kyle #2
two summers ago when i returned to work from the hospital there had been some new hires. one was a very young massart student. tall and lanky and dark curly hair. i had a small crush on him but everyone did then. very harmless. like a boy scout. i thought nothing of it. too young. i had been in the hospital over my infatuation with a thirty-seven year old man so it was nothing. i was surprised i found someone younger than me attractive at all. early in our friendship he saw me vomit behind a tree after leaping out of our co-worker's car. the winter after that he was in france and it was only when he was gone that the idea of possibly even started to show up in my mind. when he came back with giant curly hair i shrieked and fawned over him, only half-seriously. he was so nice and normal, completely untouched by popular culture. like he grew up without a tv and was home-schooled or something...but not in that creepy/socially retarded way.
our friendship grew over 2009 as i was fucking around with whoever but when the fall came i realized that i genuinely LIKED him. i couldn't think of a thing i didn't like. working saturdays was so awesome, looked forward to it all week. sometimes i'd say something coy or tried to get it out there without being too direct, but any half-assed attempts to show anything were politely shot down. i'm sure he saw me as 1)his boss, 2)too old, 3)risque. because all three were true. his arms were thin but kind of muscle-y. his white tshirts were so innocently transparent that i'd have to look away. there was a halloween party at my house and he came and stayed later than anyone. we sat in my room drinking and tattooing. i'd been bugging him for a while to tattoo me and that night when we sat cross-legged on the floor across from each other and he held my wrist up on his knee with both hands to tattoo it i felt "the feeling". not in a sexual way, but in a way that my heart started pounding in my chest and i couldn't breathe. so pure. like in a movie. i couldn't believe i hadn't felt it before.
we'd hang out a lot more. i got him into the cure and depeche mode. we'd hang out alone, watching movies and shit. sometimes he'd just fuck around with instruments and i'd lay around and watch. i drew him a picture, which is a huge thing for me. it was like crazy best friend shit. when we'd sit on the couch or floor and he'd tattoo my wrist i'd ever so slightly stroke the palm of his hand. when we started to go to the symphony i think i caught him looking at me a certain way. still nothing happened.
i think in january i slept on the couch at his place and we both lay awake in the dark in different places, considering. talking about it later, oh yes, it was too strange, we couldn't be like that, let's not talk about it again, silly. then one night we were laying side by side on my bed on our stomachs like a couple of kids looking at my old foreign coin collection listening to sigur ros or something, half-drunk, and he slung his arm over my back. i think i made a sound like "huuuuuhhhh......." and he pulled me into spooning, teasing that in the past i'd casually mentioned that spooning at any time would be acceptable. i think doves flew out of my chest.
just spooning that night, that was all. soon after that the same thing happened at his house, but i turned on my stomach and kept my face close to his, half-mashed in the pillow, staring at him until he kissed me. sex came within days, i believe. at my house, almost naked, i was terribly hilarious. on top of him, about to shimmy my underpants off(or down around the ankles would have worked, too) i got very serious and confessed that i had a secret, that i wasn't...all...woman...down there. and i think he was going to just roll with it. of course it was a hilarious lie. i am a terrible bitch.
the sex wasn't bad at all. i'd suspected he was a virgin before, but then changed my mind. he'd just been burned badly in the past and hadn't touched a girl in years. sex face to face with someone for the first time, someone who'd been like your best friend was almost too much, i really enjoyed being on our sides, hearing him breathe behind me like i've never heard him breathe before, hands on my hips, pushing against me. i lived on the top floor of a veggie co-op on a hillside in jp, a hippie/gay/dominican-populated area in boston. my bed (a hand-me-down futon, possibly just a mattress on the floor at that time) was under the window with just a solid view of the moon, nothing in the way.
no one at work suspected a thing. my last night in boston we went to a raw restaurant for dinner with the coop, i became ill with nerves. spent the night in intervals of restless sleep and vomiting. he tried to comfort me. in the morning we went to pick up the rental car, packed it and said goodbye outside his house. we said we loved each other, which was true. i cried while driving. for a long time i knew i'd move to chicago. what happened was terrible timing but i wonder if it really was. if it had happened sooner i may not have moved...and it was my time to move. we may have had a long and messy breakup. this way there wasn't a chance. for two months we talked on the phone every night, phone sex sometimes which i'd never done before. i saw him during a layover he had at midway at the end of march, just hugging for twenty minutes. after that, sometime in april? he told me it was too difficult. we didn't have a plan, you know, just this surprise thing that happened right before i moved. he said he couldn't come visit me in chicago as a lover. i hung up and we haven't talked since then. he graduated college and moved to providence, doesn't have a friend there. much like the boat i was in when i moved here. it hurt to ignore him knowing he was so alone and how hard it is as i'd just done it and he had been there for me, on the phone every night. we've written letters twice though. i want to stay his friend even if it hurts, we'd been friends long before the little romantic blip at the end. he's just a fantastic person, doesn't even know the meaning of a one night stand. so different from any other guy i've met. i'm sure when he does date again it'll be someone really awesome, some innocent girl who doesn't wear makeup and would rather make stained glass than go to bars. i sincerely hope he's happy whatever he's doing.
