You Can't Hurt Me No More

Your full breasts always felt just right in my hands. Big and heavy, but not a bit wasted. Soft and supple like nothing else, not even any other breasts, and I even used to worry I was paying them too much mind until you told me how you loved the attention I lavished on them.

Our room, our bed...just as safe and comforting as your breasts when we were wrapped up in it together. At least that's how that light up in the bedroom window looks to me now. A postage-stamp beacon to the past, a precious glimpse at a dream that came true for a little while. Even just the little patch of ceiling I can see offers all that -- sparse but real, it makes it so easy to imagine the rest.

How I'd love to lavish your breasts right now, just one more time for old time's sake! The way you used to moan as I worked them into a lather -- I can almost hear it over the white noise of the black night out here. I can almost feel the warm, dark safety of our bed from out here under the fluorescent lamps of the railroad bridge.

It wouldn't end well, that I know. Nothing was ever going to be resolved, not really. Now that's over, just as much of a bittersweet memory as your kiss and your breasts and your white-girl ghetto talk. You can't hurt me no more, babe. You can't make love to me no more either, but at least you can't hurt me. You might be safe and warm up there and I might be free of your pissed-off hectoring, but don't tell me you don't miss my caresses!

I wonder now, as the train rumbles above me and the liquor store down the block is locking up for the night and the tipsy college kids stumble past me on the corner, did you ever notice how I often kneaded them in rhythm with the clickety-clack when it roared past our window? Probably not, the way you used to get so beautifully worked up when I caressed them just right. I had us all wrapped up in our little cocoon of joy.

I had us all wrapped up. Not you. Us. It was fleeting even then, and even the afterglow was often spoiled with another round of arguing about something. But it was worth all the fighting when we had our clothes on for the way we burned so brightly when they were off, don't you think? Nothing like that since then and I suppose there never will be, but the memories are worth it.

I think.

That's why I'm down here, gazing up across the overpass at the light on in our window -- always our window, even if I'll never be welcome in that room again -- wondering just what's going on in there while life goes on in the rainy night out here.

Is he doing that to you now? Whoever he is? Heaven knows there will be another by now, knowing you! Do you notice it this time around? Is it half as good as it was with me? Well, you told me yourself it isn't, no one ever was. But I'm glued to your window up there all the same, the light too bright against the black sky and the inarticulate illumination when the train rumbles through. The early spring rain isn't hurting me none, not like my jealousy for our past.

Our past. His present.

Your present with him. Your present for him? Certainly not his present for you. Not if he knows what's in store when it comes to living with you.

Is there even a 'he' up there? Or are you out on the town for the evening? Probably, knowing you, but it's not like you to leave the light on. No wasting electricity when there are starving kids in Africa, and all that stuff.

Whether you're there or not, the bright light comforts me. It's a beacon that's closed to me, down here outside the bakery where even the morning shift won't be in for a few hours -- remember those cranberry muffins? -- but it tells me all I need to know just the same. Whatever you're up to in there, whether he's there or not, even if the two of you are stark naked, he's not taking my place just now. After all, it's too bright for intimacy.

For your kind of intimacy anyway. You know I remember how you'd never do it with the lights on. Probably you remember how I longed to try it, to see your full glory as well as I could hear and feel it just for once, to fully appreciate the clefts of your vulva and the lovely curls that only just cloaked it, but you just wouldn't hear of it. No matter how much praise I lavished on your body, and every last bit of it was sincere, you just had to have it dark. Dark but for the sliver of the streetlamps through the curtains when we drew them, the glare when we didn't, and the wonderful reflections of the train cars when they roared past. But that's not the light memory I cherish most of all.

No, I cherish the bathroom light, when I was under the covers and you had the bedroom door ajar. A poor couple's nightlight, a contrast to show just how dark and warm and safe I was in your bed, a promise that in minutes it would be just you and me and the screech of the train that we did learn to sleep through most of the time. Our humble little corner of the world, and ours alone for those wonderful hours. Such a lovely light, even your curt dismissal -- "whatever, Mister Drama!" -- when I told you how comforting it was, didn't make it any less comforting.

That nasty attitude of yours? That's what's comforting now. Me out here in the rain, you in there with him, or at least him being welcome in my old bed now while I'm just the guy you might call to whine to when he takes off on you like you took off on me, and for all I know the two of you are giving one another naked oil massages and having such a laugh at my expense...your attitude, your dismissiveness, your abrasiveness, that makes it all worthwhile.

Because he gets to put up with that now, not me.

No more fighting like cats and dogs every time the lovemaking is over with, no more going to bed angry, no more guilt trips about disrespecting the poor when I admire a Ferrari passing in the street, no more whining from you when I'm too tired to make love, no more hassling me about my attitude about my parents, no more griping about the train when you were the one who just had to live in this neighborhood years before you'd be able to afford a decent place here...now it's all his problem. Call it a hunch you haven't found your soulmate yet and this one will be just as much a fixer-upper as I was. Or that he's another one of your train wrecks, only after a green card or a baby, or already married and forgot to tell you. Or that he sometimes gets too tired to make love just like I did, and you give him just as hard a time as you did me.

Too tired to make love -- it happened, and yet now I wonder how? How, when that was the one thing about us that worked?

It worked, as long as I showed but didn't try to tell, like with the bathroom light. As long as I understood you thought all my pontificating on the wonder of you was just so much bullshit. As long as I accepted the act of it all was the only communication you valued at all. As long as I forgot everything I thought I knew about women and talking with them about how it felt.

So after a misstep or two like with the bathroom light, I didn't tell you.

I didn't tell you how magnificent that first look at your body was in the pale moonlight that evening in May, how I'd feared it would be horribly awkward seeing you naked when we'd been friends for a year and more, but your utter confidence and the smile when you watched me getting hard and guided me into your pussy put me totally at ease. I didn't tell you how magical it was hearing your screeches and yelps for that very first time, or how it was just as magical the next umpteen times we got to share it.

But I'm pretty sure I showed you. Night after night all that summer, I showed you. I showed you I was good for a summer, huh? Just imagine the heights a long, cold winter could have inspired us to in your bed! Imagine us in a blizzard, warm beneath the covers, utterly content with the chance to play to our hearts' content...but you just had to move on.

I didn't tell you what a thrill it was to run my fingers through your pussy hair. You wouldn't have believed me, not the way you apologized for even having it that first night. I wonder, does he push you to shave or get it waxed? Do you do it? You said once you came to like it. "It's so erotic to look down and see a triangle!" I hope he appreciates your triangle like I did. Not just playing in it, but looking at it, the way it fit so beautifully between your hips, the beautiful mystique it implied, the hungry beautiful woman in her lair. I only hope she's found someone who appreciates that hunger for all it is. Meantime, I enjoy the memory of your triangle eating me alive and sucking me dry and loving every last out-of-control moment of it.

I didn't tell you what a thrill it was each and every time you enveloped me within, how delicious it felt to be trapped under you while you rode me into the clouds again and again. I didn't tell you how I never got tired of watching your breasts flop about or occasionally reaching out to tease them while you rocked, or how much I loved flitting at your clit with my fingers so we'd come together. I didn't tell you how endearing it was to ask you ever so discreetly that first time if I could finger you, only to have you tell me you'd always wanted that. I certainly didn't tell you how beautiful it was once I did get to tease you from within with my two fingers. I didn't need to, not when I came back to do it again so very many times, and you so eagerly welcomed me to it.

I didn't tell you how your skin against mine prickled in the loveliest way, far beyond our danger zones down below even when they were intertwined. I didn't tell you how the way my balls slapped up against you in rhythm did nothing for me but it turned me inside out when you said you liked it. I didn't tell you how deliciously erotic it was to sleep nude with you still in your nightie or how I'd have bought some pajamas if you'd have enjoyed peeling them off half as much as I enjoyed undressing you. I didn't tell you how sure I was you made a point of tossing and turning extra hard on nights you couldn't sleep, so you'd wake me up and we could make love. After all, you might've stopped doing it.

Do you do that to him, too? Just what are you doing in there anyway with the light on? Not chatting with him, I'm sure. You never did that for this long. On the phone to someone new? I'll bet that's it. If only you knew your old standby was down here just waiting...but then I'd have to explain myself. And how could I do that?

I can't. There's no excuse for invading your privacy and our memory like this.

I'm not missing anything anyway, not with the light still on up there. You told me once you're a private person. I don't buy that, but I do know you always pulled the shade to undress. So you're not undressing now.

It's not the undressing for the night that I miss the most anyway. It's getting dressed with you in the morning. The way you put your bra on backwards and then slid it around, and the clueless way I just had to ask the first time, Does everybody do it that way? People with big boobs do, you said. I've been lucky enough to confirm that with a couple of other women since then, but they're history now too. And yet, they don't haunt me the way you do. I wish I knew why.

I never told you about the joys of watching you put on your bra either. But I might tell you that now, just to show you how endearing the memory was and to give you a fair chance to embrace my lingering fondness for you. If you brushed that off the way you did everything else, maybe I could let go.

Maybe I can let go now. Well, of course I can let go. It's just two blocks to that Irish pub, and they're probably playing those songs I loved and you didn't. I ought to go anyhow. Sooner or later a cop will come by on the beat and ask just what I'm looking at, and the view of our bright ceiling isn't worth getting soaked over anyway.

And yet, what it implies? That is. Even if you're in there, you're not getting one more fuck away from the golden memories we made. Even if I'm a creep getting wet on the corner, I'm warm with the memories and keeping them alive and they don't deserve to die, not like our love did. You wouldn't let me in and I wouldn't try to come in because I don't want you hurting me again, and I don't want to listen to any more of your "Yo, s'up wit choo?" nonsense when you're a white girl from Kansas, and you can't hurt me no more. Not if you don't even know I'm out here.

But I don't need you to let the memory in. All I need is this window to our past, the lilt of your moans and the heaviness of your breasts and the tickle of your pussy hair and the warm and wet and fierce embrace that was all those nights. It's gone, but you're there and I'm here and I've seen it all through the lights of the passing train.

Besides, I'm just imagining this as I go along, warm and dry and thousands of miles away at my desk where I ought to be studying. But I'll bet you rushed to the window to see if I was down there by the bakery when you read this, didn't you?

I'd better mail this now if I expect it to get back East in time for April Fool's. Here's hoping it rains that night and you do leave the curtains open. Sleep warm.