Torment Me (Rough Love 1)

It killed me that I didn’t even have a name to hold onto. I had nothing but a small collection of poems, and fuzzy, adrenalized memories that would also start to fade. Maybe I could find him, with enough money and ingenuity, and persistence, but why even try, when he obviously didn’t want to be found?

He’d left me.

He’d deserted me.

He hadn’t even given me the chance to say goodbye.

Coward, I thought. You’re a fucking coward. You’re chickenshit. I loved you.

I looked down at the dress, the perfect, new, intact dress lying across the bed as I’d lain across the bed so many times. I didn’t understand. I thought he’d come to care about me.

Good luck, starshine? What the fuck?

I left the hotel, and I left the dress, because I knew I’d never wear it again. I went home and arranged all his poetry around me on the bed, trying to figure out what had happened, what had gone wrong between The Carlyle session and Gramercy Park. As I looked at the verses together, themes emerged. Dreams, longing, darkness. Mystery and lust. I read them again, and again, and as much as I didn’t want to, I began to comprehend what had happened.

I’d rather have the dream of you

With faint stars glowing

I’d rather have the want of you

The rich, elusive taunt of you

It was a pretty, poetic way of saying he didn’t want me, the real me, the way I thought he did. It was all right there in the poems. What he wanted was the dream, the fantasy. He wanted Miss Kitty, as much as he insisted on calling me Chere.

And when Chere got too real, too human and complicated, he didn’t want me anymore. When I talked to him about continuing to date him as a person, a real, available person and not an escort, he must have been shaking in his thousand dollar shoes. He must have been doing everything in his power not to run away. Well, now he’d run away.

Love lies.

I understood it. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. His sexy charisma had blinded me to reality. He’d made me imagine he cared about me, made me believe he might want an actual relationship. God, so embarrassing. He’d wanted sex; that was all. I’d gotten carried away by my fawning, needy fantasies, just as I’d done with Simon a decade ago. Simon seduced me with painting, W seduced me with poetry, but the outcome was the same. Thank God W had been kind enough to save me from my idiocy and fuck off out of my life.

Jesus, this was so hard. My eyes ached from crying, but my heart ached worse. I stood and walked to my window, and made a promise to myself as I looked out at the darkening cityscape. No more relationships. No more co-dependence on others. No more fake emotional shit.

From now on, Chere was going to be in a relationship with Chere, and the rest of the world could go fuck itself. I’d keep his poetry as a reminder, a warning about how awful and wonderful people could be, and how easily they could leave you.

This was it for me. I was finished. I was never, ever letting go of my heart again.

**to be continued**