“Stay With Me”

Guess it’s true, I’m not good at a one-night stand
But I still need love ’cause I’m just a man
These nights never seem to go to plan
I don’t want you to leave, will you hold my hand?

Most people who’ve spent the night in bed with me know that I am schizophrenic in a sense.  I will keep us both up most of the night trying to figure out if I want to reach out and hold you or push you to the furthest point in the bed from me.

There are only 2 intimate partners who can say that doesn’t happen with them and one of them is not even The Man.

Saturday was like that.  I spent a lot of time instead of sleeping trying to figure out if I wanted to wrap my body around August 4 or figure out how to push him on to the floor and pretend like I didn’t.

It’s gotten worse in the last 4 years.  Part of it is specifically refusing to share my bed with my sex partners, at other times it was …well I just didn’t have a bed.  Mostly though it was my subconscious remembering that my Clyde who was way too old to sleep with me refused to conform to the rules and almost nightly somehow ended up on a pillow next to me.

If nothing else the kid taught me to sleep in a nightgown.

I don’t pick people on purpose who cannot be with me, in a traditional sense.  Shit I don’t pick people on purpose.  I have avoided relationships consistently since my pregnancy with Clyde. Technically even before then since my refusal to enter a relationship with Clyde’s father.

I’m capable of love, and I desire it.  I am capable of companionship and world building. I’ve done it. Before the incident it was a matter of just not being with the person I wanted.  After the incident it is understanding that there is a risk in loving again, and since there really is nothing left to take from me, with the exception of my very life, can I survive putting my heart out there again for the possibility it will be broken and I end up looking like the cracked Earth on AoS season 5?

I am not going to be in a relationship with August 4.

He is deliriously happy with his girl. If you knew August 4 you would understand the comedy that comes with that sentence. While his interactions with me are usually happy, his scowl is the stuff of legend and he dislikes people more than I do.

In many ways he is who I would’ve been had I been born with a penis.

He may be the 2nd person on this earth who I felt that immediate compulsion with but not unlike the first my happily ever after with him is not something that will happen. His girl would have to lose her mind and leave him, he isn’t leaving her. I can’t see her leaving him. So  here I stand on the outside wondering ……

Mathematically speaking on a planet with 7 billion people it will happen again. It being that connection I cannot ignore.

While I figure out if I want to run through 7 billion people to find just one more I get weekends like last.

There was my careful preparation. I even shaved.

There was the anticipation of knocking on the hotel room door.  There was the lengthy conversation with myself on that bullshit commute trying to decide if I would do as trained and strip at the door. There was the tension of a period which showed up just hours before [ hating ass uterus ]. There was the understanding that no matter how many orgasms I had I’d still miss the feeling of a certain someone who was apparently born to fit inside me. There was excitement at finally being able to suck his dick followed quickly by the voice of Nicole asking me what if he hated it?

I could pretend to love you
And be someone else for a while
Make you believe your the one that I want
Give you my heart in disguise
I could be all you’ve wanted
Make all your dreams come true, yeah
Surrender my love at the feet of your will
And live out your fantasy for you
And you would be happy
And I’d make you smile
And I’d go on living a lie

What I  fundamentally understand in the days after this weekend, is that as much that could go right if the universe went crazy and somehow August 4 was available and chose me…it’s that like so many others in these now 20 years, nothing compares to you.

I’m still just filling a moment instead of living a life. Yes those moments are real, but they are never him. For a woman who has spent so long avoiding commitment, I have somehow figured out how to mate for life at the same time. Worse still with someone who will leave this earth without ever having loved me the way I loved him.

But you can lay with me so it doesn’t hurt.

Aphrodite Brown