Beautiful Agony (A Tale Of Savage Love, Part I) (6 page)

The photo
I was providing
did
not have any indentifying factors in it
either, and like I’d said earlier, the email address was brand new
.  I did feel a little uncomfortable giving him
even
half of my
real
name (
as he’d demanded
)
, but I didn’t
really
see how he could do anything with it.  I wasn’t listed in any phone books, I had no
public
Facebook or LinkedIn account
s
, and I pretty much remained anonymous in this c
ity of millions.  Besides, those rare times when I had me
t someone at a bar
that I’d decided to go on a date with,
dishing out my name was something I typically
couldn’t get around
.

So, now
that
I had hit reply, pulled up a blank em
ail, and attached my picture, w
hat next?  What in the
hell
did I say in re
sponse to those cutting,
starkly-cruel words of his?  He spoke like he already knew the inner depths of me, as if he’d already somehow mapped out the twiste
d and warped pathways o
f my secret-most psyche
.  But he was nothing more than a stranger who hadn’t even
yet
see
n
my face.

Would he
possibly
think I was pretty?  ‘
If I like what I see, I’ll
respond
,’ he’d said. 
Was there
really
even any
thing here for him to like?  I had a very edgy cut to my glossy, dark chestnut hair.  It was shorter in the back than in the front, and on both sides of my face, it tapered at an angle towards my chin.  Once it had been so short, the longest part had barely
even
met my
jawline
, and my stylist had trimmed the
very
back with an electric shaver.  Recently, however, I’d let it grow
back
out, and it was now only an inch or two shy of brushing my
shoulders.  At work,
I always kept it straight-ironed so severely, it was as flat and shiny as a sheet of glass.
  But a
t home, at play, when I went out in search of danger, I liked it tousled and gelled so heavily, it actually looked wet.

My body was ave
rage, I suppose.  Being only 5’2
”, I always wore 4 or 5 inch stilettos to work.
I was extremely thi
n, severely
svelte
, but regardless of how little I ate or how methodically I starved myself, I never lost my
heavily-
rounded breasts
. 
Overall, m
y
figure was carved more by
nature
than by design
, the bones beneath my fine skin leaving me with a defined waistline,
cu
rved hips with sharp-edges
, and slim, tapered legs with tiny feet.
While other women in my circle seemed to stay perpetually tan, I preferred to remain as
pale as possible,
religiously
avoiding the sun like the
B
ubonic
P
lague.  This
left my skin soft as velvet,
my face youthful and line-less even
though I was nearly three decades
old.

I’d once been told I had the visage of an anime girl, with large, wide-set, heavily lashed eyes, and a very slender nose and pointy chin.  Probably the most interesting thing about me was the color of
my eyes.  They were such a deep
sky-blue that they appeared purple.  Somewhere between lilacs and bluebells, I guess.  I didn’t think they
were anything special, but regardless, they always seemed to captivate my chosen prey.

Men I used temporarily, for affection, for sex, for a diversion – but never really for any true length of time.
No matter who I met or how much I liked him, there always remained this thick, impenetrable wall between us. 
It had gotten even more difficult over these past five or six years, though, which was why I’d only had one-night stands the last three times.  And all of this
made it even more difficult for me to say why it actually mattered to me so much all
of a sudden, whether or not he
respond
ed
back
to me.

Even so, a
fter I
’d
opened myself up
to possible
disappointment and failure, after I’d sent him my picture and my plea, how long would I have
to wait to find out if he ‘
liked what he saw’
?  If he didn’t, would he simply remain silent? 
Or would he bother to personally tell me to go ahead and fuck off?

My palms were sweating pro
fusely,
and I wiped them off on my slacks
.  W
hat
in the hell
was wrong with me?  Why
was I letting him get to me so much?
  And just
what
was I going to say? 
‘
A word or two that is the real you.
’
  Ah, Jesus.

Before I could stop myself, stomach churning, I went into an old, old file.  Copying the words of the document, I hastily right-clicked and then posted them in
to
the body of the email.  It was a poem I had written years ago called
Damage
.  I had never shown it to anyone else before in my entire life.  It read:

Burned out husk-

still smolders.

Shell-shocked flesh,

hurts, blames, and

screams…sometimes.

Laughs.  Loves.  Lies.

Why does it still sting

when innocence dies?

How can the same mistake

Bite?

Over and over;

a poisonous snake,

whose venom washes through me.

Memories made dangerous

and painful again,

a collection of weeping scars.

I push them out:

a mottled, misshapen baby

rotten inside.

Rupturing,

membranes spill

the stuff of

Lost Dreams,

Haunting me,

still.

Quickly positioning my hands back over the keys, I typed, “
This is me
.” 
Then, before I could dismantle it further -
pick
apart
my courage
until
nothing
was
even
left -
I hit
send
.
  Brow
sweating
now, too
, I felt a wash of relief flood throu
gh me.  It was done.

Oh, God
. 
It was done
.  Sour anxiety
suddenly
roiled
heavily within my stomach.  I
t could be hours, days, weeks, months, or
never
, before I ever heard back.
  And how could I have shown m
y innermost, private
work to a complete stranger?

Disgusted with myself,
I pushed away from the desk and went into the kitchen.  I opened the cabinet door and
had just
reached for the Jack when I heard the bell-sound from my computer.  Oh shit;
I had mail
.

Surely it wasn’t from him.  N
ot yet, anyway.  Still, I slammed
the bottle down on
to
the counter
top
almost h
ard enough to shatter it
and practically sprinted back into the other room. 
Before
I
had
even made it all the way
over to the desk, I could
already
s
ee
that the email was, indeed
,
from him.

The subject line was completely blank, offering me no hint of what lay within.  With a shaky hand, I clicked on it.

“
Meet me at
Pudge and Druthers
in one hour.  Wear red.
”

Pudge and Druthers was a local bar on St. Mark’s Street – everybody knew it.  But how had he known I’d be able to meet him there inside of an hour?  Apparently he’d presumed that I lived in the heart of the Apple as well.
  Or at least that I’d have the sense to email him back right away if I couldn’t make it and needed
another hour
or two
.

I looked at my watch.
  I didn’t want to have to send that email
requesting more time
.

‘
Wear red
,’
he’d said.

I had two choices
here.  Go and meet him, and address
my fears head-on – because let’s face it, he would demand absolute honesty
from me, and a complete baring of an inner-self that I’d always tried hard to hide
.  If nothing else,
at the very least
his email had
absolutely indicated
that
.  Or, I could delete the account I’d set up, forget this whole venture, and take the safe way out.  Looking down at the fading scars near the bend of my elbow, I quickly made my decision.

The clock was ticking.

I made it to
Pudge and Druthers
with
just over
three minutes to spare.  We were deep in the belly of winter, so outside it was already
almost
pitch
, screaming
-black.

I
wound
thro
ugh the
congested
restaurant side,
pushing though the noisy throng and
heading
over
towards the bar where I could only assume he would be.  And I was right. 
Halfway across, I saw him there; waiting silently for me
at the
distant
end.  He wasn’t talki
ng to anyone, but the w
omen al
l around him were staring a
t him, quite obviously gawking at his
face
.  Only
suddenly
, I
didn’t think it had
anything
to do with his scar.  Oh, it was quite noticeable, for certain.
  In fact, it literally shrieked
out into the
busy, bustling, dimly-lit room -
demanding immediate attention.  The white arc cleanly cleaved the right side of his face in two, creating a jarring countenan
ce that undoubtedly
elicited
stares every
where he went.  But that wasn’
t what stood out the most by far
.

No, what immediately gripped one’s
innards and squeezed
so compelling
ly
(
catching your breath in your throat and smushing your heart in
to a
flattened
pancake in the process
),
were
his arresting eyes. 
As I’d surmised, they were even more intimidating
in person
than in his picture. 
Only I hadn’t any real gauge as to
just how fixating they would
truly
be. 
They didn’t just
see
me: 
they saw through me
. 
So strong and overwhelming was their immediate force,
I
practically
had an out of bod
y experience as he silently and steadily watched
me weaving my way carefully
across the room.

From above,
I saw myself swaying
through the
swelling morass
of
twenty
-something, well-dressed, self-important professionals.  I saw the men whose glances
followed
m
e, their
eyes feasting, their
heads turni
ng
while
I removed
my
black,
heavy
woolen jacket
and
sashayed
past
.
  Beneath
,
I had on a red dress; shockingly-short, long-sleeved, tight.  It also had a
scooped
, v-shaped top that dipped
so low, you co
uld actually see the bony staircase of my ribs between the two, bare swells of my ripe
breasts.  I was not wearing a bra.