Lea pt 4

Friday, I met a beautiful woman. I seem to have a habit of meeting beautiful women lately. I met her at Karaoke at the local dive bar. Her best friend runs the karaoke there sometimes. I must have seen at least six guys walk up to her and lay their game. I must have seen at least six guys get met with polite indifference. When she looked at me, I saw a friendly face. I felt as if she should be familiar to me. Indeed, she does resemble several women that I have known in the past. Not Lea. No, she is physically set completely apart from my memories of Lea. Lea was tall, where Tracy is petite. Lea had very rounded facial features, while Tracy has very finely sculpted, polish facial features. They're both tom-boys, but I love a woman that wants to go fishing. I miss fishing.
Tracy certainly has an energy about her that I find irresistible. So did someone else though.
"I don't want to hear about your adventures. I wish that I could lock you away in a tower until I get home."
Lea wrote that in a letter to me from Ecuador. That was almost two months after she had left. She and I agreed that while separated by so much distance, it would be unfair to expect either of us, given our proclivities, to wait for the other. I am sure that she took lovers while abroad. She alluded to doing so many an occasion before she left. I also took lovers. I started dating. I told Lea about this. I told her about these girls that had captured my attention. I wanted her to know what was going on in my life. I told her everything. I told her about my work. I told her about problems at home. I told her how I was doing in school. Most often, I told her how much I missed her, and how quickly I would leave all the distractions behind me for her. I wanted her to know that I wanted to be part of her life, and that I needed her to be part of mine. I'm getting ahead of myself again. I suppose it doesn't really matter what order I tell the story in here. I don't remember things in order anyway. I have to write them down and put them in linear order. I'm not doing that with this. I don't think that I can or should.
There were several nights after bowling that instead of spending time with my friends, I went and spent time with Lea. Lea wanted to get into agriculture. I believe I remember her talking about some new kind of fertilizer that she had the idea for. I wonder if she ever got that together. I hope that she did. That would be a good thing for her.
The night before she left for Ecuador, Lea made certain to spend it with me. She had arrainged for her going away party to be the week before in order to ensure that we had our night. She made official goodbyes to her family the day before. We made love twice that night. Lea promised me anything that I wanted. Maybe I could have asked her to stay. I don't know. I think that it would have been a bad idea. I knew how much it meant to Lea to be going abroad to further her studies and broaden her horizons. I couldn't imagine even trying to take that away from her. I loved her far too much not to let her go.
I asked that she keep in contact with me.

Lea pt 3

I took a walk barefoot in the park today. The grass was cool and wet with morning dew. The sun was still hiding behind the clouds from the night before. The chess tables were empty and inviting. It reminded me of something that I now regret saying.
One night, Lea came over to my house while I was home alone. This was after we had already been seeing eachother for a few weeks, and I wanted to see how things would play out if I didn't make a move on her. I wanted to see if I could go the whole night without making a move on her. We spent that night laying next to one another, on the couch, watching movies. We kissed and cuddled. We held eachother close for protection from the outside world. We talked about the future, about the past. We tried to talk about the present but the past and future kept getting in the way.
Just before she had to leave, Lea asked me, "Why did we not have sex tonight?"
I told her that it was because I had to know if I could resist her. She rolled her eyes, shook her head and said that that was a very silly idea. She asked me if I was satisfied with my results, and I said that I wasn't sure. I said that I didn't know if it was a good thing or not that I could resist her for so long in my arms. I look back now and think that it may have been one of the best things in my life, that comfort.
I remember one of the first nights that Lea came over. We made love on the floor that night. Afterwards, she massaged my head until I fell asleep in her lap. I'm not sure now how many hours she sat there with my head cradled between her legs, watching me sleep. She used to tell me that she loved watching me sleep. She said that it was the only time that I looked peacefull. I remember waking up and seeing her putting on her clothes. I remember being confused because she wasn't in my arms. I remember that the sun was just coming up over the horizon. I remember asking, "Are you leaving me now?"
I remember Lea smiling and giving me a kiss saying, "Good morning. I just have a busy day. I'll catch up with you at school."
I remember that she was wearing a white button down shirt and blue jeans with her ever present long fringed leather jacket.
Is it wrong that thoughts of her can still make me smile? It has been ten years.
There was a reason that I started writing these stories. I wanted to explain to someone why I felt the way I felt about what they did to me. I wanted to explain my anger and pain. I wanted to put their behavior on display for them under the guise of another. That doesn't make these stories any less true. I am recounting the facts as accurately as I can. Like I said, it's been ten years or so. My reason for writing these stories is now obsolete. Now, I'm writing them for me. This may be the only way for me to move on with my life. I've always been told that writing can be a very cathartic activity. This is true. It helps to put the demons on paper. It's the demons that we don't let out that devour us.
I was a member of a hack bowling league at the time that I was with Lea. We called ourselves the gutter gurus. We were some of the least impressive bowlers you could gather together between four lanes. There was close to seventy of us at one point. By the time I joined the group, we were whitled down to thirty or so. Lea will deny with her dying breath that she was ever a member of the gutter gurus. I know that I didn't see her bowl. I did however, often see her at the bowling alley on friday nights for glow in the dark bowling. I remember that Lea often asked me why I chose to spend so many of my friday nights with people that she felt were obviously beneath my level of intelligence. This led me to believe that Lea spent her time there to be close to me. She always arrived at the bowling alley with someone else, but she always left with me.
I remember so many nights; our hungry fingers seeking out eachother's flesh. I remember staring so intently into her eyes; her eyes like pools of chocolate, inviting me to dive in and have my fill. I don't imagine her laying next to me anymore. I don't still feel her imagined warmth next to me on cold winter nights. I don't still hear her call my name when I'm walking down the street. I don't still see her in my dreams. Sometimes, I wish I still did. I was so terribly in love with her. It would be a shame if there was nothing left of that feeling within me. I feel that it would be a loss to my humanity to so completely shut someone out of my heart. For now though, my heart is misplaced. I'll let you know when I've found it again.

Lea pt. 2

Why do we allow ourselves the illusion of hope. Why do we constantly open ourselves up to the inevitable pain that follows. We know that the pain will come. It's not a question of if someone will let us down. It's a question of when, and how hard will they let us fall. It has been my experience that not a single human being on this earth is capable of being completely true. Not a single one of us can fulfill the fantasy that others see in us. We are all inherently fallible and have capacity for cruelty. Most often, our cruelty stems from pain that we have endured at the hands of our human brethren and sistren. Sometimes it is just a result of personal joy. There are those of us who take pleasure in the pain of others, not because we were scarred as children, but because that is the thing that triggers our pleasure centers. I don't think that I have ever met anyone that this describes, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if I were wrong.
I know that there is something wrong with me. I know that I seek out cruelty. I know that I am addicted to the hormones that are released when my heart breaks. It's one of the hardest highs to achieve, but it seems like I always give it my best shot. I just keep on chasing the dragon that got away.
Speaking of dragons that got away...
Lea was a military brat. Her father was a navy man, so she was well traveled and well educated. These are two things that always impress me in a person. Lea was also a theater geek. There is nothing in this world that will endear a person to me faster and more securely than a love for the arts. I was raised to appreciate the theater in all its forms. Lea was also a talented musician. She could sing as well as play several different woodwinds. I myself have been complimented many times for my voice, and can play both the oboe and the clarinet.
Lea never played for me, but we sang together in my car on many occasions. She told me repeatedly that she loved the sound of my natural voice. It is because of her that I have worked to develop the sound of my natural voice. No matter what Lea and I did together, it seemed that all she wanted to do was to make me feel like I could take on the world. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she wanted me to be more than I was, more than I am. Perhaps that would have persuaded her to stay. It's too late for that now, I fear. I've killed her too many times in my heart for any connection to be made no matter how far I go in the professional world. I will always see any attempt on her part as a reversion to plan b.
God knows how many times I ran my fingers through Lea's hair. God knows how many times she looked at me with those deep, passionate eyes, inviting me to kiss her. God knows how many times my face has been sprayed red with her imaginary blood. God knows how many times I've stood over her beaten and bloody corpse. God knows how many times and in how many different hideous ways I've defiled her. All of it is in my mind though, and will always be. It doesn't matter how much time has passed. It doesn't matter how disappointed my heart is. I still love her, and a small part of me will always be in love with her.
This feeling has faded over time, but more so to hide the pain that it still courses through me. The pain of this loss has perverted every relationship since. I have always since, sought out affection from multiple quarters. No one woman has ever made me feel as whole and liberated as her. I know that no woman that I have wronged will understand this. I know that they will not understand how I can still feel affection for someone who has done to me what she did. None of them will ever understand why it is her that I compare them all to. I don't compare women to my mother like most men. For one, I know that there is no comparison. For two, I had more than one mother figure growing up. Lea was the first woman that I ever met that measured up to all of them.
There is a photograph somewhere, of Lea and I standing next to my christmas tree. My right hand is resting on her right hip, and my left thumb is hooked on one of her belt loops. Her right hand is rested on my right hand, and her left hand on my left arm. She is leaned up against my chest so that she appears shorter than me. (We're the same height.) She has a contented and happy smile on her face. She is in the arms of the man that she loves, posing for his mother. I burned one copy of this photo. I don't know what happened to the other ones. I remember sitting in the car one night after work at UPS. I just happened to pop the glove box, and this photo just happened to fall out. I remember the tears streaming down my face as I burned her face out with the lit end of my cigarette. I remember tossing the paltry, flimsy remains of that picture out the window as I pulled on to 294. I remember thinking that it was over. I thought that it was over. I thought that that act of destruction had immolated the last vestige of feeling for her in me. Were that true, I might be married and a father by now.
I don't blame Lea. It wasn't her fault that I fell in love with her. It wasn't her fault that I let myself get so carried away with my feelings for her. It wasn't her fault that noone could truly satisfy me while she was gone. It wasn't even her fault that she broke my heart. It was my heart to be broken. I should have been more cautious. I should have steeled myself against the pain of disappointment. That is something that I have never been able to do with women like her. Some women have thought me cold and unfeeling at times. It is at these times when I feel the pain of my existence most pointedly. It is when I smile the widest that I long most for a shoulder to cry on.
No shoulder ever does though. No shoulder heals the pain. No amount of tears will blot out this ink in my heart. The words are etched there like on a diamond. The only release that they have it seems, is here on this screen. I will keep writing until the words no longer make me cry.

Lea pt. 1

Why is it that every time I meet a woman who can make me forget about the entire rest of the world she has to have some self-proclaimed personal defect that makes her "not worth my time"? I've heard that phrase more than once. I believe it's bullshit. I believe it's an excuse. I feel certain it's a lie, having heard it so many times.
"I can't cope with how much you make me feel." That was Lea. Lea Barnes. I was nineteen, she was twenty. We met in history class.
I remember the second day of history class. I counted that day, how many times the teacher said Uhm. Ahhs were counted as well, so the tally turned out to be six-hundred and two. I remember the class laughing over how many students had taken the time to tally up the stutters. I remember Lea sitting in her desk against the far wall with her friends. I remember that they didn't laugh, but she did smile at me.
Two weeks later, I was sitting in my own desk against the far wall with my new friends. We would pass notes back and forth about what we would be doing with our weekend, or even just later in the day. We'd smoke cigarettes together out in the "smoker's alcove". During this time, I got to know Crysta. I really liked Crysta. My only issue was that she was pregnant and not entirely separated from the father. I was with Crysta for probably three weeks. In the third week that I was with Crysta (she will deny this) she wrote me a letter which said that she wanted to slow down and perhaps see other people.
Three days later I asked Jim to give my number to Lea. I knew that she wanted it. I also knew that she would not ask for it. I also knew that she was going to be out of school for four days and Jim knew how to get ahold of her.
The first night that I spent with Lea was spent in complete platonia. We sat up and talked to each other for eight hours while Lea was house sitting for a friend. I remember her face perfectly now because I spent the better part of that night studying it. She had heavy lidded, almond shaped eyes. They were so deep a shade of brown that they appeared red in certain lights. Her hair was dark as well. Chestnut, you would call it. She had short, unruly bangs that she had to blow out of her eyes every twenty seconds or so. Her lower lip was slightly lop-sided. I found that simple imperfection to be deeply endearing. It was very slight and so subtle that it looked like she was merely smirking. Her upper lip was a little thin, but felt natural between mine. She had white teeth. They weren't really white white. They were as close to white as I've seen outside of tv. She had a small roundish nose. I used to press it with my finger and she would kiss the air. Her face was oval shaped. She had freckles all across her high cheekbones. I still remember how her ears felt between my lips. Her body scent is still familiar to me. There are times when I think that I smell her in some public place, crowded like a jar of pickles. A person trying to pass by will have a hint of her about them, and I swoon a little from the weight of the emotions caught up in that scent. People receive 90% of all information from their eyes; however, it is the sense of smell that we react to first and most instictually. Lea smelled like white jasmine and musk, dark musk.
I remember laying with her on her bed, talking for hours. I could talk to her for hours on the subject of the concept of nothing. I have never met anyone since that has stimulated me so, intellectually. She wrote a poem when she was in high school entitled, "Butter". As you might imagine, this was a provocative poem. She said once, that I was like that poem for her. Not the butter, but the knife you see. I suppose I should have taken that as a warning sign.
Lea and I didn't have much time together. She was scheduled to go to Ecuador for the foreign exchange program. I met her only four months before she was supposed to go. We started seeing each other almost two months before she was supposed to go. Perhaps it was all just bad timing. Perhaps I'm a chimpanzee dressed up for a post card photo shoot.
I remember one night, we were in my room and the condom broke. I tried to get up to find another, but Lea wrapped her legs around me. She pulled me in and kissed me. Then she whispered in my ear, "This is what I want to feel."
Lea would do little things to let me know that she was thinking of me, as often as she could. She would write out a short note and have one of our friends bring it to me. She would dial my pager late at night and leave 07734 as the call back number.
I took her to Lover's Lane one day. I made her blush a very deep shade of red. I won't tell you how I did it, but I will say that she did try on the french maid outfit for me. We very nearly didn't make it out of the store. Well, actually she would have probably kicked me in the knees had I tried that.
Lea and I used to sit at denny's for hours. We would talk about everything we could until we couldn't find anything to talk about. Then we would go and have a more in depth conversation. This was almost every day leading up to her departure.
I remember one day, I saw Lea with scratches on her face. She said that she had broken it off with both of her other lovers and her girlfriend didn't take it as well as her other boyfriend. She told me that she had broken it off with them so that she could spend more time with me.
I only saw Lea cry once. It was four days before she left. She and I were sitting in her room, and she was resting her head on my shoulder. Tears were quietly streaming down the side of her face and her voice was just a whisper as she told me about everything that she was going to miss. I'm getting a little ahead of myself though. It happens.
The day after I took Lea to Lover's Lane, she asked me if I would drive her over to HF to drop off a petri dish filled with bacteria. I was not fond of the idea of traveling with this petri dish in my car and was not shy about voicing my concerns. In answer to this, Lea grabbed me by the neck and kissed me. Then she said, "We just exchanged more bacteria than is in that dish. After that, I had no further complaints of trepidation. I think that I've written enough for this entry. There's just too much for me to write it all out at once. I need to let my memory work out the kinks. There are certain things that aren't quite so clear, but I'm working on remembering them as accurately as possible. This was over 10 years ago.