on that particular night I was ravenous. I couldn’t keep my hands off him in the car on the way to Trip’s dad’s house, and once we arrived the only thing on either of our minds was finishing what we’d started on the ride over.
By the time we made it down to the basement the place looked like a crime scene. Unconscious bodies were strewn around the room as if a bomb had been detonated nearby. There was no rhyme or reason as to why the guys landed where they did, especially considering that they left the bed in the corner of the room untouched. It did have a bunch of boxes and shit piled on top of it, so maybe through their beer goggles it just looked like too much work.
Hans and I tiptoed over his snoring bandmates on our way to the bed, removing the debris—and our clothing—as quickly as possible. Within seconds we were joined under the cover of some scratchy woolen nightmare, trying our damnedest to be quiet. The bed was squeaky, so we had to move slowly and deliberately. We paid attention to our breathing, our pace, every sound, every movement. While it seemed at first like a pain in the ass, all that care and intention caused us to be more present. Every exquisite drag and pull felt significant. Time moved fractionally, if at all, and each time we returned to one another, three tiny words always seemed to escape on a sigh, despite our best efforts to be silent. Fallout bed be damned, Hans and I were cloaked in a silken womb of soul-baring love, and it transcended our meager, mothball-littered surroundings.
I like to think of that experience the way people describe the first time they smoked crack. They say the first time is always the best, right? So maybe love is just like any other drug. Maybe the reason I haven’t experienced that magical interconnected love-bubble sensation since that night in the basement is because I’m simply doomed to chase that high for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t matter who I ended up with—a cold, limp fish or a sensitive artist.
But deep down, I know that’s not true.
I could have that feeling again. In fact, every time I close my eyes and go back to that night, I feel it. It’s not some elusive high I’m chasing. It’s accessible. Simply remembering how the ambient light in the room turned Hans’s kohl-rimmed gray-blue eyes into liquid pools of mercury, the way my hands slid over his tattooed torso and found a home in his unruly black hair, the way his lips caressed my ear like butterfly wings as he whispered the words, “I love you,” has that exact combination of pheromones and endorphins queued up and ready to go…for nothing.
Whenever I try to initiate a love volley like that with Ken, he simply throws his hands up and takes a step backward, as if I just tossed him a live rattlesnake. It’s like he’s an extra on CSI: Miami. There might as well be a chalk outline around his body while we—no, while I have sex.
If Ken would just have a fucking feeling once in a while, make a little eye contact, cup my face in his hands, press his forehead to mine, say something sweet—I’m not even looking for complete sentences. He can fucking tap, You are beautiful, into my ass in Morse code if it’s really that excruciating for him to express himself out loud—that entire entry would have been about him. Actually, that entry wouldn’t even exist. There would have been no need. We’d be John and fucking Yoko. In fact, the only time I’d get out of bed would be to go fill another prescription for ciprofloxacin due to all the sex-induced UTIs I’d be getting.
Complete and utter lack of passion aside, I still love the shit out of Kenneth Easton. In fact, he’s my all-time favorite person. I think I even like him more than our kids.
He just accepts me and supports me and quietly goes about making all my dreams come true without the need for affirmation or thanks of any kind. He’s the kind of man who waits to eat until everyone else is seated; who stands on the train, no matter how many seats are empty; who folds the laundry simply because it needed to be folded; and who always lets me choose the restaurant. Despite his inherent sense of responsibility and courtesy,