As we climbed the steps to my flat, I was full of anticipation. Were my fantasies about to be fulfilled? I led Sinbad straight to my room, turned on a dim floor lamp, and invited him to sit down. He took a chair at the table. Not exactly what I’d had in mind, but how could he know?
I made a mental note to myself: “Next time, if you should be so lucky as to get a next time, sit on the sofa/bed, and then invite him to sit down. Leave no room for doubt. My god, woman! Do you need a choreographer?”
I noticed that his beer bottle was still unopened, so I brought him a bottle opener and settled down in the armchair next to the bed and watched him open his beer. It seemed that he’d had an easier time of it with his keys, but he finally managed to get it open. I wasn’t happy about the physical distance between us, and quickly racked my brains to see what I could come up with to change the feng shui of the situation.
“Should I put some music on?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let me get the computer fired up. What kind of music do you like?”
“Let’s listen to one of your songs.”
Cool. What song could I pick that would give him an idea of who I am and what I like? Impossible to do all that with just one song… my tastes are so varied, but I chose one of my all time favorites.. “Because the Night” by Patti Smythe. He recognized the song, but he had heard it by a cover artist. I sat back and listened to the words.. enjoying sharing this with him…
Come on down… try to understand,
How I feel under your command….
Suddenly, that whole dominant/submissive thing just popped right into context, and I could see myself being very open to his command…
The song ended, and he asked if I had internet, because he wanted to play some music for me. He came over to where I was sitting in front of the computer and knelt by my side to navigate the screen. I jumped up from my chair and offered it to him or to bring the other chair over, but he said,
“No, it’s okay. I like.”
“Alright,” I agreed. “I don’t mind having a man kneeling at my feet.”
He gave me a look of mock severity out of the corner of his eyes, and I smiled.
He found some songs by one of his favorite bands… a Czech group that plays medieval heavy metal. Some of it was nice and lyrical, and other songs were just heavy metal. He was able to predict exactly which songs I would like and which ones I wouldn’t. We got on a discussion of metal, and I asked him if he knew Deep Purple.
“Yeah, but that’s not
really metal.”
“Come on… you’ve got to be kidding me! That’s one of the original metal bands!”
He admitted that he didn’t really know much of their music. Then, he asked me to play him a song that I liked. I asked him if he knew CCR. He thought he did, but he said that their music didn’t have much energy, that it was just something nice to put on in the background if you wanted to talk. I questioned whether we were talking about the same group and played him a song (can’t remember which one). He said that he must have been thinking about some other band.
Then, he asked me if I’d ever heard of a band called Faith No More. Of course, I hadn’t. If they came around after the 70’s, they don’t exist for me… lol. So, then he wanted to play me one of their songs. He said he used to listen to it all the time when he was 18, and that it was one of his favorites. It turned out to be a cover of “Easy (like Sunday morning)” by Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores. I listened to the words as it played, trying to see what it was about the song that turned him on so much…
Know it sounds funny, but I just can’t stand the pain…
Girl, I’m leavin’ you tomorrow…
… I wanna be hiiiigh…. Soooo high
I wanna be free to know the things I do are right…
I wanna be free… just me…
It reminded me of something he’d said while we were sitting on that hill in the park… talking about men and women and relationships… and I began to get some insights about why his relationship with Molly Bly might have ended…
“But women always want more,” he’d said. I’d acknowledged that most women do want more, but said a few things to let him know that I am not that kind of woman. I told him that I don’t believe in ownership. I hoped that that had sunk in and wished that I’d expanded on it.
But now, as I sat here with him, listening to his favorite song, and even identifying with the words myself… I wondered if it was really true that I wouldn’t want more. I was starting to appreciate so many things about him… starting to become attached… I was falling for him. Damn! This was not what was supposed to happen. Falling in love wasn’t part of the plan. I was just out for a little bit of fun… wasn’t I?
And now, if I were lucky, I would have a chance to put my theories to the test. Would I really be able to have such strong feelings for someone and avoid trying to claim him for my own? I’d have to. This is not a man who can be claimed. I know that. And I wouldn’t want him any other way. He is even more of a free spirit than I am, and that is what draws me to him so strongly. Trying to change that would change who he is. It would turn him into somebody that I wouldn’t want to be with.
No. No… this man is perfect just the way he is. And I know that when he feels free, he’s capable of being so perfectly pleasant and delightful and engaged that anybody would want to make it last forever. But if he ever feels any sense of obligation or duty, he’ll run as fast and as far as the wind will take him. I know. Because I am just like him.
So, if I could remain grateful for those times when the wind blows us together out of a mutual desire, without wanting or asking for more… then I think Sinbad could bring a great deal of joy to my life… for a while. Maybe.
Maybe there’s some significance to our astrological signs. He’s an Aquarius… the water bearer, and I’m a Scorpio, which is a water sign, but I’ve been far removed from the water for many years and really feeling its absence. Maybe he’s come to bring a little water into my life. Just one bucket at a time. My challenge will be to drink his water when he offers it to me, and if I need more… I’ll just have to go and look for it elsewhere, because he only has so much that he can give.
Or maybe nothing will ever happen.
When the song ended, he said,
“I used to listen to that song all the time. It still makes the hair stand up on my back. Do you know what it means to have the hair stand up on your back?”
I knew what he meant, but I said,
“You have hair on your back?” and used that as an excuse to slide my hand under the collar of his T-shirt to feel his smooth (and thankfully hairless) back. As my finger got stuck in the tag, he let out a manic squeal, like a loon screeching in the night. I quickly pulled my hand away.
“What?! What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. But that’s the way it feels.”
We both cracked up. We laughed so hard, I thought we would never stop. And in fact, we didn’t stop laughing all night. We continued sharing our favorite songs with each other, and telling stories. I slid my arm around his shoulders, and I half expected him to pull away (I guess I was more traumatized by my experience with Jolly Roger last summer than I had realized). But he didn’t pull away. In fact, he seemed perfectly comfortable with everything I did.
At one point, I looked down at his head and noticed, for the first time, that his hair line is receding slightly, and that actually turned me on. Maybe because it made me feel less like I was robbing the cradle.
Then, somehow, we got on the topic of military service.
“You know, in Czech Republic, every man have to go to military when he’s 18.”
“You were in the military?” I found that really hard to believe.
“No, but I had to go register. So one day, I woke up in my bed, so happy, because I didn’t have to go to school, and I just lay there feeling so lazy. And then I remembered why I didn’t have to go to school… because I had to go register for military. And so, I got there an hour late. And you know, you have to have medical examination… and I’ve always hated being naked in front of people…
“You know every child have a medical exam when he’s three years old…”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well in Czech Republic, every three years old child have a complete medical exam. So my mother, she take me to the doctor, and they take off all my clotheses and check everything. And when it was over, my mother said I came to her like this…”
He rested his hands on my shoulders and put his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my cheeks, and his skin, smooth and translucent, almost waxy, like the petals of a wild orchid, smelled sweet, like baby lotion.
“Don’t make it to me again,” he said sternly.
“And you were only three years old?”
“Yeah.” He continued talking about his military exam. “And they told me that I was really skinny and asked me if I had any scoliosis, and I said yeah, I have a little scoliosis…” This reminded me of my medical exam for the work permit in the Czech Republic where the doctor’s ‘examination’ consisted of asking me if I had any heart or stomach problems and then filling out a certificate of health.
He continued, “The doctor looked at my eyes and asked, ‘Did you do some drugs?’ and I hadn’t tripped for two weeks, so I said no, and he said my pupils were very big. And then they sent me to talk to a woman psychiatrist. She put her hand over my one eye like this…” He covered half of my face with his hand, leaving one eye uncovered, and I fixed my gaze on his eyes. “And she told me to look in her eyes, but I didn’t look at her at all… my eye kept looking everywhere else.” He was laughing the whole time he told the story.
“And after the exam, I told her, ‘please could you say something good about me, because I don’t want to go to army, but I really want to work as civil servant, and she said ‘oh yes, of course.’” The way he quoted the psychiatrist, it was obvious that she was just humoring him.
“And then she gave me the envelope with the results, and I wasn’t supposed to open it, just deliver it to the doctor, but I opened it in the hallway to take a look, and she wrote that I was psychopathic and sociopathic and a lot of other things, and said that they absolutely should not take me in the army or the civil service. So, I delivered the envelope to the doctor, and he told me that they didn’t want me in the army, because I was skinny and I had scoliosis. So, that’s why I never got a civil service job.”
Ha ha… he could write the manual on how to get out of the draft!
And all the time he was talking, I was just drinking in his beauty, and I must have drunk a lot, because I was gushing! And I had begun to believe that I had dried up in my old age, but I guess I just hadn’t run into anyone who’s lit a fire under me in a long time. I was so ready for him, but the bewitching hour was quickly arriving. He’d said that he had to leave by midnight.
And even in my heightened state of arousal, I didn’t want to manipulate him into staying, so I held myself back. I really have to develop a different code of ethics.
At a couple of minutes before midnight, he noticed the time and said that he had to get going, but he still wanted to show me one more video. And then another. Was he going to blow off his bus? I hoped so.
But then, he really did get up to go. He said he could still make the bus. It didn’t leave right at midnight. I walked him to the door, and before he turned to go, I thanked him for the smoking lesson and opened my arms for a hug. He took me in his arms and held me, and stood there, squeezing me lightly and rubbing my back. I could have stayed in his arms forever, but that little voice in me said, “Don’t trick him into staying… honor what he said.”
So, I stepped back, and as I did, he kissed my cheek, and I turned and kissed his cheek, too. And then…
I don’t know… in my shyness, I think I probably ducked my head. What would have happened if I would have raised my face toward his instead? Go toward the light! Will I never learn to be spontaneous? We stepped apart, and I walked him down the stairs to unlock the main door for him.
“If you miss your bus, you can come back here,” I offered.
“I won’t miss it… but I can stay with Pegleg.”
“Alright then. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I came back to my room and sat on the bed, savoring my new memory. And it suddenly dawned on me that Sinbad had spent an entire three hours kneeling at my side! Couldn’t I have made better use of that time?
“I really have to give up this notion,” I thought, “of not starting anything unless he’s clear to stay the night, because that may never happen.”
And yet, even without the kiss or any of the other “possibilities,” it was a perfect night. I don’t know that I would change anything. And even if nothing else ever happens, I have a perfect memory.
So, for all of you who have read through this entire story, especially the men, (because I think I already know what the women are going to say, and I really need a man’s perspective), I have some questions. So, if you’ve come this far, please don’t click away without putting in your two cents worth. Here goes:
1) Is there any way that Sinbad doesn’t realize what’s on my mind?
2) Is there any way that he does realize but is just being polite?
I know these sound like dumb questions, but I am a dummy when it comes to these things sometimes. Please tell me what you think. Thanks!
