Somebody to Love

“I want to give you oral sex,” Luís says to me.

P.C. Merch Hüsey

“I want to give you oral sex,” Luís says to me. We are lying on my couch together, drinking each other in.

I pause. I know that these are only words. I have rolled my eyes at so many of my female friends when their partners said only what they wanted to hear. The promise of attention. The promise that they loved them. The promise of change. And yet, here I am, believing his prayer like a horny gospel.

It is a Friday afternoon. We had wandered around my neighborhood and settled on a brunch place. He got the vegetarian lasagna. I don’t remember what I got, except that I gave him a couple of my paprika-ed potatoes. He bought me a lemon tart, my favorite.

Now, I let him hold me as his words sink into my soil. I bury myself in his neck again. Skin to skin. A drug designed by nature some million years ago. Kissing that sacred triangle. There is nothing I want more than to see his face coming up for air between my thighs, breathing beneath the dark pink linens of my sheets.

But when I close my eyes, I see the red flags blazing. The incessant pot-smoking. The best friend with borderline personality disorder popping pills. The ashtray bursting with cigarette buts in his car. The spasms of his morning anxiety attack that I had to hold him through when I had wanted him to be holding me. A magical opportunity missed. I wonder how I got entangled with a person who is too consumed by their own daemons to give me my morning loving.

These are supposed to be the purest, sweetest moments. The honeymoon period. Our bodies and hearts and minds fusing into one. But instead, I’m getting blinded by the red taillights of a midnight traffic jam. As he undoes the buttons on my blouse, and I let him run his fingers along my chest ever so gently, I curse at the murderously boring reality of adult living. The teachings of my 12-step program, ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families), blares like a loudspeaker in my ears.

“We will learn to differentiate between love and pity and not only love those that we pity. We will not date people because we want to rescue them. We will come to rely on people who are emotionally available and who can take care of themselves.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! Can’t you just let me live a little? I think to myself. Let me wallow in my childhood trauma if I want to. Why do I have to be “working on myself” all the time? Fuck you, fuck the future, and fuck all these stupid attempts to fix yourself. I’m not fixed, and I prefer it this way. Let me fuck up my life if I want to.

I sigh audibly.

“I’d like that,” I tell him. I smile at him. I let him cradle me tighter.

“I’m kind of vanilla, though,” Luís says. His words bring me back to the other day when we were getting in bed together. He took off his clothes without undressing me. I promise to myself. I will ask him to let us undress each other next time he spends the night.

“That’s okay,” I say, “I know what I like.” I love the idea of telling him how I want him to please me. I love the idea of disrupting the cadence of his sheltered solitude with blowjobs and butt plugs and him eating me out like there’s no tomorrow.

I gaze into his brown eyes, the window into his dark and troubled soul. We kiss. I tell myself that despite it all, to me, he is so lovable. I don’t want to cut the blooming flower of our relationship short with logic. The flower may be flesh-eating and more of a weed and growing in some twisted old witch’s garden. But let it grow. That’s why we were put on here on this Earth, us humans. Wasn’t it? To dare to love someone else wholeheartedly. Let this red river run its course.

Perhaps I am destined to be his mother. To take care of this 33-year-old man-child who’s still living with his parents and rescue him from himself. Isn’t that how humanity got here? Caring for each other. Women taking care of the broken men. The men returning from war. The troubled ones. Logically, you know that you shouldn’t want that. You want a child of your own, not a boyfriend or a husband who is a child also. He probably doesn’t even want to be saved. When my therapist asked me why I liked him, I told her it was because I understood him. He’s a shy, weird kid who also never got enough love and attention from his parents. I get that. I get him.

My logic brain says: You don’t want to date a pothead. You want someone who is going to call you. He hardly ever calls you. You’re the one calling him all the time. You deserve better. You deserve someone who is going to ask you how your day went. Who isn’t baked out of his mind constantly.

My heart says: You’ve found somebody to love. He’s not perfect, but he’s so cute. The cheeky grin he gives you looking over the rim of his light-green glasses. Can’t you see the beautiful, little ways that he’s loving you? The only ways he knows how? He bought you sleeping goggles. You’ve never slept so well. He cooked you eggs. He cooked you chilies rellenos. He’s not a bad person. Just a sad one, a trapped one, a confused one. But who isn’t? He’s a little rough around the edges, but he’s yours.

I admit to myself that he reminds me of Blake, the main male character in my second book. Another pothead. Another addict. I wonder why I keep getting entangled with these kinds of people. Should I prolong my heartache with Luís for better writing material? I know that dating someone for my writing is manipulative and wrong. I’m using him as a means to my own selfish ends. Am I a bad person for even entertaining that idea? Probably. That’s fucked up. But so is this relationship.

I am not supposed to do this. I am a woman with a career. With my apartment, my clients, my own life. I pay my bills. I throw out the extra food in my fridge that’s gone moldy. I double-bolt my door when I leave my house. I have done so much to build my own temple. All the rational people in my life tell me this could wreck me. Lock my little beating heart in Luís’s box and shake it. See how I like that. See how that ricocheting works out for me. And yet, the heart wants what it wants. No amount of quarterly budgeting can convince me otherwise. 

The next morning, when we wake up together, I ask Luís,

“How did you sleep?”

“Not very well,” he said, “Don’t worry, though. It’s going to take me some time, but I’m getting used to you.”

💌