Ivory Angel #5

There was supposed to be love there that night, I think. And maybe there was a little. I was going to stay sober that night because I knew he’d be coming and I didn’t want to have to stand up to him drunk. I had been told he had a girlfriend. I had been told that after I’d already made out with him, after I tried to run out the door only to have he and his friend (the one everyone was trying to get me to go out with) tackle me and carry me, tickling most unfairly, over their shoulders down the hallway towards a bedroom. Luckily, that night, I had vomited earlier and was remarkably sober. This lent me the moral fortitude to kick him in the shin, elbow his friend in the shoulder, and kiss them both good night before I hitched the last ride out of there. It really had been a quite wonderful evening.

One week later, when I heard this brilliant redhead who greeted me with a kiss on hand (and sometimes elsewhere- when he touched my thighs I went wild inside) had a girlfriend in another city. Oh, had I been played, sistas. I don’t mind a little one-night action, but not if it leads to hurt. Then it’s not fun anymore. Especially if the person hurt is me.

But my red knight hadn’t shown by midnight and it was just us traditional warriors watching some bad science fiction snake-flicks and so I consented to guzzle down four cape cods. The friend of mine who I was staying with finally got the courage to sit next to me and talk to me again. (He was so cutely frightened! I had waited for him to leave the house before taking a shower but he came home early and saw me in only a towel. I considered myself quite decently clad, but he has this thing for wet hair, and he was somewhere between terrified and enamored the rest of the night. I would walk towards him to get some pizza or something and he would flee to the edge of the room saying, “sorry” and blushing. I thought he was going to scream “Leper! Unclean! Unclean!” He really was overreacting for someone who has seen and tasted every inch of me and who habitually wandered around me in nothing but his boxers. Men are such silly creatures.) Anyway, this friend of mine finally had the courage granted by vodka to sit next to me on the couch again and his eyes were making a most intriguing offer, his voice kicking into the higher register the way it always does when he’s a little nervous, arm brushing me gently. I was giggling helplessly at nothing in particular, when the redhead came in and my thoughts fled simply.

There is nothing like a boy who you are supposed to hate but can’t to make you feel all inside-out.

Long story short- the redhead was leaving tomorrow and he didn’t really have a girlfriend just a friend-girl who he wasn’t sure what he wanted from. I was still mad at him, though. We had been doing this relationship-esque dance for months and I knew he wanted me and I knew I wanted him but for some reason it just wouldn’t happen. And that reason was him. Because every time I got the courage to call him, to ask him out to something more than a silly party, he would act cold and uninterested, and my voice would crack. I gave him my number three times. He kept losing it. He never called me. He didn’t have the self-confidence to believe that I could possibly be interested in him. He told me that when he touched my face. “Sometimes life can only be explained by the inexplicable,” he whispered gently as we curled on the beanbags together.

I smiled. “You,” I told him, “are trying to sound philosophical and failing badly.” I had given him the key, weeks ago. You read me your poetry. That was all I needed.

But there was another friend I half-crashed into that night. He was short and Italian and planned to be 21 until he was 90, which was a problem because he was already 22. His girlfriend called him “The Italian Stallion” and he had laughing brown eyes and was one of the friends on the “Yes, I would” list. Something had changed between us about a week ago. A hug between friends had been something more. And yesterday, he hadn’t stopped touching me, bothering me. We chased each other around the room bouncing balloons into each others’ faces. I didn’t put two and two together. We were talking about relationships, the host’s in particular, which recently gone South. “All the best boys have girlfriends,” I lamented.

“All the best girls have boyfriends,” he replied. “All the hot ones, too.”

I tried my best to look mortally offended. “That is insulting no matter how I take it.”

He squirmed and stuttered and I laughed at him because he was so hopelessly wonderful. And then I stopped laughing, because he was looking very serious. “Actually, my girlfriend and I broke up about two weeks ago,” he murmured.

“Oh,” I said. Then: “Oh.”

I apologized profusely and the host-friend crashed next to me, calling us slackers. So I drank and I danced, and went on with my night. Nuances are not for drunken people, especially drunken people who have almost ALL their drunken hookups right under this roof, dancing and laughing and blushing like mad as they meet each other.

In the end, host-friend found a cute, Asian, former girlfriend of the Italian’s to spend the night with, making the Italian very jealous. At 4:00 AM there were only three people still awake. Four, if you counted the guy semi-passed out on a beanbag. He would grunt occasionally and say something not remotely understandable. He was only here because the Italian was his ride, and the Italian wasn’t sober enough to drive and was otherwise occupied. I had, perhaps unwisely, crashed between the redhead and the Italian on the couch, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly. My redhead quickly took my leg and began stroking it gently, and the Italian had inched his fingers towards my fingers, and now he had them gently and brushed them softly up the inside of my arm. The guys pretended to be oblivious to each other. We watched MTV videos, making wry comments as the redhead flipped off the people he felt were more attractive than him (everyone), but they knew. Every once in awhile one would yank me to the side and look at me expectantly, as if I was a lapdog supposed to jump to them on command. This expectation was very annoying. And how could I send either away without hurting their feelings? I don’t do this if it hurts someone, remember? The couch was the place I was sleeping tonight, so I couldn’t very well flee to bed with them on it. I hadn’t planned any of this and I didn’t know what to do. So, I did nothing. For too long. The situation was stasis. The minutes ticked by. I really wanted sleep now. Finally, I decided I’d give them a hint (because they didn’t get the one where I got the blanket and announced I was very sleepy…which does not mean TAKE ME NOW BIG BOY!). So I got up “for a drink” and when I came back, I sat down on a beanbag in front of the TV well away from both of them.

“Are you sure you’re not more comfortable on the couch?” one asked.

Actually, the beanbag was cold and the hardwood floors were…hard. Guess that’s how they got their name. “Quite comfortable,” I said. “Extremely comfortable.”

We sat like that for more minutes. Finally, the redhead got up to go. He was leaving for another city the next day, and so I said goodbye tenderly. I haven’t seen him since. He promised to email me. He didn’t. I didn’t really expect him too. He had, after all, promised a lot of things over the months.

The Italian didn’t move. More minutes passed. I was cold, tired, and feeling very sad, because something special had just walked out the door, mostly because the boy was too thickheaded to see it. And a boy who I liked very much and who had just become an ex and who’s best friend was making out with another of his old girlfriends was sitting on my bed place and refusing to leave. Maybe I wanted him to smile and not look so sad. Maybe I wanted to spite my other would-be suitor for lying to me about the other girl. Maybe I just wanted to be something other than alone.

I sighed softly and got up. “I think the couch would be more comfortable after all.”

And I was naked in a friend’s house on a friend’s couch in front of a stranger politely pretending to be asleep. And I was not ashamed.

Though I would have been, if my host had walked into the room 5 minutes before he actually did. Thank God. That was one complication I really didn’t need.