But this scion of Chief Oconostota Stalking Turkey, the last great warrior chief of Chota ( whose name is literally translated as Groundhog Sausage -- which I imagined were links not patties because I knew there had to be a gay element in there somewhere.....) didn't feel much like a descendant of the great Cherokee vanquisher as I tossed and turned in cold blankets that night. ((He'd also married a lady in waiting to Queen Caroline, King George the first's wife, so that explained my need to be around queens))...............The light of the full moon seeped through my bedroom curtains, and sleep didn't come easily. I'd grown accostomed to the warmth of Bart, and his side of the bed was as arctic as my heart had been the day I had met him. The last time I remembered looking at the blaring green lights of the digital clock, it was 6:17.......
Sadness accompanied me to my dreams and escorted me to worry. Suspicion and doubt lurked in the shadows and bitterness bit my heart through out my restless slumber. Trust flew away from me as quickly as a hummingbird, and I knew that it would be just as difficult to recapture.
All sorts of scenarios of Bart's whereabouts played out in my nightmares that disguised themselves as dreams initially and then bloomed into full blown night terrors. I envisioned him being locked up in a cell for drunk driving and being called Bartella by some criminal named Buddy, probably because his breath did smell of wine the last time I'd seen him, and I'd heard terrible accounts of the treatment of gay inmates in Southern jails.....
A montage of reconciliation sex with his former fiance combined porn with horror in my mind's eye, and the girl who'd slipped into the shadows outside of Acapulco's played the female lead. Her "oohs" and "ahhs" had made me so jealous within the night vision that I had awakened with the full intent of finding the bitch and kicking her ass....
I even saw Bart kneeling at an ornate, gilded altar in a 14th Century cathedral (( even though I knew full well that Bart was Baptist.......Catholic churches are much more beautiful in dreams than plain old Baptist buildings....)) seemingly, at first, to beseech God's forgiveness for his feelings for me in a great drama of good versus evil .....But on further investigation, I noticed the priest who ministered over him and wore an elaborately embroidered pink frock had one hand on the back of Bart's neck and the other lifted to heaven......By the back and forth motions of Bart's head, I knew that he wasn't praying unless God resided in the holy underwear of the pinkly clad confessor, and by the way the priest mantra'd "penance...penance", I could see that he was enjoying Bart's punishment.
Tears must have streamed down my face for quite sometime before I awoke because my pillow was soaked, but I'd never tell anyone that. Of course, I was being overdramatic; I THOUGHT that I had fallen in love........but how could I? I didn't really even know this person, and I certainly wasn't worthy of his attention -- much less the adoration that he'd heaped on me. I told myself that I was behaving stupidly and swatted my emotions like mosquitoes on a muggy May evening, but the apparitions of yesterday floated over his pillow and every word he'd spoken to me became golden in my memories.
I applied my academics and told myself that I was suffering from immature infatuation, but the feelings that I felt were more real than any other love that I'd ever experienced..................but they were irrational. For some reason, smartly labelling it eased my suffering a bit, but only reinforced my original assessment that I was nuts for letting myself fall so quickly for an idea of Bart that I didn't even know truly existed.....(( But don't we all fall in love with the idea of the person since we never really truly know anyone completely?))
I warred with my emotions through out the day and welcomed work as a way to avoid feeling and thought............but hoped that every sound I heard was his footsteps walking to my door. 4:00 couldn't arrive soon enough and though I was already weary from lack of sleep and my own mental battles, I knew that business would crowd out every other thought in my head. I was in great need of work therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment