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By Darren Kaminsky

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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three.  The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C.  As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.

Click here for a Chapter Index.

Chapter Six

June 10

Bella and I are broken up. We're not broken up. I've betrayed her. I haven't betrayed her. I still love her or I'm just fond of her. Or we're so familiar to each other that fondness or love just don't make a difference?

It's funny how after a while of sleeping with someone, it just becomes easy and natural, no awkwardness. Her body as familiar as my body, not an adventure to see, just normal and everyday. Having sex as regular an act as tooth-brushing, as showering, as getting on the Metro to work.

No, not routine. The pleasure was just different. This thing happened, maybe would with anyone, maybe would only happen with the special ones, where somehow things that--on another woman--might be a turn-off, on her became sexy. That was what the familiarity did.

What there wasn’t was the newness, the shock of seeing a body that you’d only imagined. And, once you had the familiarity, you didn’t have the extremes. Why do people crave the extremes? Why do I?

Bella in the lamplight. Bella in the strobe light. Bella in the star light. Dancing. Always meant for the moonlight. Pale skin glowing.

Bella surrounded by a group of pretty, thin men; shaved heads gleaming, shirts in sheened rayon, pants in flared polyester. Just a few in muscle shirts: they weren't all so fashionable.

They saw me walking towards her, "Hey, Bella girl, here comes your Sugar Baby," and made cooing sounds when I kissed her cheek. "Woo hoo," one said when I put my arms around her and pulled playfully on her pigtails. “I want some of that,” said a tall dancer whose wide cheekbones made him look like a lion. “None of that for you,” said a medium-sized dancer, whose long nose and sculptured face made him look like he was made of metal, to the lion-faced dancer. “Who knows, maybe he’ll realize that we’re his true thing,” said a small dancer with long graceful arms, who put a hand on my head and growled like a small terrier dog.

I was in a cab with Bella; it coasted along the Potomac. I leaned over and finally kissed her. We’d been hanging out for months. She was exasperated it had taken so long to get to this kiss. But she must have known it was coming? How could she not know?

Who told me that she was exasperated? Dani did.

They were going dancing. No, they were going to an embassy party. Or they were going to an art/dance/performance art performance piece of art or dance performance. They were going to have champagne. They were going to have martinis. They were going to have cosmopolitans. They were not going to get drunk unless they got to dance. They were not going to dance unless they were drunk. They were not going to drink unless it was free. They were not going to feel free if they weren’t dancing.

Bella and I were out to dinner…at the Fox and Hound with our friends…out dancing at some club that only Imogen had known about…out to see band after band after band…Ur-Riot Girls Bikini Kill, lovely goth Siouxsie Sioux, Pearl Jam, Lungfish, Fugazi and Fugazi and Fugazi…night after night after night.

It was dark in the 9:30 club. The band, Primal Scream, was late coming on. The crowd was restless and getting impatient. Across the small club, just beyond the big pillar, I saw Bella for the first time, her face illuminated by a blue light from the stage. Teddy saw me staring. "Hey dimwit," he said, "Why don't you go talk to that one?" I didn't, couldn't.

But the next week, we were both at the same party, out back of a house that Nellie had once lived in. There was a keg perched on the thick roots of a tall oak tree and it was kind of cold; it was October. She'd been behind me in the beer line and tapped on my shoulder and asked to borrow my jacket and I'd taken her cup and filled it. I remember being so careful to tip the cup so the beer didn't get too foamy.

They were going to see Bella’s Imogen -- Bella's childhood friend -- perform. She was going to roll from within a large canvas bag womb through a long rubber tube-vagina, onto the stage where she was to do a disco-tango-waltz to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. Afterwards, a bathtub would be wheeled onto the stage. It was to be filled with flowers and she was to take a long, flower-bath. “Only the softest petals must be used,” she had said as she lifted her small hands up and re-barretted the part of her hair with the neon green-streak.

Bella was off with Imogen on Imogen’s father's private jet towards the Caribbean. No, they weren't going to the Caribbean, they were going to the Mediterranean. Or to the Black Sea. There was a yacht involved. No, a private island. Or a private resort. They might go to the Rivera, but only as a last resort. I wasn't invited.

Weren't all the couples supposed to stay coupled? Gets jobs, get houses, get cars, get married, have kids, get fat, get bigger houses, lose our hair, go into debt, pay for college, live vicariously through our kids? Isn't that what we were supposed to do? You're a cliché if you want it; you're a cliché if you reject it. You're a cliché to think about it. You’re a cliché to spend time worrying about it.

Didn't Bella let it happen? Wasn't she dancing or jetsetting when Dani and I started hanging out? Didn't she seem to…not care? Wasn't this her fault? The fault of my being a man? Couldn't this please be any fault but my fault?

Dani and I were walking down 22nd street or 19th street. Up ahead was Bella with one of the dancers whose name I didn't know. He was wiry and had a long nose and a buzz cut and stayed silent. He didn’t say a thing about my being Bella's "Sugar Baby."

It was all really awkward and Bella was silent and looked down at her toes and Dani had an eat-shit smile on her face. After we'd walked off and were most of the way down the wooded block, Dani said, “That one’s ‘bi’.” She knew she didn't need to say anything else; the little pain machines in my head would do the rest.

Bella acted oblivious, maybe was oblivious. She and I would still have dinner. We'd go home, talk to each other while we each brushed our teeth and I'd go to the kitchen and get water to put by the bed and then we'd undress and get in bed and I'd lie near her and we'd so rarely have sex. No lust to be distrustful of so I was distrustful of my lustlessness.

Bella and Dani would still hang out. Bella and I would still hang out. Dani and I definitely hung out. We'd even hang out, we three together, and in larger groups, and at parties, bars, long dinners and wee-hour breakfasts. Still.

Dani went away one summer. Sublet her apartment. Came back and had nowhere to stay. She was sleeping on my sofa. I was living in a building with a rooftop pool. The gray-painted stairway was over-lit and the door leading to the roof and the pool was locked so we climbed through the window. Both of us knew that we'd brought towels but no bathing suits.

“I’m not wearing a bra,” she said. “What if there are security cameras?” So I loaned her my t-shirt. I wore boxers. We swam near each other, both of us knowing. She got out of the water and shook off her candy-floss hair and turned her back to me, facing away from where the cameras might be, and pulled off my t-shirt, revealing every muscle of her thin alabaster back as she reached up with her arms like she was climbing. The moon reflected in the shadows of her moonstone muscles.

Down in my apartment, something had happened, but I was so nervous. I wanted to act like I'd felt nothing rising with her arms, like I'd felt nothing in looking at her moonlit back. And there was some flirtatious talk, but I had acted like I knew nothing, though both of us knew. How can people not know?

But still we waited and nothing happened and I was scared for Bella. What if Bel ended up alone? What if the short dancer wasn't "bi?"

We went to a party where Bella wasn't. We drank and talked together, our heads close together and people looked at us like they knew we were together. We went back to her place and dropped together on a sofa next to each other and she fell across me and I kissed her hair and we kissed together and we both knew. How could we not know?

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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn.  He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.

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