Moonlight Girlfriend

The first time you kissed me

Was on the backseat of a car

After a gig.

Our friends were sleeping on the front seats

And we were on the backseat

Sharing a blanket

My blanket.

And that moment

Both of us, sharing a blanket in the backseat

In the dark, trying to sleep

Was the most beautiful thing I could ever have imagined.

We were intoxicated

From alcohol and dancing

The streetlights shined through the parking lot

And illuminated your sleeping face

That I couldn’t help keep staring at.

I loved your face.

I loved your sad eyes and your hands

And your mouth

More than I can possibly say.

I couldn’t tell you

I knew you could never feel the same way I did about you

I had heard the way you spoke about “girls like me”

Right next to me

As if to make sure I heard exactly what you thought of me.

And at that time

I thought you were right

I thought I wasn’t deserving of love

But I loved you, anyway

In ways I could never tell

And, despite that, there I was

Trying to sleep next to someone

Who said they despised people like me

But who in the few hours prior

Couldn’t keep their hands off me.

I was content

Just looking at you

And feeling you next to me.

But you had to do it.

You had to search for my hand

In the darkness, under the blanket

You had to touch it

Softly, slowly

As if feeling a new texture for the first time.

As your fingers moved slowly up my arm

I was completely frozen

I let it happen

I had to let it happen

I was confused, dumbfounded

I was used to suffering from desiring people

I wasn’t used to people desiring me and acting upon it

You moved slowly

And hungrily

In ways I wasn’t used to

But desperately wanted

When you kissed me

My lips were chapped

Hard and messy

From too much alcohol, anxiety and disbelief

But yours were soft and hungry

And wanted mine.

I caressed your face

You put your hand under my shirt

And as the tension grew between us

I found out the kind of hands you had

For someone as thoughtful and controlled as you were

You had wild, wandering hands

Touching and holding on into all kinds of places you didn’t want to want

And I realized the body you despised so

The tongue you said no man should ever kiss

Was making you very,

Very

Hard.

I didn’t know what to do anymore.

I bit you.

I bit your lower lip and sighed

And our lips parted ways.

You didn’t like that.

For a moment, I woke up from my dream-like state

I realized something was wrong

There was something else in your touch

Besides hunger and urgency

And that something

Was calculation.

You were still pretending to be asleep

Even in that state

You never opened your eyes, not once.

I caressed your face, once again

And you grabbed my hand

Not sweetly, no

You grabbed my hand like I had missed a clue

And you planted it

Right on top

Of your beautiful, glorious hard-on

A work of art of my own making.

But something was still wrong.

I grabbed your hand instead.

I held tight to it

And caressed it gently

As if saying

“I know. But no.”

You didn’t like that, also.

You jerked your hand off mine

An planted it

Right on top of my

Drenched underwear

For which you were solely responsible

Aggressively, assertively

As if I had the responsibility of accepting it

And letting it happen.

Once again I took your hand in mine

And caressed it

As if saying

“I want it, too. But no.”

I was naive at the time.

I thought someone who had the intimacy level of jamming his hand down my pants

Would also have the intimacy level of understanding that I might want something else.

So, you did resign yourself to your fate

Turning the other way

And leaving me facing your back

A little colder

A little confused.

I cuddled up against you

You barely acknowledging my presence

But I was still high

On the feeling

Of being loved by the person I loved

At long last.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

I lied awake, listening to you breathing

Looking at your shape in the golden lights

Wondering if you were actually sleeping or still pretending to sleep.

Morning came

Slowly and surely

And all my hope and happiness and yearning

Vanished with the morning light.

When you woke up

I could swear you were avoiding me

You were sitting next to me in the backseat

But at the same time

You were as far from me as humanly possible.

I wanted to talk with you about what had happened

You pretended to sleep, once again.

Everything you said to me

During that trip home

Was half a dozen knives

Dressed as words

Meant to put me in my place, once again.

Once we arrived at my door

I had to know

Where you stood in all this

So I asked you

If you remembered anything about last night at all

And

You answered me

That you had slept all night long

And remembered nothing

And that was all I needed to know

About the kind of person you were.

I decided, consciously

To believe your lie

Because I couldn’t forget it

And I spent the next few days in bed

Trying to believe the lies

Of a boy who just wanted to try out the girl he’d never introduce to his friends as his girlfriend

So he’d only love her in the dark

Where girls like her belong

His moonlight girlfriend.