Will's Apartment

The apartment was in the same complex that I met him. He cornered me into a room that had a queen size bed set on a ghetto metal frame with no sheets, just a funky flea market blanket balled up into the corner of the bed. There was not any furniture in the room. It reeked of stale cigarettes, alcohol, and fresh meth smoke. All over the floor were little pieces of trash and in the corners were empty beer cans that also served as ashtrays. Off to left hand side of the room was the door to the bathroom and two the right was a closet with mirrors that I couldn’t help looking at myself and wonder what the hell I was doing here.

I knew exactly what I was doing, I was with him, El Guero. I couldn’t shake him out of my mind since the first time I laid eyes on him. I day dreamed of the moment I would be alone with him somewhere, waiting for him to make that first move and come towards me.

And here we were. He closed the bedroom door while stood nervously in the middle of the room watching him. I nervously looked around the room looking for a place to sit that I didn’t think had cockroaches. All the while he leaned against the door slightly grinning at me. I could feel him looking over every inch of me.

Finally I had the courage to look him in the eyes and when I did I couldn’t look away. Everything around me disappeared, there was no longer any noise other than his footsteps as he walked towards me. I found myself trembling, I could feel my face getting clammy.

Still frozen in his eyes, he walked up to me like he had done it a dozen times before, as if he knew exactly what he wanted and knew he was going to get it, with that cocky, devilish smile. He kissed me gently below my left ear, then my jaw bone, and then he kissed me on my lips.

It was as if I had been given a drug, I knew it was wrong but it felt so good. I was tingling from head to toe. I didn’t even close my eyes. I leaned back into his kiss as he grabbed my face and then a handful of my hair.

I had held my breath so long that my legs were weak and they started to buckle a little. He wasn’t about to let me go, instead he pinned me against the wall still kissing me and still looking me dead in my eyes.

Never in my life had I experienced this. It was more than his confidence or my desire for him, we weren’t in the dirty tweeker apartment anymore and we weren’t in Napa anymore. We were in our world where nothing could interrupt us. The music in the background wasn’t real in that moment, the sound of the traffic in the street below was drowned out by us. He and I were connected. We were one. And when he pulled away from the kiss we were still in that world, eyes still locked. He had me frozen in this wonderful place, nothing around us existed. It was just us floating in a white space of nothingness.

I couldn’t look away from him. Words were not coming out of our mouths. But at the same time we communicating. I could see an indescribable pain his eyes, that he was looking for a way out from the inner demons he couldn’t hide from. That pain, those demons were sucking me into him, l was instantly addicted to him.

Reality broke the trance, my insecurities again began rolling around my head just like when we first met. I didn’t want to be some piece of ass to some tweeker I barely knew. Here we were in a dirty apartment that belonged to his friend. He was covered in grease from working on a car, he smelled of old, sweaty beer, and here I was all dressed up trying to look cute for him.

Voices from the other room became audible in my head. It dawned on me at that moment I did not want to be seen there. My eyes were frantically darting around looking for a way out, but we were on the 2nd floor. He just kind of smiled at me, he knew.

Suddenly he walked out of the bedroom leaving me all alone. Again, I kept looking around looking for some imaginary door that I knew didn’t exist to magically appear. Of course it didn’t. On one hand I was thrilled to be there, but on the other hand the reality of situation was very uncomfortable

Although I was relieved to see him walking through the door, I also knew that I hadn’t formed an escape plan yet. But to my surprise when I peered out the door I saw something very peculiar. There stood 8 people lined up with their backs turned toward the door looking out window making sure not to look in my direction.

 This man knew how I felt about being seen there and I didn’t say a word. How did he know? Did we really have a connection? Was I really not imagining it?

I felt like I had found my match in life, that I had found yet another magical person that I could communicate with beyond words. That emotion was one that I thought was buried the day Miguel was lowered into the ground. I thought that my ability to love had been buried with him. Yet here stood a man, with all his flaws, able to re-conjure that lost part of my heart.