Tsunami Across My Heart (5 page)

I felt destined to be cheated out of a greatness of love and acceptance from Eric, and helpless to do anything to make him see what it was I so desperately wanted to share with him. He never really wanted what I could envision between us, he never saw the same thing that I could practically taste as if it were the salty spray on the beach in
Carmel
. Over time, his limitation, his lack of recognition of the depth of my feeling for him, beyond being disappointing, had a way of making me discount the significance of my self revelation and connection to Eric. Surely it meant that I’d love another man more completely, that I’d be better suited to another man, that the my ultimate capacity to connect and love in a lasting way had not casually been conceived, given birth to and lived out its existence without any kind of permanency or significance. I always wondered what might have happened between us had we been in the same city, or been willing to be exclusive.

As that first year passed, David came back into my life again and Eric’s limited availability and his lack of meaningful pursuit meant that it wasn’t realistic to measure the two against one another. Men have revolved in and out of my life like they rode on a carousel, and my close girl-friends comment about how men don’t seem to ever completely leave me behind. I am a memorable lover, uninhibited and intense, so have been told “I’ve never forgotten you. I still dream of you at night” by almost every lover I’ve ever taken. If it weren’t for the terminal sense of separation or the confusion over being valued so sexually all my life, I might feel flattered, but often it just makes me feel alone. So, at the time, I didn’t ask Eric for more than we had, and I don’t think he expected me to either.

I did see him “one last time” before I promised to be faithful to David in our round two of romance. Funny how many times I’ve assumed the last visit with Eric was indeed the last. One day something, someone I love more completely, or eventually death may separate us once and for all. I’m not convinced that even the veil of death has done that in the past. I felt connected to him in some otherworldly sense as though I must have loved him before. We spent that stolen night together in my garden bath in
Charlotte
with the phone ringing incessantly.

Here I was ignoring David, who was asking me to promise to love him forever, who I thought I would love forever. Just after I gifted myself a farewell to
Eric, to say good bye to the passion I couldn’t quell with Eric.

My actions were telling at the time, but I didn’t see it as ripples flowing across still water. I didn’t see it for what it was; I didn’t know I couldn’t expose myself to David like I did to Eric, or that it would take me more than a decade to know I needed to learn how.

David and I spent another tortured year playing push me pull you, and I’d periodically update Eric with our progress or lack thereof. He remained unimpressed with my romance with David, and seemed always to be saying the same things. “He’s never going to make you happy. This will never change.”

I left my corporate job, spent all my savings and followed David around the world. Once I came home, when it was over with David yet again, I cried on Eric’s shoulder for probably the tenth, twentieth or thirtieth time.

He was always magnanimous, always my friend first. But shortly after I’d abandon hope that David and I would ever clean up our mess and when the occasion inevitably arose, I’d welcome Eric back into my bed with unadulterated glee and he seemed equally happy to be there.

In March some two years now after we first met and after my second December break up with David, Eric came to visit me, comfort me, and make love to me.

B
efore he could rest I was all over him again, very happy to see him, to have him comfort me, and build me up. I sensed he felt a little overwhelmed by my enthusiasm.

That weekend, we made love in the afternoon, the light streaming through gauzy windows. It had been so long, I missed him. In the bath I teased him again and again and then we hurried back into my bedroom, I felt wonderful with him.

Excited, he leaned me over at the edge of the bed and aggressively entered into me fully and moaned out, “Oh my God, that is some sweeeeeet pussy……” What he said shocked me and thrilled me in its unadulterated passion and desire all at the same time. Shivers ran up and down my spine and my toes literally curled, and he felt divinely perfect inside of me. I always felt like his body was custom made to fit within my own and I was filled with passion and desire, and flooded with the pleasure of him. Less than a thirty second passage through time seared into my brain with such intensity, the ripple across the pond was more like a tsunami across my heart and the passion exploded within me and rushed through me.

It must have represented sheer contentment and pleasure to me because I thought of that instant, what he said, and how I felt those few seconds almost every time I had a discontented moment within the ten years of my marriage. Every time I longed for passion, for a sense of unbroken connection, a sense of completion his voice echoed like waves within my very soul.

Eventually that recollection was the only thing that could summon physical pleasure in my marital bed, and I felt horribly guilty at the betrayal of my husband and his “rightful place” with the blessed memory of Eric filling my heart, my soul and my body that late winter
 
afternoon
.

After a few months of hoping Eric would reveal his feelings for me were growing the way my feelings for him had grown, I took a Judaism class that talked about the significance of marriage from a Judaic perspective.

Why we marry, what we are supposed to get out of it, the purpose of a spouse and how we are to aspire to be our best possible selves through the mirror we provide to one another. Here, I already had this perfect mirror naturally instilled in my relationship with Eric. Yet there were the things about Eric that left me uncertain. His ability to be faithful, I doubted, more than my own; his desire to be a father, and his readiness for both; how much he loved me as opposed to anyone else, how our mutual childhood experiences and addictions might cause us to falter…were all things I was uncertain about.

But most of all, his experiences as a child and with Gerald, his roommate in
California
left a dark shadow of uncertainty. I was afraid to ask him about its significance now several years later, I didn’t want to imply anything, but I knew he’d had adult experiences with other men. I didn’t know how our mutual experience of being sexually abused would play out as parents and I was too afraid to ask him that question. The sad truth too was that Eric was not pursuing me in any kind of a permanent way, and I didn’t think I should hold on to the hope, I didn’t think I should continue to suspend expectations of him, and I wanted and needed him to claim my heart for his very own….and he didn’t and wouldn’t.

I wrote him a long letter telling him what I learned and that turning 30, I really wanted to find a mate and have a family. I remember taking more than four hours to write that letter, editing it and rewriting it a number of times. It was very important to me, not just in what I was saying to him, but in the affirmation of the kind of marriage and growth experience I wanted to create. For that time, David was completely absent in my life and I didn’t write what I wanted in marriage specifically for Eric, or any other man. But I wanted Eric to know what I wanted clearly as an aspiration just for myself, before I walked away from him. Being a time long before email it took a while for my letter to reach him across thousands of miles.

As the phone rang I absent mindedly picked it up as I sat at my new computer writing something for a new customer. “Hello?”

“Marissa, it’s Eric, I just got your letter today. It’s beautiful, what you’ve said.” He was touched, and I knew he meant it from the sound of his voice. “I love you in many ways, and I value our friendship very much. But, I’m not prepared to commit to you or to anyone else. I’m not saying that I never will want that with you, but I’m not willing to give you that now.”

“Eric, I know this, that’s why I said that I thought we should not stay in touch anymore. As long as I have you in my life I can’t really let anyone else be significant to me.”

“Marissa, do you have to be so hasty about ending what we have between us?”

“Eric… aren’t I just prolonging the inevitable?”

“Look, I’ll be there in three short weeks. I have a business trip with a client to the Merchandise Mart. Wait for me to come and visit and we’ll talk through the whole thing, ok?”

I sat there for a moment considering everything he had to say. It was a perfectly reasonable request though I worried a little my strength might falter. I was very attracted to him after all, despite the futility of it. I wanted to see him again, even if it were just one last time.

“Ok Eric. You know I want to see you, you know I’m crazy for you. I’ll wait for you.”

I was working on
Peachtree Street
in a temporary position. I met him in Midtown as he easily strolled off the train. I was wearing an aqua dress with a slit up to my hip that was lightly concealed by a panel. The dress flashed long leg as I crossed
Peachtree Street
in Midtown from the Museum to the train station. He stepped out of the station from beneath a beautiful office building on to dark marble steps, with black glass gleaming behind his tall, lean and handsome frame. He stopped when he saw me, cocked his head and appraised me appreciatively.

I saw his attraction for me all over again, and it always made me think there was somehow a real chance he’d “get it” this time, that his resistance would finally melt and that he’d be mine once and for all.

I kept my pace across the street and let the flap of the dress reveal the flesh of my thigh freely, and sidled into his big strong arms and got the kiss I’d been dreaming of for the better part of a month.

I saw him as if it were the first time. I never could control my passion for him and I’ve since then thought if I’d only been a little cooler towards him he probably would have come around, but I remained too eager.

When we got back to my place he sort of put me off, said something about “Give me a chance to get something to drink woman!” and laughed easily.

His remark hurt me in a way, but I didn’t say anything about it. He was distracted. He was stressed. He had a lot to do on this trip. These were things that should not matter when it came to me of course, and I was wounded at the echo of being denied what I wanted from him… I remembered Elaine. I remembered it all.

“What have you got in the kitchen?” he said as he swung through the door towards the antiquated refrigerator.

“Mmmmm, some juice, milk, maybe some Sprite?” I said trying to regroup in the living room, adjusting my dress and straightening up a bit.

“Hey.” He said as he came back into the dining area. “You know I think you’re sexy, I’m just a little tired from the trip, and I get a little grumpy when I’m too hungry. Let’s go get some dinner.”

“Sure.” I said as I stepped into the bath to touch up my lipstick and brush my hair.

Dinner wasn’t terribly eventful. He told me about his customer, Dana, who was high maintenance and difficult and very demanding, and frankly I don’t know that I even knew that she was going to be so much of a focus during the time he and I spent together on that visit.

Dana was more or less as cuddly as your standard triple blade razor. She’d developed a novelty gift sold in local Spencer stores as a wild and crazy aphrodisiac among the Yuppie crowd and they were at the Atlanta Merchandise Mart to promote her budding product in the Southeast.

Finally we went back to my place and as we opened the front door, I pushed him through the threshold, shut the door with my foot, and pushed him up against the wall.

“Come here, you, I’ve waited long enough. You know what I want.” I smiled into his eyes and he smiled back at me. He was so incredibly hot, and I just melted into him as my tongue traced his lips and then twirled around his tongue and my hands slid down his chest, his stomach and caressed him from outside of his pants. He moaned into my mouth and I kissed him hard, full on, and his hand ran across my body in a flurry.

“You. Here, you’re coming with me.” Eric said and took my hand and led me to my bedroom. We fell into the rumpled bed and he expertly unfastened the front of my dress to reveal nothing but a pair of lacy bikini panties, and slid his hand underneath the surface and into the heat of my passion. My hands shook as I embraced his face and kissed him passionately, desperately, and he climbed onto my body and slid inside of me as I threw my legs around him and arched my back in delight.

Moving, slowly, deliberately in and out of me, “Uh huh, mmmmm, uhhhh huhhhh.” He was staring into my eyes and the passion was intense as it always was.
Before long he threw his head back, yelled out and collapsed upon me, heaving. I held him, tears streaming down my face.

“Marissa, Marissa. Don’t cry. Don’t.”

But I cried anyway.

I wasn’t very happy that Dana was monopolizing so much of Eric’s time. Every day was hectic and I was transporting him to and from downtown early in the morning and again late in the evening. They were consumed with meetings and dinners and lunches and floor shows, and none of it included the romantically inclined.