Page 57 of Goode Vibrations

Wondering what was wrong with me.

Why didn’t I enjoy the open road, now? The quiet, the solitude. The endless possibility.

The answer was obvious.

Her.

She made everything seem…more alive. Better. Brighter. Possibilities seemed…shinier.

The open road held potential, with her in the van. Now it just seemed like an endless journey to no purpose.

Why had we separated? I could have gone north with her.

Could have, or should have?

Was it just the sex that was appealing? Sure, it had been, by several orders of magnitude, the best sex of my life, and not because she’d woken me up with her mouth on my cock. The way we’d fucked had been…intense. Not just erotic, but…

Dammit.

Meaningful.

The answer to everything hit me like a lorry going 120 km/hr.

We’d separated because to stay together would have meant opening up the old wounds. We’d fucked a couple times, but to go beyond that, to remain together, traveling, meaningless, idle conversation would run out—hadrun out already. We’d butted up against the sad bits, as I’d called them. My own and hers.

I hated talking about Mom, about Dad. Hated sounding all poor-me. Hated bringing any of it up. Hated the pity, the compassion, the sorrow. Hated the discussions of how it had affected me. Hated all of it. Wanted to just…bury it all behind miles of highway, behind stories, behind professional achievements, behindlife.

And getting close to a woman meant opening all that up. Trust me, I’d tried. I once spent six months in one place, and it had not turned out well. Perth, two years ago. I’d done all short-hop assignments and stayed local to Perth, and I’d gotten friendly and then more than friendly with a surfer/bartender named Leslie. Blond hair in a chic, easy-maintenance bob, green eyes, small tits and a sizable ass that looked great in a wet suit; she’d had a penchant for cowgirl, and was prone to gushy sentiment afterward. She would claim, outside the heat of the moment and afterglow, that she wasn’t looking for love, but during? She always wanted an emotional availability from me that I just wasn’t capable of. Hadn’t been capable of then, and wasn’t now.

She’d always been after me to talk about things. About my tragedies, about how they’d shaped me. She shared hers without reservation, and god was she brave about it—dad never in the picture, mum with a slew of shitty boyfriends, one of whom had abused her mum physically and Leslie sexually, but she’d chosen to not let it make her hard and broken and chose to trust men, as long as they earned and kept her trust.

Inspiring, beautiful. She was a great woman, Leslie.

But she’d confronted me one night. Late, after a double-round of sex. She’d stood naked in her bedroom and demanded that I either open up or fuck off. She wanted a partner for life, not just sex. Someone who trusted her with himself, with his heart.

So I’d fucked off. Told her I wasn’t ready for that, maybe never would be, and I was sorry. Packed my things that night and hopped a red-eye for Thailand, where Jerry had been after me to go for a piece on jungle temples.

Standing on the side of the road, I realized that now, finally, twenty-four years of buried shit was bubbling up, and that I’d finally come to a point where I had to find someone I trusted to hear it, to understand it, and me.

And I had.

She hadn’t pushed me for it. If anything, she’d been only too eager to avoid talking about mine for fear of having to talk about hers.

I’d made the wrong choice.

I should have gone north.

Should have taken that moment, there in that motel room in Dubuque, when we’d been faced with the choice to either jump in or run, and we’d chosen to run.

I’d been running all my life.

Time to stop running, I think.

I had no idea what I would do. What it would look like, feel like, where it would lead me. But I had to do something different, this time. This empty feeling, this…missingher was different. I’ve never missed anyone, before. Never let anyone in far enough that my emotions got involved to the point of suddenly missing them…needing them.

All I knew was that something was drawing me not west, but back to her. Maybe she’d tell me I was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe she wouldn’t be ready to open up her past to me. Shit, I had no idea where to start, or how to open up. Closing off was a familiar instinct. Staying aloof, staying cool. Keep the past in the past. The present is now, and the future is yet to be written, so what’s the point in rummaging through old pain?

Why do it at all? Where would it go? Our paths had crossed for, what, forty-eight, sixty-some hours? Two days, not quite three. Some sex, some conversation.