I stared to the floor as I responded, but it wasn’t out of guilt. I stared because there was a lack of feeling for a man-turned-boy that I had loved for so long. “Strangely, I’m okay,” I said. “I can’t believe I just told the love of my life that I cannot marry him and I am okay.” I smiled with charm and poise even though my face was freshly painted from several playful smears at Doug’s hand.
By the end of the night, the room was mauve but looked more like pink; I was single but looked more like taken. And my lesbian life was present but looked more like breeder beginnings.
CHAPTER 7
Enchanted is a word you can use to describe a portion of what you are feeling when you fall in love. All other life ceases to exist when a person is enchanted by the mystical powers of The Big L. I can’t say you even know that it is love until you are six feet under it and are unable to breathe without that person.
Douglas and I didn’t need discussion of a future together to know where we were headed. Our conversations consisted of matter-of-fact statements like “when we get married” or “I’m so glad you don’t want kids.” We honestly have no proposal story either. I was nineteen, he was twenty-three, and it was six weeks later when we drove to get our marriage license. It was more romantic because there was no romance, if that makes any sense. We were in an enchanted whirlwind of the engulfment of love. Oh, someone should chime a triangle and sprinkle fairy dust across this page, it was so heavenly.
The car ride to apply for our marriage license became a last-minute confessional as Douglas asked me to pull over. I did without too much question. He was highly agitated so, for a while, I just assumed he was nervous. “I have something to tell you,” he said. Strangely enough, his request didn’t faze me. I’m not sure why, but I know that whatever he was about to tell me, no matter how bad it was, wasn’t going to change my decision to marry him. So I entertained his request for my undivided attention by positioning my ass closer to the driver’s door and twisting myself in his direction. Patiently, I waited for him to begin with a crooked smile on my face.
When he spoke, his voice cracked like he was tired. He hung his head low, although he maintained eye contact. “You might not want to do this with me after what I tell you.” He looked down to his hands that were fidgeting with a string on his pants and took a huge breath, then exhaled. He lifted his head to the ceiling of the car and took another deep breath as his eyes reconnected to mine. It was as if he were asking the Lord to help him through this. I was patient.
After he exhaled the second time, he practically spit it all out in one long monologue. ”Before I met you, I was at a party and this girl begged me to take her in the back on the balcony. I didn’t really want to, but she kind of pulled down my pants and started sucking me off and, you know, I wasn’t going to stop her, but I really, honestly, didn’t like her, but I was drunk but…” Douglas put his hands over his face, laughing in frustration while breathing through his fingers. He sighed and tried to get a grip, but his face was changing colors as his eyes went from tears to fright with wide open clarity. He looked at me in a last-ditch effort to gather all his strength and finally released. “She called yesterday and told me she is pregnant. She wants me to help pay for an abortion or start doing paperwork for child support.” Douglas stopped, held his breath, and sat in an awkward heart-pounding silence.
Calmly I asked him, “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he said and began inhaling again.
I didn’t mean to sound as if I was mocking him, but I was genuinely curious. “Is she about five-foot-five with short brown hair and huge boobs? Lives in the barracks across the street from you, right?” I smiled confidently because I knew exactly what was going on.
Maybe confusion isn’t the right word for how he expressed what he was feeling in his facial movements. It was confusion, for sure, but it was also that look of how the fuck does she know. Much like the face of a skeptic being told his darkest desires by a stranger who claims to be a psychic. He was further dumbfounded by my inability to hold a straight face as I burst into laughter. His puzzlement turned into an uncomfortable sort of relief.
“That ho,” I said and dismissed the whole thing with a hand gesture you would use to wave away a peasant field worker. “That is some funny shit.”
“I can’t believe you are laughing.” He didn’t move other than to slowly spread a nervous smile over his face.
“I can’t believe you believe that ho! Listen, the last guy I was fucking before I met you came to me crying with the same story. He told me she said it was either his or Mike’s baby. Mike is the other guy I used to doink. This skank is leaving me with all the sloppy seconds. Jesus, this chick is not pregnant. I think it’s a scam to get money. Don’t give her shit until you see a paternity test. If I was scamming, I would say it was you too because you are the most responsible and respectable one of the three. Fuck that ho, you aren’t having any babies.” Again, I dismissed the whole situation with a wave of my hand, which gave his tense body unspoken permission to relax. He glared out of the front window to the Arizona mountains that surrounded the post in quiet relief.
“Okay. You are right,” he agreed, then looked over to me in the driver’s seat, still smirking. “Fuck that ho. Let’s go get our license.” He was amped that I took things so well, but I cut his excitement short to stop him from leaning over to kiss me. “Wait. Since we are sharing…”
Douglas really thought he had thrown the worst at me, but he wasn’t prepared to receive. I figured that, since we were in a moment of elation and human redemption, I would go ahead and say what I had to say.
“You know I’m bi, right? I won’t give up women, so, if you can’t handle that, maybe we shouldn’t get married.” My eyebrows lifted to the top of my forehead in a very straightforward manner. He was slightly surprised by my retort, but what he didn’t know was that this was a side note compared to the secret yet unveiled. I knew my sexuality was not an issue for Douglas, and he confirmed it when he told me he didn’t mind, joking about working something out. So I went on with it, trying not to pause. I figured if I actually thought about what was coming out, I wouldn’t say it at all.
“Before I met you, I was with this asshole who gave me a VD, but it is gone now and I’m finishing up my meds. You would have gotten it by now if I was still infected.”
I shied away, covering my mouth with my hand, looking at him with widened eyes. I choked on my spit a little as I stopped breathing for a moment to let him digest the information. He scrunched his eyebrows together. ”What do you have?” His voice trailed upward in pitch.
“No, I don’t have it anymore. It was genital warts,” I corrected with my hands still over my mouth.
“That’s forever!” He was surprisingly calm having just heard his fiancée, to whom he was about to commit himself, admitting to having had a venereal disease.
“No, herpes is forever. I had genital warts. They are gone now. I swear it.” I corrected him for a second time with the imaginary shield of fingers still crossed over my lips.
“It’s gone?” His demeanor was inquisitive rather than judgmental.
“It’s gone.” My voice was quiet as I finally dropped my hands into my lap but maintained eye contact as if my life depended on it. He knew as I did that purging was probably the best thing we could have done before finalizing paperwork.