Dealing Flesh (25 page)

Hot Shot:
We are not in a committed relationship. He hasn’t even told me once he loves me since I moved out. If he isn’t playing by the rules, why should I?

My hand trembles as I dial Ken’s number
.

“Well, that took you awhile,” he says as he answers.

“Well, hi to you, too. I noticed you paged me.”

“How come you didn’t call back sooner?” he asks, his voice sounding exasperated.

“I was at the gym and left the phone and pager inside the car.”

“That’s so unlike you. You’ve never done that before.”

“Well, I did now. Why didn’t you call me last night?”

“I got in later than planned.”

Doubt Cloud:
LIAR—I know he is fucking someone else.

A week goes by. Ken drops me off at the office after lunch. I get out of his vehicle and start walking toward the front entrance.

“Hey, wait!” I hear him yell after me.

I turn back. Reaching the car, I lean forward into the open window of the passenger door while resting my elbow on the frame. I look Ken straight in the eyes.

“What’s up?”

“You’ve been out with another guy, haven’t you?” he says.

Hot Shot:
He can’t possibly know. It’s a bluff.

“I don’t appreciate you accusing me of things.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know you are lying because your mouth gets all crooked.”

“Fine, Ken. I was going to tell you eventually, but not here right in front of my work.”

“I don’t care. I wanna know now,” he says irately.

“I am not seeing anyone else, but I did have lunch with someone on Sunday after you pissed me off with refusing to take me to the concert. And of all things, you never bothered to call me afterward like you had promised.”

Romy:
The wounded look on his face kills me. And all I ever wanted was to live happily ever after with my baby.

“You fucking bitch.”

“You must believe me when I tell you absolutely nothing happened with that guy,” I say feeling tears well up in my eyes. “He does not mean a thing to me. There was no kissing, no nothing, just a harmless lunch. I just craved to feel desired for a change.”

Ken swears at me some more, seconds later driving off with screeching tires.

Romy
:
S
ee what you’ve done? You hurt the only man I truly love.

Hot Shot:
No female would appreciate to repeatedly be treated like the ‘wrong kind of woman.’

Ragelina:
That gotta burn anyone’s fuse.

Tough Gal:
It’s not your fault.

Whip Cracker:
Sure it is. You just ain’t good enough.

~~~

I move into a studio apartment in Agoura Hills this weekend. As Monday morning comes, I turn in my resignation at work to wholeheartedly throw myself into entrepreneurship.

Over the next few weeks, I work as hard as an ox, trying to get the animal care company up and running.

Tonight, I don’t sleep at all, sitting in front of the computer, creating forms, contracts, and other miscellaneous items. Besides offering basic dog training, I add equine exercise and care to the curriculum. From now on, I spend days and often weeks at a time with all sorts of critters. The work proves labor intensive and demanding but whenever I am around the creatures, I feel like someone just lit a bunch of candles inside me.

Strolling around the Topanga Mall today after lunch, I bump into Ken. The feeling of intense love and affection for him grips and shakes me. One smile from his lips, and I forget where my feet are.

“What are you doing right now?” he asks.

“Why? I haven’t really decided yet.”

“Wanna hang out?”

“That sounds cool.”

We take a trip to my house where we instantly make love on top of the leopard print comforter that covers my new king size bed. We stay by each other’s side all day, going for round two between the sheets right after dinner. Ken agrees to spend the night.

Romy:
This is good.
I may get my baby back.

After another course of close bonding, we fall asleep snuggly happy in each other’s arms. Around 2:00 a.m., I awaken from the noise of Ken getting dressed.

“What’s going on, babe?”

“I gotta go, honey.”

“What? Why?”

“I forgot I have to meet some people in the desert.”

He puts on his clothes, gives me a quick kiss, saying that he will call me soon and leaves. I cry myself to sleep.

Today at the grocery store, I break into uncontrollable sobbing right in front of the checker. It’s something that happened to me many times in the past months, but much more the last few days now that Ken appeared on the scene again. Having the hardest time being alone with myself, I attend three back-to-back gatherings today in the program that supports people who love someone whose life is ruled by mind-altering substances.

Ken’s number shows up on my pager around ten this morning, putting me right back on top of the world. I phone him.

“I want to come home, babe,” he says.

Severe elation takes me over.

“What do you mean by ‘home’?”

“Can I move in with you?”

I gulp as additional euphoria ignites me even further.

Romy (beseechingly):
You must say yes. What’s to think about?

Doubt Cloud (shouting):
Dooon’t do it. You’re not gonna survive if you lose him again.

An hour goes by during which I arrive at a “yes” answer, quickly changing it to “no,” then “maybe,” and back to “yes,” and so forth. Frustrated and my head in a spin, I ring Ken’s number. His voicemail picks up.

“Honey, I thought hard about you moving in with me, but you know what? This very moment, I really can’t make a decision about that. I’ll talk to you another time, okay?”

Romy:
I’m suffocating in here.
Gotta get out of the house.

I go about the day, returning around eight this evening. Fantasia plays me a movie of how wonderful it could have all been right now had I said yes. I feel like running, just like
Forrest Gump
did, and never stopping again.

Romy:
Call him right away and tell him you had a change of heart
.

Deciding to listen to his voice one more time on one of the saved messages in my mailbox, I dial into my system.

“You got one new message,” it alerts me.

Ragelina:
Impossible. I haven’t seen the pager go off for hours.

“Please call me right now, baby. I will do anything you want; I just want us to be together again,” I hear Ken say.

I call him instantly, but he does not pick up. I briefly explain on his voicemail what happened, urging him to contact me as soon as possible.

Ragelina:
Damned that pager company
.
Those fuckers should pay for ruining other people’s lives.

Romy (wailing):
How could they fail to deliver the most important message of my life?

I do not hear back from Ken until the next morning.

“Do you want me to be honest?” he asks as I have him on the phone.

“Of course, I do.”

“When you didn’t return my page, I assumed you went out with some guy again, so I went out with a girl I know.”

The all too familiar raven blackness returns.

“Fuck you, Ken. Do not ever bother me again.” I slam the phone down and head out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, I am parked at the outskirts of the deserted grocery store parking lot a couple miles from my apartment. My eyes zoom in on the icing-covered donut inside the box on the passenger seat. I make a game of trying to catch the tears that keep crashing into my mouth by whisking my tongue across my upper lip like a windshield wiper: left, right; right, left. Their saltiness offsets the lingering sweet taste of the
dozen
cream and jelly-filled dough balls that passed over my tongue a few minutes ago. I grab the last one and devour it in the same savage manner as the others.

To keep my long, gold-blonde highlighted hair from sticking to my soiled mouth, I secure it behind my ears. My fingers get stuck in tangles caused by sticky jelly patches. Ew. I rest my arm on the console, getting more sugary globs. Frantically, I wipe some of the crumbs from my black spandex top and knee-length skirt while my eyes take a brief scan of the cockpit interior of my ride.

I notice that it looks like a birdcage tray after a parrot feeding. The mess is jarring but I cannot attend to it. Nothing matters but the paper bag next to me and the only thing left in it: a soft, gooey, chocolate fudge bar. A couple of bites into it, my face grimaces in disgust at the incessant sweetness of my binge. I take the rest of the bar and rub it one side at a time across the stained mat in front of the passenger seat, knowing it will eliminate the chances that I’ll be tempted by it later.

For a few moments, I concentrate on the tingling of the teardrops traveling down my cheeks to my chin where they remain for a couple seconds before plunging into the crater of my cleavage. Several scenes of my favorite sexual fantasies flash before my eyes. They disappear again. I promise Fantasia I will revisit them later.

Miss Vanity demands that I take instant measures to keep the sugar from reaching my blood stream, scaring me with frightening pictures of what I would look like chubby. I crank up the car and head toward home. Once inside the kitchen, I fumble for the chopsticks in the cabinet drawer and forge into the bathroom. Instantly, I kneel down in front of the toilet and poke at the inside of my throat. Out comes the load—or several little loads, that is—taking away much of the guilt—at least, for a short while.

Ten minutes go by. A new wave of intolerable soul discomfort sends me rushing to the convenience store a few blocks from my pad and returning to my vehicle with a monster package of cookies, a pint of ice cream, and a couple of candy bars. I ravage the cookies and candy. I then try jabbing a spoon into the ice cream but it breaks. To give the stuff some time to thaw, I set course for my house again, driving the car at 50 mph down the road. My fingers lunge for the container on the passenger seat. I move it into my lap and lock it tightly between my thighs.

One hand on the wheel, I tear the lid off with the other and quickly move the carton in front of my mouth. I can no longer see the traffic around me now that my incisors burrow into the frozen tan-colored substance, carving an inch-long trench into it. Gee. The brain freeze and stinging cold instantly make me pull my teeth back. Who cares that I can’t see the road? I need what I need, and I need it now. Within seconds, I stick my teeth in again. Pull ‘em out again. I do it twice more.

Thoroughly frustrated, I pull over to the curb, turn off the car, and pick at the ice cream with another plastic spoon. It’s still hard, but with passing minutes, the chunks that make it onto the utensil get bigger and bigger. Thirteen minutes go by, not a lick left. I feel sick, but I know Hell Beast won’t let me rest. The tantalizing vapors of fudge float into my nose. Scaredy Cat demands I pick the filthy piece off the mat and trim the edges. I dig up one of the picnic knifes from inside the glove compartment, place the chocolate chunk onto a napkin, set it down in front of me and start sculpting. While chewing on the remaining piece, I hear Miss Vanity holler that I oughtta be ashamed of myself. I am. Sure, but it matters not.

This is not your garden-variety suicide attempt, although it could be construed as one—a slow and dragging one, an involuntary form that has been proven to kill if engaged in habitually. Right now, I’m just after finding relief from the achy-breaky, acid-like burning feeling that is eating at the gaping wound inside me, the internal crater that no amount of sexiness or perfection could ever fill.

I rush to my house again, and quickly relieve myself of the internal cargo. As my eyes stare at the still partially firm vanilla substance at the bottom of the loo, Scaredy Cat suggests I dig some of the texture back up and eat it. My throat badly battered, I ignore her. Instead, I shift my attention to Fantasia who does an excellent job selling me the concept of being the star in a titillating threesome with two sizzling-hot black men.

The phone goes on silent. Blinds are closed and into the multi-disk-player drops one of the raunchiest music CDs I own. Mister V at my command, I dive into the mental theme of “I’m a porn star participating in an orgy with hoards of good-looking men of different nationalities who are doing all sorts of nasty things with me.”

Another two hours go by.
No…don’t stop,
I hear Lustania whine as I am about to quit, hinting I should explore porn stardom for real; that way, I could always feel good about being bad. The excessive aching in my carnal region forces a break upon me, and my thoughts drift to memories of Ken again. I cringe, move into a fetal pose and wail until I feel brainless. As my gaze loses itself inside the blackness of the room, I contemplate another round of eating and sexing it up. Thankfully, within minutes, the sleep fairy whisks me away.

~~~

The sun shines on my
g-stringed
behind while lying on my towel at Malibu Beach. Out of the blue, Ken calls, suggesting I pick up the rest of my things from his house, saying that they otherwise will end up in the dumpster since he is going to move out soon. Girded with seductive tan lines, I make it up the stairs that lead to his apartment an hour later.

Doubt Cloud:
Hmmmh, I wonder, if he’s moving in with some woman he’s doing.

Ken lets me in. We exchange a disgruntled “Hi.”

More convinced of my sex appeal than ever, I throw him an arrogant look when passing him.

Hot Shot:
Eat your heart out, pal
.

Without a word, I shoot straight over to the walk-in closet.

Romy:
Tell me this doesn’t mean I’ll never see him again?

The garments piled on one arm, I do as Pretender Babe suggests, dawdling toward the front entrance in record-breaking slow motion to buy some more time for a possible reaction from Ken.

Romy (swooning):
I want him to interfere like they do in the movies…like when boy keeps girl from walking out of his life, and they live happily ever after.