Natalie (12/11/05)

In the 28th year of my life I met a sweet and conflicted young graduate student with a luminous smile named Natalie. She had a subtle grace and elegance to her movement that was belied only by the not-so-subtle, if endearing, shrug of her shoulders every time I made her laugh. They would bounce up and down with the tender and soft rise and fall of her laugh, and I likened it to one of the most beautiful sights and sounds I'd ever seen or heard. I grew very fond of Natalie in a very short time, and drew from her all the laughing and breathing and sighs that I could consume. But, I also drew pain.

We'd met in a club/lounge, a tiny lobby in a converted art deco hotel, rearranged to accommodate singles crowds. I was there to meet someone else, but because this second girl was late, or because I was just instantly and unavoidably attracted to Natalie, my original plans became discarded ones. After a series of casual glances turned deliberate I approached Natalie. She was standing at the bar smiling, laughing, bare shoulders bobbing out from underneath a beige shawl. "Hi, I'm Natalie," she said without giving me a chance to say a word and it was as if I was wrapped up in her shawl and shoulders and smell and smile before I could say, "Nice to meet you." Lord, was I in trouble.

How is it that you can describe the exquisite taste of someone else's flesh? Yes, flesh is salty with sweat, and sweet with the lingering of fragrance and perfume and lotion, but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about that sensation of placing your open lips and tongue on the base of another's neck, in that intimate space just above the shoulder, and feeling like you could subsist just from that. Even as I write this now I swear that I still have that exquisite and sweet and bittersweet taste lingering in my mouth.

You see, Natalie was conflicted and pained and, at that time, incapable, perhaps, of any kind of profound emotional investment. She was just out of a relationship that had left a deep and sizable wound, open and festering, in her psyche. You know whenever you meet a person like this--for they have a sense of self esteem far beneath and below what others regard they should have. Perhaps, because of this, Natalie could not, or chose not, to see my affections as anything but motivated by seduction and physical pleasure. And maybe every word that was said to refute this she only saw as proof of my 'imagined' devious intentions.

I grew up writing stories, painting pictures and singing songs. And forgive me if it sounds self-aware and conceited; but words have always come easy to me. It is not out of arrogance to say that I express myself well. In fact, I also suspect that I feel more than others do. That I have a deeper reservoir for emotion--and therefore am more capable of understanding and explaining it. Maybe, it's these two factors that truly encapsulate the irony of knowing Natalie. For I grew very fond of her in a very short time, and anytime I told her I how I felt, she only saw a ruse made in conquest. Because she knew how easy the words came they had become less meaningful. But I know that in those moments of subsistence, as I drew smiles and passionate breaths and bobs from her shoulders--in those lazy days between our first meeting and 'our talk'--I felt those very things that she was incapable of.

We had a heart to heart, Natalie and I, lying on my bed, our legs entwined, our feet close to the headboard and our heads at the foot of the bed. And she tried to tell me about how difficult dealing with her break up had been. She tried to tell me about how hard she was taking this rearrangement of her life and I could tell it was true. I could see the corners of her eyes moisten, and I wanted nothing more that to take away her pain--even if it meant my own. I had heard somewhere, that the difference between a good lover and a great one, is that the latter has only one thought, and that it's not of himself. So I smiled and she kissed me and said, "I feel much better after our talk," and it was never clearer to me how things would go. No, I didn't know how any of this would end--only that I would suffer until it did.