I, Death

Friday June 1, 2012 - 11:58 PM

I had to stop that last post all of a sudden. I’m trying really hard to get this story out, but it’s hard to convey. And of course, every time I get to a part like that last one, like when I found out that Robbie and Monica were sleeping together, I get a bit overwhelmed with it all. Rather than start going on about how it makes me feel, I stop myself.

After all, I’m trying to get this story out, and get it out in the proper sequence of what happened. Because a hell of a lot went down that night. I found out a lot of things about Robbie, about Monica. And I need to write this out in proper order, so I can keep these details straight in my head.

When Robbie told me that he and Monica were fucking, it was like someone punched me, hard, in the gut, then took hold of my stomach with a steel-tight, ice cold grip, and squeezed. I couldn’t respond to what Robbie had told me, it was such a large piece of information that I was still trying to digest it.

“There’s more,” Robbie said, “that I have to tell you.”

My own eyes had welled up, tears of rage were streaming down my face even before my mind started to piece the different bits together and I seemed to make the conscious realization. “Y-you raped Monica?” I remember seeing red, ready to strike out at Robbie, to tear his eyes right out of his head.

“No, Peter. No! I loved Monica; cared for her very deeply. I would never hurt her, rape her. Please let me explain. Please.”

The anger started to subside. I sat back in my seat, drank down my own glass of rye and then asked him to refill it for me. “Go on.” I finally said.

“Monica stayed after class that first day to talk to me. She was so beautiful, looked so much like a woman I’d loved back in University — Lynda, the woman whom I thought I was going to marry and spend the rest of my life with. And when she started talking excitedly about The Dead Poet’s Society and how she thought it was so cool that I’d taken a scene from that movie and tried it out in the class, her personality, her spark, reminded me of Lynda again.

“We talked for a good half an hour after that first class. And I loaned her a book of poetry by Keats. The look on her face was priceless, wonderful, when she looked at it. She told me Keats was her favorite poet. And when I saw that sparkle in her eyes when they fell upon the book, I knew I was falling in love with her. I know it sounds strange, but that’s exactly how I felt.

“Monica came to visit me after class yet again the next day. And the day after that. And the next. A week or so later when you started hanging out after class, Monica stayed off to the side, slipped out with the crowd. I remember enjoying chatting with you Peter, because by then I’d been following your online journal and feeling a real connection with you. But I was also a bit sad to miss out on my one on one time with Monica.

“She was waiting at my car at the end of the school day. We ended up sitting in the car and talking for hours, about books, about movies, about music, about life, about dreams.

“And almost every single day after that she was there at my car and we did the same. By then I knew it was too late, that I’d already fallen so madly, so deeply in love with her, that there was no going back.

“One Friday, she asked if we could go somewhere, get a coffee or a drink, and keep talking. She put her hand on my leg and told me that she didn’t want the evening to end.

“So we went out for coffee, and then to a restaurant and ordered dinner. We stayed there, talked until the waiters were putting chairs up on the tables signaling that it was time to go home. Too wrapped up in each other and the conversation, we headed back to my place without discussing what we were doing. I put on some coffee when we got there and we sat there on the couch, talking into the early morning hours. We ended up making love on that same couch, just as the sun was coming up, still talking, still sharing, our bodies finally as intimate as our souls had been the entire night.