You People, With Your Feelings and Stuff

He closes his eyes while we’re fucking and when I try and look him in the eye he pulls his face down to mine and kisses me on the cheek and neck, then pulls himself back up.  I watch his closed eyes until he opens them again and sees me watching him, thrusting, with my knees up against my chest and him inside me, he grabs a pillow and puts it over my face.  I think maybe he’s trying to keep me from breathing the way I do to him, so I go along with it for a minute or so before pulling it off. I watch him struggle, try and dig at something under me, push my legs up, then down, try and find repetition and comfort but he can’t.  He stops, rolls over, covers himself with the blanket.  I know what to do because this is always how it goes.  He shifts his body down lower on the bed and pulls the pillow out from behind him before looking at me with his deep, brown eyes and abnormally long eyelashes.  He sticks his tongue out a little, playfully.  I get up, put my knees near his ears and bear down on his mouth.  I pretend like he’s not a person, which is what he wants, fuck his face, don’t let him breathe, grab his hair, feel his tongue, listen to his hand do all the work before he cums all over his own stomach.  I lift myself off of him, go to my dresser and toss him a pink tshirt that he uses to wipe the cum off his stomach and my vagina off his bearded face.  I crawl back next to him and lay my head onto his chest. 

He says, "I’m hungry, do you have pancakes?"

Earlier that night we were both on stage at a comedy club, sitting next to each other on stage, reading aloud what we had written for the monthly game show and podcast.  The crowd laughed at our haikus and were uproariously laughing at a lot of his material.  It was a good night for him, he proved himself in front of a lot of other comics and he seems happier and more ambitious than ever with comedy.  We stay for the late show after ours and he finally sits next to me, even touches my leg a little, smiles.  Outside, we stand in a circle of other comics who smoke cigarettes and talk about the hecklers.  I watch him interact, make people laugh, put his hands in his pockets and his eyes at the ground for a moment. I’ve never been so inexplicably in love with someone who does not have the capacity to reciprocate.  He sits next to me on the stoop and says, "you wanna come back to my house?"  What I wanna say "YES OF COURSE" but instead I shrug. He says, "No?" 

We fight in the car on the way to my house to pick up some things. He says, "you can’t just say what you want" and I say "because every time I do it pushes you away" he says "it’s annoying" I say "you don’t understand" and he stops and looks at me and says "I do."  We stop in front of my place.  "I changed my mind," he says, "I don’t want you to come back with me." I say, "okay" and get out of the car fast and slam the door.  I’m walking down my driveway and I’m trying not to cry and I don’t wanna hear the car drive away but I know it will.  I sit on my front step instead of going inside and his car isn’t moving.  I wait, five minutes, maybe more, then walk back, open the door and sit back inside. 

"You scared me." He says, he’s been on his cell phone. "Basketball scores." He says, points to the phone.  I know that’s probably bullshit but I don’t care.  "Can I come in?" 

He used my bathroom right away which gives me time to throw all the clothes I was gonna wear but didn’t tonight in the closet.  Throw away the tissue my dog chewed up all over the floor, throw my pack of cigarettes in the nightstand drawer.  He comes out, falls face down onto my bed, moans. I lay down next to him, he pulls me closer, pulls his arm over him and says

"Jaime, can you make the pain go away?" 

I don’t say anything.  I don’t know what he means or if HE even knows what he means.  I lay with him for a while until I finally hear him start snoring.  I get up, change into shorts and a Led Zeppelin tshirt, shut the light off, try and make him get under the covers but he won’t.  I sleep like shit and so does he; we both keep waking up, the dog is restless, the light shines through my window too early, the blanket isn’t warm enough. He takes his shirt off in the middle of the night and lay next to him with my face pressed onto his bareback and I think

what the fuck have I gotten myself into?

In the morning we fuck and play fight and I make pancakes and we eat outside.  I tell him I used to have a diary where I wrote a lot about relationships and he’s recently inspire me to start writing in it again.  He doesn’t say anything at first and then he says, "You people, with your feelings and stuff."