Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(36)
She hugs me and I clutch her, sob into her neck that smells like vanilla extract baking inside cookies—so f*cking wonderful!
The sad suits and briefcases pass us in droves, but no one even seems to notice us as I drink her up.
“God works in mysterious ways,” she says, and rubs my back all motherly. “This world is a test. It’s hard. But I will continue to pray for you. We could pray together. You could come to church with me. It would help you. My father will help you too.”
She’s saying all of these really nice things, trying to comfort me the only way she knows how, and I love just being on someone’s radar so much that I start kissing her neck and then her mouth. Our tongues touch, and she kisses me back for a fraction of a second—
Her mouth is so warm
and wet and mint-y
from the gum she’s
chewing and my
heart’s pulsing spikes
of adrenaline through
my veins, which is
exciting and
animalistic and
primal, but maybe not
quite what I was
expecting, because I
thought kissing
Lauren would be like
the epic kisses in
Bogie films, like the
string section would
kick in and I’d get
that swirling feeling
Baback’s playing
produces, and Lauren
would pause to gaze
at me and say, “I like
that. I’d like more,”
just like Bacall says—
in that infamous
husky voice—to
Bogie in The Big
Sleep, and when I
kissed her glossy
battleship-gray lips
again, she’d say,
“That’s even better,”
but instead it’s just
the hot sweaty rush of
bodies mangling
when they maybe
shouldn’t even be
mingling—and she
tries to push me away,
but the rush forces me
to hold on to her tight,
even though I want to
let go, even though I
should really LET
GO!, so she turns her
face from my mouth
and yells “Stop” in
this high-pitched
squeal that is the
complete antithesis of
Bacall’s warm sexy
brassy voice and
when I keep kissing
her cheek and ear, she
smashes my chin with
the heel of her hand,
jolting my brain back
to reality and
knocking off my
Bogart hat in the
process.
I stagger backward and then pick up my fedora.
The warm rush freezes into a heavy lump in my chest and suddenly I feel so so shitty—like I need to vomit.
“Is there a problem here?” says this subway rent-a-cop who has magically appeared. He has this dirt moustache that makes him seem about twelve years old. He’s hilarious-looking in his official uniform with the little silver badge. Almost cute. Like a kid wearing a Halloween costume.
“I’m just delivering a message from god,” I say, and pop my hat back onto my head. I’m acting again, keeping my true feelings repressed—I’m aware of that, but I can’t help it.
Lauren looks at me like maybe I’m a demon from hell or the Antichrist, and says, “Why did you do that?”
“What did you do to her?” the rent-a-cop asks, trying to look official and tough.
“I gave her a cross on a silver chain and tried to tell her I love her—I do love you, Lauren; I really do—then I kissed her passionately.”
She looks at me with her head all cockeyed and her wet lips parted.
She’s so confused.
I’m kind of confused too, because I’m not attracted to Lauren at all anymore and the kiss was a spectacular failure.
I can tell that some part of her deep inside liked the kissing, because it’s natural for teenage girls to like kissing, but she feels conflicted, like she’s not supposed to like it, that she’s supposed to deny her instincts here, like her religious training bids her, and that’s what’s really eating her up inside.
Maybe that’s how rapists justify their actions.
Maybe I’m a monster now.
Because I can see the thought process happening—it’s written all over her face.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
No.
No.
No.
I can’t.
I really can’t.
I really truly absolutely can’t.
Why did you do this to me?
Why did you make me feel this way?
Why?!?
Lauren says, “I have to go,” just before she drops her stack of religious pamphlets and runs away.
I hate myself.
She literally runs.
I really f*cking hate myself.
And I don’t have the heart to chase, mostly because I used up whatever courage and strength I had just to kiss her.
There’s a part of me that still wants to believe the kissing was wonderful.
Black-and-white Bogie-Bacall perfect.
Even though it wasn’t.
My dad used to say that the last drink of the day, when the work and thinking are over and you’re just about to surrender to unconsciousness, that’s always the best drink regardless of how it tastes.