Hello

I didn’t say Hello.  Let’s get that straight right now, alright?  Because not saying hello portends the rest of this non-story.  We never had a drink at our least favorite bar, the one where the drinks are expensive and we hate the regulars, if only because they can afford expensive drinks..  We might have gone there to avoid friends, we might have gone there so I could pretend I had more money–who knows?  It never happened.

You never had cheap tap beer, not wanting me to spend too much on your account.  I never had Bombay and tonics, trying to appear sophisticated.  I would have asked you about your family.  You probably would have talked about the mother who raised you.  You would have fabricated whole cloth stores about your father, a man you never knew, a drummer in a band that your mom had sex with when she was seventeen.  You probably wouldn’t have mentioned your grandmother who took you in at fourteen when your mother died of lupus.  It would have been a first date, after all.

After we had a few too many, I would have only pretended to care.  I, with drunken hope, would have gently rested my palm against the back of your bare arm.  Now you might have put your hand on my thigh, a tentative few inches above my knee.  I would have noticed your cleavage rising and falling faster.  You might have noticed the new color infusing my cheeks.  At bar time, I probably would ask you if you want to have a few drinks at my place.  And, although this never happened and I don’t know you, you would have said yes.

I never saw the desperate hunger in your eyes as you unbuckled my nicest pair of jeans–the ones with the perfect number of scuffs and holes–and took me into your mouth to get me hard.  I never once tasted you when you became excited, when you urgently ground your hips across my tongue.  When I penetrated you, I would have noticed the way your hands grasped and pulled at my bedsheets.  You probably prefer to be on top, but you were too shy to ask. 

Now I imagine that your back would arch–an arch is the perfect structure to support one’s soul–and that you would brush the damp hair out of your face with one hand, staring at my headboard.  You would open your mouth in a soundless scream.  I would be satisfied in that, I think, and finish, too.  I never laid next to you, with our torsos pressed together, your nose in the hollow of my neck. 

We never went on a second date.  Third, fourth, and fifth dates never happened, either.  A condom would have broke on the tenth date, maybe, or perhaps the fifteenth.  A good round number, for sure, a multiple of five.  You, panicked, would have bought a pregnancy test at two in the morning, although we both knew that silly.  That one would have been negative.  The one five days later would have been positive.

Your grandmother, the woman who raised you and has never met me, would have demanded that we get married.  You would have worn a tastefully cut dress, one let out so the growing bump in your belly would have gone unnoticed.  I would have worn the suit I’ve had for years that doesn’t fit anymore, because we still have no money.  We would have fought a lot at first, if only because we both feel neither of us wanted it.  It doesn’t really matter, though, because it never happened.  And the fact that we grew to be happy, understanding that a child can be the lens through which we see what once refused to be seen–well, we never learned that, either.

I never said hello.  I’m glad we got that straight.  And when I saw you at the bar later that night, out with a few friends in your favorite yellow blouse–the one that makes your B-cup breasts look like C’s–I was too drunk to remember.  I was too drunk to remember anything.  I didn’t say hello.  And now you’re just a face I saw in a bar two years ago, a face I can’t remember.