The First Time

FIrst Time

It had been her experience that first times were usually best experienced in fiction. Every day fact being more a place for shades of gray, not the black and white and fire and lightning of fantasy.

First times, in her opinion, were best viewed as an occasion for expectation and exploration. A time for bobbing on an arc from desire to anxiety before finally, a slow step forward, to a hesitant fall, into the usual pattern. For rush, not finesse. For clumsiness, not ease. For finding the itch and scratching.

With him, it had been different, had she ever thought that it could be otherwise? The softness of his voice had made her forget the game that was being played. No old losses or defeats there to intrude on the nowness of this moment. No remembered glory of triumphant climaxes to overshadow the reality of the time and place. No past or future, only this. Drawn into the web and falling, sensing vaguely that the landing would be soft. But for now, no landing in sight. None required.

From the moment she had first set eyes on him, she had been falling, not quite sure why nor when it had become inevitable. Looking back, there had been hints. An X on the road marking the spot when she still had a choice. Already knowing enough to know she had to choose, run away now or stay. Stay to find out, stay for the long haul. She stayed, watching him, learning to read the pattern of breathing, the stiffness in the posture, the tension in the muscles in his face.

A dark and dangerous game. After all, this was not her style. Sliding into his Spell. Such adolescent stumbles were not her weakness. It was not her habit to allow imagined sensuality to override the demands of reality. She was tumbling into his charms. But so slow. Never feeling her feet slip as a warning that she was losing her grip. Imperceptible drift forwards, towards what? An abyss? A warm cozy place? A place of black and white and lightning?

The temperature rose. Heat. Dry heat. The sort that made her sit up straight then bow her head. Almost not daring to look, yet impossible to turn away. Her guilty secret.

She had it on tape, thanked some deity or demon for the gift. Standing in that office, not even looking at his boss. He looked too young. He looked like someone who had seen too much and expected too little. He looked as if he had forgotten how to fight.

Her fingers drifted guiltily over the VCR remote as she watched again. His head bowed, subdued and defeated, yet so angry under the veneer of close control. Accepting his fate as if resigned to it, taking his punishment, and then suddenly rebelling at its inevitability. Guilty as charged, yet not guilty at all.

Eyes flicked fire for an instant and the trapped words escaped soon after. Words that hit their target hard and true, slipped through hitherto unseen gaps in the armor plate.

The third man paused from his cigarette and tried to intervene, spotting the problem, recognizing that dialogue had opened where only monologue punishment and condemnation had been intended. Yet the energy path was clear. The gossamer thread of elastic tossed as a last parting gesture from the apparently defeated to the conceivably powerful. The thread picked up. The dismissal words, when they came, were for the third man, the interloper.

Fidgeting as the third man walked away, she breathed for him and watched again. Guilty of invading his privacy. Yet needing it, and allowing it because she needed it.

"I've still got my work. I've still got myself. I've still got you."

He had her now. It was true. Had crept in below the radar, avoided the minefield that protected her from her weaknesses. She should probably have seen what was happening, realized where they were heading. Yet, she didn't walk away, just stuck around to see what would happen next.

She recalled his intense gaze on the screen, head to head as he stared into the eyes of his captor. Held prisoner by a madman, who might have known more about the truth than those who claimed to be sane. Not wanting to die, yet not wanting to let go too easily of the chance to know more, to maybe get just a few more pieces for his jigsaw puzzle. She watched helpless as he almost pushed too hard, almost lost his life on a gamble for a few vital minutes of insight from a maniac.

The tape grows threadbare. I lose the sharp, crisp clarity of that need in him, that need to know. It fades into the cackle of electric noise, but I feel the tingle as I imagine him. Trapped, at gunpoint, finally relenting and talking his way out of trouble, by sending his attacker to certain death. Sending his own soul into spasms.

Yet in this place, nothing is certain. Except the certainty of hope and loss, of fragments of truth and love paid for in blood. Slow tumble into loss and blood. Sat and waited to see if the darkest hour really was just before dawn, slid down into the undertow.

Until at last a time for hope.

A time for watching an ally kill and an unknown die. Watching blood, known and unknown, pool on the concrete among the parked cars. Wanting to fight, yet not knowing how, knowing only that he couldn't fight that way, their way. Another chance, another opportunity for revenge to sidestep fear and to pretend that in vengeance there might be justice. Gave it away, had to give away even revenge.

Until at last all was lost. Felt the tug of exhaustion and helplessness that stripped away the last of hope, even the hope of revenge. Needing to crumble, yet needing to feel the solid wall behind him to remind him that even now, something was real. Needed that fixed point to focus on, to push against. Let weakness take him as muscles and sinews and bone melt and shudder and freeze.

Caved into the hole in his soul.

And I was no longer a voyeur, because I'd followed him down that wall and crumbled.

And that was the first time David Duchovny broke my heart.

So I wasted your time, so sue me.

Err, I mean. Love and kisses, Joann