I Want To Hold Your Hand

"Hey, boy, won't you take me out tonight? I get excited when I think of crawling into your arms."
- The Bird And The Bee, My Love

Wrecking Ball and I can talk for hours. We have spent a few nights driving for hours in his car. We drove an hour away one morning and did a forty minute hike up to a lookout spot, then hiked down and drove back, talking the whole way. On New Year's, we watched the sun rise together. On the Sunday that just went by, after we had watched the Spanish movie Record (or [REC]), the inspiration for the English movie Quarantine, we lay in bed talking for around three hours. He held me as I confessed to the whole chlamydia thing with Cowboy.

To be fair to Cowboy, I actually caught it from the guy I dated just before him. But it was Cowboy who never got himself tested, and it was Cowboy who ignored me in September when I said, "No, we shouldn't".

Now that Love is reading this, I have to apologize. I know the morning after that night I was in a good mood, and I told you we had had sex, but I told you he had been tested as clean. I just didn't want to admit that it had happened the way it did. I was instead focusing on the fact that he had wanted me that much. I'm sorry, Love, but I was too embarrassed to tell you what I had allowed to happen.

Wrecking Ball didn't push me away like I thought he would. He was silent as I haltingly, tremblingly told him the story - how afraid I had been that the diagnosis would be worse, how there is now the possibility that I may not be able to have children (yes the chance is small, but it exists, and that is enough), how I wasn't sure if I wanted to consider September "non-consensual" because then it would be the same as rape, wouldn't it? Even though I definitely didn't want to. Once he was inside me, he was saying, "you're going to be so mad at me aren't you," and all I could say was, "just don't talk about it, just keep going." I didn't tell that to Wrecking Ball though. I couldn't.

I finally finished that agonizing story. "I wish I hadn't wanted to talk about that," I said. "I feel embarrassed." He told me he hadn't heard anything in the story that I should be embarrassed about. It was the perfect thing to say. I felt so good in his arms. Comfortable. Safe. Like it was home.