The Revolt

Had I bothered looking at the caller ID, I’d have seen who was on the line. Unfortunately the Hand reached for the phone while the Eyes weren’t looking.

“Hello?”

“What are you doing?” 4 asked. Oh, lovely. The Stomach twitched. It had been a really tiring day and I had no patience for bullshit.

“Whatever it is, just let me have it.”

“I mean right now. Are you doing anything?” Inexplicably her voice again took that thin coat of honey Southern girls pour on when they need to lubricate a situation in their favor.

I can’t imagine the expression that was on my face. TSA squirmed to get me to convey what was taking place. All I could do was flash him the “I don't know” wave and point to the phone. He heard only my side.

“Uh. Sure. I guess. Where?” I hung up the phone and rested my face in my hands. TSA was beside himself.

“What? What, what, what?”

“She wants to meet for a drink.”

“No!”

“Yes.” I shook my head. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all”

“Are you going to go?”

“I already said I would.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Give me a break. It’s been a rough week.” I packed up my desk and gathered my things. “See you tomorrow. I hope.”

•••

Like a tired and cranky little kid being led back to the parking lot at Magic Mountain before he’s ready to go home, the Feet dragged in protest along the concrete leading to the lobby of the Sunset Marquis, right back where this whole mess started. She beat me there. Hairs stood up on my neck when I walked into the bar and saw two members of a then hot hard rock band hovering over her, offering an invitation to their show, and if not the show, maybe up to their suite.

“No, really, I’m not interested,” she said, and then seeing me over their shoulders added, “It’s been nice talking to you, but my friend just got here.”

“She can join us,” one of the rockers said before turning around. “Oh.” He said when he got a load of me. “Why is it always the ugly ones...” he half whispered to his band mate as they shuffled off. I let the remark slide and wondered how many of their fifteen minutes they had just squandered.

“So.” I said to her.

“So. She said and paused uncomfortably. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure.”

She flagged the bartender, pointed to her vodka rocks, and raised two fingers. I scanned the room nervously, hoping she’d say something. Finally, she did.

“We haven’t been here since,” she thought about it, “our first date, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

“I wonder why we never came back,” she wondered out loud.

Quizzical was my expression then. She was showing mild discomfort.

“This would go a lot easier if you sat down,” she said. I obliged, pulling a barstool a comfortable distance. She took a long drink. I had nothing to say. Something ominous was hanging in the air and I was just waiting for the sky to fall.

“Okay,” she exhaled and set down her glass hard. “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you here.” She laughed nervously at first and then slowly raised her hand toward my still swollen forehead. I recoiled. “I’m so sorry.” Once I sensed I was in no danger of further injury, I relaxed and let her hand feather my bruise. Her eyes said more apologies than her words ever could.

“I can’t begin to explain to you what I’ve been going through,” she said.

“There’s no need to explain.”

“Well,” she held onto the word. “There kind of is.” That got my attention. The nervousness that made the Eyes dart around the room subsided and my vision trained tight on her.

“There were a lot of things I never considered before this summer,” she continued. Still I added nothing. She sensed that I wasn’t going to have this conversation for her. “You brought up a lot of things that I was pretty uncomfortable with.”

That I understood. What I didn’t understand was why she was telling me this at all.

“So what?” I asked - So much for my therapist’s sensitivity training. She leaned in close to me and rested one hand on my thigh.

“So, I think I may have made some mistakes,” she whispered.

“Hey, Stranger,” Booze said as I picked up my glass and downed it in one gulp.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” I asked her.

Completely out of character from what I’d previously known, she opened up wide and let out a lengthy explanation of exactly what she’d been going through since before we went to Mexico. A lot of it started around the time we went dress shopping, but the more she examined it, things actually started bubbling under the surface from the very beginning. Apparently, I challenged a lot of her beliefs and values. That got her thinking. And the thoughts scared her. Then the more she thought about it, the more frightened she got, so she did what came naturally: she ran away. But unlike all the other times in her life she’d run away, something kept gnawing at her. At first she though that it was because we saw each other every day, but even since I’d been avoiding contact, the fears kept tormenting her.

“I even tried dating other guys,” she said, suddenly wincing at the obviousness of the comment and the painful result her Hitman had on my face. “But I keep coming back toÉ” she trailed off.

“To?” I prompted her. She reached toward the two new glasses of vodka next to us and threw one back.

“You.”

Booze laughed joyfully as I joined her in the drink-it-all-at-once club.

“I keep coming back to you,” she said. “Everything leads me back to you.”

She leaned in even closer, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed my ear, whispering, “Please. Let me come back to you.”

Wow. Do you know what it’s like when the moment you’ve been waiting for, praying for, hoping for, plotting for, and dreaming of finally, suddenly, and unexpectedly arrives? There’s a sudden release. For weeks and weeks the Brain had been saturated with thoughts of this moment ­ every possible scenario, every minute detail of the when and where and how. Suddenly all those thoughts were no longer needed and the Brain let them all go, all at once ­ whoosh! The Chest, which had over time constricted around the Heart and Lungs like a python, simply released its grip, flooding the entire system with oxygen and blood. And all the knots the Stomach had twisted itself into started to uncoil, lurching inside me.

Should feel pretty damn good, shouldn’t it - all that tension suddenly gone? I felt like I was dying, overcome by the urge to piss, shit, and vomit all at the same time.

“Excuse me,” I barely got out before running to the men’s room. My body gave me a break on the vomit part. I only shit my guts out in their entirety in one huge blast.

“Are you all right?” She asked and rubbed my forehead when I returned to the bar. “You’re sweating.”

“I’m fine,” I pretended. “What were you saying?”

“Do you want to get out of here?” She gave me That Look. I hadn’t seen it in so long, it took a few seconds to register and I stood silent. She reached in and held me.

She held me. She kissed me. She chose me.

When we got to the lobby, I turned for the exit, but she tugged on my arm to stop me.

“What’s up?” I asked, suddenly afraid the other shoe had dropped. Oh my god, she’d changed her mind, I was sure of it. She pulled a piece of credit card-sized plastic out of her purse.

“I got us a room,” she cooed. That was so like her to think of doing something so romantic for this moment. And it was so ballsy, risking that I might have backed away. It could have happened.

A bottle of Taittinger chilled in an ice bucket next to the bed. The lights gave off an amber glow that made our skin radiate. It looked eerily familiar. Somehow she managed to give this hotel room That Look. She had totally set me up - again.

Tiny silky things had been placed with care under the outfit she’d worn to the office that day. The Fingers had difficulty distinguishing between them and her skin as they explored every inch of her. The way she smelled ­ god, how I missed her scent. And I’d almost forgotten how sweet she tasted as her tongue recited delicate poetry on mine.

In all the billions of brain cells I’d dedicated to imagining this moment, not one conjured up a setting as completely, utterly, and undeniably perfect as this.

“Do you like this?” she asked, gently gliding her leg up mine. I swore I said ‘yes,’ but I distinctly heard the word ‘no.’

“You don’t like that?”

“No,” I whispered and found an unusual place on her body to kiss. She froze and said, “You don’t?”

I had to think about what I just said.

“No,” I said, “I love it.” She relaxed, kissed my chest and slipped into the moment.

“Then you must not like this, either.”

“No.”

“How about this?” She asked and licked a circle around my bellybutton.

“Uh-uh.”

With each move lower on my body came the question. Every time, the answer came back, “No.” No, no, no, until she reached the point she couldn’t speak.

God, how lucky I was. After all we’d been through, she’d finally come around and made a choice. She chose me. Who knows how many night with how many other guys it took her to make that choice.

That suddenly reminded me of 3b’s infidelity. Damn, that hurt.

“No,” I heard myself say. 4 just hit a sensitive spot.

Oh yeah, 4. It must have been so hard for her to fuck all those other guys only to walk away unfulfilled because really she only wanted me. For god’s sake, don’t think about her fucking anyone else. I really couldn’t hold it against her. I’d done the same thing when we first went out because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. And I had a few weak moments of my own since we’d split. I even considered choosing Ex-Ass over 4.

Ex-Ass. I hadn’t thought about her in a while. I wondered if she’d ever forgive me for D-Girl.

“No,” I said again.

D-Girl. Boy, there was something interesting lurking around that corner.

No, no, no.

Why were all these stupid thoughts popping into the Brain just now, with 4’s mouth all full of me?

Concentrate, fucker.

Why was I thinking at all? There was nothing to think about. Everything I wanted was right here. It was all smooth sailing.

“Show me, baby,” 4 broke my train of thought and climbed up on top of me, slowly, tenderly grinding her hips into mine. “Show me you want me.”

I wanted her so desperately I almost couldn’t believe she was really here in my arms. God, she was gorgeous. The feeling of our bodies together took my mind off 3a completely.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

“If you don’t want me, just-,” 4 shook her head and climbed off me.

“What?”

She grabbed the half-mast Wiener and just looked at me. I could sense she was shutting down.

“Look, I wasn’t expecting any of this,” I said.

“God, how you must hate me,” she said, releasing me. I rolled on top of her, slid my leg between hers and kissed her.

“No,” I whispered. We kissed for several minutes and slowly worked our way back into a rhythm, broken every so often by her inquiries: ‘You’re mad at me,’ ‘you just want to get even,’ ‘I’m such an idiot.’

“No, no, no,” I kept saying softly while the words came louder and louder in my head till they drowned out every other thought, sound, and feeling. This should have been so easy, but I just couldn’t make it work. No, no, no!

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered. She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow.

I closed the bathroom door behind me.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I demanded. Silence. I removed the anger from my voice. “Don’t shut me out. Just tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll deal with it.”

After a long pause, Wiener finally said, “I’m not going to let you do it.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to let you fuck up your life like this.”

“You most certainly are.” I informed the limp little prick.

“Nope.”

“Yup!”

“Nope, and that’s my final answer.”

“Why? Why, why, why do you not want to go inside that perfectly good piece of ass just waiting to make you feel like a million bucks? You used to love nailing her.”

“She hurt you”

“I don’t care. I forgive her.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“You should. You must. She’s back. We’re back, buddy!”

“Nope. She’ll do it again. You know I’m right.”

“Please. Let’s just do it this once and we’ll discuss the outcome in the morning.” How pathetic, begging my own dick to get hard. The only thing hard on Wiener at that moment was his stubborn streak. I wondered where he got that from.

But that’s how it went. We volleyed back and forth a few more times. He was hell-bent on holding his ground and I was hell-bent on making love to 4. Finally, the Temper kicked in and I put my foot down.

“Listen, mister. You owe me big time for all the trouble you’ve caused in my life. So let me tell you how this is going to play out: We’re going out there and you’re going to get so hard I could hammer nails with you. And you’re going to stay that way till I say you can go soft again. Do you understand?” Wiener said nothing. “Do you understand?”

Wiener’s objections were not going to stop 4 and me from getting back together. This was going to happen, and that was my final answer. I rinsed my face, turned off the bathroom light and grabbed the doorknob. It was time to prove once and for all who was the boss of me.

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