Mitch

We drove through the silence together, and out of it again when the beach came into view. The waves roared & licked the shore like a pride of lionesses.

"I feel like I'm starting all over again," she told me in a low voice. I felt like I was starting new; we felt the same then, but reacted to the feelings in different ways. "I can't seem to focus wholeheartedly on anything anymore."

"Maybe you don't need to now--maybe you're not supposed to," I told her with an undetectable edge of desperation to my words. I wished I could lend her my acceptance of the way things are--however they happen to be.

She pulled the lumbering beast of a vehicle over, killing the engine the moment the back wheels hit the gravel of the shoulder. The headlights extinguished themselves under her demanding hand even before we glided to a stop, and we immediately began to drown together, submerged in the wake of the heavy darkness dimming the cab.

Mitch & Indie

There was nothing wrong with them--they only had to move one, without one another. That night the look in her eyes was foreign to him in a way that he could hold no curiosity for. Like an absence of light that's not quite black, but perpetually at its bidding/on its track.

All along, she maintained that the things which must be made up of more than one soul--that those things themselves have no true substance. Coldly, she'd concluded that their love was intrinsically reciprocal--so that his (perceived) failure at its altar meant that it had ceased to exist. Poof she'd said, cruelly, denying his eager/own wan apologies.

Indie & Mitch

"Do you know that this is not okay?" That grasping your eyes does to my throat somehow when they meet my eyes, might not happen this time, I thought. I close my eyes anyway, instead of looking at you, letting you panic alone/with privacy.

"I only knew you were going to say that," you said. I heard the subtly shaking tone, despite the flippant/calm words. I felt so drained at what would happen next, luckily this new challenge of yours piqued my old anger just enough to get each next word almost fully out of me. What of these I kept, I already realized that I'd never again shake them.

Speaking a bit too slowly, I felt, I said this time: "I want you to know, that if you don't offer to move out by the end of tonight('s end), I won't stay to the morning." My voice sounded like belting-down hale onto a gray parked-car that lived in our past. So much arbitrary history...arbitrarily betrayed?

"Why would you tell me such a thing?" No longer pretending Mr. Cool-Guy, I noted from somewhere farther away then the mere feet that set us (engulfed and) apart. "You don't have to go anywhere, and why the hell would I!?"

"Stop it," I didn't have to look at him to see him drop his arms at my fatalistic tone. "One way or another, tomorrow we'll be living separately. But please..." I felt/heard vaguely the telltale signature of a voice about to break, even though it was my own. "Could you do something for me tonight? Could you sleep with me just life we slept last night? (But) could you not let go (this time)?" Ever the coward solely where my heart is concerned, I still didn't look into the face of my (first/only) love.

He could suddenly reach me and lifted my chin with the scratchy pads of his be/well-loved fingers. I raised my glance to fall into his in the way that I would never again allow myself to. His eyes were so warm, mingling anger and love and shame, perhaps. His face was blank, but to me its very reticence spoke secrets aloud. Locking his jaw, I saw him swallow hard before letting out his withheld breath to harshly and/but pulling me too gently into his arms/chest/body, as though/like he too believed I embodied something broken. He petted my hair while he held tight enough to hurt a little, and actually managed to make me feel temporarily better. But (then,) what else is there? What else c/would I dare to expect/hope for?

Mitch & Bethany

"Have you told Indie anything about this?"
"Immediately at hearing her name, Beth watched the tension of defense creep into Mitch's forest green aura.
"What does she have to do with this?" he asked with a new warning in his still soft tone.
The noise shot from me; I laughed at him cruelly, knowing it would do him good but feeling a little bad anyway. "Come on, Mitch! It has everything to do with her!"
"Why (the hell/fuck) would you say that?" his foul/dirty mouth demanded, once again sounding familiar/recognizable to Beth.
"We both know I'd never give you a chance to fulfill this oh-so-risque sudden fantasy of yours--fucking the lesbian girl-next-door that's madly in-love with your sister who's conveniently off travelling?! Ha! Talk about too freakin' easy, my man."
"I said, 'make love,'" he stated redunantly, angry now but as stubborn as ever.

"Mitch." I looked at him as sincerely as I could, and tried putting a little smile of forgiveness in my eyes, because I knew that's all he really wanted. His glare lost a bit of the fight they'd begun to hold. "Look kid, I know you love me, just like you know I love you. How could we not when we've known each other blissfully for ages!?" I paused to/and let the casual confession drift away. "But there's no way we could ever manage being lovers, and we both know that by now, too. If you're suddenly thinking about me like this...it's only because something not-so-good is going on between you and Indie." That is/in other words, the woman the poor guy was in-love with. "Something that you don't want to think about. And I'm not the bangin' easy out you almost think you want (me to be). Don't be getting scared enough to do yourself a disservice, okay dude?"

Silly Mitch sighed heavy. "Quit lecturing me Beth, okay? And then maybe I'll talk to you--even though I know you're wrong."
"Ha! Fair enough," Beth exclaimed cheerfully. "Well, you know how I love to be enlightened, my goodly mate!"

"Yeah right," Mitch too-darkly replied, happily without any hint of forsaken apology. Then we sat in crazy tense silence--his--until he untied the big red love-balloon and exhaled aloud his coming-to-terms. "Do you remember how Indie and I first met?" he asked me, suddenly so unintense in comparison to only moments ago. [Thinking about Indie rather than something that excites him--at least, still seems interesting to him. :(]

"Not really...actually, I don't know if either of you have ever told me! And I'm pretty positive that I would have asked you guys by now, didn't I?" Perplexed, my/her face (was).

"You did. Almost everyone did, since that's what you do when you meet a brand new person hanging with your age-old friends. And we never told a one of you guys--I don't even know how we pulled it off! But it was definitely (a) deliberate (move)."

"Oh yeah?! Well that's pretty mysterious Mr. Honesty! What would possess you to do such a thing? Overpowering and hollow black shame? Red-hot passionate blushing sessions? Unforgivable sudden loss of memory!?"

"Quit being strange. It was sort of an unspoken reticence... the scene was just lame enough for both of us to be embarrassed, without wanting to be called (out) on it." He hesitated, then, "You know what I mean? From the very start, it was like we formed our relationship into something neither of us could be proud of--and we each made that damning choice all by ourselves." [Eh! but maybe only he did...and then took a course in projection.]

We let this sit--and then I couldn't contain myself any longer/more: "And you're not being just a tad bit melodramatic, dear? 'Damning' isn't too strong of a word here?!"
"Whatever. The point is that we ended it before we started."

But now it's been two flippin' years! I thought, flabbergasted. In that much time, something must have happened that bested this argument... Sheesh! Talk about a tired case of fatalism--as if neither of them could fix a fuck-up!? But I wanted him to tell me about this date from the unfortunate limits of a hellish limbo. That is, BEFORE my big-opined and unrelinquishing mouth buttoned-up his--especially without giving our expected flaky-crusted kiwi tart a chance to shine its light through to the tail end of this tunnel.

(Enjoy the cold, my most gracious love!)

Mitch & Bethany

"If you could do anything right now, what would you do?"
"I would make love."
"Ha!"
"What, hey!?"
"That's just pretty sweet, dude. Not 'have sex' or 'fuck some' or 'bone like rabbits', but 'make love'."
"'Bone like rabbits'?"
"It's a euphemism, I hear."
"From who?!"
"From you!"
"..." ... "Oh."
"Ha!"
"Whatever! So what would you do--if anything?"
"Well I would make love," I responded with a facetious-feeling grin.
"Oh yeah?! Who with?"
"With myself--I'm the best I've had yet! Hey what about you, big guy? Since you apparently had some specific body in mind, hmm? Indie?"
"No... Never mind, forget it."

I blinked at my friend in surprise at his indicative and sudden bashfulness. I decided to risk goading him on a bit anyway. "You were totally gonna say with me!"

He turned beet red at this unexpected turn of his skirting flirtatious efforts, but then reminded me why I liked him. "So what?" he asked simply.

"Where would you have sex with me, dude!? We're at a freakin' coffee shack!"
"I said, 'make love'," (he insisted,) still red.
I looked at him until he looked back up again to meet my eyes. I had quit pretending to laugh, for the moment.
"Where?"
"In my bed," with less hesitation.
"How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Since I woke up this morning. I was just laying there and it dawned on me that I wanted you with me." The son of a bitch looked at me the whole time he said it. My freakin' stomach tightened, which I didn't expect, but I took it (well).

"Are you gonna tell me about it, then?"
"Would you like me to?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Alright," he said.

You would have been sleeping still, and I begin quietly because I don't want/I'm not ready to wake you up (yet). I run the pads of my fingers softly down the line of your jaw, then follow the rail with my tongue as slow as I can, tasting you. You wake up instantly, like I knew you would, and I can tell because you are no longer breathing. But you don't move, and you keep your eyes closed. The scent of you skin reminds me of myself and your silent encouragement convinces me to ignore the slamming in my chest. I lick my lips and press them against your throat, feeling the sudden motion/movement of your pulse.

I open my mouth very slightly and bring a small flavor of you between my lips, moving at the same time into a better position. Still laying on my side, I close the distance between us so that I am pressing against the side of you as you lay on your back, almost shaking it seems to me. With one hand I lift the thin sheet that still covers your chest and I move my mouth slowly away from your neck, lowering my lips near the top of your breasts and kissing you there, just below your collarbone. With my free arm I encircle your fast rising and falling rib cage, letting myself brush across your nipples and watching your whole body react to that tiny touch. I look up at your face and see that your eyes are squeezed tight now, but at some point you had resumed shallow breathing. I duck down before you can recover and close the whole warmth of my mouth over your right nipple. I almost lose it when your body spasms against me, jerking your hips upward and making you gasp sharply. Your eyes snap open then and after only a moment your hands find my face and you pull my mouth to yours, kissing me for the first time as I finally move to place myself gently over you. Pressing down slowly, I feel that my hands are shuddering now.

Sheet still between us, you start to squirm as though impatient beneath me, even while your arms have found their way around the back of my neck, keeping me where I am. Right before I think you'd just as well kill me then move one more time like that, at last you loose one of your soft hands, moving/placing it between us to stroke me. I moan wretchedly into our still-joined mouths and you press yourself upward again, somehow freeing one of your legs from the sheet and wrapping it around my waist. So sweetly inviting now, I feel your lips gently/finally press a smile into mine.

[While we only pretend, to pretend.]

Mitch & Bethany

Rounding the corner of Cedar and Elm, a young man walks near the middle of the day. The houses pile up behind him as he passes by and each one is occupied in a random degree; whole lives play out their existence around him, but he doesn't fully appreciate this. And right now he doesn't think about it all.

"Dude, what's going on!?" A girl marches out of a storefront with oversized books showing through the window. On a plank affixed above the single doorway, 'The Scribe' is carved and painted in black shadow.

"Hiya Miss Bethany. How goes it?" says the man trekking toward the itty-bitty woman. (Indie is exactly his height, in fact...not this blessed waif-girl.) On his lips tease a flickering spark of smile as though he anticipated the punchline to a joke he'd heard before that promised satisfaction.

"It's going good, Mitch. I've just had an epiphany as a matter of fact, waiting around all day for you--as usual."

"Oh yeah? How so?" the man responds. He wondered if she had any idea that she was grinning? Squinting her eyes as if considering whether or not he was worthy of this new discovery of hers--did she know that she undermined her coarse scrutiny every time, grinning this way?/like this/that?

The woman with the open smile shifts her weight from one foot to the next, back and forth while she studies the man before her. She has brown-bobbed hair and large/ish dark teal eyes. She'll chew on the right side of her lip until it's fully digested before hurrying along her careful regard of him. And hypocritically so/at that. "I think you should invest in 'The Scribe'," she tells him at last.

"I am invested in 'The Scribe'," he laughed at the serious expression accompanying her bizarre proposal. "I spend all of my free afternoons here, remember?"

"Exactly--so why not buy me out of a portion and pay yourself back a bit?" the woman finishes rushing then stands with every appearance of self-satisfaction.

The youngish man scoffs and takes his own turn squinting his light blue eyes in exaggerated distrust. He couldn't imagine what she was talking about--he had thought that she wouldn't have parted with that place of hers even if she had to start paying to keep the damn thing open!

"What's this madness you're playing at Beth? Since when are you willing to give away any real share of 'The Scribe'?"

The woman shifts her weight again. "Go and tell your lady-friend 'hello'. She won't want to leave today, so come out to lunch with me and chat a bit, yeah?"

Mitch: "Surely i don't give a shit." (Err--on a bout of superfluous curses just recently...)

There's a house at the top of the ridge beyond my balcony that I find hard to believe in.‭ ‬It sits in a field of fawning grasses in gold,‭ ‬precisely the shade of its walls,‭ ‬and it is flanked on three sides by sentinel evergreens leaving only the view that I have.‭ ‬It is a self-congratulating house.

Besides that, I'm good. My life follows sequential rules and I like/appreciate expecting some kind of control in its course. I am male, and my favorite food is dried pears (my mouth waters and everything!). The size of my ears appears to be too large to passers-by, (perhaps too round, so near my face?) but in fact they are proportionately correct. I suspect that the regularity of this mistake points to the downfall of the brunt theory of evolution, grossly failing as it does to account for the faulty connection of human sight and its tendency to encourage false beliefs in our own inherent abilities, such as basic mechanical reasoning. I believe that my own excessive exaggeration is funny as fuck, falsely no doubt. My name is Mitch, and I do not surf.

For the past year I have dreamed about you every night. I haven't the foggiest sense of why this is. I'm beginning to miss my previous wet dreams of the dewy-eyed sprite that ignores me with lustful desperation during mid-shift at the bar; it is no longer her in the extravagantly-thrown, shabby galas of my sub-conscious, but you.

Actually, I don't mind as much as is reasonable. My eyes accidentally close at some point and the rest of the night is yours. Like the way my dog doesn't register eye contact when it is made through a mirror. You're here, always walking somewhere--hurrying? And it's as if I know you completely, with your thoughts running off in our head. I don't believe that I have a say in what happens to us, I'm stowed-away somehow, a voyeuristic paraplegic. It's uncanny--and it doesn't only sound creepy, rest assured. I wonder if you know that I'm there with you?

I fell out of bed this morning.‭ (“‬Ouch‭!...G‬od forsaken.‭”) ‬Again.‭ ‬It's a mad thing,‭ ‬this bewildered occupancy you've taken up in my head.‭ ‬What if you knew me‭? ‬What would your opinion look like‭?

Mitch: "Satnam, have a great day." -D.C.

The woman before me is tremendous. Her tremulous eyes are playing up her lips in a tasteful show of extravagance, complete with #4 ran-mascara trailing an outline around her face, looking like a picture frame that exclaims art more honestly than its captive.

‭ "Look at me, Mitch! Can you blame him? I'm not young anymore, I'm not thin, I'm not happy--I've made her look so fucking good. You know I didn't want to marry him? He fucking begged me. Did I tell you that? Fucking begged me!" She laughed horribly.

‭ Her name is Lilith with one 'l'. She can talk to me like this because I'm kinder than I am cute, and because she thinks I'm paid to listen. I'm not, of course, which is why I can.

‭ "You know what? You know what marriage is good for, Mitch? Kids. That's it. One and all, its only worthwhile excuse. I never wanted kids. I got a tubal ligation before I ever met him. You know I never told him that...the funny thing is that he wouldn't have married me at all if he'd known. He always wanted kids. I shoulda said, 'Fuck marriage.' You know what I mean, Mitch?"

‭ I knew the man she was talking about, her husband. She and he were regulars of mine--loyal from the start. Kenny was always quieter than his wife, and he drank less. Presumably so that she could drink more, which she always did. His all-purpose expression was a bit of a smile that used to brighten a bit more when directed at Lilth, though she was usually looking another way.

‭ I wondered if he hadn't found out about the surgery somehow, and I wondered if I'd see him in here again. Probably, no. This was her place more than his; he was along for the ride. Leaving her was another woman's idea, I thought. But you never know what goes on between two people.

‭ "Sometimes I wish I could've had a kid for him, you know?" Her eyes were black with mascara. She looked like she'd just lost a bar fight. "He never would have left me then."