From

Diary of the Seduced

a novella, 2008

May 13th

The rain comes down as a fog. I can’t feel it for the heat in my body as I walked so far to the bench where I lie down and it is shaded and the damp leaves of the trees sink down. I lower my baseball cap over my eyes and place my hand on my heart to count the beats.

I had last seen him at Bowery Electric, a new bar where people sit on black leather couches sipping cocktails and placing them on square silver cubes at their knees. The bar is lit by stage lights and the bartender is a model during the day. He doesn’t say much and smiles and does not drink but gives the impression of drunkenness.

“Hey,” he says to me because we have known each other since before he moved here and he hands me a Black Label neat.

“Thank you,” I said, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek.

When I turn around, I rest my elbows on the bar top and I see James has taken a seat on the couch and there is a long haired blond girl beside him, their legs pressed together, and Xander stands up when he sees me, coming over.

I sip my drink while he talks to me and he invites me to the table.

I sit down with them and face Xander but out of the corner of my eye, I see them taking and I see James straight-mouthed and I wonder if my presence annoys him. I cannot endure it. I say goodbye and leave without looking back.

“kido,” James says.

I lift up from the bench, lift my cap up.

“You look good,” he says, as I swing my legs around for him to sit down.

“No, I don’t,” I say because my face is puffy and my hair is soaked and the silly baseball cap doesn’t fit right. When he sits down, I lay my head on his shoulder and the tears mix with the rain.

“Shh, kido, shh.”

He looks at me and sticks my hair behind my ear and kisses my forehead.

“How could you love me still when you’re with someone else?”

“I’m not with anybody else,” he says, “I still love you but you need to go love someone else kido.”

“You can sleep with other women and still love me?”

“Yes.”

“But do you love them?”

“No,”  he says.

I stare into the rain, my hands curling around the wet bench, my shoes rubbing over the leaves on the ground.

“I’ll fuck somebody else but not yet. I’m not just going to fuck someone just to do it.”

“All right,” he says, leaning forward and dropping his cheek to his hand. “I saw pictures and I thought maybe…”

“No,” I laugh. “How lame are pictures on the internet…”

There was a photo of me on someone’s blog kissing a man. It was wretched. I felt nothing and drink had blurred his face from my memory.

“I’ve got to go kido,” he says standing up.

“Not yet,” I say and the tears have not yet dried on my face.

I stand up and wrap my arms around his waist and he looks taller than before. He looks down to me.

“But James, nobody knows me like you do.”

He smiles with dark eyes. “No one knows me as well as you do either.”

“Then—”

“But you must love someone else like that.”

He kisses me on the forehead and leaves one way and I begin walking immediately the other way, shoulders hunched, tears coming fast now because the love is burrowed deep in my heart and as long as he is alive, how will it ever go away? And how can I love another when I have given up my heart and he has received it and then tried to give it back? It stands stubbornly in limbo, refusing to be resold, collecting dust and beating softly under the floorboards.