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“It takes two to make
an accident.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby
I should have known
immediately that there was something evil about him; the way I craved him was
so unnatural and new to me. I grew up a good Christian girl, honoring my
mother and father, and believing strongly in the sanctimony of marriage.
When I accepted communion on Sunday morning, I also believed that I was
consuming the true body and blood of Christ. I never hungered for that
wafer, though, or thirsted for that wine the way I hungered for his body and
thirsted for his kisses.
I had watched my
father struggle with addiction. I never would have shamed him before by
spilling this secret, but all my old pretenses about that which was right and
good were abandoned once I first knew longing and felt alive. I knew then
that my father never felt fully alive until the first drink every day.
That trembling in his hands as he precariously poured the bottle of whiskey
over a glass of ice each afternoon was indicative of his own unhealthy desire.
It was the way my own thighs now quivered in anticipation whenever I
thought of that devil’s body hovering over me, hammering inside of me. I
felt I couldn’t survive without his flesh against mine. I knew now what
need was, and I forgave my father the slurring of words and the slamming of
doors.
That new devil
fascinated me. Although a part of me acknowledged he was broken, he still
made me feel whole. I never knew kisses like that before. Kisses
had been sweet with other boys, but they always seemed somehow obligatory.
They were merely a token of appreciation for the evening out. His
kisses tasted like sin. There is no better way to describe the soft, wet
meeting of our mouths than as pure sin -- that knowing that something is so
wrong, but the wickedness makes it all the more delicious. It never ended
with a kiss either, unlike the others who were merely a peck before parting
from the ever obedient, polite girl I was. When his lips first met mine,
and his hands traced every inch of my skin, that good girl was gone.
It felt like release
to let her go; it was a wonderful release as literal and physically felt as the
first time his fingers found their way below my waist and entered the pink,
supple insides of me. The former good
girl never could have imagined her body feeling so alive and astounding. The
wetness was overwhelming as I moaned in delighted disbelief. I wanted this; I wanted him. Nothing else mattered. Reputation, morals, and obligations were
immediately forgotten and I was slave to the mastery of his touch.
I never imagined then
how much I would forget myself; my entire identity became intertwined in him. Lips and limbs lustfully entangled one
another, and my soul and mind so, too, became ensnared. I believed every word that
came from his lips, never once questioning his intentions. I was
ready to be his everything because I didn’t want to let him down as the others
had. His father left him at four years
old to live alone with an alcoholic, manic-depressive mother who too left at
age fifteen, finally succumbing to her illness with an overdose of prescription
medication. Guilt-ridden after being
found in the arms of another man, his first girlfriend drank herself to death. I imagined his soul must be riddled with
sorrow, although he never seemed to show it.
Despite being a magnet for all things tragic, he had a cool confidence
that also pulled me magnetically toward him.
So entrenched in my
deep desire, I couldn’t read all the passages of foreshadowing that were told
through his unreliable narration. I
blinded myself completely to any arcane mysteries of his character, and saw
only that which I coveted. I craved the
way the tip of his tongue tickled my chest, my stomach, my inner thighs,
teasing me before entering me – the dripping discharge of liberation felt again
and again. Sightless to his faults, I also ignored all feasible miscalculations
of my addiction. I failed to predict the
pregnancy as foolishly as I forsook this final outcome.
The warmth of his touch was
drastically altered once he learned of our error. In the way his eyes narrowed viciously upon
me, I knew he deposited all the blame upon me.
I suddenly felt that he saw me
as the enemy – the enemy I should have seen him for all along. I was the good girl and he was the one who
tempted me with his forbidden fruit, yet he now beheld himself as a god ready
to banish me from our Eden. Banish me he
did indeed, and I became just another tragedy.
I wasn’t just exiled from his touch, his thrust, his tenderness. He went far further to extents only a man with
a devil inside would ever dare.
Everyone who heard the fatal report
believed it was an accident. No one ever
questioned him. They mourned my death,
but sympathized far more with his loss. “How
tragic,” they all whispered in the church pews.
They would then drop their voices even lower to pass their judgment, “Did
you know she was with child?” It would
have been a son. A son had been sent to
us, but the child couldn’t save him from his life of lies. The child couldn’t save me; I was already too
far gone. The accident all started with that first compulsory, criminal kiss. I was utterly amiss in my desire, and now
this good girl is genuinely gone.
