Heather Lewis - Notice

She leaned back to unbutton my pants. And while she did this she said things I don’t quite remember and didn’t believe. Things about loving me and wanting me, about wanting so much for so long to do this.

Hearing her say these things backed me away until I felt the edge of the bed behind me, behind my knees, and so I knew I could fall. But it was a little longer before I did. She was kissing my stomach again. I wanted her to hold me up, but instead she was pushing me down, her hands on my thighs, and so I folded on to the bed. I let go of her and then let her.

She got my shoes and socks off, my pants, my underwear. I still had my shirt on and I pulled it around me. But doing this made it hard to sit up and I felt I should try to stay upright. I had this idea I should keep an eye on her, except everything worked against this. All the weight of it did. And so I couldn’t hold myself up for long, not when lying back seemed so much easier.

It was easier, once I let myself do it, which was when I noticed her taking off her clothes. On my back I could forget all of it except her mouth on me and how this felt and her hands still on my thighs first, and then her arms curled around my calves. Her weight on my legs made me feel all of it more. Made me feel her more. Made me feel maybe the best I’d ever felt. Enough so I couldn’t stand it and couldn’t stop it, couldn’t let myself come off.

She could tell, I think, because she kept saying for me to let myself. Instead I pulled away from her. I kind of crawled away and then was kneeling with my back to her. She was on the bed behind me and she’d pulled my shirt off my shoulders. She kissed me there, and my neck, all the while murmuring to me in this way I loved and wanted more of but didn’t trust, in this way I wanted so badly to give in to, but kept fighting.

She kept talking softly, and her arm around me, her hand moving from my stomach to my chest and then lower and back up to my throat, at first this was what held me up, what helped me. Her hand, not what she was saying.

With her mouth so close to my ear I could hear every word but couldn’t hold on to any of it. The things she said worried me most, scared me most. Scared me for her.

I’d kept hold of my shirt. I’d kept my elbows bent so she couldn’t take it all the way off me. But now I let my arms drop back behind me because I needed us to get to the next place we were going. Needed this because I thought it would stop her from talking this way.

Once she had my shirt off, I had nothing on anymore and neither did she and this seemed to be what let us lie down together. I was on my stomach and she was behind me with one hand inside me and the other holding me around my waist. I could only make sounds and do what she wanted me to do, which was pull one leg up under me more.

Her hand in me had me near begging her. I felt crazed in a way I didn’t know, or could barely remember. Crazed and swallowed somewhere and then coming up again and then not anymore. Just staying down there, staying with her and when I’d gotten to this place, she took her hand out and put it in my ass and then I was begging again. For real and out loud. Begging for more of her. Asking from this place in me that felt early, as in ancient, but still very young.

I was pleading with her and she kept telling me to let myself. She kept saying, “Sweetheart, let yourself have it.”

And her telling me this fastened me to her voice, to the sound of it, which was so gentle and knowing. So convinced about what would make me feel better. That the way to this was through giving in to her, to what she was saying.

I could listen to her now because the words were about what she wanted from me, what she wanted me to do, and not how she felt, so I could be with her. I could be so close to her that she became who I most wanted her to be. For a little while she did. Until I did what she told me and let myself come.

Once that happened, the shift in me was so fast I thought I’d go under for ever. This rage came up and over me with such fierceness and sorrow I feared I’d turn on her. But then instead of it swallowing me, I swallowed it. And before I understood any of it, I’d begun all the motions of loving her back.

I got caught in this fast because it let me feel all those other things again. The first and most important of these was being turned on, the only one able to drown out the others. Or permit them. The one that allowed me to feel things I otherwise never felt safe with.

But then all that was over too. And she seemed so at peace in my arms while I felt in pieces and wanting badly for her to notice except she didn’t, and so I was left alone in my head where nothing good was happening.

All of this felt familiar and strange. It had something to do with how I managed the men, but in another way it had nothing to do with all that because the men didn’t start this trouble, the women did. And not even all of them, and never anyone had like this, like Beth.

Ingrid had begun it, had come closest. She’d shown me myself and where I was headed. She’d made it clear I couldn’t keep on with what I’d been doing. That it didn’t matter anymore how hard I tried, I wouldn’t be able to keep the things inside me where I thought they belonged. That it was only a matter of time and maybe of place before I lost hold.

Until Ingrid, I hadn’t felt anything in such a very long while. I’d made sure of this. I’d promised myself. My life may have looked haphazard and I suppose a lot of it was, but I’d kept this one piece very well ordered. And even with Ingrid I’d seemed able to keep myself under control.

But not with Beth. Since the first day I laid eyes on her I’d been fighting myself and then just plain pretending. Had done this by seeing what I felt for her in one way only. Had tried to make it just about sex, but then that was what led me here. What put me in her bed where feeling became suddenly everything until the feelings themselves overlapped and tangled up, impossible to distinguish, or stop, or recover from.

These were the feelings that had made it necessary to stop feeling in the first place – necessary to stop all of them. Or at least dull them, blunt them. Find so many ways around them, to never allow them. To keep myself especially far from love and even farther from being loved because, of the whole lot of them, these were the only two that could actually kill you.

All this crowded into me while Beth slept in my arms. And it made me panicky and flighty. Restless enough to get up and put on my shirt and my pants and then search out my cigarettes, which were caught in the sheets near her feet. I found myself wanting to wake her, wanting to shake her awake, and I did jostle the bed more than I needed but she was sleeping too deeply to notice.

And because I understood so well this kind of sleep and how impossible it is to intrude upon, I went down the stairs and into the living room, curled myself into the far corner of the couch and smoked, wondering what day it was going to be and what it was I was supposed to do. I did this until she came down the stairs with my shoes in one hand and my socks in another.

She handed them to me and I put them on – all this without a word passing between us. And we said nothing putting on our coats or the whole way in her car. And nothing still when she dropped me at my car.

It was still dark when I got into my own bed and by then I knew which day it was turning into, and knew I’d call in sick to work. And I was sick, I supposed – and with the whole weekend looming.

I spent the day in bed nursing a loneliness too large to ignore. A lovesick that wouldn’t let me alone. This was the place I called her from and so I wasn’t in my right mind.