Theme

"I read your latest journal while you were gone." He leans back in the computer chair, brings up his legs, and rests his head on his knees. "I don’t know whether to puke or take your face in my hands and kiss you."

Immediately my mind scans the pages of that journal grasping for the pictures that go with the words.

"I don’t know what to tell you, Cory. I wrote it like it was. That is all I can do."

"I feel dirty, Crys. I feel like I stepped into a very scary place that I don’t want to leave. I’m so sorry I invaded your privacy but I had to let you know that I did it."

"I’m not upset that you read it. It’s that reaction I feared the most, the reaction from you." I curl up in his lap knowing the only way to remedy this is to let him hold me.

"It’s hard for me because I know them, even with the changed names. The chipped blue escort, the shelter house….I know your life because I was there. But I was left with this feeling that I’ve been sleeping next to you all these years and I never knew. I never asked. I couldn’t know."

I run my finger down the inside of his palm, willing myself to let him purge instead of making excuses for what I feel.

"Our lives are so interwoven. Not too many people have what we have because the background isn’t there. But that is also what makes it so difficult for me to read. I can picture Denny’s and the yellow Triumph and…..why did you make him out to be so caring? I know what you felt when you wrote ‘Road Trip’. You were shamed. You had taken yourself from Chicago and you were getting out. Then you walked back to him. I know this. I think I would have sensed it even if I didn’t know the background but I know this."

I slide my bare feet under his leg and twist my hair up into a knot. "You don’t get it. We all did what we had to do back then to feel special. You did it too with the guitars and the bare chest and the singing. You needed attention from girls and praise from the boys. You wanted to be known. You did what you had to do. I wanted to be loved."

"It’s my pride, Crys," he sighs. "It is difficult to read about you sharing an intimate moment with someone else. It repulses me, not you, the thought of it happening. How would you feel if I wrote about a passionate moment from my past?"

A smile breaks on my face dimming the blue light on the monitor. "I think you’ve forgotten your past," I smile down at him. "You slept with half my friends."

"Fair enough," he laughs. "Our lives can’t be separated. The history is too deep. I realize this."

I take the baby out for a walk and think about how I was sucked into that life, how at thirteen I ended up dancing in the middle of a house in Howell while two twenty year old men sat on a mattress playing ‘Simple Man’ on acoustic guitars.
_____________
Before bed, Cory wrapped his arms around my waist and told me not to hold back because of his pride or mine. It was a time, a life that many kids shared but no one understands. Maybe that’s part of the story I need to tell.