No happy endings

   After it happened, I went right into the bathroom and pretended I was doing what people do in a bathroom. Of course, I had closed the door properly and, after a few minutes, I turned the faucet on to make water run and make them think I was washing my hands. But the truth was that I wasn’t doing any of that. I was staring at myself in the mirror, looking at a person that I knew but not really that well. I got closer to the glass and really tried to get in there, I really tried to see if there was a human behind those eyes. Maybe the one I thought I knew or maybe another, a new person that I had to get to know better.

 But no, it was me. It was me there, naked on a bathroom in which I had never been in. I decided right there that I wanted to leave but, after what was happening in there, I had no idea if anyone was going to let me leave. To be fair, they both looked like decent people, not the kind that put a lock on the door and then do something unspeakable. No, they really seemed like any other people or at least like any others that liked what they had started doing after a lot of drinks. But I did want to leave so that had to be my priority. In this day and age, I couldn’t just do as they pleased and forget myself in seconds.

 However, that was exactly what I did. I tried to forget myself for a while, trying to pretend I was some other person or that I was in some other place. It worked for short periods of time but then I had an interruption from reality and I had to start over again. But that had been a very good idea because, not much long after my escape to the bathroom, everything finished and we found ourselves catching our breaths. It was then I stepped out of that place, after arranging myself properly that is and checking that I had all my belongings on me. I know very well how rude that was of me, but there was no other way.

As I walked towards the bus stop, I tried to convince myself that was the best thing to do. After all, I didn’t even know them. I hardly knew their names and not so much more about them. I did not know what they did for a living and had no idea of the dog’s name, the one that had been sleeping in his little bed for all the time I had been in there. I didn’t get to ask how was it possible that they could afford such a nice place in such an expensive neighborhood, being only two people with, as far as I knew, fairly common incomes. But none of that was ever mention at any moment, as alcohol had played too much a role.

 I sat down at the bus stop. The place was lonely and freezing. Luckily, the next bus would pass in just a few minutes and I would be home in a rather short time, or so I hoped because of the late hour. When the bus got there, I noticed there were very few people in it at that time and the only ones there were all alone, not talking to anyone or having any kind of interaction. Somehow, I felt I belonged there at that moment, in that exact place in the world.

 When I got home, I checked my cellphone as I took off my clothes off for a second time that night. They had written me that they had loved their evening with me and would have loved for me to stay. I felt strange, wrong somehow. It was all made even weirder by the fact that the guy that wrote had a picture of their wedding as his profile picture on the app he used to contact me. It made me feel like an invader, like someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. And also, it made me feel lonely and not worthy of anything.

 I spent a few minutes in the dark, sitting on the edge of my bed, only wearing socks and briefs. I wondered about my life, my shitty little place, my horrible job and my absolute lack of friendships and real love possibilities. Instead of spending a fun night, which had been my intention all along, I was feeling horrible. Feelings of loneliness and sadness invaded my body and it was then when I moved to get under the covers and tuck myself in tightly in order for the warmth of the fabrics to make me feel a little less horrible.

 However, the mind always works more when left alone. So, I started thinking about the cute couple that I had met earlier. They had seen me at the bar, and we started drinking right then, drinking and drinking a lot. We did that for only a couple of hours and then they talked about their place and I just said “yes”, without any hesitation or doubt. I just pushed myself into something I didn’t know about, without measuring any possibility of danger or any outcomes. They had chosen me as their person for a while and it was just when I entered their place when I realized what I had become, at least that night.

 I was just a guy. I wasn’t me, with my personality and all the things that make myself the person that I am. They weren’t interested in that, so the alcohol collaborated with some part of my unconscious brain to just hide all that was me and “enjoy” myself that way. And I did, I cannot pretend I did not feel pleasure or happiness in different amounts. But it was right before running to the bathroom when I realized they just wanted a body there to be with them. I was not myself in the sense that there was no one inside that body, at least not the full me controlling everything, as it should always be the case.

 One has to do what one has to do, so I did. I made them happy or at least did exactly what they had probably thought about for a long time. I was the vessel for their imagination, for their pleasures and fantasies. And that was nice, I guess, but I have to believe someone, only one person, can also feel something for me and not only for the me that moves around the world but for the me that lives inside this body, the me that thinks and hurts and feels insane sometimes. Maybe someone can find a way to actually love me for who I am.

 But I won’t keep my hopes up. This is life, not a silly movie. There are no real happy endings.

After all, we are in love

   The first thing I did, was giving him the biggest hug I could. It was amazing how I could feel his sweater against my face, how I could feel his warmth through the fabric and hear his heart beating beneath it. It was so real I cried, both in the dream and outside of it. I don’t remember how long we stood there, but I do remember I started seeing him in other places in my dreams, just running into him casually while he was saying something nice about me or about what he felt for me. I was over the moon.

 Actually, the full moon loomed above us for most of the dream; it was quite a beautiful sight. It was also nice to be able to touch his hand and hold it out in the open, in front of all the people in campus. Or at least I think it was a campus, it didn’t look anything like the college I had been to years before. It was bigger and with more faces and nice walkways lined with trees. And we would hold hands and just talk about movies and laugh about silly gossips that we had heard about people we knew.

 I have to say that, even then, I knew he wasn’t real. I knew that I was dreaming but it all felt so real that I didn’t mind. I knew what my real life was like and I wanted to have something different for a change and it didn’t mattered if it could only be in a dream. That’s why I tried to remember every single thing, repeating in my head as I went through it, because I wanted to remember every single part of that beautiful dream. I want to memorize his face, because somehow he was more than real to me.

 We even made love and he whispered in my ear how much he wanted to make me feel pleasure. I know, maybe that’s too graphic for some or to little information for others, but I have to say that also felt amazing. I could almost say that I was moaning loudly in my room, in bed, while we were having sex in the dream. We kissed a lot and he really seemed to care for me while we were together. I think that’s what everyone one’s in a partner, someone that really cares for you and who’s not there just to be there.

 Afterwards, we lay there talking a bit. We were tired and sweaty, but we couldn’t prevent our faces from grinning and smiling. We were too happy not to express it with our souls. I remember touching his face, feeling his stubble. He kissed my hand and then hugged me and I felt I could drown in his smell. I still have in my head, and I hope it never goes away. He kissed me like no one has kissed me before and, I have to admit, that maybe no one will ever kiss like that. After all, I lived that vivid dream in a moment but that’s all it was, it was just a dream, as unique as it was.

 When I woke up, I felt really good. I was smiling and I didn’t feel tired or worn down. It was quite the opposite and it has to be said that’s not very common. I usually feel I have just arrived from running a marathon. But not that time. I knew the alarm would go off in any minute, but that wasn’t important. My brain and even my body were still with him, feeling his body against mine and every single feeling he felt towards me rushing between both our beings. No idea if that makes sense at all.

 As I was in the shower and putting on my clothes, I thought of everything I had dreamt of. Some of it was already gone, something that was bound to happen. But most of it was there, for me to think about it over and over again. As I prepared to leave home for work, I realized how silly I would sound to anyone if I told them I had fallen in love with an imaginary person, with someone that only existed in my dreams. They would think that I was going insane or something worse.

 Then again, maybe I am. Maybe it is insane to think that a person that you own mind created is simply not healthy. Even I can say that it sounds crazy but I cannot stop thinking about him and about how he made me feel. In the bus, standing up facing the window and looking at cars and buildings pass, I realize that I don’t really care about what people think or not. He made me happy and it doesn’t matter where it happened or if he was just my mind creating him to make me feel less lonely.

 I couldn’t afford not to care, not to recognize he had been there. After all, I actually thought, for a moment, that maybe my head had not created everything about him. Maybe humans are connected in ways we do not yet understand and we were connected during that time. Maybe he exists, somewhere, and maybe he’s also asking the universe what this all means. I know how all of this sounds but sometimes you just have to believe in something to keep going, in order not to crumble and just give up.

 And I have to believe the love of my life is out there somewhere and that he’s thinking of me too. I would love to know if the face I saw in my dream is the same as the one in reality, but he will surely be thinking the same thing. I’ve found myself hoping he’s not very disappointed, because I’m not exactly a top model or anything like that. But maybe worrying about such a thing is just stupid, because he probably worries too about what he looks like. If he just knew I would love give him a hug and just feel him close to me, maybe that would make his worries disappear.

 Meanwhile, real life is going on as usual. I go to work and I go back home, I sometimes cook and write and do things to pass the time. But every now and then I find myself thinking about him. However, after a while, I just think about how lonely I feel and how nice it would be to have someone close to tell him all my worries and my problems and to laugh and be idiots at the same time. I sometimes think about that and it makes me sad because and over thirty and that hasn’t happened yet.

 I’m the first one to say age doesn’t mean shit but the older you are whenever you finally get to meet that wonderful person, the less time you will have with them. And that scares me a lot, because I want more than a few good years with someone. Shit! After so many years of avoiding any kind of emotional attachment to others, I find myself in a position in which I would be ecstatic if I could feel something for someone else. It would be hard and strange and new, but it could be worth the shot.

 But life doesn’t work by wishing, or I would have met him several years ago, when I was more of an innocent kid that ever before or after. I was someone else and that guy really believed in possibilities. Me, not so much. I know that the dream is just a dream and that, even if there’s a possibility he could be real, that doesn’t mean everything would just work according to my imagination or some kind of plan. You don’t plan life because she will never let you. She’s tougher than that, always.

 Anyways, I want to keep dreaming about him. He made me happy, he made me smile. No one achieved that in a while and I want that here, with me. I know how it sounds and how it looks, but I’m the kind of tired that has to use his imagination to go forward. Reality is not the kindest to me, although it could always be worse. That’s why I dream of him, because even if things really go south, I would have someone nearby to really live with, in every single of the word. And that word means hell of a lot.

 My only hope now is that, somehow, I can see him again in my dreams. I feel like I’ve done that before so, maybe, it could happen again. Maybe this time we could go out dancing or singing before going to his place and have sex. Because that’s something I’m not willing to give up.

 I go to bed tonight thinking… No, I go to bed wishing I will see him again. And then I shed a tear and realize how silly, childish and stupid this is. But I don’t have anything else to hold on to. Real or not, I really need him right now and I just know he will come. After all, we are in love.

Being wild

      As he went down on me, I started looking up at the ceiling. I had been drinking quite a lot and then, he had rolled a marihuana cigarette in seconds and we had smoked it together while laughing about people that we had met in our pasts. We shared a lot and we knew it but, for the night, we had decided to remember certain things and not the whole picture. We hadn’t discussed it with so many words but it was clear to both of us the moment he had stepped in my apartment that night.

 It felt nice what he was doing and, I have to say, he looked better than ever. He had recently entered a gym and the results were already showing. Granted, he might never become an Olympic athlete or nothing like that, but he did look amazing, just like I remembered him from the past, or even better. Back then; he was tall but very skinny, with a beautiful body that had virtually no curves. I never complained then because our relationship was based on love and he had been my first love.

 This time around, however, as I closed my eyes out of pleasure, I knew that everything we did was simply based on lust. That love that had united us so many years ago had been dead for almost as long as we had been apart one from the other. We had lived a lot and we hadn’t spoken much through the years, only following each other on Facebook and such social networks where you can take a peak on the lives of others, almost always just to have something to regret.

 But then, we reinitiated our relationship by talking at least once every two months and then more and more often. As the time passed, we realized we had grown to be very different people socially but very alike in everything that had to do with sex. Sometimes, we would chat online for hours, talking about what we would do together if we could and things like that. I didn’t mind at all, as I had vowed to be a single man for a long while. I was certain that kind of flirting wouldn’t amount to anything.

 Him, however, had a very different life going on. As we started talking, he wouldn’t say much about himself and would often prefer to talk about me or about the times we had been dating. But eventually, he had to confess that he was not only dating someone, but that he had been doing so for more than a couple of years. Furthermore, he hinted to me once that his partner had proposed to him with a ring and everything one would imagine, but that they had agreed on marrying after they were able to afford living together and everything that came with that.

 At first, I had decided to slowly pull away from that friendship of sorts we had developed. For a while, I couldn’t understand why someone that was almost married would talk to me like he did. Furthermore, it was outstanding to read how he described my body with a precision I would never imagine a surgeon to have, much less a boyfriend I had spent less than half a year with. It scared me but at the same time it felt very flattering, as no one else was telling me the things he said so often.

 Then, one day, he wrote to me on my cellphone one afternoon. It was a weekday and he just said “Hi”. I said the same thing and then we engaged on the typical conversation one has with any living person: we talked about what was going on with both our lives, what we were doing right then and there and, finally, the weather and such things most people don’t really care about. Then, after about fifteen minutes of filler, he finally said what he had been wanting to say for a while: “I’m alone in my house now…”

 I immediately understood what he meant with that. He clearly wanted me to drop by and have sex with him. In minutes, he confessed he had been thinking of me for some time and that he wanted to feel again what he had felt with me back in the day. He was very flattering, telling me a bunch of stuff I was very glad to read. He told me I had been the best lover he had ever had and that my body was ingrained in his memory forever. He said all the right words, in the right order.

 However, I was reluctant because I remembered his almost husband. And I have to confess something: I have not been an angel all my life. I have been known to go to bed with people that had previous engagements, me knowing about the whole thing. The difference this time was that I actually knew him and I had been in a relationship with him. Somehow, that changed it all and I had to lie in order not to meet him for sex. One part of me wanted to but my true soul gained the upper hand.

 Not that my decision changed anything. Especially not after, one night during a shopping spree with a friend, I stumbled upon my former boyfriend and his fiancée. We couldn’t just pretend we hadn’t run into each other, so we decided to shake hands and talked a little in the middle of the mall. I don’t know how, but I ended up chatting it up with his partner and I have to say I found him to be a very nice person. He wasn’t the type of man I had envisioned for my former lover, but he was undeniable a good person and I understood why that relationship had formed and had lived through the years.

 However, I had no idea why the guy wanted to cheat on that nice man. I didn’t understand it at all and didn’t understood either when he called me out of the blue in order to invite me to a “game night” at their place. According to my former boyfriend, it had been his fiancée’s idea. I struggled with the decision of whether to go or not but finally the decision was taken for me, when the fiancée himself called me on my cellphone and begged for my presence. After that, I couldn’t say no.

 The evening, I have to say, was pretty tame. They drank conservatively and their jokes were just like their level of general fun: just average. Other friends of theirs were there, thank God, so the evening passed without a hitch until my ex-lover pulled me aside on the kitchen, touched my genitals over the fabric of the pants I was wearing, and told to my ear that he really wanted to fuck around with me. When he realized nothing could happen there, he told me the story he had created for his almost husband.

 He hadn’t told him that I was a former lover or boyfriend. He told him we had gone to college together and that we had gone out several times together because of mutual friends. But his lies proved unnecessary, because his fiancée never asked anything. He was being a gracious host and a nice person overall, not drilling into people’s lives or anything like that. That made me feel even worse when I got home. So that’s why I’m staring at the ceiling right now, trying not to think a lot or feel much.

 When he came back to kiss me on the lips, I did it in a very distracted fashion. He had come in to my apartment out of nowhere, as his fiancée had left the city for a couple of days because of a death in the family. He was in mourning, who know where, as the love of his life was getting rid of all his clothes and my clothes as well. Yes, I felt guilt but then I realized, or told myself at least, that none of that was my doing. I wasn’t the one doing something wrong, or so I told myself.

 As I had sex with him, I tried to dedicate my senses to the moment. The marihuana kicked in right when it had to. I heard his moans and I felt the heart of his body very close to mine. And we spent hours doing the same thing, in different ways.

 When he left early the following day, I realized that I was one kind of person. And I have to tell everyone that I’m not ashamed of that. I am the person that fucks someone that wants it and I’m the person that does something knowing the consequences and ramifications it could have, if any.