Strawberries & grass

I went to Target.  I had to buy something and I remembered I needed soap.  I have to use unscented, plain soap because my skin is sensitive.  But sometimes I want to smell pretty.  I started looking at the other kinds…the vanillas and burnt sugars, orange blossom, cocoa butters, and rose petals.  Strawberry.  It smelled sweet, light. The bottle read, “for smooth, sexy skin”.  I wondered how much it mattered if I were smooth and sexy for no one.  I bought it anyway.  In the next aisle, there were soaps specifically for men.  I wondered (out loud) why but I guess it was necessary.  They all smelled the same—like waterfalls or forests.  Like men.  I like that smell.  Then there were some that smelled like heaven and I thought I could fall into love or something like that. Then, for some reason, I thought about you. I thought about you and how you smell like grass.  Like clean, fresh cut, spring grass.  Sometimes like the grass you would bring to light up, blow smoke. But most times like earth.  Strong. Solid. Good. I remembered the smell left on my pillow after you would leave, wallowing in my sheets when you were gone.  I thought about climbing into my bed tonight smelling like strawberries and immersing myself in my memories.  I remembered everything.  I remembered that one time after a while had passed until I saw you again.  I had told you during the hiatus that things weren’t the same between us. You accepted it and were worried we wouldn’t be cool.  We’d be cool, I assured you.  Then later I said you could come over. Honestly, I’d missed sleeping next to you. My intention wasn’t sex and I told you that.  You just wanted to see me.  You laid in my bed and I asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?” You said, “Like what? Like I like you?” I blushed but I didn’t say anything. Lights out.  I lay next to you. Face to face. I closed my eyes. I felt the heat from your body.  I moved closer when you moved closer.  Our noses touched. Your hands went up my arms and held my face.  Then our lips were centimeters apart and the magnetic force pushed them together, creating an explosion of desire.  I wanted you. Not physically, no, more than that.  In that moment I wanted to be with you in every way possible. We didn’t have sex but the intimacy was better than that.  I hope you know that.  I don’t know what things are like now but it’s hard to forget that part.

They Say I’m…

bellasteffani:

Always running to solitude. i’m

Never just hanging, or in the mood

To be a part of the crowd;

Is it such a sin to want to be

Secluded from

Others? maybe i just can’t stand the

Company, or maybe

I don’t feel like handling the noise.

As astounding as it may seem, maybe I just

Like to be alone.

             

Damage Control

Apologies are unacceptable.

There are no sorries for what crimes

have not been committed.

But you listen, expecting me to lament, 

to acknowledge wrongdoings I have not done.

So I perform a ritual of controlling the damages

caused by others, both metaphorically and literal.

I tip-toe around your questions and accusations,

bob and weave through clauses of love

and pauses of lust—

somewhere between heaven and hell—

caught up in your rough exterior,

a testament to what you’ve been through.

But I never accomplish much.

You never let me in.

So I say I’m sorry

for never being what you want me to be

in hopes you’ll see who I am

and that I love you despite your damages.

The Blame Game

This is a new short story I just started.  This is all I’ve written so far so…let me know what you think.  Thanks! :D

The Blame Game

Sitting in the waiting room at the clinic makes you look at life with a whole new perspective.

I was trying to be as inconspicuous as I could but I still felt like everyone knew why I was there. How you can even be inconspicuous in a clinic is beyond me, but it was worth a try.  I kept trying to convince myself that there was no way anybody knew I was there because of an STD. Right?  

There was this one kid who just stared at me the whole time. She wore glasses that were too big for her face and made her eyes look huge.  They kept slipping off her runny nose and every time she sniffled she pushed them back up with her palm.  It was disgusting. Her mother was young, maybe my age or younger, preoccupied with her cell phone.  At one point I tossed an old issue of Parenting magazine in their general direction, faking like I dropped it by accident, hoping that the mother would start paying attention to her sickly child, or at the very least the kid would be distracted and quit looking at me. There were mostly older people waiting too, one man who couldn’t stop coughing, sounded like he was going to regurgitate a lung or something. 

Jared text me asking me how it went. I replied that I was still waiting.  He “LOL”ed me and told me I should have insurance. I knew it was a bad idea telling Darrell that I might have caught something but it just slipped. We’d been at the bar and we’d hit a lull in our aimless conversation.  Well, really his rant about Brianica (yes, that’s her real name. My best guess was that her mother wanted to name her Brianna and Monica at the same time) putting him on what he called “pussy restriction” or something.  I wasn’t really paying attention but he was apparently irate about it. And then I’d blurted, “You ever had gonorrhea?”

Darrell had paused for a split second but slowly raised his glass of beer to his mouth and sipped, looking at me through slitted lids the entire time. “Man, what the fuck?”

“Nevermind.”

“No, no, what are you talking about?  You think you got something?”

I’d shrugged, not wanting to talk about it anymore but there was nothing I could do to avoid the conversation.  That’s one thing about Darrell: he didn’t know when or how to let things go.  

He had started to laugh uncontrollably and I had tried to ignore him.  “Oh, boy.  Amanda, huh?”

I had cringed slightly at the mention of her name and looked into my almost empty glass. I shrugged.

Darrell just shook his head. “What makes you think it’s gonorrhea?” He paused thoughtfully and took another sip of his beer. “I told you, you can’t trust them mixed girls.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I hadn’t meant to sound so defensive and he’d looked taken aback, a slow smirk creeping onto his face. “I mean, whatever. And I don’t think it’s gonorrhea.  I don’t know what it is. I just know it ain’t right.” The truth was I had Googled STD symptoms and I did think that I had gonorrhea but there was no way I was gonna tell Darrell.  I had to get a second opinion anyway.

He’d chuckled then, downing the last of his beer and signaling the bartender for two more. Then he’d said nonchalantly, “Yeah, I had gonorrhea before.  It wasn’t nothing.  Got it when Brianica was pregnant, but don’t tell her.  That one chick at the club.”

Another thing about Darrell was that he referenced random events and expected everyone to remember the exact one he was talking about.  We’d been to the club a million times while Brianica was pregnant and we met a lot of chicks and Darrell probably slept with more than half of them. I’d refrained from asking him which chick and which club and on what night; it really didn’t matter. 

“It just burns a little when you pee and there’s some stuff that comes out of your dick.  You go to the clinic and they give you antibiotics and then you’re good to go.”

Telling Darrell was just like writing a public status on your Facebook page.  In the span of 24 hours all my friends knew and a few of my co-workers knew and I was pretty sure the kid with the huge, creepy eyes and snot nose knew too. I was surprised my mother hadn’t called me yet.

“Malachi Williams.” 

I looked up at what I assumed was a nurse standing at the entrance to the hall of examination rooms. She was dark-skinned with a tall gold beehive on top of her head and she had the longest, brightest nails I’d ever seen on any nurse.  I didn’t trust her and hesitated following her. Her name tag read Wanita Lewis.  I wondered if her parents named her that on purpose or if they couldn’t spell Juanita. They probably didn’t know it was Spanish. I had to tell myself to stop being so judgmental.  Amanda and I had a discussion about that once.

  Wanita took me to an empty examination room.  She smiled and told me someone would be in shortly before leaving me alone in the cold room.  The echo of the door’s dull thud as it shut and the affirming click of the knob left me feeling more isolated than alone.

I didn’t know what amount of time constituted “shortly” but I thought it was too much.  In the waiting room at least there were other people to distract me.  The examination room was so technical and impersonal that I had no choice but to go inside my own head. I tried not to, tried to focus my attention on my surroundings, but the medical equipment and anatomy posters only made me think about science and sex and Amanda.

The first time I saw her was at a house party and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.  I was pretty sure everyone else thought the same but to me it was more than just physical.  She was beautiful the way nature was beautiful, subtle yet uncontested. I was in the kitchen with Jared and Darrell and I saw her walk into the living room.  She had on a dark green peacoat and her curly, golden brown hair was sitting on top of her head like a mountain of tinted cotton, in what she later described to me as her best attempt at a ponytail. She’d caught my eye and I couldn’t look away fast enough before she smiled and motioned for me to follow her up the stairs, which I’d done.  And the rest was history. 

The door opened and a short lady peeked inside.  She smiled when she saw me sitting on the examination bed and entered the room.  “Hi, I’m Doctor Monroe.” She walked over to the desk, reading the papers in my file, her expression unreadable.  “Malachi, it says you’re here for an STI test.” She looked up at me as she settled in the rolling chair.  It was a statement but Dr. Monroe pulled her chair forward and waited expectantly for me to respond.

I cleared my throat, covering my mouth and avoiding her eyes.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay.” She made a note on my paperwork.  “So, tell me what’s been going on.”

Again, she waited for me to speak and I didn’t know what to say.  It took me a few seconds to realize she was asking about my symptoms. 

Talking to Dr. Monroe felt a little like talking to my mother.  They were both small-framed with cropped hair and round-rimmed glasses. Once, during her subtle interrogation into my sordid actions, I slipped up and called her “Mom”.  She just laughed it off, though, so I guessed it wasn’t that bad.  After she had all the information she needed, Dr. Monroe asked me to pull my pants down.  

“Don’t worry, whatever you’ve got, I’ve seen before,” she said as she flexed her latex gloved fingers. If the gesture was meant to make me feel better, it didn’t work.  I had no choice but to oblige, since that was what I’d came for.

The procedure didn’t take long but it was painful as hell.  If you’ve never had to have it done, consider yourself lucky.  I’m not going to go into detail but it involved a long stick with a Q-tip looking thing on one end and you can probably figure out the rest.  When she was done, Dr. Monroe took off her gloves and bundled up the plastic wrapped samples.  She smiled, told me to get dressed, and said she’d be back in a few minutes.

As I pulled up my boxers and jeans, I thought at least the hard part was over.  There was relief in knowing that I’d taken responsibility.  I actually felt that whatever I thought I had was cured just by me going to the clinic and getting tested. That false hope was quickly diminished when Dr. Monroe returned and stated that the results would be in in two weeks but she suspected I had gonorrhea and that I should start taking an antibiotic, which she prescribed.  She also suggested I cease having unprotected sex with current partners and that I should advise them to be tested as well.

I wanted to tell her there was only one and I definitely was sure I got it from her and that I knew I was being stupid to have unprotected sex in the first place but that I’d trusted her and wanted to be her everything and felt that lack of protection brought us closer together because it felt good on all levels, not just physical and that I didn’t know how to tell her because I wanted her to love me.  But I didn’t say that.  I thanked Dr. Monroe and left the clinic with a little less self-respect and $35 poorer than I had been.

I always fall in love…

with ART. 

Doesn’t matter what it is—a picture, dancing, a movie, a song, words on white paper, language…it’s just amazing. And beautiful.  Makes me want to create something as beautiful…makes me want to be as beautiful. Art makes me feel like changing the world. What does it make you feel like?