(masculine hegemony's ultimate failure is a sexually-unfulfilled woman)
"Good as I imagined," she said with something resembling satisfaction, but not really, I'd have called it something closer to relief if I'd had the capacity for language at the moment.
We were sitting in the front seat of her Acura as it idled on the street, eighteenth, just a block north of West Burnside. The furtive glances I periodically snapped behind us were reflex; at this point in my life, some things, unfortunate though they may be, become axiomatic. She looked at me huskily from behind the wheel with an expression I couldn't discern was affected by alcohol or not. The non-drinker in me momentarily wondered if she ought to have been driving but something, somewhere, ended the debate with a low, resigned not your responsibility that, had it been audible, would have sounded conspicuously like my father's voice.
My voice dropped, words short and awkward, sounding almost breathless as I tried to not make any sense of what had just happened. "I try," I half-whispered, then caught myself and corrected the reflex. "Okay, no, not really."
She laughed, that slow, self-assured drawling chuckle that reminded me of Melanie at her most frustrating, only Melanie was an affectation, or so my wounded, angry brain screamed in the moments I forgot myself and let myself think about her, and this was different, the eyes looking at me were different, not as beautiful as some, but faintly reminiscent of a stronger, surer love from a recent past, enough to keep me looking and not wanting to run. Behind me, outside the door of the Acura, away from the glow of the malfunctioning GPS, my grandfather's Infiniti called, balding tires and freshly tuned engine begging me to do what my body (or certain portions thereof) could not.
"Good as I imagined," she said with something resembling satisfaction, but not really, I'd have called it something closer to relief if I'd had the capacity for language at the moment.
We were sitting in the front seat of her Acura as it idled on the street, eighteenth, just a block north of West Burnside. The furtive glances I periodically snapped behind us were reflex; at this point in my life, some things, unfortunate though they may be, become axiomatic. She looked at me huskily from behind the wheel with an expression I couldn't discern was affected by alcohol or not. The non-drinker in me momentarily wondered if she ought to have been driving but something, somewhere, ended the debate with a low, resigned not your responsibility that, had it been audible, would have sounded conspicuously like my father's voice.
My voice dropped, words short and awkward, sounding almost breathless as I tried to not make any sense of what had just happened. "I try," I half-whispered, then caught myself and corrected the reflex. "Okay, no, not really."
She laughed, that slow, self-assured drawling chuckle that reminded me of Melanie at her most frustrating, only Melanie was an affectation, or so my wounded, angry brain screamed in the moments I forgot myself and let myself think about her, and this was different, the eyes looking at me were different, not as beautiful as some, but faintly reminiscent of a stronger, surer love from a recent past, enough to keep me looking and not wanting to run. Behind me, outside the door of the Acura, away from the glow of the malfunctioning GPS, my grandfather's Infiniti called, balding tires and freshly tuned engine begging me to do what my body (or certain portions thereof) could not.