I met Matt one
night in August
1996 at a bar/restaurant called Escafe.
Nineteen years old, blonde hair, slight of build, and wearing a long-sleeved
shirt emblazed with a photo of a brief-clad wrestler (Alex Wright), I must have been the
portrait of a victim, because that’s what I nearly became to Matt.
I was standing off to myself when he,
seated at a table with friends, asked me to sit next to him. I did so and not ten words passed between us
before he leaned over and kissed me.
That first kiss went on forever…perhaps half an hour if not more. Matt’s friends were hovering, teasing us,
saying if we didn’t come up for air that we were going to die of oxygen
deprivation. Wanting to escape them, we
took the make-out session to Matt’s car.
There, in the parking lot, in view of anyone
who might be passing, he gave me a blowjob.
The public display should have been a sign that he
wasn't concerned about my dignity; however, a nineteen-year old doesn’t ponder
such things mid suck-off.
In the days that followed his swallowing
of my genetic material, I got to know Matt (or ‘Sparky’ as his friends called
him) more intimately. He was very
physical (always wanting to make-out), quite nicely endowed, and was about to
enter James Madison University as a freshman.
On a negative note, he confessed to having a very bad temper, which he
swore I would never see because of his fondness for me.
He spoke frequently of owing his ex
boyfriend, Nathan, a good beating for talking unfavorably about him after their
breakup. I was very naïve at the time,
and the way I rationalized the threat was to believe that I had found someone
who could protect me.
The ironic aspect is that Nathan became
my boyfriend after I had broken up with Matt, and he turned out to be the
sweetest, most non-aggressive young man I had ever met. Coupled with the fact that Nathan was a
diminutive blonde raver boy, who weighed barely anything, Matt’s threats of
physical violence towards him become quite disturbing.
However, at the time, Matt was my
boyfriend (my first), so I whitewashed his flaws and took his side in
everything.
There really wasn't time for anyone to
warn me about Matt’s true nature (not that I would have listened), because
within two weeks time he had left to attend college. Although I lived an hour away from the campus, I naively believed
that nothing would change between us. A
week passed when I decided I couldn’t stand being apart from
him any longer.
I was at work when I called Matt
that say I was going to pretend to be sick, leave early, and pay him a visit. He said he didn’t want me to jeopardize my
job, but I persisted in a lovesick fashion until he acquiesced...in the worst
possible manner.
“Just quit your fucking whining and get your
goddamn ass over here!” he screamed to me over the phone. Consequently, feigning to be sick proved quite effortless, as I was
weeping when I informed my boss I had to leave.
I was still crying when I arrived at Matt’s
dorm. He asked what was wrong, and I
wept as I told him that I was upset because he had been so
mean to me. Matt’s heterosexual dorm mates were
rendered speechless by the display of an effeminate man channeling Bette Davis
in their living space.
For his part, Matt took me in his arms
and condescended to say that he had only been teasing me and that I had to
learn to be less sensitive. He then
whispered that I was making a fool of him in front of his roommates. I apologized for my behavior, and he said it
would be easy enough to make it up to them.
I could just pay to have a couple pizzas delivered; he rationalized my generosity would redeem
me a bit
his classmates' eyes.
Playing the role of the Greene County
back holler idiot, that’s just what I did.
When the pizzas arrived, I paid the
driver and included a tip, which Matt said tersely had not been enough (even
though he hadn’t contributed a cent to it).
Well, they all sat down to watch
television and enjoy pizza, which I couldn’t eat because the boys had insisted
on meat toppings, even though I had stated that I was a vegetarian. The television was tuned to Sparky’s
favorite show, “The X-Files”, when I made the ‘mistake’ of trying to initiate
conversation. He turned to me and said
I was only allowed to speak during commercial breaks.
On the verge of another crying jag, I got
up, went to his bedroom, and lay on his bed for the next hour. When the show was over, Matt came in, and I
suppose we made out, though I don’t recall the session. I know there wasn’t any fucking involved
(Matt was a top), and I suppose I should be thankful for that because of how
well endowed he was. All that I
remember is that in the middle of night I fell out of bed and cracked
my head on his nightstand. Matt woke
up, and I apologized for being so clumsy.
He took me in his arms and held me, and I
think it was the only time he was ever really tender with me. He was amused that anyone would apologize for
falling out of bed. He said he didn’t
think I had much sense, and that it was a good thing I had him to watch over
me. I replied that I was glad that I
had him to watch over me before falling asleep in his arms.
The next morning, Matt got up, took a
shower, and got dressed for class. He
asked if I would be there when he got back.
Wanting to stay forever, desperate to be loved, I said I would be.
While he was gone, I took a shower, put on
one of his sweatshirts and a pair of his boxers (which were two sizes too big
for me), and opened the drawer in which he kept his music. I tried playing several of the tapes, only
to find that they all contained profanity-ridden rap music. In hindsight, with his previous behavior
towards me, this should have been the last clue that my boyfriend was a bad
seed, but I refused to see what was right in
front of me.
When Matt returned, he looked at me, saw
that I was wearing his clothes, and said, “You’ve just been into all my shit
haven’t you?”
But he said it with a smile and then
became affectionate with me, removing his clothes from my body and lying me on
the bed. The shades were pulled back, so that anyone looking up at his apartment could
witness our make-out session. At the time, I thought
it
was because he was proud of me, but now I can say he was just flaunting a body
in his bed.
Not long into our make-out
session, Matt seemed to get detached,
and I sensed that I had overstayed my welcome.
We parted amicably enough, but when I called the next day, he said
things weren’t going to work out between us and that he didn’t want to see me
again.
Years later, I befriended a
young man named Philip Rodriguez who had been in a long-term relationship with
Matt. He related that, on one occasion,
he was barefoot and playfully stepping on the back of Matt’s heels when Matt
turned and viciously sucker punched him in the stomach.
For the fact that Matt lost swift interest in me, I shall ever be thankful.
Eleven years after our breakup, I was navigating a social networking website when I came across his picture and profile. I copied all that which was written above, and I sent it to him. He replied with a complete disavowal of our time together, going so far as to state that he had no memory of me whatsoever. I wrote back with more intimate details of his life, and, a day or so later, he wrote back, no longer certain that he and I were strangers, given the fact that I knew where he had attended school, what kind of car his mother drove, and what his father had done for a living.
He offered forth an apology, swearing he had changed and that he would
like to meet so that he could embrace me and thereby assuage the wounds of our
past. I declined, stating I was beyond the point of needing another human
being to comfort me. With any luck, those will be the last words I ever
say to him.
Your Favorite Meal
(An
alternate reality poem of how life might
have been had Matt remained at my side)
We’ll part ways here,
But I’ll leave you
With a remembrance,
What’s left of my heart.
You can sprinkle it with salt;
I’m sure it’ll make a lovely dish.
One, as I recall, which you were
Quite fond of eating
You’d kiss me then drive your mouth
Into my chest, and I’d smile sweetly and say,
“How nice that you’re so fond of me.”
Then you’d hit me and almost
Put out an eye, and I’d think,
“Oh, how he loves me, but why must he be so rough?”
For too many years, I lay on that bed,
And I let you eat out my heart.
Every night, you’d carve my chest open,
And I’d lie still and I’d search your eyes
For the love I was so certain I had once seen.