There’s something so warm about a stranger from the past knocking on your door, memories coming rushing back through time warping you right back into that exact instant. It pricks this place of desire for one’s self, not only sexual or merely passionate, all red hot; it’s a tingle that makes you giddy with approval, this reminder that you are something, someone you think you are. The validation of stories told over and over of love and lusts coming back to haunt you. This confidence you have carried with you but never truly felt. After all, hadn’t you said you were magic?
It’s the reminder that you had an effect on someone. You’ve always longed to be remembered, stories written on your skin of experiences eagerly waiting to be retold. You had to be that person at the party, outshining everyone with a bigger story until you realized the irritation it would bring, locking everyone else out. It’s sweet that they remember the moments you had together that you think of fondly, the lone night in the hotel room, the banter of historical figures and their legacies shared in between kisses that could sear through you, the passion in yourself you didn’t know possible kindled by this man’s touch (was he really a man at the time or a boy trying on the costume of a man?). It’s not something you thought they put any stock in, just another junk bond to be thrown away, another wild story in Vegas with some unknown girl at the right time and place.
Ghosts of your pasts are beckoned when you are truly happy. There’s a deep innate piece of you that knows when there are the slivers of unease in those moments of happiness, the veins of time where self doubt lurks, hunting for new prey. These men-boys pop out of their trenches, their alternative realities where you’ve placed them in your mind’s eye, in a place where no evil lays, but one where all their dreams can come true and you never have to think of them again. Here they are, yet another one slipping in from the gulf of that timestream laying claim to your thoughts and the perception of your body, wanting to tether you against some dream they have of you instead of who you actually are in your complexities. Therein lies the sweetness for those that don’t know you, but idealize you as you have down to the good moments with them, those who have only seen your unrelenting fight for good but not the failures that leave you wrecked in a bubble of doubt, or of your deep heartfelt well of pettiness that lies beneath, bubbling and waiting to go over.
It took 12 years after your initial dalliance for him to return. A romanticized memory of innocence and laughter wrapped up in dreams of what adulthood could be, all so sweet it was stuck in a bottle for all time; it was completely glazed over, a snapshot of a memory in pristine detail with the edges worn over. He was not knocking on your door asking for sugar, you not doing your neighborly duty. Coming in from the grey haze of the past, a world so far removed from your own as if an alternate reality, without a word, interceding into the doldrums of your own reality, it was as if you woke up into yourself, suddenly.
Did he remember the spark from the touch of your skin sending electricity through his, desire flaring up through his veins, revving up his engine? Or was it your intellect, the conversation you remember with vivid detail, spinning theories of past heroes into thoughts to chew on later, figuring out what that night even meant to you?
A brief moment in time for two people to enjoy the company of another exceptional person. A moment that should not have been explained, should not have existed, too many miles put between you, a chance on this timeline where everything aligned. Yet it’s a memory of a moment someone saw you for what you were despite knowing nothing about you; sliding yourself up into a frenzy of flirtation not only based on your beauty, but of your brains fluttering across crafted inside jokes of historical acts only understood by him. It was a night of passion, both of the flesh but of mutual appreciation for who you both were. A night where you found safety, and against all odds, how to be yourself, the one whose voice you hear in the murmurings of your brain, with a total stranger. A contented sigh when they look back.
I have always been detrimentally internal, a spiral of self doubt mixed in with a healthy dose of people pleasing, molded by my mother into identifying how to perfectly fix a situation for anyone other than myself in an instant. Imagine my surprise of my intricately placed walls finally being pulled apart from my door, hinges spiralling before propelling to the ground by a mere boy. Being told by yet another self-proclaimed savior hiding their true narcissistic face under a guise of protecting my well-being worming themselves deeper and deeper into the tunnels of my heart, stripping away my sense of identity: independence suddenly seeming selfish, a wave of nausea at the thought of not being able to be alone as that would mean I didn’t care; dictations over what I was allowed to do with whom, even close friends. Until finally I was yet again melted down into gelatin and poured into another cake mold, only to be tossed out for someone who already fit what I was becoming.
I had been too fat, you see, for the boy before, and still he had the audacity to enjoy the lushness of my thighs, the swells of my breasts, the smooth rotundness of my belly, all youth and innocence chiselled into my stretch marks. The image of my ink black curls spiralling onto pillows that Victorian dolls would have haunted mansions for no longer mattered. This prize I had been, something untamable, something genius, an ambitious go-getter who wanted everything the world had to offer, all a reminder of something with more potential than he was, became too much. I was beautiful…until I wasn’t.
It’s always fascinated me how I’ve obsessed over mediocre men-boy-children. My sycophantic nature wrapped up in a tortilla of unfathomable greatness created a recipe of something inedible for me to absorb. Never any of my ideals, barely even the things I wanted, these so called men I would dream about. No, what I truly desired was their experiences; I wanted to be that history professor educating a group of idle minds and explaining the intricacies of why a conversation between two individuals changed the world; I wanted to be the one chasing continents for a new adventure, working in circuses, feeding off of the high that is performing in front of thousands of people. It took me too late to understand that I never really cared about all of those boys, as much as I believed that I did. I envied them. That was the saddest piece of it all; that I couldn’t even see that my worth allowed me to have those experiences in my own time.
It was something beautiful spun out of a need for something more. I think we both got it that night; it was a fertile playing ground for us both to start becoming who we needed to be.
Over the years, I had to learn the hard-earned lesson not to trust with my heart as much as I could trust with my body. It was too precious to me, too big of a prize sought by Indiana Jones types, wanting to come in and rescue without understanding there was no princess in the castle waiting patiently at a window fawning for someone to sweep her away. I was the fucking hero in my own story. What I couldn’t process, what turned and clanged against the walls of my mind, forcing me into confusion was the misunderstanding that I had no story to tell. I’m still learning when and how to tell these stories. I’m understanding the value that they hold, more than prized jewels, more than secrets hidden or whispers tucked in pockets; they hold magnitudes of who I am and why, each a page more elegant in the next, a story more bold in each passing telling. Who deserves to hear that story is the real question.