A Girl Gone

I was a nightmare wrapped in denim and cauterized in whiskey. That's what I see when I look at old pictures of myself. I feel a little more refined these days, even if my head is still a mess. Tonight my dress is short and my heels are high and there is nothing underneath to hold me back. I can feel the fabric shift around my body as we walk. The straps are loose on purpose and slip down my shoulders, wanting to reveal the real me.

David took me downtown to a fancy restaurant. He knows I love the tall buildings, along with the bustling nightlife of the city. The crowd is probably a good fifteen years younger than we are, but we march in step all the same. He leads me by the hand at a pace I struggle to keep up with and maintain my dignity. David is six feet to my five. My heels might get me to five foot two. It is near impossible to keep up with his long strides.

I kept finding my mind wandering to the past. It's a place I try to steer clear of.

"Stay in the moment," I keep reminding myself.

Take in the view.

All the decorations I see around me. Those are not cheap. The trees and the grass and the air that I breathe.

Swim little fish.

Swim.

They might be watching.

When my life began, I was already nineteen years old and married, with a beautiful young daughter. Settling down was never an option with Scott. He partied as hard as he worked. For all the hours he was absent working in the mines, he matched them by drinking hard. We drank together, but I could never keep up. Though, I held my own deep into the nights.

On this night, the night I was born again, I had retired from the party and went to the sanctuary of my bedroom. The room was my mobile, and I watched the ceiling as only the blue light from our fish tank in the room broke the darkness.

I finally fell asleep after wondering if the night would end with my head over the toilet before stretching out on the cool bathroom floor.

I think I fell asleep.

I have never been certain if I slept and had a dream and woke up or if I was still dreaming and looking back at it now. An even worse thought was that I was still there, letting it happen and the rest of my life had been a dream.

I saw him when he walked through the door. There was just enough light around him to see who it was before he blended into the darkness. It was Scott's cousin, Justin, who was always hanging around the party. He spent his life in the clouds as he discovered alcohol and whatever drugs took him to the place he wanted to be. That place was always a mindless waltz into walls or one time right off our front porch and onto his face. Scott left him there and let him wake up by himself, even though I begged him to call the paramedics.

"He'll be fine," Scott assured me.

And he was fine. For him.

I watched his shadowy figure as he first took off his shirt and tossed it to the floor. Then tried not to laugh as he stumbled, kicking his shoes off and almost fell. Then again, as he pulled his socks off. I watched through half-closed eyes as he took his jeans and boxers down and braced myself for the inevitable shift of the mattress from his weight. Not that he had much. He was always skinny. Even back then. He might be even skinnier now.

To this day, I cannot explain why I did not get right up and leave the room. Nor could I explain why his hand touching my panties felt so right. Even his gentle kiss to my neck was something I had been missing, like a diamond necklace at a royal party. My legs moved without my mind. Spreading apart the perfect amount to give him the access he was not asking for.

The familiar smell of Jack Daniel's on the breath of a man was all it took to wake me up fully and leave me knowing that I had better be ready.

The blankets moved back. Either by will of their own or by his reflexive hurry to get my panties down.

He looked into my eyes as he positioned himself between my legs. Neither of us said a word. I felt him push his way inside of me. Clumsily at first, but then building a comfortable speed.

I felt angry at first and then consumed by fear and guilt.

I bit my bottom lip as I watched over his shoulder at the door to make sure no one saw us. I knew Scott would kill us both regardless if I saw him first or not.

Justin placed his hand on my sharp hips and moaned as he moved in and out of me. My hips are my weakness. They are so sensitive to the touch of a man. I moved my feet up and locked them behind his back. My mother was right when she joked about a woman's feet being made for locking around a man and trapping him there.

The position blocked my sight of the door and turned what I knew would be a horrible ending into a surprise. My eyes were open as I pressed my lips to his sweaty shoulder and gripped into his upper back.

It felt so safe. It felt like being home again. Loved and wanted. Treated like an object of pleasure instead of a wife and mother.

With each passing second, I held him tight until he finished inside of me.

He was asleep faster than I could catch my breath.

It was then that I did what I should have done to begin with. I went out to the living room and fell asleep on the couch next to my husband. His head had only been a few feet away from the open bedroom door.

I regretted having to embarrass Justin and shame him the next day. When I told the story, I said that he climbed into bed naked with me and I simply left. He was blackout drunk and could not argue how or why he got there.

I needed to thank him. Thank him for waking me up.

My affair with my stepfather had begun a year before the same way. I felt the same betrayal. Tasted the same alcohol. Allowed myself to be taken because that was what I wanted.

The affair had resulted in my first pregnancy and my family moved out of state to hide the fact. We returned after my mother and stepfather had adopted the baby and would let our little town believe that my mother had given birth.

I had blacked all of that out until that night with Justin. It had been a year of believing that my baby sister was not my daughter. I played the part so real that it had become my reality.

When we came back to the small town, I fell in love with my stepfather's son and got pregnant.

Now that I had remembered, all I wanted to do was forget again. There was no amount of alcohol that could suppress it down.

Even as I tried, my hands would clench with rage. Slowly I caught up with my husband's drinking and the days and nights felt as though I was running a track that was shortening with every lap. There was no finish line. No difference between first and last place. Just me running as the blacktop beneath my feet turned to shadows at night and I could have been running to the sky as far as I knew.

It was a terrible thing. Waking up. It was almost like having control. Now that I knew, it was something I was completely unaccustomed to..

"You'd take me right here on the table if I let you" my grandmother would tell me the story of a date she had with my grandfather when they first got married.

I remembered the story as David and I sat down at our table in the restaurant.

"Yep," my grandfather answered her "I'll give you ten seconds to attract a crowd"

I wonder if that's where I got this from. Wanting to be watched. The thrill of maybe getting caught in the act.

It may have been a seed.

One little story that made me meant to be.