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.

Pet party

   As Mary got out of the bank, she realized there was only one more chance to get her dreams to come true. If she couldn’t work it out this time, she would be done for good, as she had nothing to fall back on. She had quite her job in a prestigious company and now she had withdrawed every single penny she had saved. Once she got him, she started making plans for every single cent, knowing how she would spend her money in order to make her dreams come true.

 Since she was a little girl, Mary had a tendency never to get what she wanted. It was always some other kid, more likely her sister, who got all the attention, all the love, all the gifts and presents and everything from everyone whereas she had to settle with whatever landed on her lap, basically. The times she complained, her parents argued that she was jealous of her sister and that she shouldn’t be such a nasty little girl. That kind of response was the main reason why she hadn’t spoken to any of them in such a long time.

 She wrote on a small yellow notebook every single plan she had in order to make it all a success: she had to invest some money buying stuff and then there would be a time of a few months in which she would have to reduce the amount of money she spent drastically in order to survive and have enough time to be successful. She had read several books and informed herself of what she had to do, so it wasn’t like she had rushed herself anywhere.

 As per usual, no one would help her achieve what she wanted. Mary had broken up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago and they didn’t spoke at all after that. It had been a very healthy break up, when she had accepted her mistakes and he had been very surprised she hadn’t attacked him or tried to make him stay. The truth was that Mary had changed quite a lot and simply had no time for such behavior now.

 After she quit her job and decided t be independent, she also realized there would be hours and hours of free time as her business began to from so she decided to exercise at home and also try some kind of diet. It would help a lot to spend less money and it would make her a little more agile and awake, what she needed urgently because of her new lease on life.

 Even if people hadn’t seen it, she had always been a very careful young woman, with her money and what she chose to say and not to say. Mary had never been distracted but rather very focused and driven. She knew most men didn’t like that and her family thought she was just jealous of everyone so her achievements had always been clouded by the shadow of someone she really wasn’t.

 The idea was pretty simple. Since she had been very young, her ambition had always been to have a pet. She had tried to make her parents buy her a dog but that didn’t happen until she was fifteen and her sister got one but she was twelve and wouldn’t really take care of the animal so Mary ended up having to feed him, and groom him and do everything for him in order to be healthy.

 She noticed back then that the food pets got could really use some work. They didn’t seem to be really delicious and she even tried one to check out the flavor. Her sister saw her doing that and immediately told her parents who told her she was disgusting and that they wouldn’t let the dog near her if she did it again. And yet, she kept looking at his toys, the ones that they sold at the stores and how the dogs interacted in the park and, even back then, she had the idea.

 Only now she was making it a reality. She had many designs and recipes kept on that yellow book, thousands of small idea she could bring to life if she only had the money and the energy to do it. She had not tried it before because she was certain the idea would fail but now it was different. Maybe it was that she had heard about her sister recently and was jealous of her, as they had always claimed. Or maybe it was because of that man that tried to have his way with her at work. Whatever reason it was, she was thankful for it.

 She bought ingredients, fabric, even clay to do small versions of the toys she would like to produce. She tried the food with the pets in her building or at the park wearing a vest and a hat she had sewed herself with the potential name of her company: Pet Party. Some people were interested and happily gave their dogs some of the treats and it was surprising to see how they all wanted more. Of course, there was no sugar or nothing like that in them, only vegetables and various proteins.

She submitted her toy ideas to several factories and many of them rejected her ideas because she thought she was joking or because they didn’t think her designs were good. But she finally found one specialized in pets and they were thrilled to work with her ideas.

 Everything was slowly falling in to place. She was making some dog’s clothes by herself, she had many ideas for smaller animals like rabbits and hedgehogs and also for larger ones like horses. She really had thought her idea through and was hoping to be able to achieve the dream of her life. She wanted to prove herself that what people had always told her was just a lie and that she was a good person and a smart one too.

 Right then though, her parents made an appearance. Of course, they criticized every single thing she was doing, they hated the fact that she was doing a diet and that she had gotten slimmer, saying she just wanted to be like her sister. They talked about her all the time, telling her how successful she was as an actress and the fact that she had paid for their trip, including the hotel and business class in flights and all those things they had never enjoyed because of having two kids.

 Mary did not say anything, trying not to let them get to her. However, her father found her yellow book and started reading it. He mocked her for her ideas and told her that she had to realize those perfect businesses where everything goes perfect doesn’t exist and that they are only achieved, if they exist, by people that have talent and that special thing that she clearly didn’t have.

 She didn’t love them but in that moment she understood how devastating it truly was to have always been a disappointment and a mistake for her parents. She let them know how much she had tried to be a good daughter and how awful and despicable they were. Mary told them about every single time in her life in which she only needed her parents to love her and she had to do everything by herself because no one got her back, no one was there to support her at all.

 They tried to argue but she just told them she was done with them for good and not to talk to her ever again. She pushed her out the door and asked her building’s security guy to come and fetch them and never let them in again. Same went to her sister, who she never heard about anyway, unless it was trough his parents. She just quit to having a family and it was surprisingly a very easy thing to do for her.

 Six months after quitting her job, her business had begun taking off. She received a lot of orders for her pet food and also for the dog clothes she had designed. The toys were a bit cheap in their build but people bough them anyway. She kept an online store for a while until she was able to pay the rent of a small store not far from her house. In a single year, she had won much more than in the rest of her life. She hired an assistant and Pet Party was an example of good planning and success.

 Mary loved the fact that she made people happy. She wanted to make everyone feel that their pets deserved better, as she had deserved better all her life and had needed a push to just do whatever it was that she needed to do. And she was grateful for it. She had never been happier, even if she had to give up her blood relatives in the process.