By Rebekah Hommel rebekah@ms.com Date: 10 February 1999
Eyes wide open, for the first time since love drifted like a gauzy veil over our path of vision nearly a month before, we realized that love didn't make you invincible, but it made vincibility easier to bear. We held on in spite of doubt, in spite of fear, in spite of a natural instinct to run like hell away from the edge and back to the security of being alone and miserable, back to the familiarity of empty beds and take out for one. In spite of this we stayed together. And it might be easier to go it alone, fewer mouths to feed and fewer people to share the bathroom with. Less dirty laundry, less trash, more television shows that I want to watch, fewer action flicks, more tearjerkers. No junk food and no one pressuring me to eat when I just feel like starving for a while. But I traded all that, for a hand to hold when I was scared; an arm around me while I slept; a breath on my neck while I came hard; and the voice of my angel, who walked in my life one rainy night in a seedy bar in Brooklyn, on the other end of the phone at least five times a day; the price paid was peanuts for what I got man. All the riches of the world wouldn't buy me back.
I've held steadfast and headstrong onto this love, an action out of character for me who tests the boundaries and tortures myself on purpose all the time. I never felt the need to make something last before, never felt the desire to let something last. I have always been the hapless victim, why start playing the victor now, just when I was getting good at pitying myself. But nonetheless I have held on. What's more I believe that this will work. I have my doubts now and then, that perhaps the whole thing is hoax for my demise, and other typically narcissistic conspiracy theories that wander through my mind at moments when hostility and bad days get the best of either one of us. But as I drift to sleep each night, his hand nestled in that gentle curving void between my breast, I know that only his body belongs beside me, I beg forgiveness that I could have, in past times, mistaken another love, for this, as true. Our love is unmistakable as anything but what it is. We are not perfect and we are not infallible but we try and we try and we try. Human hearts on a mission to create the most of what we've got. It may not be much to you, but it's all the world to me.
A day turned into weeks and months and, he kissed me; my clothes fell to the floor in a breath of exasperation, I was wondering when he'd do that! I was begging for an hour of the millennium that seemed to pass between his lips and mine. KISS ME. And then he did, and angels sang in the holy choir ballads of Nirvana's cheer. He kissed me. At last I knew, that love was not a myth, that cupid had not quit his job, and Venus remained a powerful goddess in her glorious right to be one. Heavens yes, I am in love!
By Rebekah Hommel