Like Me

There was a time when you were my roommate, when the door across the hall was warm with your mystery, and the bang of a hanger on the doorknob would make me sit up straight, arrange my clothes, bury my big toe under the little ones so you couldn’t see that it was curved wrong. You’d walk into the living room, rubbing your eyes, your blonde hair always straight up from the pillow, and you’d light a cigarette and regard me through the blur of morning. As it was, we’d usually been out just a few hours before.

When you sat like that in a pair of loose boxers, always blue striped, I’d try not to let you see me look, would pretend to stare at your cigarette as you leaned forward. Always down the left leg, all the way to the break where your groin muscle dipped in between the front and the back of the thigh. I wondered sometimes if you saw me looking.

I saw it in action that one time, do you remember? Of course you do. That time I came in and found you at your computer when I said I’d be out and forgot my I.D. I didn’t make a sound, but watched you for a long time, watched the bend in your neck, the pull inward of your shoulders. I was there long enough to feel a part of it, as if it were suddenly natural enough for me to drop my own pants, kick them to my room and come back, fingers deep inside of my wet pussy, and if you noticed, I felt you’d do nothing but smile. I didn’t tell you how long I watched. I don’t know how long I watched. I remember backing down the hallway until I hit that creaky patch and heard a rumble in your room.

I’d dream at night that you would come to my bed, the old twin I used to have that made the bedroom seem so small. It squeaked when I moved, bounced enough to throw me off if you jumped on it, and I’d lay there and wait for you, bracing the edge in my fingers I was so sure it would happen. I believed you’d come to me, tears in your eyes, telling me that you’d noticed that I was the one, that I could never accept it, you know, but that you had to tell me anyway. I’d wrap your arm around me and you’d kiss my neck and I’d feel that wet on my neck from your eyes. And it was the kiss. It was all about that kiss you’d give me. In my bouncy bed, waiting for you, I’d lift a thigh and find myself streaming, wet enough to lubricate the entrance of a magnum of Champagne. I didn’t even think of sex until the end, before that, it was only a kiss.

We never dated anyone, you or me. We never talked to anyone. We’d screen calls like an SS officer and with as much respect. One night, drunk and driving home from the clubs, you were chatty, and told me how much you wanted to find someone just like me. I sat there, just like me, and kept my hands at 10:00 and 2:00 on the steering wheel.