To dream. Will having a dream carry us through? To simply continue dreaming in a time where there are no dreams...Is this in itself, a victory?

Imagine what would've happened if you'd pursued your dreams earlier? Would you have been ready?

little man

There is a greedy, little, aching man inside me.  He often ruins my relationships.  With men and women.

My relationships with women are affected because of what the little man does for the men in our lives.  They like this little man.  They can relate to him. 

This man is clever and asinine.  He relies on the kindness of strangers and he takes what he wants.  He is obscene.  He is magnificent.  This is yet to be implicitly stated by anyone other than myself. 

This man was evoked by my failures, my misgivings.  He trudges on.  He's wounded but he trudges on.  He wants to prove something goddammit.  He wants you to even dare to question his ability.  This will be his fuel.

This little man is hungry.  He is starving for something more.  But that doesn't make him any less afraid.

two is the loneliest number

Emptiness.  She’d felt the emptiness for weeks now.  She felt it even before he left her.  She knew the fall would come, in this way.  Lying next to him at night, she felt so damn lonely.  She’d never felt that lonely, even when alone. 

          “Have you ever been in love?” she asked him.

          He looked away.

          “True love,” she said.

          “Maybe once,” he said. 

          “Do you love me?” she asked.

          He looked down.

          “Look at me,” she said. 

He hadn’t really looked at her for the last few months they’d spent together.  She held on.  She held on longer than she should have.  It was hard to forget who he was to her.  How safe she felt with him.  She kept thinking about how he used to look at her.  She kept thinking.

She remembered all of this and she forgot herself.  She pleaded with him.  She begged him.  Sitting across from him at the bar where they’d agreed to meet, the place they used to come when his eyes shone, she asked him why.

          “It’s not fair to you,” he said. 

          “I care for you,” she said.  “I need you to know.  I care about you, no matter what you say,” she said, tears forming.

          “I’ve been feeling so guilty,” he said, shaking his head.  “I can’t.  It’s just not fair.  I have no time to give.  It’s not fair to you.”

          “But we can make time…” she pleaded.

          “Our time is over,” he snapped.

          “Please,” she said, and felt a welling in her chest. 

          He turned his head away.

          “Can I please come with you?” she said, looking at him, her eyes searching his for a shred of tenderness.

          He turned towards her.  He closed his eyes and opened them. 

          “I just want to be with you one last time.  You make me feel safe,” she uttered.

          “You really are a masochist,” he said. 

          She looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

          “Just understand one thing,” he warned.  “I will be terrible company.”

          She nodded.

She accepted this, whatever he could give, though it wasn’t much.  

dating the "sensitive guy" can blow up in your face

I was on the verge of dumping Jason after I discovered how disappointing he was as a human being, but he bought himself some time by apologizing. He always did. Just when I was at the end of my rope, when I thought I’d had enough, he found a way to suck me back in. To make up for his misgivings, he offered to make me dinner on Wednesday. I agreed. Food was a weakness of mine.

On Wednesday I only had a few hours to spend with Jason because that night he was driving to his mother’s in Los Angeles for the Thanksgiving holiday. When I got to his apartment complex I had to wait outside for a bit. He didn’t hear me incessantly pressing the buzzer, for about three minutes. His roommate Tim began shouting for him to let me in. He casually comes out to greet me with beans on his breath. I seem to have interrupted a nice little dinner he was having with his roommate.

“You started without me?” I was aghast.

“I figured you weren’t showing up,” he replied dumbly. Nice.

The dinner was mediocre. Jason made rice, potatoes and salad…again. I conversed with Tim for the most part. He is, after all, more interesting and Jason did leave the room on several occasions to use the phone for ten minutes intervals. We lingered at the table for a while after we finished, chatting and smoking. Eventually Tim wandered off to his room to get ready for an evening out and I moved into the living room. Jason followed me to the couch. I sat in his lap.

“So you’re really driving up to your mother’s tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s expecting me. I just spoke with her earlier while we were eating dinner.”

“Yeah, I figured that. Say, why don’t you just wake up early and leave in the morning?” I asked, running my hands through his hair. “It’s pretty late. Aren’t you tired?” I asked, trying to lure him into staying.

“Yeeaah,” his voice trailed off. “I promised mother.”

“Jesus. Fine.”

“Sam, I told you I was going to my mother’s tonight.”

“I know.”

I wasn’t going to argue. It was a losing battle. Jason was never one to be forthright, or put his foot down about anything, especially when it came to his mother. He proudly admitted that he was a momma’s boy. He was an honest to Christ Cub Scout. All the t-shirts in his closet were color coded and folded into neat little squares, and he cried more than I did.

“I’m going to start some coffee,” he announced as he leaped out of my lap and bounced into the kitchen.

I decided to wait for him in his room. I wanted to get the ball rolling. We hadn’t slept together in two weeks, and I was horny as hell. I knew he would take forever to initiate sex, and we didn’t exactly have all night. He’d made that very clear. Normally when it came to having sex, I practically had to rape him. It was annoying.

He eventually finished in the kitchen and came in his room to find me. As soon as he walked in I started to press up against his crotch. I would think that if you hadn’t seen your significant other in a while, and weren’t going to see them for another few days, you would want to consider sleeping with them. But maybe that’s just me.

We began kissing. Things started getting intense, so I suggested he close his door. He started to, but stopped short, remembering he wanted to say goodbye to Tim first, in case he stepped out for the night before we finished. I asked him if this was necessary, as I honestly didn’t believe his roommate would be hurt if he didn’t get a goodbye. Guys know the code. Getting laid is priority. All else comes secondary. He insisted on saying goodbye anyway. This flabbergasted me. I started to protest.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he says. “C’mon. I have to say bye to Tim. I don’t want to be rude…God.”

In order to occupy my time while Jason ensued an elaborate goodbye with his roommate, I started checking out an instruction sheet on his dresser that came with the rubics cube he’d recently purchased. He came back in the room while I was observing the instruction sheet and got excited about the fact that I was looking at it. He showed me a cheat sheet he made during his spare time, from the rubics cube manual. I feigned interest out of politeness, nodding my head and smiling weakly. Somehow this fueled his energy regarding the rubics cube. He then proceeds to work on the rubics cube, explaining how he’s applying what he’s learned from the manual to the rubics cube. He became enthralled by it. He seemed more interested in the rubics cube than the prospect of getting laid. I sat there, blinking. He wasn’t aware that I didn’t give a shit about his rubics cube.

Breaking from my trance, I took the rubics cube away from him. A bit surprised I’ve snatched his toy away, he asked, “You don’t want to see how it works?”

“No,” I said.

Tossing the rubics cube aside, I moved in on him again and began kissing his neck. I moved my hands down his waist and start fondling his crotch. Suddenly he tears away from me, as if he’d remembered an urgent matter he needed to attend to.

“I know…we need music! I’m going to go grab the radio. I left it in the kitchen during dinner. I’ll be right back.” He started for the kitchen.

“No Jason, it’s ok. We don’t need…”

Halfway to the kitchen before I finished my sentence, he remained set on the idea of having a soundtrack for our impending sexual encounter (were it to happen). Come to think of it, he always wanted to have music on while we screwed, and I began to get the impression that the musical choices he made were always premeditated. It’s as if he had chosen a certain song to fit a certain moment, and played it with nonchalance. As if the romantic ballads constantly spewing from his speakers were randomly selected. He did, after all, always seem embarrassed when I was loud in the bedroom, which I usually was. Maybe he wanted to drown me out.

After he returned with his boom box in tow, he put on one of his favorite playlists: Jas1chillmix.

“Do you want some water?”

“NO.”

“Well I’m thirsty. I’m going to go get some water. You sure you don’t want any?”

“YES!”

He rushed off to the kitchen to get some for himself. I threw myself flat against the bed and decided he was trying to kill me.

Finally he returned after finishing with his errands. He carefully sets the glass of water down, not taking one sip from it. I stared at him in amazement as he lit a few candles on his desk. He turned to me. He was ready.

At that point, I predicted awful sex involving erectile dysfunction and me lying there like a dead fish. It was surprisingly fantastic. He lasted longer than usual and I was able to climax effortlessly. That moment certainly wasn’t set up for success, what with him resisting my advances prior and his mother psychotically calling him about fifteen times in a row while we were having sex, wondering what time he would arrive at her house. What was more surprising, he didn’t stop mid coitus and answer the phone, as he usually took her calls during our dinners and general outings. My mind was somewhat blown. That sex bought us approximately one more week.