time after time

What is it about us and time? , T asks, as we walk briskly back to his house. I’m taking wide steps to catch up with him, the heels of my boots clicking and clocking on pavement washed with rain the night before.

Twelve hours before, he called me at three o’clock in the morning to tell me that something had happened at work that had left him completely discouraged. He was not sure how he would feel after some sleep, but he said he might not be up for sex. In fact, he might just want to be alone. He said he just wanted to call, to make sure that whatever happens tomorrow, that I know it wasn’t anything against me.

Half-asleep, I mumbled some kind of platitude. He sounded bad, and my sympathy couldn't help but kick in. I tried to remain positive, suggested I just give him a call when I approach his house at the time we had agreed upon. And then if he wasn’t up for it, I could just hang at the nearby mall until the time when I was supposed to meet with my girl friend. But the truth is, he sounded like shit, and by the time I hung up the phone, I had resigned myself to not seeing him. The disappointment sank in.

I posted my ‘fuck’ post, anticipatory hyperness deflated, freshly shaved pussy lips sighing. I went back to bed. I couldn’t get back to sleep. But I’m bad with interrupted sleep that way.

Come morning, my alarm clock went off and I never heard. I could not bring myself to rush when I did finally rouse myself. I could not do it, keep the hope, hurry myself down there and have it end up being for nothing. Nothing held against him, but I just could not seem to push myself with that risk there.

Seeing him must be a bonus, nothing more.

I shaved my legs anyways before I left to house. I like to do it as close to last second as I can, so they are as smooth, as cloudy heavenly, as close to just-been-depilated as my legs can be.

I made myself leave the house finally. I forgot my contact lenses at home, and decided to take the bus back round to get them. I ignored the voice niggling that I was going to feel pretty idiotic if I was wasting time that could have been spent with T.

I did not call like I said I would. I was running two hours late and I didn’t see the point of waking him up to tell him he could sleep because I wasn’t going to be there on time.

As it turns out, when I finally gave him a call: he had been awake, thinking I would call. He had left a message on my home phone. He was ok, was up for seeing me. I felt pretty idiotic.

(‘You did not believe enough’, a nah-nah-nah-boo-boo part of me whispers, even now. I tell her to go watch West Side Story again or something, leave me alone.)

So we ended up meeting up in the same mall where I first met him nine months ago. Our safe place. The buffer zone between the Internet and our private real lives. The public venue where even mass murderers, and girls who pick their noses when no one’s looking are given their final chance to reassure that they’re not so bad. Where we are asked to prove we are exactly who we type-said we are, more or less.

I found him under the same overhead sunlight of the glass-domed food court, replete with the same palm trees and what looks like the same real live sparrows flitting about.

He stepped off the escalator and we were face to face, and it had been so long, three months nearly since we’d met. I squinted. I knew it was him, just forgot that that’s how he looked.

No lover’s reunion this. I waved casually to his suddenly larger than life self from across the lunching crowd. He smiled and signalled towards the nearest pita place. He wanted to pick up his lunch. I nodded and walked where he was walking.

It’s the same place we had eaten at that first time too. I remember because I had spilled half my pita wrap contents out of the bottom, had made lame jokes about my lame attempts to cover up the escaped lettuce and olives with a napkin.

Hey, I said, sidling up to him by the counter, giving him a quick sideways squeeze with my arm.
Hey, he answered back, cooly warm.

Smiles and it’s been a whiles were exchanged.

He was fresh out of his haircut appointment. Which he would have cancelled, he said, if he had been sure I was coming. Gelled newly cut hair, still looked mousy sandy soft. Eyes, still blue.

I complimented his haircut. He grinned and thanked me. He asked me if I’ve changed my hair. I thought about it and said nope. We agreed that it really had been a while.

He always leaves me so quiet and subdued. He doesn’t leave me with much to hide behind. Feel nervous and new and like I have no one to be.

He always feels too like someone I don’t know. Someone who I used to know a long, long, long, time ago. The truth is what I’ve ever known of him is close to nothing at all. A few random blurts and glimpses now and then our only giveaways.

I’ve never been able to show him really, not even here. I wonder how he comes across. Does he come across at all?

He’s different. Not I am special, therefore he must be different. Not I am secretly in love, so I think he’s different. He is just really and truly a strange one, the kind we’ll all meet now and then. The kind it feels good to meet now and then, especially when you feel your life blending and fading into suffocating shades of normalcy.

But anyways, we left the mall, strange him and possibly strange I, to cut our way back to his house. Our time left was hacked down to an hour by then.

It is windy and my hair flaps around my face. I joke about his hair not going anywhere any time soon. Slow conversation about running a salon and whether men or women get the shorter end of the financial stick in the world of coiffure maintenance. He’s talking mostly. I’m laughing mostly because I feel like laughing.

We bump into his neighbour, then a student. I fade back, and give them non-commital, friendly ‘don’t mind me’ smiles. It’s funny to actually see him with people, even briefly. It’s weird to have them see me. He’s never really seen me talk to anyone but him either.

And we’re rushing, to get back to his house, and I’m trying to catch up, but my boots will only let me go so far before I fall flat on my face.

What is it about me and him and time? I don’t know.