Thoughts on Rebecca getting married.

It hit something hard in me and the harder bits broke. I wandered around my apartment for a little while naked. It was hot and the apartment’s small, so I circled circles and wandered over the same soiled carpet thinking desperate, hot thoughts that sizzled and fell off me like the sweat of the push-ups I’d start and stop. The humid night pressed down on me and I pushed up, not daring to forego this daily ritual, scared to death what skipping it tonight would spell for my tomorrow.

I never dated Rebecca, I never got to know her.

She was a classmate freshman year, we were paired in theatre, we did a scene together as two working class chumps that called for a big kiss at the end. We practiced that scene a lot. We did it well in class and then that night I got good and freshman year drunk and we did it better when I climbed up her dormitory window.

She was a big girl, not a big, big girl. There was more to love, she was soft in all the good places a woman ought to be. She had the most amazing tits I’ve ever laid hands on. I don’t go out of my way to be vulgar but with some women bosom and breasts and boobs won’t do.

She had the most innocent and scared smile I remember from that year.

We never slept together we just messed around with each other, that night, once or twice after. And, frankly, that was that. We didn’t keep in touch, we didn’t chat about the possibility of roping our scared and innocent little hands together, we just drifted out and stopped kissing.

I don’t know if it’s right to say I always wanted to take another crack at the girl but I can still feel the weight of her in my palms to this day; that smile, red hair, hungry kiss. I didn’t even know she was engaged. Hell, we’re not that old now, are we?

Old enough. I heard the news from a mutual and mutually estranged friend, she’s married, beautiful ring and everything. Jesus, it blew my heart out my asshole.

I don’t mean to be vulgar and I never loved the girl. This ain’t a love story. But for some stupid reason tonight I’m shaking, naked and stalking the dirty laundry in my lonely apartment, finding reasons not to sit down, making ado about nothing but the creepy crawlies in my spine. Friends have married but they were always friends of friends. The woman I really love, when she gets hitched to some punk back east I’m sure I’ll really take a tumble.

Tonight, I don’t know. I hope Rebecca’s married to a hell of a man; she’s a lot of woman to love and worth every pound. I never really wanted to know the rest of her story. I just wanted to get going and keep her as a fond memory in my pocket. But then those memories grow up and live lives of their own, break away from the little webs we stick ’em in and trail our feeble notions about ’em until we snap off their heels. That’s how it feels.

I’ve never felt so lousy over so little. It’s true I do fall in love a little with every pair of lips I kiss but it’s not my heart that’s broken tonight. I think it’s my pride.