I was Heralded by the Angels of Sex
She turns her back on me and breathes out some words that I can’t hear.
‘What?’ I ask in a voice that’s as polite as I can muster.
‘I said “I don’t understand you.”’ She sighs. ‘It’s not like you’ve never made a mistake.’
She’s got the nerve to blame me for this. In her mind, she’s working out the reasons why this is my fault. Now, she’ll twist everything around so it’s because I didn’t buy her fucking flowers.
She turns back to face me and I can see that she’s crying. Her mascara is running down her face and old habits are telling me I should do something. What am I supposed to do? What she’s done fucked me up in ways that I’m yet to begin to fathom, so where does she find the guts to be the one seeking solace?
As per usual, this is all about her. I hurt her. I mistreated her. There is no way (ever!) that I’m going to forgive her. But something, somewhere is wrong. I’m supposed to stand here, and act cold to her tears but right now, I can feel the anger, hatred and utter disgust melt away to loneliness.
Instead of just standing there, doing nothing to comfort her, I find myself doing something quite the opposite.
I lean over and put my arm around her shoulder. It isn’t a hug, and there’s no way that it’s going to become one. It’s just lying there gently as if she isn’t there at all. It’s a token movement. It makes me the good guy. It gives me the moral high ground. It’s just a part of the big game that she has set us up to play. If I comfort her, I win.
Then, she rests her weight on me from the wrong direction so that I have to push myself back on her to stop from falling over. She takes this as me pulling her tighter. It isn’t, I’m just trying to hold myself up.
She lifts her chin and looks at me with red, wet, mascara-smeared eyes because she thinks I’ve forgiven her. And I haven’t. I still hate her.
She’s wearing one of my jumpers and she lifts her arm and rubs her runny nose right along one of the sleeves. They are usually rolled up high on her arms because the jumper is too big for her. Today, though, they droop low over the ends of her hands. This is her showing me how sad she is, she doesn’t even have the energy to roll them up.
She thinks that me looking into her eyes means that I want to kiss her. And I don’t, I’m just trying to work out what she’s thinking.
She thinks that me kissing her back as deeply as she kisses me means that I need her. And I don’t, it’s just one last kiss to say good-bye, to leave nearly three years of my life behind.
She thinks that me running my hand up under her jumper (my jumper!) and tracing circles on her back with the tip of my finger means that I want to fuck her. And I really don’t.
We rip at clothes and fall onto her bed and all I can think is how much I want to hurt her.
I bite her shoulder and she arches her back and pushes up into me. I grab at her flesh and try to tear it with my blunt fingers and she wraps her legs around me. I push myself inside her as hard as I can. She groans and falls backward.
I fuck her and for the first time ever I don’t give a shit about her. Before today we’d always made love but now, now we’re just having sex. It’s bestial, to match the beast that she’s become.
She’s screaming at me the whole time, but never to stop. It’s rape, but she consents. I leave deep bruises in her back, her arms, and her thighs. On her shoulders, a small trickle of blood flows from where I’d bitten her. When I cum, she pushes up to meet me, and I don’t know if she was having her own orgasm or just pretending but I couldn’t care less either way.
I tire and lay on top of her, glowing in my triumph, until I feel some words rising in my throat. There’s no place for them here—this is sex, not love—so I push them down.
They rise again, and again I push them down and then they rise a final time and I can’t stop them and I’m just too tired to fight.
‘I love you.’
I’m facing her with the side of my head on the bed and my mouth close
to her ear so she squirms out from under me slightly to see my face. She’s
smiling.