Myra's Sunrise
My body may be in the car, instinctively shifting and searching for a comfortable position, feigning the motions of someone who wants to sleep, but my mind is on fire. My mind is in the tent with Myra. In that tent Myra and I are forging a new future together, laughing and crying and moaning and forgiving each other of every wrong turn and stupid mistake and promising to start fresh with the sunrise, knowing we’re just going to make the same stupid mistakes and hurt each other in the same stupid ways, but laughing and crying and moaning some more anyway. If we’re going to love and laugh and get hurt no matter where we are or who we’re with, we might as well do it together, tonight, while we’re still young, while we still have our looks.
Fuck. This so stupid. A light rain starts to fall, and the drops on the roof bring my mind back into the car with my aching body, and I curse the Japanese design team that designed the Nissan Sentra. People sleep in cars all the time. You’d think they’d take that into account.
I’m approaching this situation like it’s a test, and I think that’s probably my problem here. Okay, Myra confesses that she’s sick of sex because she’s been using it as a tool to mask her insecurities. She’s afraid to be alone and friendless. Okay. Fine. I’ve pretty much known this about her since we met, but today was the first time we’ve ever talked about it, and I pretty much bungled my end of the discussion. I’m not really sure how you respond to something like that, but I’m pretty sure that if you’re trying to be understanding and supportive, the response isn’t supposed to come in the form of sex. I would think that after all that, the right thing to do would be to NOT have sex with her a couple hours later. If this was a test, I think I passed.
I think I think I think. Fuck fuck fuck. I’m too fucking analytical. I’m so conflicted it’s driving me to pieces. I feel guilty, too, because I know that I probably wouldn’t have come on this trip if I didn’t see the sexy little carrot dangling in front of my eyes. I’ve been trying to let my desire to be good be the driving force in my life. I’ve been trying to heal scars and leave a trail of light in my wake. I’ve been trying to be angelic. Sounds really pretentious, I know, but I’m just aiming high. Some people are primarily driven by the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of power, the pursuit of lust, gratification, profit, glory, the pursuit of immortality, and I’ve been trying to subordinate these other desires to a higher ideal. And I know that if Myra’s enticement wasn’t preceded by that conversation, I’d be in that tent right now, grunting away. And knowing what I know now, I feel guilty about that.
But what good am I doing Myra by hiding in the car? How can I expect her to know that my motivations are honorable without talking to her? I just got scared by my own internal conflict, and for all I know I’m doing more damage than good. Myra knows me pretty well, after all. I can’t just assume that this was some sort of test. Today was full of intimate conversation, and it doesn’t seem like too far of a stretch to extend that intimacy into a physical encounter. God only knows what’s going through her head right now. God and Myra, that is.
If I were writing a story about Myra, my character would get out of the car, climb into the tent, and Myra and I would start forging a new future together, laughing and crying and moaning and forgiving each other of every wrong turn and stupid mistake and promising to start fresh with the sunrise. But in real life, when I finally got up the nerve to go to the tent, Myra was passed out asleep. I lay out my sleeping bag, kissed her on the forehead, and fell asleep myself. And honestly, I think that’s fine. It would have made a good story the other way, though. It could have been a story about rebirth, or maybe a story about the disappearing nature of the people we were. It could have been a story about making the same mistake over and over again. Maybe someday I’ll sit down and write a story about Myra, and I can make it all those things. But this isn’t a story, this is real life. In real life, when the sun rose on us, we woke to found that we had been holding hands in our sleep.
Fuck. This so stupid. A light rain starts to fall, and the drops on the roof bring my mind back into the car with my aching body, and I curse the Japanese design team that designed the Nissan Sentra. People sleep in cars all the time. You’d think they’d take that into account.
I’m approaching this situation like it’s a test, and I think that’s probably my problem here. Okay, Myra confesses that she’s sick of sex because she’s been using it as a tool to mask her insecurities. She’s afraid to be alone and friendless. Okay. Fine. I’ve pretty much known this about her since we met, but today was the first time we’ve ever talked about it, and I pretty much bungled my end of the discussion. I’m not really sure how you respond to something like that, but I’m pretty sure that if you’re trying to be understanding and supportive, the response isn’t supposed to come in the form of sex. I would think that after all that, the right thing to do would be to NOT have sex with her a couple hours later. If this was a test, I think I passed.
I think I think I think. Fuck fuck fuck. I’m too fucking analytical. I’m so conflicted it’s driving me to pieces. I feel guilty, too, because I know that I probably wouldn’t have come on this trip if I didn’t see the sexy little carrot dangling in front of my eyes. I’ve been trying to let my desire to be good be the driving force in my life. I’ve been trying to heal scars and leave a trail of light in my wake. I’ve been trying to be angelic. Sounds really pretentious, I know, but I’m just aiming high. Some people are primarily driven by the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of power, the pursuit of lust, gratification, profit, glory, the pursuit of immortality, and I’ve been trying to subordinate these other desires to a higher ideal. And I know that if Myra’s enticement wasn’t preceded by that conversation, I’d be in that tent right now, grunting away. And knowing what I know now, I feel guilty about that.
But what good am I doing Myra by hiding in the car? How can I expect her to know that my motivations are honorable without talking to her? I just got scared by my own internal conflict, and for all I know I’m doing more damage than good. Myra knows me pretty well, after all. I can’t just assume that this was some sort of test. Today was full of intimate conversation, and it doesn’t seem like too far of a stretch to extend that intimacy into a physical encounter. God only knows what’s going through her head right now. God and Myra, that is.
If I were writing a story about Myra, my character would get out of the car, climb into the tent, and Myra and I would start forging a new future together, laughing and crying and moaning and forgiving each other of every wrong turn and stupid mistake and promising to start fresh with the sunrise. But in real life, when I finally got up the nerve to go to the tent, Myra was passed out asleep. I lay out my sleeping bag, kissed her on the forehead, and fell asleep myself. And honestly, I think that’s fine. It would have made a good story the other way, though. It could have been a story about rebirth, or maybe a story about the disappearing nature of the people we were. It could have been a story about making the same mistake over and over again. Maybe someday I’ll sit down and write a story about Myra, and I can make it all those things. But this isn’t a story, this is real life. In real life, when the sun rose on us, we woke to found that we had been holding hands in our sleep.