- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
“How do you want me?” she’d asked. Trevor smiled thin. He was tired and had been called away from thoughts of her by other concerns, although she was his favorite subject to ponder. Her question arrived with a crash, then whispered away; a wave returning to sea without sand, starved of an answer by the smooth stones of his rocky obligations. He had known he wasn’t enough for Alyce for quite some time because he was always missing cues, not responding fast enough or at all. Because his mind was a whirlpool. The car needed gas, the kitchen floor needed sweeping, the cat had to have his medicine administered, his broke friend was bleeding him dry with small loans, and in front of it all was his son and his mom, spinning around him so fast that his neck felt bent and cracked by the velocity of their alternating need and indifference for him. Trevor wanted to love correctly for Alyce, but the tide kept pulling her away from him before he could be enough. And he felt that even as friends he was stumbling on the rocks, the ocean arriving with fists that pummeled, leaving him wet and cold among the pointless tasks at work, the mounting debt, the frivolous weekly stumble through grocery stores he made while pretending he had a life to maintain. He was bled by the water and bleached by the sun, his failures evident too late to him, but obvious to her. “How do you want me?” she had asked and when it finally landed on the forefront of his mind, he started to answer in the ways lovers might. From behind, with you on top, against a wall, in a car, in the shower, wet, warm, welcoming. I want you sweating and moaning and your legs to shake so much from what I do that you cannot walk. But instead, Trevor said nothing and saw the opportunity to swim in her ardor swallowed in her vast disappointment. How did he want her? “Here,” he thought to himself. “And forgiving.”
(at Question and Answer)