My Boyfriend's Back

August 15, 2005 - 2:07 p.m.

If you are reading this, then there is a good chance you are a bit of a writer, and you read people’s blogs for inspiration, plagiarism, or whatever. You will understand where I am coming from.

There are a few different things that can happen when you sit down at the keyboard. For me, it’s one of two things. I can have the time and energy to write, but with subject matter that is so trite I make the Buckteeth Face and *cross eyes* at myself as I’m writing. Blah blah, look at me, my fingers are moving and yet my brain stalled out a few blocks back but my fuckin body is still coasting down the hill and I should just cross my fingers and hope for a fiery crash, right through the storefront of a Starbuck’s - but I’d be satisfied with a Wal-Mart too.

The second thing that happens to me is that I will have subject matter that is highly important to me, but no way to present it, and all the little pieces try to fall into place but they just pile up brokenly with big gaping holes, looking like your grandma trying to play Tetris.

The end result is that I have a blog full of stupid shit, and I wonder why I spent so much time writing about stupid shit when there are so many fantastic, meaningful, profound things that happen to me all the time, and that shit just isn’t getting recorded. So long! Fair well! Say buh-bye to all that is important and worth remembering!

And then I will die and someone will print out my entire blog and stick it in a three-ring binder for my future children to snicker at and it will be surmised that the words were written but a 14 year old girl who lives in rural Illinois and who plays with that boy down the street who still eats his boogers and kills cats in the woods with a pitchfork. Todd. His name is Todd. Todd shits indoors, but not in the toilet, and his mom is always screaming and blaring Neil Diamond on the hi-fi to drown out Todd’s girlish shrieking.

Are we there yet? Are we?

My blog makes me look like the biggest tool in the shed: the headless hammer, the toothless saw, the Philips when all you need is a flat head.

I’m here to tell you what is important to me, what is in the forefront of my mind and what induces the most intense psychosomatic response in my body, filling my heart with hot, my head with high, and my belly with bumblebees. That alliteration thing was totally unintentional. Here’s what does it.

At night, when I sleep next to the pilot, there is a routine. Sometimes clothed, sometimes not, it begins with the embrace. My face, nestled into his neck, *mumble mumble*

“What?”

I tilt my face up, point my lips directly into his ear, and speak.

It doesn’t matter what is said, it’s usually semi-coherent murmuring, nonsense, repetition of noise. Like a dog, he only needs to hear the tone, and not the words, and it is conveyed as favorable. Even though my eyes are closed, I imagine that this makes him smile. He responds with a small squeeze around my shoulders, letting me know that he “gets it” and agrees entirely.

There is some rolling back and forth, each taking turns squeezing the other until we come to a rest and doze. We always fall asleep in an embrace, and just after we’ve gone under one of us will snap awake and pull away slightly, waking the other.

That’s when he says, very gently, in almost a whisper, “Ok honey. I’m going to roll over now.”

Every night, even though I know it is coming and I support the rollover 100%, he still says, “I’m going to roll over now,” so that it doesn’t feel like he’s pulling away.

Neither of us can sleep well if we’re in each other’s arms, and we do best to separate and sleep back to back, maintaining a connection through one point of contact between body parts. Sometimes it’s tailbone to tailbone.

If we stray too far away, I’ll extend my leg backward and gently press the bottom of my foot against his calf so that he knows I’m still there. Sometimes he reaches backwards and grabs the first thing he can feel, maybe my butt or my belly.

So he says, “I’m going to roll over” and then I always say, “goodnight” and “I love you” and then kiss him very hard on the cheek or lips.

He slowly rolls over, revealing the big beautiful back, like a full moon rising. It’s a never-ending landscape of soft, perfectly smooth skin and this instantly wakes me up and I want to run my lips all over it. He settles in comfortably and I have to contain my excitement and try not to paw and chew on his creamy pale skin. Even if it is pitch dark, I can still see his back in my mind’s eye, clear as day, because I have all of its features memorized.

I quickly lean up and kiss him five or ten times between the shoulder blades, tossing in a nibble and a squeeze. I sigh blissfully and lie back down, nuzzling only my face into his back, just slightly, touching only my nose and lips. I purse my lips out, like a fish, reaching for one last smooch. As I fall asleep slowly, I let out small kisses intermittently. Smooch…smooch…smooch. Each one getting weaker until I’m just flubbing my bottom lip and then I’m out.

I’m in love with my boyfriend’s back. It’s a great source of content and happiness for me. It’s the highlight and closing of my day. I’m not even sure why, other than it is a beautiful back. It must be because of him always saying, “I’m going to roll over now” so then I take it as a gift from him to me, like his back is there to keep me company while he is away in dreamland.

It’s the comfort of this routine, and it’s his back that gives my life meaning. Did I just say that? You know what I mean. This, THIS people, is why we mate. Sure, when I’m single I’m all tossing the devil horns left and right, tongue swaying in the wind, head jerking up and down violently and hissing at men in the subway and one the street I don’t need YOU, you’re nothing but a Baby Batter Factory, and I’m an independent woman, I don’t answer to anyone, and I couldn’t BE FUCKING HAPPIER!

This kind of attitude is necessary when I’m single so I don’t have to think about the beautiful back I’m not sleeping next to. I do all right when I’m single. I spend a lot of time with friends, get drunk a lot, clubbing on Tuesdays at Subterranean, pretending I know the first thing about hip-hop. I manage to stay relatively thin, healthy and sane.

But the one thing I don’t miss, is the late night post-drinking phone call. 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, I’m crawling into my crib and prying my crippled feet out of high heeled shoes. Stripping off everything, peeling the face mask off. Beeline for the bed as I yell Timberrrrrr! and fall like a lone oak in an empty field.

*ring-ring*

Sons-of…

“What’s wrong now?”

And then [anonymous friend] always says, “I don’t know, it’s just that whenever I drive home late at night…after going out…I just get so lonely—”

“You’re just drunk.”

“ — I mean, it always happens when I’m driving up Lake Shore Drive. It just hits me. I’m going home alone. Again.”

“Yeah, well, this is why we drink.”

“I just think I can’t take this any more. Going home alone—”

“Then bring a stranger home with you.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t you feel lonely after I drop you off?”

“I’m actually sleeping right now and this is a recording of my answers from last weekend.”

“I just feel like such a loser.”

“Why don’t you strap a rubber nipple to a bottle of Bud Light, go to bed, and nurse yourself to sleep?”

“I’m just so depressed—”

“Ok, well, why don’t you call me in the morning and we’ll go out to brunch and talk about it for hours?”

“Yeah, okay, that’s probably—”

Knowing full well that anonymous friend won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow: *click-k-k-k*

Of course I was lonely too. I just gain no relief at all by telling a friend that I am lonely. It just makes me feel lonli-er by alienating them with my needy talk and then I feel like a loser, a baby, an asshole, and what kind of man wants a baby asshole loser? A beater or a cheater, take your pick. So my solution is to just clean my house obsessively until 2am and TRY NOT TO THINK.

I can be alone and fare just fine. But (just admit it, FemiNazis) we were born to mate. Your philosophy cannot compete with a million years of evolution, biology, genetics, chemicals, hormones, and pheromones. It’s a scientific fact that if you’re standing in an elevator with a man who is genetically similar to your father, you will be able to smell his genes, and your womb will grow warm and you will want to get really close to him – maybe even squeeze out a José Juan Carlos Jr. for him.

I’ve been looking for a boy companion since the day I was born. And as far as I’m concerned, I was born to be the pilot’s baby.

I love that sexy muthafuckkin white-ass nigger. And he is finally getting burned out on my excessive cursing so that may be the last time I can call him that.

Goddamn. Grown-ass man. LOVE that shit.

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