Winter Lyric

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Sunday, October 5, 2014

It had been twelve years since I kissed a woman. The way things were going, before being amorous with Sarah less than a week ago, I thought I might have had to wait thirteen years to kiss a woman again. Those couple of nights Sarah and I were together, over the past two weeks, were very memorable for me. I’m glad it’s only been twelve years because I’d be lucky on one hand that I’d get to kiss a woman again but on the other hand I’d be unlucky if it was thirteen years since the last time. It was Thanksgiving twelve years ago when I kissed that woman at the bar in my hometown. I was living in Toronto and visiting home for Thanksgiving. Victoria had stayed in Toronto for Thanksgiving.

I’m not home right now either. I live here, but I don’t think I’ll ever consider this city my hometown. I moved here seven years ago, about two hundred kilometers south of my hometown, a hundred kilometers north of Toronto. My sister moved here to further her college education and I followed her here with my parents to get away from the family of the man I killed. They weren’t harassing me but I felt I was an unnecessary presence to them so I moved here in silent sympathy.

When I moved here, I didn’t meet any women until two years later. Two of them, in fact, and they became the subjects at the beginning of my little blue diary. It didn’t work out with either of them. It must have been the greeting committee for my new place of residence. I must have been on the waiting list. Neither of the two stuck around.

For the next five years I didn’t become close with any women at all until I met Sarah. Sarah was with me on my birthday, yesterday, which is just before Thanksgiving. Although, I’m not quite sure she was with me as much as she was being tonight by herself. She left me drunk and alone. I was expecting her to stay with me because it was my birthday.

Sarah and I went to the liquor store early yesterday. I bought some rum and a bottle of wine. I told her I wanted to drink something special so I would remember my birthday. She looked beautiful. She was wearing a cardigan sweater, a short black skirt with brand new black leotards and a scarf tied around her neck. She complained that it was cold out. She got herself a bottle of wine, a couple of dark beers and a small bottle of vodka. After we left the liquor store, she told me she’d come over later.

When she came back, she had changed her clothes and she was wearing a black jacket she got for seven dollars at a thrift shop. She was wearing the same leotards, a white shirt and a slightly longer black skirt with white polka dots. We were out on my porch having a cigarette when my friend and neighbour, Eric, came to see us. Sarah asked him to come with us to her friend’s party. Without question he came.

Last summer she kissed Eric in front of me. The week before they kissed, Sarah and I went to a party at his place and I sent him a message on the phone saying that I loved Sarah. He read it out loud as the three of us sat together. Later on that night, Sarah left and went to Eric’s room with him for about an hour. It was a late hour and she left after that. When Eric came down, I asked him if I could talk to him privately. We went outside and I asked him what happened and he said he didn’t do anything romantic with her. I still don’t believe him.

The next weekend we went to another party there and Sarah was ignoring me and by the time it got late she was getting very flirty with Eric. He kissed her as I played Billy Holiday’s What a little Moonlight Can Do on the stereo and other romantic songs. I thought the Billy Holiday song was fitting because of the lyrics. I couldn’t stick around to suffer much longer so I left overwhelmed with jealousy. In the morning, Eric came over and sat on my couch. “All I did,” he said “was kiss her, we didn’t do anything else.”

“I’m surprised,” I replied, “I played the most beautiful music for you.” I guess it serves me right because I didn’t kiss her the first opportunity she gave me. I don’t think a lot about Sarah and Eric kissing but that thirteen year estimate was on my mind quite a bit this past week.

When I lived in Toronto for my first two years of college, I used to spend a lot of time with Victoria. She was a poet and studied literature at the University of Toronto. I remember keenly going to buy gloves with her in my first year of college, back when I still studied music. Since then, buying a pair of gloves has always been a fall tradition, except that I’ve had to do it alone because no women have been in my life much since my first s****l experience with April. I have met women—some of them in my new city, but none of them really became close and stuck around.

Victoria and I went to a movie on my twenty-first birthday, just after the start of my second year of college, eleven years ago. After the movie we were talking. She stopped me and said she was with her ex-boyfriend the previous week. She didn’t just kiss him either, she had s*x with him at his house. We went back to Victoria’s place and she had planned a surprise party for me. Nina came. I really hate surprise parties. I imagine it’s what it feels like to have s*x with a prostitute. You’re excited at the idea but you can’t get fully aroused because it doesn’t really come close to what love is supposed to be like.

I guess this year’s birthday wasn’t much better except that less than a week ago I kissed Sarah for the first time, making it only a twelve year wait. Since being with Sarah, I haven’t been able to keep the thought of kissing her off my mind.

Before that, I really couldn’t stop thinking about the time I met her and how I felt an amazing connection. She mentions to me and others the time we met, too. Perhaps there really was a connection there.

I had had two shots of rum before we left for Sarah’s friend’s party. The three of us walked to the party together and, gloating to Eric, I told him he had to get closer to women so they would love him. He had been complaining that the woman he was in love with didn’t talk to him anymore. I didn’t say that Sarah and I had kissed but I was clearly much more confident and lost some of the jealousy of him since finally kissing Sarah. I felt like she might get flirty with me and we would kiss again. She looked beautiful and I really wanted it to happen.

I didn’t talk to Sarah much at the party. I took a few pictures of Eric and together we stole a few shots of someone’s alcohol. I couldn’t remember much after that. I remembered the kitchen counter was full of alcohol shots prepared for everyone and after that I remembered standing in the kitchen when Sarah came and told me she was headed downtown to the bar and I couldn’t go. “You’re sleeping,” she said. If I was sleeping, how did I remember it?

She was being tonight. She took me to one of the couches and told me to sleep there. I pushed her out of the way, upset that she wouldn’t let me go, grabbed my bottle of wine and drank it as I walked home. Meanwhile, she and Eric got a ride with everyone to the bars downtown.

This morning Eric showed me some of the pictures he took of me. There was one where I was sleeping on the couch and another where I was clearly acting very animated with two bottles of beer in my hands as Sarah looked at me smiling. I couldn’t remember either of these things happening. I didn’t go to church today because I was feeling too hung over to go.

It was depressing thinking that Sarah didn’t stay with me for my birthday. When I woke up I had a cigarette on the porch and there was a small puddle of vomit there. I walked in and my roommate told me to clean it up. I told her it wasn’t mine, that it was from a few weeks ago when one of our other roommates had a party.

She asked me if I remembered last night. She said I was lying down sleeping on the porch when she came home at two in the morning. I told her I didn’t remember. So, I didn’t even make it to my bed last night.

I cleaned up my puke and hoped that Sarah would reply to my text message. The night that she left and spent an hour in Eric’s room, he spoke with me afterwards. He said she didn’t say anything about me. “You have to be amazing when you see her,” is what he told me. I definitely wasn’t amazing last night and I really feel jealous that Eric got to spend my birthday with her instead of me. Although, he did tell me he got lost and separated from them at the bar. He couldn’t find Sarah and her friends again after that.

I wanted to sleep off my hangover but I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept remembering that I pushed Sarah, leaving on bad terms but I knew we had to rehearse for our next performance at the college. Knowing this, I waited for her response while listening to the song that was playing when we first kissed. I listened to it over and over for hours today, crying.