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It should have been beautiful and sweet. It should have aroused me again in a softer way, like the same soft ending that had brought me back from the far out places I’d been when Will had taken me to that lovely place beyond. It should have been the final fulfillment for Reggie and me.
But it was not.
I waited for that miraculous something to happen, for the heavens to descend on me with a fierce kind of love, the kind to match the fierce sex we’d just shared.
However, something was missing.
I was in love, or at least I thought I was. I assumed there was a possibility that he loved me in return.
But there was no passion behind the gentleness, no tenderness that spoke to me of love. Only form, only movement as practiced as any skill could be. It was clear that he was uncomfortable, comforting me. And unsure. This was not what I expected, nothing like the fantasy my mind worked so hard to create. I longed for other hands. Ones whose passion for gentleness matched the passion for severity. The longer Reggie was there beside me, the more strange and unwelcome his attention became. I became uneasy and angry. He was ruining everything, and I despised him for his ineptness.
“What are you doing?” I suddenly blurted out. This was all wrong! I shook him off and rose from the mattress, wanting to be anywhere but in his company.
Months worth of high expectations crashed into the reality of this awful moment a
nd I had no idea what to do.
He looked up at me dispassionately. Not sorry, not apologetic, not seeming to care. For a moment, I saw in Reggie that same sadness I’d seen during that amazing night with Will; the same sadness that had torn me away from Will and the others, and the gentle affection they offered.
“Damn you!” I whispered. I didn’t know what else to say.
He shook his head, only then a little sadness appearing in his placid expression. “I didn’t want you to choose this, Alex,” he said.
There was a fury simmering in me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” My own eyes bore down on him as his often had bored down into me.
“I thought I did,” he replied, “maybe not in so many words, but I did warn you. Even if I’d given you a stronger warning, would you have listened?”
Of course, I wouldn’t have.
“Truth is, I really had no idea how this would end. It was a gamble on my part as much as yours. I was willing to gamble one night to see if perhaps you were right about us and I was wrong.”
A gamble! A gamble? I wanted to scream. At him, and at myself for believing that this paper doll of a man could have anything of substance behind his well-enacted dramas; for having illusions that there could even be the perfect master of my fantasies, that there might be such a man who could engineer my awakening, and could love me, too. I knew now why he was so distant, so cold. There was nothing more to the man than his finely executed theater.
He sat on the mattress as I paced the room, looking at the crumbling walls, at the brick and mortar lying strewn about the floor.
“You could have said something.”
“You wouldn’t have listened,” he repeated.
He was right. I was far too caught up in my fantasies to see him for what he really was. I sighed deeply, letting all the emotion, all the disappointment fall away. He did what I wanted him to do for me, why should I expect anything more?
“Why?” I asked.
“Why?” he returned.
“Why did you even agree to this knowing what I was hoping for?”
He looked at me with surprising frailty, fleeting though it would be.
“I suppose that there is part of me that keeps hoping I’ll break through my facades and find something deeper than the games.”
I was tired and exhausted, and for lack of anything better to do, I sank back down on the mattress at his side.
“But you never do?”
“No, I don’t.” He shrugged. “You’re much braver than I am, Alex. I could never take a journey of the heart like you’ve taken with your sexuality.”
“I don’t believe that. If I could create myself as I am, so could you create what you want,” I pleaded with him.
