The Devil You Know

I feel the urgent need to write something – anything – so I scribble something in my notebook about the time he took me from behind as I bent over a white marble hot tub in a fancy hotel high above the towering city lights. The hot tub’s a bit of an erotic cliche I suppose, but it really did happen so let’s just say it was retro. It can be hard to pinpoint how I felt about him then, my lust being so new that it clouded over all reason, all logic. We wanted each other everywhere in every way and only held back on rare occasion. People can be quite effective ways of numbing the pain. As I pen the words, I am struck by the way the memories begin to line themselves up, one behind the other in my mind like greeting a line of familiar faces at a wedding or a funeral. The time it snowed on New Years and we had plans to go out with friends but cancelled so we could stay home, eat Chinese food, get drunk on champagne and sex, and stay wrapped against each other’s bodies all night into early dawn. Glancing up at the clock on the wall of the coffee shop, I realize I only have fifteen minutes before I have to head on to the next, which kills my ability to come up with a decent ending to the piece of short fiction on which I’ve been working. There is never enough time it seems, for the things we love. For everything we want to throw our souls into, there is a next appointment dragging us away from our heart’s desire. There’s ever a next next but as the years pass and what’s next has only continued to accumulate into piles of nothing which blow easily away on the breeze, you realize you want to give everything else that doesn’t matter up and insert yourself deep into the dark depths of those mischievous things which make your heart race and your pulse quicken. When will it be your time? When will it be your turn to shine? Your time to write the ugly truth, your time to kiss the wrong person, your time to finally taste what’s forbidden and make it your own.