just bad timing

Tag: moving

  • Book Two, Chapter  One – A Romance For the Wild Ones 

    He undressed me as the wolves looked on from the distance. It all seemed too unreal. I was feeling numb for days until his tongue hit me like the sun hits your eyes on a summer morning through the mist, unexpected and unforeseen. So many unsuspected eyes might have been preying. My head was hanging off the wall, while my hair danced over the abyss. My lower back rested on the big bricks at the ledge, where his head played to music only he and I could hear. I was naked under the stars, as he toyed with my emotions, with my goosebumps and my heart, all confounded by the signals of my clitoris. He was as free as I was; it was part of the thrill. I could feel my back grinding into the stones, but I couldn’t ask him to stop. It was too good. Until the wanting was too much to bear. Swiftly, I was on my knees, with his perfection in my mouth. My hands were everywhere on him, around him, inside him. He pushed me onto the concrete floor, to nibble at my neck, while our bodies rubbed against each other in nonsensical rhythms. I finally slid him inside me, as my knees scratched on the rubble. I caught a glimpse of the wolves, as my eyes rolled back into my head. He was so perfectly thick, and slender, and nimble, and slow. He grabbed at my shoulders, he clawed at my waist. He stopped to look at me. “Should we take this to my place?”

     ***

    I promised myself I wasn’t going to go out. I promised myself. I even stopped at the pub straight from the train station with all my shit with me, so that I would have to go home. That’s when April invited me over for wine.

    “I’m so tired honey, I’ve been working like crazy this week and I have to be up at 8 am tomorrow.”

    “No sweetie, you don’t get it. You have to come to my house tonight. We aren’t going out on purpose, we’re just chilling,” she said.

    “I’d love to, honey. But that’s how it always starts.”

    “When I tell you, you have to come, I mean it. There’s gonna be a guy there, you have to meet.”

    “Alright, here we go. Who is it?” “A friend of mine. See?” She said, holding up her phone to my face. I have to admit, he was looking pretty delicious.

    “Fine, twist my arm. I’ll go home to shower first, I’ll pick up some wine and I’ll come over around 9.30pm.”

    Of course, I only got there around 10 because the guys were home so we caught up, and then I chatted with the girls at the wine shop. They picked out this “natural” more-than-organic Chardonnay for me, and I was weary because I really don’t like Chardonnay.

    I got to April’s and because I knew the others already, I assumed the last guy was Sebastian. He didn’t look quite like his profile picture, but he was cute. A little less manly than I usually pick them, but cute. To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed. For about 15 minutes. When he guessed the Chardonnay without looking at the bottle, I was sceptical. I mean, I was already thrown to like the wine myself. When he started talking, I felt myself smiling more. He was surprising me with real talk, and comfortable body language. He oozed confidence, in the weirdest of ways. Later somehow, they all did a bit of drugs and decided to go to the bar. So much for staying in tonight. I was definitely not going to jump on that bandwagon, but I wanted to know more about this guy. I sat across from him at Smiley’s and got him talking. Very openly. Upon discovering his investigation into the pleasures of the male G-spot and his reluctancy to hiding the fact that he was supposed to be on a different date tonight, I was a little hooked. We had the most bizarre conversation and didn’t even notice that everybody had gone back to April’s for more drugs by this point. We then silently decided to pretend we were going to go check up on them. That’s when we detoured by the walls.

     It was strange, I felt like I had already kissed him when he kissed me. I felt like all night we had been touching, when we actually hadn’t. I guess the assumption that it was going to happen sort of took away from the mysticalness of that first kiss. It did not take away from the heat though. He kissed me and grabbed me by the little hair I had left at the top of my neck. We were almost eating each other’s faces out when his phone rang. I told him to pick up, it was his date. “Go on, cancel.” I teased. When I took mine out to check it, I had a message from one of my prospectives I had told I might see that night. I had forgotten about him. When I texted to cancel, he called. Sebastian and I looked each other in the eye as we both told people we were supposed to be fucking that we were “tired” and “going to bed”. It was such a turn-on, the blatant honesty between us. It’s a little fucked up that I felt special that I was given the curtesy of truth whilst accepting the assumption that all the others got lies. It made me feel good in a way that we both felt it was special enough to tell each other we were liars, in demonstration.

     Because I couldn’t bring anyone back to the house, I had to be creative. When I hung up, he was still talking to her. So I kissed his neck, stroking his arms, grabbing his ass, hovering my hand past his zipper. He pulled at my hair and kissed me passionately when he hung up. He took my hand in his, and motioned me to take a walk with him. So we strolled around the walls, and where the pathway is usually closed, it was magically open that night. The buildings up above would be the witnesses to our wilderness, as the unsuspecting strangers walked under us, past the bridge to the port. I didn’t even know he had a place until my knees were officially broken, and my head was fucked up from the art installation that had sprung up around town. The artist had placed random black sculptures of wild animals everywhere around town; it was incredibly spooky. When we euphorically walked back to his, I couldn’t believe the sweetness in him. It almost didn’t make sense, and that’s what he was running on. The total understanding, the likeness of our beings, but the chaos and the madness that reigned. I had to have more, I had to know more.

    The passions were soaring. Before the door was even shut, our clothes had flown off. We did it everywhere in his house. We fell off the sofa and continued climbing each other on the floor, contorted between the couch and the glass door that led onto the patio, where we later smoked, seeking each other out in the darkness. There was this silent, unbreakable, unwavering tension when we looked at each other. It was almost like hunger. We broke his bed, and swam in our puddles of sweat. He promised to teach me yoga one day. I promised we would dance one night. A few hours later, I couldn’t hide the bruises under last night’s clothes at work. A few days later, we would drink wine on the walls, feeling the beats of our hearts speed up as we played with the space between our bodies. I was soaking wet for hours, from his words in my ears, from his kisses on my neck, his hands off of my body. The touch was one of real intimacy, one of mutually wanted romance, without fear. Without fear, because we were the same peas in two different small pods. The road was unsure and adventurous, and of course individual. Yet there was this admittance to mutually restored faith, faith in connection, faith in realness, faith in two spirits singing the same tune. I think, to a certain degree, that we both silently admitted that the lives we chose lacked a bit of love, and we uncovered a source in each other that wouldn’t sour, like milk and feelings do. The rules were simple, because we both knew, that rules are obsolete.

    I drank a bit of the red wine he had picked out, looking at the sea, thinking there wouldn’t be a better way to remember this person and this moment. Until he held me under the running water, so I wouldn’t collapse as my legs gave out from under me. The orgasm he gave me in the fifth and final hour of our bodies speaking in tongues, it shook me. It was the small, subtle noises of his pleasure, the bruises on my ass cheeks, and the strength with which he pulled my hair, combined with the wetness of the shower, that took me out. If there are no further memories to be had with him, then he will always be the one suspended in time and space, the one that made me feel like I was flying, or falling, never quite tied to gravity. The big bang I needed, to finish the last chapter, and start with a whole new book, where timing would be irrelevant.

  • Chapter Twenty One – The Big Bold Move 

    The decision fell, almost exactly a year later. The plan is set in motion and we are doing it. We are really doing it. I cannot believe it is actually happening and will probably wait for something to screw it up before we are on the plane. 

    Yet, here we were! In FRANCE! Can you believe it? We moved to France. What a sigh of relief. I felt like a little kid the night before Christmas. I had two weeks until my new job was due to start and we had to deal with the unbearable bureaucracy that all who have moved to France are all too familiar with. It was challenging but it was blissful. We had gotten ourselves out of our rut in Vancouver, sold everything we owned, and shipped only a handful of suitcases. During the first days, we walked around, tried to get a bank to accept our application, struggled to get a phone plan, and enjoyed having some time to ourselves.

    On a particularly sunny day, we sat down at the only beach bar open in January and drank rosé with our happy feet in the sand and cigarettes in our hands. This bar was a little hut, literally on the beach, in Juan les pins. The waiters were handsome and smiling (a feat in France) and some awesome electro-chill beats were playing. The sun was strong even though it was soon setting. I could feel it hit my skin and could have sat there with my eyes closed until the end of time. We smiled at each other like blissful idiots. I’m not sure it if was the vitamin D, the sweet sweet wine, or the surreal actuality of the situation, but it felt like we had succeeded at life, like we had gotten it right if just this once. There was another couple there, and the four of us seemed to be the only ones in on a very important secret in this world: the secret of the little things in life.

    I will always remember how we looked at each other in the car at the first sight of the sea arriving on the riviera and sang our lungs out. “I’m so proud of us bébé; we made it!” We had made it this far and were so confident that it was going to be amazing, super hard but amazing. We picked out an apartment that was too cliché to be true, with colourful tiles, an arched hallway, creaky doors and high ceilings. I could just picture us dancing there, to some jazz, in our beautiful kitchen. It was one of those kitchens with a big white farmhouse sink and an old gas stove. It looked onto a small courtyard, where a old palmtree died and a orange tree grew. It was just like a movie. We lived above a tea shop for fuck’s sake.

    We spent those first couple of weeks eating on patios, strolling down pedestrian cobbled streets and watching old men walk around with baguettes under their arms. It was the dream come true and I couldn’t wait for life to unfold, for us to meet our new French friends, for us to go dancing, for us to live the lives we thought we were destined to live.

    I eventually started my job and Liam ventured into town on his own, texting me to inform me of the new words he had learned. “Une autre bière, s’il vous plaît.” Amazing stuff. My job was alright, intense. I was working from 8am to 8pm to sustain him not having a job for a while. It felt odd working that much when all I wanted to do was explore the scenery and revive the passion we had somehow lost in the incumbrance of the stuff we had accumulated in the past. But it was all worth it, as it allowed us to live out the dreams we had made up for ourselves.

    To be perfectly honest, it was all a bit surreal. Everyone in Switzerland thought I was mad to move to France. “You got it the wrong way around my darling. In this day and age, there is no money to be made in France!” Yes, I know. Thanks. We picked it because it allowed him to get a visa rather easily and it allowed me to finally see some sun. The French Riviera… The dream! I get to live inside the same city walls within which Hemingway drank and Picasso painted! How do people forget this? How does society not allow for those kinds of musings to matter, for art to become an integral part of your life, for money to come last? As I have said before, I can handle a lot, as long as I see my happiness indicator moving up. No matter how hard it was going to be, I was ready to take it on. I was ready to work as hard as physically possible, because we were creating a life worth living for ourselves. In that instance, I was so proud of us.

    I was proud of how easily we de-cluttered, of how committed we had become. We were unhappy with our lives in Vancouver and we did something about it. Everyone warned us; this was going to take a lot of effort. He was a man who was going to depend on a woman. I have to admit it bothered me that in 2015 this was something that I had to worry about, but they were not wrong. It was part of a bigger thing that he would have to face. Just as I had been faced with all of life’s uncertainties in 2009, he would now have to face his internal music and create something that he would be proud of for his own little self. I thought it was magical that he was brave enough to do that, regardless of his age and status. It was no big sacrifice for me, but admittedly we are not made from the same cloth. It was a huge achievement for him. I knew it was going to make us or break us, but I had been preparing to take that risk. Taking the risk is what made us in that moment. I could not be more excited.

    “- I love you bébé. – I love you too. – I can’t wait to see what this year has in store for us.” With those words, I fell asleep peacefully and dreamt about champagne glasses and passionate kisses.
    ***
    March 1st. 

    I sit here, on my so-very-cliché patio, drinking wine in the dark. I am trying to decipher the words that best describe my current situation. Let’s see…

    Single?    Yeah, that one definitely applies.

    Unemployed?    Yep, that one too. I quit my job. Out of desperation and exhaustion.

    Aimless?    Yes, absolutely. Perfectly, decidedly, aimless.


    How could this have happened? What’s next?     Oh my poor heart. The carousel never stops turning. My life currently looks like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and Bridget Jones has become my spirit animal.

    So I take another swig of that delicious red wine and light yet another cigarette. I watch the amber as it shines through the darkness, perfectly still and shivering all the same. I have been here before.