Lust over the long term July 15, 1985

 “if I tell you three times, It’s true!”

Well, Safire told me three times, then got very quiet for a while. I get scared when her voice gets distant and harsh. Maybe she is, too, and so went quiet in order not to push me away.

“But if you don’t want to, we can still be friends,” she said, lying, of course, since she wanted what she wanted and wanted me to want it, too.

I’ve heard this same tale about friendship so many times, I know people never mean it.

Pauly once talked about his friendship deteriorating into love.

What Safire wants ultimately from me I still don’t know. She went to Baltimore this week to look at a house.

Free and easy sex, and after a brief fling, go our separate ways?

I’m not used to that kind of thing, and perhaps I’m simply bracing for what ultimately happens, rejection of some sort and maybe more hurt.

If I do get involved, it will be heavy; I can sense that much in myself. I am extremely attracted to her, partly because of who she is and what she looks like, but also because of what she once was, I have a weakness for women who have been in the trade.

She said she meant what she said, even if she had to blurt it out, even if she was drunk when she said it, and now I’m full of guilt, seeing myself like my Uncle Ritchie, who was a back door man, sneaking around, making love to other men’s wives, my hand up Safire’s skirt – and forcing myself to admit I love the intrigue, and the desire to please her in every possible way, my senses tingling over all the possibilities, in my head, I create all sorts of love scenes from the kinkiest to the most passionate, all of it spinning me around, twisting me up, stirring up hormones I forgot I had.

I’ve lusted after women before, been pulled around by the nose more than once, dragged from coast to coast out of lust or love, and yet, nothing quite like this.

This is somehow more tender, more ego-gratifying in that I have a woman like Safire lusting over me.

Yet, even as I soak all of this up, something deeper inside me questions it, wondering what it is I really want, and there are shades of regret already drawing shadows inside me, asking do I really want to steal another man’s wife.

Safire came to my apartment and still wants to push on with this, almost desperately, pain deep insider her eyes that scares me more than my lust does.

We will meet tomorrow at seven for drink which I know will end us up in bed, tempting me to call her tonight to call the whole thing off.

It isn’t just tomorrow that scares me most, but the tomorrows after that, the months and years, the long-term plans she’s made that his hidden in this velvet glove. She really sees me as a replacement for her husband and an opportunity to create a new life, and I’m not sure at all that’s a role I want to play, regardless of how tempted I am about making love to her.

Is she someone I want to be with for years, rather than a night? This would be a fundamental change in my life, a commitment to something I’m not sure would work.

I feel as out of control as Pauly has been, back to when I was 13 and my hormones first kicked in, scared to death of making a wrong move, knowing all this might well end in a fiery crash.

 

1985 Menu


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