Page 66 of Goode Vibrations
“Yes.” Flat, declarative, no room for mistaking anything. “I want yours.”
“I didn’t want yours, Errol. I’m sorry, but I just didn’t.”
“You think I wanted this?” He flopped down on his butt in the sand. Took my hands. “I didn’t. I don’t. This is scarier than skydiving, scarier than a plane crash. Scarier than war. Scarier than being kidnapped by Somalian pirates.”
I snickered. “Bullshit.”
“Spent two and a half weeks in the hold of a ship, surrounded by drugs they were smuggling. They thought I was a spy for some government. Eventually, they realized I really was just a photographer in the wrong place at the wrong time. They smashed my camera—fortunately it was a safe I’d been using and not my good one—and left me just off the coast of Madagascar. Literally, put me in a little rubber Zodiac and set me adrift. I had to hitch a ride on an oil tanker back up the coast to where I’d been taken, where my stuff was. A lot of it had been stolen, and I had to hunt it all down and buy it back.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “You oughta write a book.”
“Nobody would believe any of it.” He went serious. “I didn’t want this, Poppy. But here it is.”
“You just want me to blow you again.” Maybe I could joke my way out of it, and barring that, fuck, suck, and jerk my way out of it.
He didn’t take the bait. “I’m not going to lie, Pop—yes, the sex with you is a major reason I’m drawn to you. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I find myself wanting more. Not just because…how do I put it? It was hot, it was unforgettable. But it was…” He let out a sharp breath. “It was…deep.”
“Yeah, you gotrealdeep, all right,” I said, snickering.
“Quit joking, Poppy. You know exactly what the hell I mean.” He sounded angry, and I didn’t dare meet his gaze.
I ducked my head, his chastisement hitting like a spear to the heart. “Yes, Errol. I do know. I don’t want to, but I do.”
“You can’t pretend this isn’t happening, Poppy. You can’t act like a blowjob is going to distract me from what this is. You want to suck me off? Go ahead, I’ll enjoy the shit out of it. But it’s not going to change the deeper shit happening, here. You want to get on your hands and knees? I’ll fuck you silly. But when we’re done, this will still be here.”
I felt my heart cracking. Felt the calcified shell around it spiderwebbing. “Stop, Errol.”
“Why? So you can go back to acting like this thing with us is just about sex and photos?” He strode to the van. Yanked open the driver’s side door, got in, started the motor. “You want to run? Take it. Take the van. I can hike out with my shit on my back. Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. So go, Pop. Take it and go, if that’s what you want.”
“I’m not taking your van, Errol,” I snapped.
“Fine. I’ll take you to the nearest highway. You can keep walking. Go back to hitching rides from fat old lorry drivers.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. Marty was nice.”
“Good on him,” he snarled back. “Not the fucking point.”
“Then whatisyour point?” I shouted, leaping to my feet and shoving my face up into his. “What thefuckis your point? What do youwantfrom me?”
“What I want from you isyou.”
I felt tears jump into my eyes. “Me.”
“You.”
I choked on my breath. On my tears. “What does that mean? You want to know about me? You want my sad bits? Fine. My dad gave up on us. He got fat and he got obsessed with work and with money, and he stopped being a dad to me and my sisters, and he stopped being a husband to my mom. He gave the fuck up. He didn’t leave us. That would have been better. I went from being his little girl, his baby, and the youngest, to no one and nothing. I was…I was the apple of his motherfucking eye, and he gave up, and I don’t know why. I’ll never understand what I did wrong. Was he cheating? Did he have another family? I don’t know! I don’t think so, but I’ll never know. My sisters and I…we’re all fucking disasters, and all it’s his fucking fault. He abandoned us without ever leaving. Quite a trick, actually.”
I sobbed, batted his comforting hand away.
“No,” I snapped. “You wanted it, well…here it is, asshole.”
I tried to quit, to stop talking, but like Errol opening the floodgates of music and his own pain, once mine was a trickle, it became a torrent.
“Mom was busy with work, with Lexie and Charlie. Charlie was a dancer and Lexie took music lessons, and Mom’s time was devoted to them, their lessons, their lives. She had a little she-shed built out back for me, and bought me all the paints and brushes and canvasses I wanted, and left me alone. I didn’t get lessons. I taught myself. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t go to summer camp or to the mall. I painted. Charlie had boyfriends and Lexie was…well, problematic, especially later on, but that’s a different story and one I’m not sure I have all of. Torie was…just Torie. Reclusive. Interior. And I had no one. Dad died and we all turned inward. Mom especially. She lost her husband and a significant portion of income, and had to figure out life and figure out how to take care of five girls, so I guess I don’t really blame her, but…I guess maybe I do blame her even though I intellectually understand. It’s Dad I’m angry at. He had a stroke or a heart attack or something. Just…gone. Bam, alive one day, gone the next. And I think he didn’t care, he knew he was unhealthy. We had family meetings about healthy choices so we could all help Dad. But he wouldn’t help himself. Didn’t care. Kept hitting fast-food drive-thru’s and bringing home donuts and drinking all the time. And I’ll never know what his issue was. What was his pain, Errol? What demons was he fighting? What could have been eating him up so bad that Mom and the five of us girls weren’t enough love for him?”
I had to stand up to bear up under the burden of it, the weight of everything I’d been burying and ignoring and suppressing and running from. I bent at the waist, arms around my middle, as if to hold my guts in, as if they’d spill out with my words.
“Why wasn’t I enough? How did I go from his baby girl to fucking…nothing? Not enough to be worth living for? Why didn’t Momseeme? Didn’t she see that I needed her? I’ve never been enough. Or too much. I want attention, Errol. Everything is about that. I know that. Acting out, the men I’ve dated.” I snorted. “Dated. Kind of a strong word for it. They give me attention, but it’s never enough. And then they either leave or want what I don’t know how to give. And I run.”