as she took me in her mouth, you started to sing again.

i shut my eyes and pretended she was you. i looked down and blonde hair was where brown had been a moment ago. her back was petite but strong, caught just right in the tightness of cotton.

i tilted my head back and relaxed it against the window. it was cold so i turned my face till my cheek was flush with it. feeling the chill on my face and the warmth of your mouth, i remembered the richard brautigan poem, Color as Beginning:

Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow
hair.

the poem clashed with the cohen on the stereo ("with both of us beneath our love / and both of us above / and dance me to the end of love") which clashed with your voice on the phone, but everything seemed right in the world.

i’ve often wondered what [omitted] would feel if i told her what i did that night--how i’d replaced her lips with yours--how i’d imagined you and i together at last. was i being decietful? was i using her? or would she be flattered that i remember so fondly what was to her just a drunken, adulterous blow job--a mistake she’d blame on too little affection from her husband and too much ameretto from me?

and you? how do you feel, reading this now? perhaps it’s you that i used and you who is offended. had i taken your beautiful gift of song and perverted it into something you’d never intended?

it feels odd to confess this to you now, a year after it happened. i think about you often, J---. usually when i’m alone in my bed and can’t sleep. i toss and turn, wondering what the fuck i’m doing with my life. why am i still here, in this city i hate so much? why don’t i sit down and *write* instead of wasting my time with clients, pimping products that mean nothing to me? but there are never any answers. just more questions.

i once told you that regardless of how bleak things look in the future, you should take comfort in knowing that you’re capable of love. that you have proof in your past of your capacity for sharing yourself, wholly, with someone else.

this is what keeps me going: i have a lot of love to give.

you have no idea how much i appreciate how your presence causes it to flow--how little self-restraint i have when you’re close.

hell, you don’t even have to be close. i’ll just close my eyes and pretend you are.

much love,

Dobbs