Message-ID: <5201eli$9710271040@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: Brother_Cadfael@earthcorp.com (Brother_Cadfael@earthcorp.com) Subject: 'Growing Familiar' {Brother_Cadfael} [ MF ] Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.hetero,alt.stories.erotic Followup-To: poster Reply-To: Brother_Cadfael@earthcorp.com X-Intended-For: Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-Id: <877925900.572586@moon.aa.net> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1997. Distribute freely, but change nothing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brother_Cadfael@earthcorp.com Synopsis: Thoughts on a withering relationship that has been relegated to sex and cold emotions. -[ Growing Familiar]- You lay quietly after we made love. Your beautiful body with a light sheen of sweat. You are a wonderful lover. You sense the desires of other bodies and accommodate them in the movement of your own. Your lips, thin-lined and wide; memorized the first time you kissed me with them. I sit against the head of the bed and watch you turn away. We haven't spoken for several days. Nothing that I would remember. Conversations died out long ago after we grew to know each other so well. You are common to me, now. I am common to you. Nothing new or exciting lay within us to be discovered or revealed. We have grown tired and bored of each other. Our relationship-- our love, has expired. We satisfied our thirst so thoroughly in the last year that we ran the well empty. I think that we care, still. But we don't love. We are convenient for each other. Finding a capable lover is arduous. It's easier to remain here, in familiarity than sever ties. We are convenient. My eyes trace the curve of your body, from the rise at your shoulders to your ribcage, to the returning rise of your hips and sloping line of your thighs. You have haphazardly drawn the sheets about you, covering the small of your back and your small feet. I feel cold. We just made-love and after coming, neither of us have touched the other. I put my hand out to touch you. I'd like to feel your skin still. Soft and gentle, like your heart. I hesitate. I reach again for you and press the tips of my fingers against your upper arm. You shrug and slip away from my caress. My heart hurts. Months ago, a simple touch from me would have spirited you to turn over and touch me back. Then we would have made love again. Now you shrug and grumble to yourself. You want your sleep, so I let you lie. I'd like to say, "I love you", but you are indifferent to me. I don't know that you would believe the words if I handed them to you, anyway. Maybe, I wouldn't even mean them. There are times when I am at the office and I pause, removing my eyeglasses and gazing out the window at the world below and beyond. I'll cradle my head in my palms and wish that you would find another. Perhaps then, I could hate you. Things would sever themselves with less regret. I want you to be happy. I know that I'm no longer capable of that duty. I wish you would leave me. I wish you would tell me that you loathed me and wanted me to go away. Alas, the only emotion you've shown recently is the quiet whimper of your orgasm. Indifferent. I even think that I could cheat on you and you would not say a word, nor wish to change circumstances. Not that I would ever do such a thing. I may not love you anymore, but I don't hate you. I'd not humiliate you by being another. Then again, is this not humiliating? Submitting ourselves to a dead coupling of souls, for fear of separation and solitude? If we weren't holding onto memories, would this be easier? Remember when you were a drama-queen seeking tragedy? I met you the very day you broke up with that heroin addict. He had caused you a miscarriage and bruised you in the process. But you were comfortable with pain. You grew with it as a child when your mother's boyfriend would touch you in those ways that scared you and you found it a safe familiar environment when you were a woman. But you found me. You gave a nice guy a chance and I somehow convinced you that you didn't need the pain and danger and heartache of dysfunctional people. Contemptible men in caustic relationships. Have I somehow betrayed you? Drew you in with promises of sanctity and security and love? I tried so desperately to entice you. I think I promised you the world, even. But I've delivered you normality. I'm not a rebel as I was when I was a teenager. We're twenty-something and I've sold out, giving into the world and finding pleasure in contentment. I should not have forced you across those tracks. That line between living and dying. You are a different soul that I am. You need passion and defiance and turmoil. You need to know that you are alive and I bring you into my mundane life. Inside, I think you know that you want to be the woman you were. Contemptible, rebellious. Happy to work at the music store for minimum wage, so that you could focus on your writing and your friends and the wild nights you enjoyed downtown. In my eyes, that life would have been too little too slowly. I am programmed to value accomplishment and my goals are oriented to the pocketbook. Your goals are simpler. Friendship. Enjoyment. Life. But we thought we could work this out, didn't we? Expected the other to come around or compromise to the satisfaction of the other. I still want to touch you. If I were a drug addict, I could quit cold and suffer withdrawals. Eventually, I would recover and be through with the habit. I cannot imagine my life without you. This bed would be so different with the body of one who is not you. It would lack that smell of vanilla. It would lack those precisely tucked corners at the foot of the bed that you insisted on. My eyes flutter up from my lap as I contemplate this. I did not feel the bed move when you rolled over again. You are resting your head on your hand and watching me. Your deep brown eyes are uncertain and wanting. That look-- it always told me you needed me-- I had not seen for so long. Many looks that I am familiar with have been absent from your angelic face. I intend to turn away, but my eyes catch yours and I am unable to let go. We stare into one another. You seem so tender and willing. What has made you turn to look at me? Did you feel guilty that you had shrugged my hands from your body again, after making-love? Or... No, your eyes would have betrayed you by now. I would have seen your intentions if they were motivated by pity. I reached for you and shook like a boy on his first date as I traced the frame of your cheek and jaw. You touched the back of my hand with your lips. Your hand comes from beneath the sheets and takes mine by the wrist. I snake mine around your palm and we hold hands, innocently and cautiously. I want to say something. I haven't the words in mind, but I feel that I should speak. When I move my lips, you quiet me with your index finger against them. You just stare into my eyes. A tear comes and I watch it slide down your face, dropping to the mattress. My heart is beginning to thaw, but I am worried that I may read too much into your actions. Emotions. I'm overwhelmed by your sudden letting of emotions. I have seen you cry only once in our time together. And you haven't seen my eyes for... You move toward me and I feel your body press against mine. Your arms wrap around my chest and you rest your head just below my neck. I put my arms around you, too and feel your heart beat above me. Slow, reassuring rhythm. I am more confused now than I had been moments before. But I push those thoughts out of my head and enjoy the moment that I have with you now. -fin- -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us | | Archive site +--------------------+------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | \ .../assm/faq.html> /