Switched Off

Long live the caller id inventor, a girl gets to adjust her vocals makeup.
“Hey, it’s me.” Clara’s voice whispers apologetically miles away.
“Hey, you. Wassup?” The same’s up, except it comforts her wording it out.
“He remembered again. I think he took the 4 am train, should be there around…“
“Soon.” I ease the pain. “I’m here.”
“Alright. So… bye!”
It’s professionalism here. She informs and I take over.
“Wait! Maybe you can bake him some pancakes. Or whatever… Well, ok. Bye!”
I could use breakfast.
“What?”
“Uhm, thanks!” That wasn’t so hard, was it now? I’d walk the world for Clara, anyway. We go together way back to college. I loved her, you know, and she brought that gorgeous brother of her around.
“Sure, anytime.”

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I met Dave about 10 years ago. The first of him. He used to tell me I have the smoothest skin he’s ever walked his fingers on. We’ve been together, as the saying goes, then switched to something else one august morning. One of fate’s stupid jokes, the kind you’d never think would happen to you.
Ever since, once a few months I get a call and him with a sheepish figure at my door.

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“Hey, it’s me.” Deja-heard. “Can I come in?”
He stinks and barely walks straight, but underneath his eyelids lays the glow. Last time we had wild snowed sex, watched Disney and I ended up with a half broken arm from his role-play. He wanted me to be the victim, just for this once.
5 months already, I’ve missed his stinky lips.
“Shower first or breakfast?”
I get a sigh and a weary soul collapsing in my arms.

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Home baked waffles, fresh orange juice, warm bubbled bath and private massager. Yet not a price to pay for common mortals. Inside my moist and scented hands he washes down guilty decisions and years of punishment to come. A bitter coincidence or a not so subtle sign from the guy high in the sky, the crash day would have celebrated our first three years. The best, the sweetest of my mistakes – he called me all that time. But I’d been good. I’d always respected her.
“Sometimes I wish it had been you on that plane. If, you know, I’d be asked whom to choose.”
“Yeah, I know. Sometimes I wish that too.” I don’t. I never wish I’d died. But he is so defenseless inside my vanilla tub, and his shivering shoulders are as perfect as a decade ago when I was dreaming of him more than the law allowed it. I pour some more creamy shower gel and scrub his bitterness away.

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Bad timing, he first cynically took it. Then revelation came and he found the perfect culprit, charged him with all the rage love can bear, up to the point of waking up once every few months and believing it all a bad dream. Jess’s late bringing him coffee and as he serenely awaits for her slim silhouette, another familiar smile slaps him back denied memories. Blame prevails. The panic in her eyes bounces back into despair.
“Noooo!!!”
Broken home stuff, nails scratched eyes, the world stops spinning for Dave. He’d fight all daemons of hell and heavens alike, kill them in booze or shout them out to helpless friends. Yet he’s only got two skinny arms and one half empty bed willing to anything.

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As he lays back on my sofa, I ponder where to begin this therapeutic session from. Head with fiery eyes and venomous lips, or feet wrapped in a kneeling me. I raise my eyes to the skies in a pathetic gratitude for the here and now. It’s time to push back the buttons and bring him to me. And to the world. He thinks my arms around his waist have begun hunting for more. I wouldn’t dare argue.