Unsuitable Obsession - Part One (4 page)

Amber hugged Victor thoughtfully; he was the only
fella she ever thought about lately. He was caring, loving, and
welcoming, always doting on her, always asking her if she was
happy, hungry, thirsty, warm, hot or tired. He had her heart at the
moment, and—as she hugged the life out of Victor one more
time—examined Eduardo Sanchez strolling away.

“I think I love you Victor and your phenomenal
family,” she gave to him happily.

“Yah? Well, you know I love you Amber
Fitzgerald.”

They kissed lightly and Amber’s eyes closed and felt
the softness of his lips, the affection in his emotion and the
worship in his words.
Well, you know I love you Amber
….she
thought over and over. And she did know it. He said it almost daily
to her, it wasn’t forced and it flowed often; she could almost
count on it.

That night, as she disrobed for Victor (the very
first night they slept together) she felt the adoration he held for
her. It was slow and effortless, almost like a leisurely dance,
coming together with little or no struggle and very, very
sweet.

Victor proposed to Amber the moment they finished
climaxing. Would Amber accept? Oh hell yes! You see, although Amber
very much wanted to be part of the great big Sanchez family, she
also wanted to get out of her suffocating household. Her mother was
on another one of her matrimonial pursuits and Amber was so tired
of greeting yet another Father Figure. She wanted out, and out
now.

At eighteen, you had too few choices. Legally you
were considered an adult, but under the same roof as your parent,
you still heeded their responsibility. She didn’t want to be
anyone’s responsibility; she wanted to live her own dream. Her job
was just that, a job. It wasn’t a career, she’d never been
ambitious or had the desire to attend college, so she took her
skills as a typist and went to work as a receptionist in a law
firm. She wasn’t making much money at first, or enough to rent her
own apartment in L.A., so she had to find better employment, a
second job, or at least, find something else that could aid her out
of that tomb. Enter Victor Sanchez, he proposed to her,
outstanding! This was her chance to escape. He was working, had a
budding post with the City of L.A. and with two incomes coming in,
she could well afford to get an apartment and obtain her freedom!
Viola!
What a great idea! Her train of thought flabbergasted
her sometimes, she was acting like her mother and brushed aside the
fact that she might be following in her same path, marrying to meet
financial means.

She did love Victor though, who didn’t? He wasn’t a
Smelly Ape that’s for sure. He was pleasing, obedient to his
parents and a jovial sort of character, who shared his affection
daily, always helped his mother, sat down with his father to watch
soccer, cuddled his nieces and nephews and even petted stray dogs.
He was an excellent choice.

After Victor left her room that night, Amber laid in
bed awake just thinking about it: marriage, her and him, in a
lifetime of wedded bliss. Her future was suddenly mapped out for
her and plans for decorating an apartment, buying groceries along
with not having to answer to anyone’s rules packed her dreams come
true. Oh what a meaningful feeling; dreamt through rose-colored
glasses, never foreseeing practicalities like utilities, laundry,
unemployment and the possibility of never having children.

Damn that decision…At sixteen, Amber wanted Teddy
Turner’s (a senior who wore really cool corduroys and wallaby’s, by
the way) attention so much she gave her virginity to him on his
very first visit to her house. She wanted to show him her MVP
trophy, but ended up showing him her underwear instead. The
following day at school he ignored her, subsequently, making her
feel like dirt. A couple of weeks later, she was pregnant and
scared to death to get an abortion. On her way to the free clinic,
she experienced unpleasant discomfort in her lower abdomen. Once
there, the doctor informed Amber of her ectopic pregnancy and had
to remove one of her Fallopian tubes. The comprehension had no
dismal affect on a sixteen year-old that mainly wanted the
situation just to end! During surgery, the doctor also found a mild
case of
endometriosis
—scarring in her uterus as well—and
informed Amber when she awoke that she would never be able to
conceive normally again without the support of hormones or possibly
through the aid of test tubes. Test tubes? Good Lord that was too
much news for a sixteen year-old to fathom. She wasn’t going to get
married anytime in the near future, so why concentrate so much on
her physical impairment? Now it’s
all
she can think about.
Not being able to give Victor any children that would devastate
him! Victor loved kids and the thought of her being barren made her
cry. Amber squeezed her eyes shut, tried to focus on apartment
hunting instead and was immediately interrupted by a sudden burst
of Victor’s brother. Now why on earth would he enter her fantasy?
Amber shook her head, buried her face under her pillow, felt her
breathing go from calm to acceleration. She felt like a nitwit
tonight practically ogling his body when they were being
introduced. She got so tongue-tied, she even forgot to say
hello!

It simply wasn’t fair. No human being should be
allowed to possess that much magnetism. He reminded her of some GQ
model; one of those gorgeous men you never thought existed. Tan and
exotic looking, he had a masculine jaw line but with smooth
feminine skin tones, such a contrast, she doesn’t know how else to
describe him other than “basically beautiful”. She’d never seen a
man so devilishly handsome! It was those eyes that threw her off,
those hypnotic heavy lidded grass green eyes. The elegance of his
facial features sent her to a mystic abstraction, so romantic and
gracefully interpreted and she felt like she was swimming through
fog for the rest of the evening. She shouldn’t have shown him so
much concentration either, trying to imagine what he’d look like
minus his silk shirt. Lips pressed against hers, hands underneath
her bra.
Good Lord!
The image wouldn’t go away. She rolled
over to the other side of the bed and dug her head underneath
several more pillows.

Eduardo Sanchez Go Away!

He was Victor’s older brother, so what, so what...so
what…so what…oh my...was she
in love
with Victor? Amber
suddenly hurled all the pillows away from her face like a cushiony
volcano. If she were in love with him, then why was she suddenly
having a sexual fantasy about his brother? Good Lord, she should be
in love with him she was going to marry him!

Rolling over in her bed, Amber became frightened all
of a sudden—panicky and insecure. She was damaged goods and wasn’t
too sure about her outlook for her new fiancé. Could Victor love
her enough for the both of them? She was already enamored with his
family; would passion come for him later?

Persistence breeds determination, and determination
creates boldness. So when a man owns his assertiveness, perceived
as being accomplished with his intellect, then its deliberate
self-assurance, arrogance and occasionally, conceit.

And what does this mean? It means power to me. I’ve
always known I encompassed potential. I like to win. I feel
accomplished when I prevail. I like to know that when I walk into a
room I command attention, that my presence of authority is
immediate. I thrive on prestige. I was born to be successful. There
is only way I’m determined to go, and that is up. Excel at school,
exceed at my profession, and succeed at becoming abnormally wealthy
by the developed age of thirty.

No one is going to stand in my way, no one, and if
someone gets offended along the way, then they should have never
tried to ride my coattails to prosperity. I welcome complication.
OK, I accept that I’m considered selfish in my need to fulfill my
aspirations, but I have to be selfish. Call me vain, call me one
dimensional, call me a master at domination, but whatever you call
me, do it with envy. And I appreciate the smile I just gave you,
which was my intention. Like I said, I always get what I want, I’m
inflexible and oh so fortunate.

As I stare at myself in my bathroom mirror, shades
of confusion tickle my intellect. A weak laugh escapes my throat as
I shake my head in utter disgust. It was a drive by, I must be
catching a cold, I lost my composure tonight, my focus; she
practically suffocated me with intrigue. Yah,
she
. It was a
woman...

Amber Fitzgerald.

Turning on the water faucet, I lean down and rest my
arms alongside the vanity. I continue to look at myself and shake
my head, splashing cold water onto my face, it’s cold, it’s
startling, but it’s temporary.

My brother threw me for a loop tonight. Meeting his
girlfriend had been a mixed blessing. Amber was unique, no doubt
about that. The hesitation that I did feel was the mental
preoccupation of what it felt like to kiss her. That unbelievable
motivation engrossed me the entire evening and I can’t fathom
why.

Along with my mental power, I’ve been favored with a
good-looking face. I hate that word—
handsome
. I like to say
that I embody advantage. I like to be taken seriously; I’m a double
threat, both in business and in my personal life. So when speaking
to an associate, who happens to be female, the conversation always
seems to detour into flirtation. Sometimes I’d like to shake her
senseless and ask her to stop staring. Favored men can never be
friends with a female; the notion of coition always seems to get in
the way. I’d rather concentrate on improving my intellect.

I’ve had girlfriends before, but on my terms. I’ve
never allowed myself to care for someone beyond the physical. Love
is for the lamebrain and I don’t have time to fall in love. I’m
never alone; I’m constantly being approached. I’m a magnet for the
opposite sex and I’m comfortable with the price tag. I decide when
we’re together and I decide if I want to spend time with her. I
hold all the control, not the female. Too many times have I
witnessed men crawl on their knees through humiliation to
accommodate their girlfriends or wives. I’ve learned my lesson at a
very young age, and yes, I did demean myself by handing over my
heart, while she accepted it, squashed it, only to ask for it once
again. I swore I’d never allow another female to try and take my
vulnerability again and I’ve been living by that rule ever
since.

As I continue to stare at myself in the mirror I
notice the tiny blemish on the right side of my jaw; a mark, a flaw
where I once shaved my face too close and caused a scratch on the
bottom of my cheek. I took my father’s dull razor and decided I was
“man” enough to start shaving. Stubborn at fourteen, I thought I
knew what I was doing. My father showed me once, and I grabbed the
razor out of his hand.

Step One: Spread the shaving foam onto your face;
Step Two: Take the razor and position it at an angle; Step Three:
Gently take the razor and glide it across your cheek in one
continuous motion.

One continuous motion? What do you do when you
forget to flex your jaw to accommodate the razor’s flat edge? Hope
to God that the girls never stare hard enough to notice the
two-centimeter disfigurement at the rim of my chin.

I knew at the age of ten that I was engaging to the
opposite sex, the phone rang off the hook. Girls used to chase me
around the block or leave little notes in my math book. Junior high
was a learning process, trying to master the skills at seduction,
but in high school, I was a stud: Most Popular; Most Likely to
Succeed; Most Desirable; Best Body; Best All Around, Homecoming
King, but I didn’t care. It was all so meaningless, trivial. Not
much effort to obtain such trophies. School was all that mattered.
Class President, now that’s the title I was most proud of back
then; straight A’s, those were my aspirations. But boy did those
hormonal girls make it fatiguing for me to concentrate when the
phone kept buzzing. The highest mark in Political Science would be
tough to achieve if I had to stop studying to answer the phone with
a hysterical female on the other end…

“
Why don’t you like me?”

“
When am I ever going to see you?”

“
Why don’t you come over?”

“
What are you thinking?”

Constant nagging and pulling for my attention when
all I really wanted from girls’ back then was sex and I had bigger
and better things to triumph over. My associate’s degree at a
community college, my bachelor’s at UCLA, then onto Harvard;
Harvard Law School to be exact. Harvard Law School offered a legal
curriculum unparalleled in legal education. It was a dream I
aspired to, a determination I felt to pursue.

Once there, the professors felt it necessary to
single me out, my race, my skin color—their predetermination that
I’d fail. A Latino didn’t belong there, but I knew differently. I
was bright, I was relentless and I was strong-minded to pass each
course. But then those insistent females were still all around me,
tempting me with their hair, their lips—their curvy bodies, meeting
them on the steps of the historic Austin Hall; Langdell Hall for
class, pretty temptresses following me to my seat. College girls
are no different than high school girls. Oh hell yes, they’d all
fight to the death and exclaim that they’re at Harvard for their
education, women’s rights or whatever the girl is into but I’ve
proved otherwise. They are all identical once the blouse is
subtracted from the body. Blonde, brunette, redhead and smart,
brainy, extremely intelligent—they all want a piece of me. And oh
how comical and obvious it is! I can always sense when a woman is
attracted to my carnal charm; the way they curl their hair around
their finger, their obvious nervousness in the way their voice
cracks, their hands go every which way but calm and the apparent
giddiness at some idiotic remark I happen to give out. I know all
the signs; study their body posture, suggestive nuances. But
they’re all just females and fulfill the need of the moment. And
who am I to complain? There are unquestionably many,
many
moments...