Act VI

Sara’s father did not attend her funeral.  I called the man myself and left a voicemail three times, “sir, do you know what happened to your daughter?  Do you care?”

I might as well have been calling a dead end.  All her mother could say was, “I told you.”

The week before it happened had been difficult.  That class, after my dad picked Sara and me up, that night left me a total wreck.  I was a wreck the following day at school, and I was a wreck over the weekend.

I was a wreck because I was in love with her.  I was enchanted by her.  I was enraptured.  My heart would flutter whenever I pictured her face, heard her voice, saw one of her texts, basically anything.  My mind was out of control and I couldn’t grasp the meaning of it all.  I was obsessed.  Touching her, I’d gone farther with her than any other girl—farther by far.  To say others didn’t even come close would be to imply that I ever went anywhere with anyone else.

Thursday evening, after dance class and right before my dad picked us up, I’d brushed her panties.  She allowed it.  She freaking allowed it.

It was wrong.  I was wrong; I shouldn’t have done that.  It was a mistake and I regretted it.  I should never have allowed that to happen.  She was feeling vulnerable and I took advantage.  I was selfish.  I was a pig.  A creep.  A pervert.  One day she was going to go on a talk show and narrate about that time in high school when some boy she like talking to put his hand up her skirt and brushed her panties and how traumatic it was and that was the moment she turned to heroin and became depressed and tried to commit suicide because of how low I’d made her feel.

Oh how that soft pussy felt good!

Sexual assault.

Maybe she didn’t notice.

She called me that evening and we talked for hours until my mom came in and grabbed my phone, “excuse me?  Yes.  My son knows he’s not allowed to be on the phone at this hour and he’s going to lose the privilege until Monday.  I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but good night.”

What was I doing?

I was perpetuating an illusion in my mind of a possibility that didn’t exist.  Sara Temptation liked girls.

Dude, say it already.

She was a lesbian.

I had to say it to make it real.  As if listening to her say things like ‘wow, nice tits, huh?’ while we watched some random video together wasn’t enough of a reminder.

And this was the conundrum.  That was the stereotype, wasn’t it?  A woman and her gay friend and they hang out and do stuff together.  And she likes him and he likes her, just not in that way.  So that’s it.  She deludes herself into thinking he’s into her, pretends he doesn’t walk on the other side of the street, more or less buys into the illusion that there’s a degree of closeness there that shouldn’t be.  Only flip it.  I saw.  People are keen on buying into lies and illusions.  We’d rather make-believe than accept a dull, boring reality.  And I was living proof.  An example of someone who failed and bought into the illusion, rejecting the truth that had so flagrantly been blasted into my face over and over again.

The illusion: Sara Temptation was the sexiest, sweetest, most tantalizingly delicious female ever to walk the face of this Earth.  I loved her, and she loved me.  We danced together, we talked for hours, we took long walks on a moonlit beach, we drank wine on the balcony together after the kids went to sleep, we held each other’s hand when the doctor told us it’s terminal, and after eighty years together, we died a month apart.  She was everything to me.

The truth: Sara Templeton was a lesbian.  Our little funtime play had more to do with reinforcing her ego than anything else.  We had a good rapport, but eventually she was going to meet the girl of her dreams and move on from me, leaving me a lonely, twisted, bitter old man asking people to name their favorite color every time they wanted to cross my bridge.  Sad.

So at school on Friday we had to communicate by pressing reeds into clay tablets.  As for our dance routine, without my phone, the privilege of staying late after school was summarily rescinded.

It was a rough weekend.  See if you can wrap your head around this: I desperately wanted to talk to her but I couldn’t.  I knew I should not have wanted to talk to her, but that thought didn’t make it far.  I should not have tried to force myself to not think about something I wanted to think about, but ended up thinking that thinking about something should have been left alone, even though thinking about it was unhealthy.  Or so I thought.

If given a choice between feeling this way, I’d have preferred to eat sand and slap myself with a live rhinoceros.

On Sunday, my dad played a thousand questions with me, starting with, “is this about that skinny brunette from your dance class?”

“What brunette?” mom’s eyes went wide and her face lit up.

“Oh, she’s a sweetheart,” dad explained.  “Sharp.  Real pretty.  And she likes him, too.”

“Was she the one you were talking to on the phone the other night?”

“Does this mean I can have my phone back?”  I asked.  It was worth a shot, no?

“No.  But what’s her name?”

“Sara,” dad explained.

“What is she like?  What are her ambitions?”

“Is she responsible?  Mature?”

“What’s her blood type?  Mother’s maiden name?  Bank account and routing number?”

“Does she have anything to declare?”

They weren’t helping.  I kept my mouth shut for years and they kept at it before my dad finally realized I was somewhat conflicted.  “Son, you seem somewhat conflicted.”

I nodded.  I was afraid if I’d opened my mouth, that would invite another swarm of questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

“You know what I do every time I feel conflicted about something?”

“What’s that?”

“Clear every thought, empty your mind completely.  Close your eyes and concentrate on breathing.  Just breathe in, and out.  Focus on that for a while until it’s the only thought.  Let the sound of the wind in the trees be the only thing that enters your ears.  Then, once you’ve got a clean slate, say something that’s the truth.  Then say something else that’s also the truth, and then keep speaking the truth.  Do that, and after a while, things start to clear up.”

This, I did.  I waited, of course, until I was alone.  But I sat down Indian style with my fingers in a hoop, not sure why but that seemed like the thing to do, and closed my eyes.  The thoughts flooded my mind immediately.  I thought of the way she reacted when she saw Gina Fromalgebra.  I thought of the way the back of her legs looked when I followed her to the stage.  I thought of watching her dance the day I met her, of how in the middle of her routine she cried and I thought she was just really, really into the zone.  I thought of the way she looked at me when she realized I was pretty darn straight for a gay guy.  Then, I thought about breathing in and out.  In and out.  It took a while.  I found that the secret seemed to be to allow the thoughts to come in rather than fighting them off.  Just open the door for them to come in, leave the door open, and they would leave of their own accord.  I found that I didn’t have to be afraid of the thoughts.  So I just breathed in and out.  In and out.  I couldn’t hear the trees over the trucks on the highway, and that thought came into my head as well.  Then I figured it wasn’t enough of a distinction to make a difference, and so I listened to the trucks.  Then that thought left my head as peacefully as it’d come in.

I don’t know how long I sat there.  Maybe it was an hour, maybe a year.  Time meant nothing, but the peace meant everything.   Finally, I was able to speak the truth, and so I spoke it.

“I love her.”

That intrusive thought barged in again, that one always nagging me about her sexual orientation.  I started to dwell on it, then I remembered to simply leave the door open and see what happened.  It raged around my head turning up tables and knocking the chairs around, screaming and yelling and waking the neighbors and all that.  I let it.  Then, it left.  And I spoke the truth again.

“I love her.”

What did that even mean?

“You can love someone, and it doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship.  You can just love someone for who they are.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I love her.”

There was more.

“I’m insanely attracted to her.  I feel comfortable with her.  I feel comfortable expressing my attraction to her.  It feels good to be this way with her.  She permits… she encourages me to be this way with her.  Not every relationship has to turn into something serious and long term.  Loving her and playing with her body feels good.  It seems to feel good for her as much as it feels good for me.  Good feelings, however, can be deceptive.  They can create feelings of attachment, which can be difficult to reconcile when the time comes to separate.  I am afraid that if I get used to touching her and being aroused with her, that I’m setting myself up for disappointment later on.  I am afraid that by allowing myself to be so close with her, that I am only setting myself up for jealousy when she eventually meets a girl she wants to be with.  She is a truly attractive girl, and this is an inevitability.  I do not want to experience these negative emotions.  I would like to continue to be close with her and continue our flirtations, but I don’t know if it’s possible to inoculate one’s heart from an inevitability.”

I wasn’t sure if that helped or not.

Anyway, on Monday I got my phone back and called her as soon as I was alone.  We met up and walked over to our private corner, where we sat down shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.  She took my arm and placed it on the inside of her thigh with a smile on her face.  I wrapped my arm around her leg and held her close.  She pulled me back, placed my hand squarely on the inside of her thigh, and nudged me a little higher, a little higher.

“Um…” I said, “we should talk.”

She stopped and gazed at me.  Her smile was gone, but her eyes gave me her full attention.  “OK?”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to, you know, flirt.  Like this.”

She looked around, checking her feet, my feet, the grass, the horizon where purple hues heralded the coming sunrise, the buildings, the pavement, and pretty much everywhere before turning her face back to me.  “You don’t like touching me?”

“I do.  I love touching you.  There’s nothing else I’d rather do than touch you more.  I want to touch you everywhere.  I just… I’m afraid of getting too far, too deep, too fast.  I’m losing control, losing myself in you and I’m scared.  I like you.  I like you a lot; I just… I need to uh…” I couldn’t find the word.  I’d had this whole speech worked out in my mind earlier, and I couldn’t figure out which word to use.  What the heck is that?

“You need a break.”

“Not a break, break, you know.  Just, you know, a break.”  That wasn’t very articulate.

She sat silent looking at me for a while.  I could see her tense her lower lip as her thoughts came through, and I had in mind to ask if she’d left the door open.  No matter, I was not about to let her get the wrong idea, so I spat it out.

“I love you.”

Her face reeled back in shock.  I don’t think she was expecting to hear that.

“I love you, Sara.  I just need a little space to sort through my feelings, that’s all.”

She took a deep breath.  “Do you still want to practice?  The recital is this weekend.”

“Of course!  Absolutely!  I’m just talking about the, uh… you know, the sexy, flirty stuff.”

“Oh, you mean like brushing your fingers on my pussy type stuff?” she grinned an evil grin.

“Yeah,” I blushed.  A little embarrassed, did she have to call me out on that?  “Stuff like that.  But everything else is OK.  OK?”

She nodded.  “OK.  I understand.  So… everything PG, no benefits package until you’re ready.”

“Yeah, basically.”

She bit her lower lip and gazed at my stomach.  I hadn’t noticed at the time, but yeah, I’d tightened up quite a bit since I’d started those dance lessons.

“One more flirt before we take a break?” she asked me.  That should have been a red flag, right there.  Might as well have said ‘just one more beer before you drive home.’

I looked around to see if anyone was watching.  I didn’t know what she had in mind, but it had to be good, else she wouldn’t have insisted.  “OK, one more.”

Dumbass.

She smiled wide, opening her teeth some and lost her eyes in mine.  I looked back at her, admiring the raw beauty of her face and catching a hint of some perfume I’d never smelled before.  Then, she took my hand and put it back where it belonged, on the bare skin of her inner thigh just beneath her summer dress.

I inched up.

“Keep going,” she grinned.

I inched up some more.

“Keep going.”

My heart started pounding.  I moved up another inch.

“You know you want to touch it.”

I couldn’t hear anything over the thundering in my chest, and this girl was inviting me to do the very thing summer dresses were made for?  I went for it.  She moved her legs apart ever so subtly while my fingers probed further up along her legs.  But when I reached the apex, her smile widened further.  I didn’t feel cotton.  Or lace.  Or silk.  No.  What I felt was bare skin, soft and smooth but for a hint of stubble.  My eyes popped out of my head in total excitement and I just about lost it right there.  She just gazed back at me and her smile never failed.  I probed around with my finger until I traced what felt like a soft crease of skin that gave way to delicate folds between which she was warm and wet.  I swallowed my breath, unable to control myself — my fingers were on auto, one of them rolled around in her, covering itself in moistness when she immediately stood up and slung her backpack over her shoulder.  “OK, so no more of that until you’re ready.  Just let me know when.  OK?”

It took me a moment to thaw, but I was Never.  Washing.  That.  Finger.  Again.

People must have thought I was weird for I’d spent the day sniffing my finger every now and then.  What a pleasant smell!

And aside from teasing me over lunch about how I kept sniffing my finger, we behaved ourselves all week.  We did our dance routine, we sat and talked for hours, and then we had our dance class on Thursday where it was clear Kelly and Meathead hadn’t practiced together as much as they should have although Cassie did put together a little routine of her own to do with him though it was clear he needed more practice on that as well.  Kelly waved off the opportunity to pas de deux with him, and so the slot was given to Cassie, who was more than happy to take it.  And from the looks of it, I got the impression she was more happy with it than he was.  Ms. Rousseau gave Sara and me some more input on our routine and glowed about how it showed how much we’d been practicing, and of course Isaiah and Lauren showed us all up with some of the most ridiculous acrobatics I’d ever seen set to some music that further got me thinking.

I'm in love with the shape you

We push and pull like a magnet do

Although my heart is falling too

I'm in love with your body

Just to be absolutely clear, this guy loves the shape of her body, he’s in love with her body.  He doesn’t say anything about appreciating her for who she is as a human being irrespective of her sexual appeal.  And so what was I afraid of?

Later that evening, Sara and I sat talking at our usual concrete bench.

Now here’s a side note, just so you know how much of a scumbag I am.  I’d asked my dad to pick us up at 8:30 because they changed the schedule.  They hadn’t actually changed the schedule; class was over at 8:00 as before.  She’d told her mom to drop us off at the usual 6:00 and that my dad would pick us up.  The two of them would never figure it out, and oh, the things I could do with half an hour alone with her, even sitting outside on a concrete bench.

“You know what I think?” she started.  “I think Cassie and Matthew are going to have sex.”

“If they haven’t already, you mean?”

“They haven’t.  At least I think so.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.  A little man in red clothes poofed out of nowhere and sat on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.  ‘Dude, smell your finger.  Does it smell like anything?  No it does not.  Tell her you need another hit.  She’ll give it to you, you know she will.’

“I don’t know.  Just the way she fawns over him I guess.”

“Oh, so you think if they’d done it already, he’d be holding her bag and saying ‘yes, dear,’ and ‘I’m sorry’ every few minutes?”

She cracked up.  I loved watching her face when she laughed.  “Exactly!”

Then after a few minutes, she looked close into my eyes and said something I was too stupid to hear properly.  “I want to have sex.”

Now, a normal, grown, heterosexual human male would have picked up on something like that when he’s talking to an attractive female with whom he’d enjoyed a close rapport.  And the thing was, even a girl who liked other girls, well, they say it’s a sliding scale; maybe her scale didn’t slide all the way to the right.  Especially, she was still young and very much curious.  That she allowed me to touch her and enjoyed arousing me should have been a massive clue.

But alas, I was clueless, and so like a dummy I blurted out, “who do you want to have sex with?”

She squinted at me and raised one eyebrow high above the other.

“I mean, of all the girls in the dance class, which one would you most want to have sex with?”  Here’s a lesson for you all.  If you ever see a younger woman with an older man and you’re tempted to think she’s simply attracted to or somehow likes older men, don’t.  The reason she’s with him is because younger men are stupid.

“Hmm,” she looked at me funny.  “I'm not even sure how to answer that.”

“OK, well line them all up.  You can pick any girl here.”

“Those are my only options?”

“Yes.  It has to be one of the girls from our dance class.”

“O…K…,” she nodded slowly.  “Well in that case, I think I’d go with Rachel.”

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows.  She was definitely not a bad choice, of course.  Rachel had tawny skin, gracious hips, flat tummy, and a cute, round ass.  And you know she had to have legs, strong, muscular legs, not long and sleek like Sara's of course but still, definitely not a bad choice.

“I don't know.  I thought you'd have gone with Lauren for some reason.”

Sara bobbed her head side to side.  “Mmm… I’d hit it from the back for sure, but I don't know, she's kind of a bitch.”

I laughed.  I tried not to be so loud about it, but I just couldn't get over how funny it was hearing that sort of thing from her.

“I like Rachel.  She's a gentle spirit.  What about you, though?  Pick any… Mmm…”

“Any what?” I said.

“OK, I guess, between Isaiah and Matthew.  No, that’s too easy.  Any guy at school.”

And how I recoiled from that question.  So this was the game?  “Any guy, huh?”

Isaiah, obviously.  Yeah, that would have been way too easy.

“Yup,” she confirmed.  “Choose any guy from school to have sex with.”

“Uh…” I wasn’t sure how to approach the question.  My mind sorted through the available options.

“Joaquin?” she asked.

I shook my head.  “He wouldn’t call me the next day.”

She giggled, “no, he probably wouldn’t.  He’s nice to look at, though.”

“Uh… sure.  Not my type.”

“Oh yeah?  What’s your type, then?  Do you like tall guys?”

Wow, what a weird thought experiment.  If I were attracted to other guys, what kind of guy would I be attracted to?  “How about… maybe… James?”

She looked up with her finger on her chin.  “Hmm.  Interesting.”  She paused for a moment, presumably to think on the matter.  “Yeah, I could see you with him.”

“Really?  Do you think he’d like me?”

She laughed hard through her nose at that.  I was just having fun feeling her lithe body convulse next to mine.

Oh, you want to know why I picked him?  Well, he’s a straight-A student, very ambitious.  He’s on the tall side of average, and lean, not bulky.  Always impeccably groomed, you cannot peck his grooming, and I think his parents probably spend about a thousand dollars a week on his clothes.  That, and he probably irons his socks and underwear.

I don’t even put mine away; they just stay in the basket until needed.

What’s the point?  No one ever sees them, and besides, I know where they are and can count them easily.

Anyway.  “That’s an unusual question.  You make me think.  Very interesting.”

“You started it,” she said.

“Yeah, but don’t you, you know, go that way?”

“Huh?” she reeled.  “Go what way?”

“You know.”

She shook her head, squinting at me.  “No, I don’t.  What are you talking about?”

“Well… aren’t you a lesbian?”

She pulled her face back and stared at me for a minute with her jaw on the ground.  “Where the hell did you get that idea from?”

“Uh…”

“NO!  I’m not.  I’m not even… curious.  Did someone tell you that about me?  Who told you that?”

“No, no one told me.”

“So you assumed it?  That’s a really odd thing to assume about someone.  What about all those times I let you touch me, what the hell were you thinking?”

Duh… “Um…”

“Why would you even think that, though?”

“Well, you’d make comments, you know, like Gina from school you said you thought she was hot, and that one from the video you said she had a nice ass.  And also…”

“Isn’t that what guys like to talk about?”

Ugh.  I looked out over the road, closed my eyes, and shook my head at the absurdity.  Of all the things that made sense in the world, I should have considered the most obvious.  It could very well have been that I took one piece of evidence and, rather than examine it for a piece of evidence, took it as fact upon which my whole understanding of our relationship was based.  I badly needed to reevaluate us.  Jeebus Creepus what did that mean for Sara and me?  If she still wanted to have anything to do with me, that is?

That meant that she…

Oh boy.

I opened my eyes and looked at her.  She sat perfectly still and gazed up at me as though waiting for me to connect the dots.

“Can I say I’m an idiot?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you’re definitely a weirdo.  Lucky you, I like weirdos.”