Here is another sample of "Glass Goddesses, Concrete Walls" for those who haven't read the book yet.
Diana
& the Gun – PART 9
They
say that you only live once but I felt as if I’d lived a thousand lives. The
sad part was that so many of them weren’t good. Too many of them mirrored the
ugly parts of the places I had been. According to my birth certificate, I was
born in Brooklyn but I’ve never felt like I was necessarily from this planet at
times. I wasn’t comfortable in a world where magazine columnists, television
program directors, comedians, talk-show hosts, therapists, psychologists and
so-called relationship experts all tried to feed us their theories on what
would make us happy. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was really from Mars.
That would explain why I enjoyed my frequent visits to Venus, even though they
often ended unpleasantly. I stopped counting my scars and lost track of the
ones I’d left on other people.
“You are so strange and complicated,” Diana told me.
“How so?” I asked even though I didn’t disagree. I just wanted to
hear what she had to say.
“You can be so cold but you have the heart and soul of a poet. You
write all of these beautiful things, filled with deep, powerfully moving
emotions. I’ve cried reading some of it. How come you never speak these things?
It’s like I have to read your writing to see how you’re feeling. Why is that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been much of a talker. I express myself
better when I write things down,” I answered. That would explain why there were
so many situations I’d walked away from without giving a proper explanation for
my actions. Whenever I tried to express myself to women I was involved with,
they usually misinterpreted my meaning or twisted my honesty in ways that led
to heated arguments. The pen just always felt more natural for me and once I’d
written down my thoughts, how could anyone dispute them. I probably should have
written them all notes. It would have saved me from lots of grief.
“I’m thirsty,” she said. Then, without warning, she got up from
her seat and grabbed my bottle of rum off the dresser. Of course the gun never
left her hand so she had to open it by using her free hand to steady it while
her mouth twisted the cap. She sat down bravely on the bed next to me. I should
have fought her for the gun while she was distracted.
“You want a glass for that?” I asked. She answered by rolling her
eyes at me, putting the bottle to her lips and guzzling down a good amount of
rum, which I knew had to set her chest on fire. She coughed and fanned herself
right after. Then she turned and studied my face as if it was the last time she
would see it and needed to commit my features to memory.
“I tried but I never understood you. You’re so strange. You’re
passionate and love like the lyrics in a love song but fuck like a total
savage. I’ve often wondered if there were two different versions of you living
inside that body. Move over,” she croaked, her voice raspy from the alcohol
that just burned her throat. She had obviously felt that my eyes had lingered
too long on her pistol.
“Fine,” I answered and moved over to the opposite side of the bed,
putting more distance between us. She relaxed but I didn’t. To her delight, I
was too far away to reach for the gun without getting shot. To my dismay, I was
still in range for her aim to be pretty damn accurate.
“Before I met you, I was so sure that the last man I would ever
love in life would be my husband. Now, I care for him a little less than I used
to. I never expected to meet someone like you. I wonder all the time if it
wouldn’t have been better if I never met you. I might have preferred that
instead of going through the motions every day, missing you. That just feels
like slow death.”
“I understand.”
“Do you really? There was a time when I could never sit across
from you like this without you wanting me. Tell me, do you want me now?” she
asked, rubbing the barrel of the gun suggestively across her lips.
If Diana was referring to my desire before the first time we had
sex, she would have been right but just like most things, the act itself was a
pale shadow of the anticipation that had built up. Fantasy usually outshines
reality. In bed, she was very timid which had been frustrating. It was obvious
that she had grown accustomed to boring, routine, conventional, married sex with her husband. She was
shy about everything, so much so that I had to break her out of her shell. She
loved the things that I taught her and tried her best to keep up. She grew
wilder over time but it never felt natural. I was always the aggressor. As the
sex became more intense she would give in to my will too easily. A woman that
was as sexually strong and adventurous as I was is what I really desired. Most
of the times we’d been intimate, Diana wasn’t that at all.
“Things are different now.”
“I know that more than anyone else. Trust me.”
“It’s different between us and I’m pretty sure it can never be
what it was. Not after what I did and not after what you’re doing right now.”
“I haven’t done anything…yet,” she said after she gulped down
another mouthful of white rum. She looked like she was about to breathe fire
the way her face contorted. She was either trying to get drunk enough to stop
herself from killing me or, she needed liquid courage to go through with it.
“At least you can go back to your husband. You can go back to your
life and eventually you’ll forget me.”
“Oh, just like that huh? You think so?” she asked before she
passed me the open bottle of rum. She took off her jacket and I was shocked by
the grotesque black and purple bruise on her arm.
“Who did that to you?”
“Oh, this?” she asked, wincing as she poked it with her finger.
“My husband did this when I told him about us. He wasn’t pleased to say the
least. This is nothing. You should see the bruises on my ribs and on my back. I
guess I’m lucky that he didn’t touch my face, even though, that also means that
it wasn’t just blind rage that made him beat me. He was certainly calculating
and careful about where he hit me hard enough to leave marks. I did cough up a
lot of blood though.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“He physically hurt me but this is your fault too. I haven’t
decided which one of you to blame for all my injuries.”
“Why would you do something like that? Why would you even think
about blaming me?”
“How else am I going to explain to the police that I shot you in
self-defense?” she asked and I began to face the serious reality that I wasn’t
going to survive the night. I wished she had just shot her husband instead even
though, everything that was happening to me served me right for interfering in
their lives. “Oh, for the first time tonight I can see in your face that you
fully understand that I didn’t come here to play,” she said smugly.
“You didn’t kill your husband for beating you. Maybe you won’t
kill me.”
“Don’t bet on it. I can promise you that you’re going to get shot.
As for not killing my hubby…well, even though he put hands on me, I understand
why he did it. For a while I thought he was going to kill me. He cried like a
baby when he was done working me over. He might have ended my life if I hadn’t
lied to him and said that you and I had only been together once. I guess that
made it easier for him to cope with what I’d done,” she said.
“There’s always a difference between getting caught and
confessing. There’s also a difference between a fling, a one-time thing and a
full-blown affair.”
“Should I have told him about every time I lied to him about where
I really was when I wouldn’t answer my phone? Or, would it have been the
honorable thing to do if I told him that I let you fuck me every chance I got a
chance to see you? I can see in your eyes that you’re judging me because I told
a little white lie” she complained.
“No, I’m not. You saved his pride and probably your own life with
that lie.”
“It’s possible to love two people at the same time isn’t it?” she
asked and passed me the bottle. I took a sip of the rum before I answered.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been able to.”
There was another reason why I had never been able to give her my
all. Prior to meeting Diana, there had been a woman that had come and gone out
of my life that still held sway over my heart. Even though that woman was
probably lost to me, I still held onto hope because she was the only one who
seemed to be made specifically for me. I had spent my whole life trying to find
the proper places for odd pieces but she fit right where she was supposed to. I
was waiting patiently for what I believed was meant to be. That was probably
why I got involved in a dead-end relationship with a married woman. I knew that
Diana and I couldn’t last and I didn’t want us to. The woman I was obsessed
with easily eclipsed all of the others that came before her. I would have
waited forever. We men may fall in love less often than women but I’ve often
said that when we do, we fall harder.
***I hope you enjoyed the sample. As always, feel free to leave comments.***
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