What Love Means (fiction)

[For Mia Pak]


“What does it mean to be in love?”

she asked sipping some sort of angry candy out of a cocktail glass,

“Nobody ever bothered to tell me or show me—My parents just shouted at each other until long after the divorce…”

I shrugged politely and I said I didn’t know – she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, only wanted a dance partner for her cynical little ballet, so I said as little as possible and continued to pay for her drinks, which go by a name too obscene to print.

“I have never met a man who didn’t drop me like a hot rock as soon as he got what he wanted—”

I was beginning to see why. Within five minutes it was glaringly obvious – if you don’t believe in love, then people will stop trying to love you, and if you expect to be treated badly, people will always rise to the occasion.

I wondered where her friends were – I looked around subtly. Usually this would mean that I was preparing to make a move and looking around to make sure that I didn’t get blindsided, but this time it occurred to me that I was hoping someone might take her off my hands. I had lost my mercenary mentality and I was just sad to listen to her. She was whiny and empty-headed, but I didn’t want to be the next page in her album of disappointments.

How could she not see that I was trying not to listen to her?

Is this the trade that she is accustomed to making? She finds a man, he buys her drinks and listens to her sad disaster of a life story and in return she fucks him and then also gets to call him an asshole for never calling again, thus strengthening her convictions and lengthening the rant that she gets to dish out to the next man in line.

“I’m sorry, you must be bored – I’m sure you didn’t sit down here just to listen to me bitch…”

And there was the opening; she may as well have said “Kiss me”, but I couldn’t do it. I told her

“I know how you feel – I really do. I was in a relationship for three years and everything was perfect – I thought it would be forever, but it never is. It was love though. I can’t explain it but I know how it feels. I don’t think the heartbreak ever goes away until you find that love again. That’s why really old couples die like six months apart – There is not enough time to find that love again – no hope, no reason to go on – the body shuts down—”

Then she kissed me, leaning in with sweetness of vodka and pineapple on her tongue. My insides moved – that sort of sinking feeling in the organs when the brain triggers the release of adrenaline and switches from cold logic to something more instinctual, and my lips and tongue started moving on their own, and my mind started to wander.

I thought about the way no two women in the world kiss alike. Every woman’s way of kissing seems to me to be an analogue to her essential self, – with fears, hopes, insecurities, pride, strength, weakness – all revealed in the movement of tongue and lips. A woman who seems crazy will usually erase all doubt by doing something odd and unsettling like sticking her hole tongue straight and tensed into my mouth and gyrating it while running her teeth across it. Some shy women will avoid opening their mouths altogether and try to focus on the tame interplay of lips, which perhaps seems more proper. When a shy woman does relax a bit and lets her mouth open, I’ll gradually work my tongue in gently – but more often than not I’ll have my tongue nearly bitten in half as the shy woman closes her mouth quickly in order to return to the monotonous rhythm of lips.

Some women like to kiss and some don’t. Some fear the intimacy of it, the vulnerability it invites, but some women seek it, knowing that therein lies their power. This woman liked to kiss, and she kissed rhythmically and without hesitation—if we were dancing, her hands would be on my hips – firmly in the lead; she kept her hand on the back of my neck, keeping my head in place, while my hands rested open-palmed and slack on her thighs. She kissed with the confident rhythm of someone who took pride in being a good kisser—she did not need to be told that she was good. She took her hand from my neck

“Not here. Let’s go out back for a minute.”

She took my hand and led me out the side door of the bar into a small alleyway. She grabbed the sides of my shirt where it was open below the collar and pushed me up against the fire escape. She kissed harder this time, almost with an edge of desperation. She was drunker than I had realized.

Though my mind was relatively clear, all thoughts seemed to travel from a haze to reach my conscious mind, seeming to crop up unsummoned from the deep. They floated up slowly and easily, thanks to adrenaline’s ability to seemingly slow down time—It was as though I had time to hold each thought in my hand and turn it over until I understood it. I thought of sunsets in the fall, I thought of the girl I was trying to forget…I thought about how hungry I was – tried to remember when last I had I eaten.

My hand began to travel up her skirt routinely, my earlier misgivings about her having entirely vanished. She gripped me tighter, already beginning to convulse a little bit. My hand went down the front of her nylons and she began to breathe heavily, pulling her mouth away from mine to take in more air. I kissed her neck as she reached down my pants and gripped me purposefully. This went on for what felt like a wonderful eternity, but was more like thirty seconds, and then she pulled away suddenly, with an unplaceable expression on her face, blending anguish, fear and loneliness, and she began to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

I asked – my voice had turned deep and husky.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

I smelled her perfume over everything in the cold alley, and my insides did that sinking thing again, but this time it was something different.

“Hey, shh – you don’t need to be sorry, it’s okay –”

I put my arms around her and drew her into me, stroking her hair and whispering to her like to a baby, which is the only thing I know how to comfort. Something had changed. I realized that I now cared about this girl. I didn’t want her to be sad.

She cried, I whispered. I lost track of time as adrenaline subsided and was replaced by something else, making me feel slow and queer all over. The busboy stuck his head out the side door and started hauling out cardboard. She pulled away, makeup streaming down her face and smudged where she had left it on my shirt.

“I’m sorry.”

I felt like a mushy idiot as I hugged her again, then handed her my handkerchief.

“It’s okay.”

We went back into the bar. My friends were gone. Her friends had found a group of guys and were leaving. She asked me to come with her, but I told her a lie to excuse myself. I got her number without even thinking about it – I knew I wouldn’t call her. As she left with her friends I said

“Don’t be sad – Time heals all wounds.”

And I swear that I believed what I told her. Looking into her puffed up eyes that to everyone else would seem destined to repeat the lonely cycle of heartbreak and hollowness, I had faith that soon she wouldn’t need to cry anymore.

I walked out into the night alone, past the prostitutes and street food vendors all looking bored and underworked, and I tried to remember what love felt like, but I could only think of pictures of me smiling and staying up late just to feel her close to me.

14/02/11