LJ Idol - Week 2 - Apathy - What I should Care About, But Don't
It should have mattered to me that your heart would break if you’d seen me in Manhattan, groping a strange man beneath the unflattering flourescents of an ancient elevator. It should have mattered to me, but it didn’t.
I met him at the bar in the Hotel Edison. Twenty-three floors of rumpled bed sheets rising above us, twenty-three stories of closed doors muffling intimate conversations; but at first, we were just two strangers in a big city making eye contact over cocktails.
Built in 1931, the hotel was opulent, Art Deco-decadent. Columns of ivory and gold graced the lobby to draw your eyes upward and the heels of my black boots sunk into the plush carpet, red as a scarlet letter, while I stood waiting to check in.
A wall of mirrors captured the moment like a panoramic photo. I smiled at my reflection, looking appropriately “New York” in my long black trench and short black skirt, but feeling infinitely Georgia with too-red lipstick and wide eyes.
The gilt edging of the hotel lobby was as hard-edged as it was beautiful, but the bar overlooking West 47th embraced me like a lover. Designed for intimacy, the oaken paneling and green velvet cushions were suffused with warmth. It was the perfect contrast to the frigid January twilight framed in the window panes.
I was in the city to make contacts for my career, but the only thing I had connected with so far were cold shoulders. Retreating to the warmth of that bar, I no longer cared if I made it out the door again, and then he slipped onto the barstool next to me and I cared even less.
I was really just a girl, although certainly not an innocent one, and he was absolutely a man - a British man, separated from his Irish wife, reeling from her decision to leave their home in Surrey and return to Dublin with his daughter. The night we met, I knew none of this, just that this was his first time in New York and that one of his blokes, the tall one who liked to smoke cigars and order expensive Brandy, paid for his plane ticket.
He slid up next to me, all nervousness. He wasn’t gorgeous, but there was something about the way the corners of his mouth turned up that made me think he was full of humor. They say a woman knows within five seconds whether she’d sleep with a man or not. It’s true.
I’d already been hit on by a know-it-all Wall Street wanker and a smooth talking pharmaceutical salesman - I suppose I looked an easy target. But the Brit was different, unassuming, friendly, and when he offered to buy me and my friend Kim a drink, I thought ‘He’s sweet. I’d do him.”
You were so far away, and I was so angry at what you’d done...or in fact not done...that you hardly crossed my mind.
My Brit and his friends were hilarious. They told bawdy jokes in their lovely accents and made them sound like Shakespeare. They taught me some drinking songs and passed me a few Dunhills and made me feel like royalty, or at least a local celebrity.
As the night wore on, the other girls staying in my room dispersed. They cajoled me, reminded me about all the places we had left to visit the next morning but finally left me to my men, making pointed glances at one another regarding my inappropriate behavior.
‘Go on, you bitches!’ I thought sullenly. ‘You’re no saints either! You don’t know me.”
Their opinion didn’t matter to me, not really, but I knew I was in the wrong. Still, I had no desire to go to bed with their judgment smothering me in the night, so I stayed up till dawn with the boys.
The second night was much quieter. My Brit and I sat together at a table, heads and hands close together. After some small talk, he told me why he was really in New York. He showed me pictures of his daughter Lilly - it’s funny that I remember her name but not his - and smiled at me with such sadness I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around his sagging shoulders.
He told me all about his life - but I never mentioned you once. Cheating woman wasn’t the role I had chosen to portray, soothing Southern belle suited me much better in this instance.
There was an ancient jukebox loaded with jazz and big band hits. My Brit popped in some change and punched a few buttons and Louis Prima sang “I ain’t got nobody, nobody cares for me...” I grinned and we danced in the dark corner of that classy bar, as if we indeed had nobody but each other, while my girlfriends looked askance and snow fell outside.
He twirled me around and pulled me into his chest. When his hands dropped to my hips and we swayed together, our eyes met, and I knew I’d be going to his room later.
We tried to pretend the heat between us wasn’t going to lend itself to a one-night-stand in a hotel room. When the bar closed though, he hardly had to ask me to join him for a nightcap.
We walked across the crimson carpet in a haze of lust but remained a respectable distance apart, nothing to see here, just a gentleman escorting a lady back to her room after midnight in New York City. But when the gold elevator doors closed behind us, pretense disappeared. I took the lead, kissing him deeply and backing him roughly against the mirrored wall of the elevator. His hands grabbed my ass, pulling my pelvis to his and grinding his hardness against me.
When we reached his floor, we broke apart, breathing heavily on our walk down the hallway. I was ready for anything.
And yet...when he opened his door, the dim, still coolness of his hotel room startled me into reality. The non-descript bedspread and boring hotel art reminded me that I was on the verge of becoming just another faceless lay. What was I doing? I'd better make it count!
I turned to him. “I don’t usually...I mean, I don’t want you to think I just go to random guy’s hotel rooms all the time...” Jesus. How contrived did that sound?
He smiled reassuringly. “Me neither, luv. Not random girl’s rooms I mean.”
He placed a hand possessively on the small of my back and gave me a gentle push into the darkness. What had I gotten myself into?
“Do you mind if I take a quick shower?” I hedged. My mind was working quickly, but I smiled with as much charm as I could muster.
“Not a bit,” he responded and gestured toward the bathroom.
I closed the door behind me and locked it before I turned on the shower. I stripped and climbed into the tub, hoping the steaming water would give me some clarity. It wasn’t the thought of you that was holding me back, it was me.
‘Do I want to be the kind of girl that goes with men to their hotel rooms? Well, now I am here and I don’t want to be a tease either...Oral sex! That’s it! I’ll just give him head and leave!” Head had always been my default - the way to make an evening end fast if I didn’t want to give in to sex. Whatever happened to just saying no? Don’t ask me. It wasn’t in my vocabulary.
I stepped back into the hotel room wrapped in a towel and prepared for battle, but the Brit just greeted me with a shy smile. Maybe he was having reservations too?
“If you just want to come to bed, I don’t mind a bit,” he told me as he sat on the edge of the mattress.
I decided now was the time to take control of the situation.
I dropped the towel to the floor and dropped to my knees in front of him.
“No,” I smiled. “I don’t think I do just want to come to bed.”
When he was finished, I made a move to leave but he had other ideas. He pushed me back on the pillows and kissed his way down my belly. I tangled my fingers in his hair but I felt...nothing. No desire, no shame, just a great weariness. This was not where I was supposed to be.
Afterward, he fell asleep. I lay beside him, feeling his rhythmic breathing, wishing I could leave - wishing I’d never come. I watched the curtains until the first rays of dawn crept through and slipped away before he woke. In the elevator I appraised my reflection as a stranger might. Smeared makeup, tangled hair, clothing askew...What's done is done I thought, and I shrugged at the disheveled girl in the mirror.
That afternoon I boarded a plane and flew home. I had two hours to get my head on straight before you met me at the airport. It should have mattered to me, what I'd done, but it didn't. When I saw myself reflected in your smiling eyes, I rapidly convinced myself that cheating was no big deal. What mattered was making sure you never found out.
Later, I found the Brit’s address written on a cocktail napkin in the pocket of my black wool coat. Had you discovered that, wow, that would have been hard to explain. I snuck off one afternoon and bought him a Louis Prima c.d. and mailed it to England with a fake return address. So he'd have something to remember me by.
Just like you, he was a good guy - it wasn't his fault I turned out to be such a bad girl.