True emotion

I declared my love for Lynn the other night.  Told her my love rang in my head like a bell at all hours.  Told her I wasn't worth a hill of beans if she didn't see me as such in her eyes.  "Who's this?" she said.  She turned on the porch light.  "Oh."  She scratched the place on her wrist where people wear watches.  "All right, what else?"

I'd written down a bunch of stuff I wanted to say to her but I'd left it in the car because it felt insincere.  I reached for it in my memory but it wasn't there.  I stammered something, but she cut me off and asked, "can we finish this at work tomorrow?"

I told her I was worried at the office tomorrow she'd make sure to hang around with a cluster of people all day so we could never be alone and I wouldn't be able to find the confidence I needed to really explain to her in full and true terms how she made me feel, so I was hoping to get it over with that night.

I heard her little girl crying in the house.  Lynn stepped back a bit and I took the opportunity to wedge my hand in the door to make what I thought would be a dramatic, romantic kind of gesture or move but which she misinterpreted to be a kind of threat, and she slammed the door very hard and fast right onto my fingers.  This caused the bones in my hand to be pulverized.  I grabbed my hand and fell backwards into some mulch on the side of her front porch.  I heard her lock the door and then the porch light snapped off.

The first thing I felt I needed to do was apologize, and maybe if that went well I could launch back into the declaration, but first, I knew, I NEEDED TO APOLOGIZE.  I staggered back up to the porch.  Some blood of mine was on her door.  I tried to wipe it off with my sleeve but I just smeared it, a big red slash across her lovely white door.  I shouted her name a couple times.

"What do you want from me?" she shouted from somewhere inside the house, not very close to the door.

I lost my nerve.  "I need a bandage," is all I said.  She threw some gauze down on me from an upstairs window.  I wrapped up my shattered fingers and drove home.

I went up to talk to her at her desk the next day at work.  Gina was there and gave me a nasty look when I came over.  I cleared my throat like to give the hint that privacy would be appreciated, but Gina didn't leave, so I just launched into it.  "I'm sorry for what happened last night in my passion," I said.  I showed her my fingers, which were sprouting purple from her gauze.

Gina and Lynn both looked a little sick at the sight of them.  "You should see a doctor about those," Gina said.  "You should fuck off," I told her.  That was inappropriate.  I realized immediately and I took a breath and apologized.  Gina walked off in one of her huffs for the boss's office, but I knew he was out that day so I wasn't worried.  I asked Lynn if, now that we were alone, it was a good time to talk, but she cut me off.

"I think it would be best if we kept our relationship in the workplace strictly professional," she said.  Ok, well, I didn't even disagree with that, but I reminded her that it was she who was the one last night who said that she wanted to discuss these issues in work instead of at her home in the dark.  "I don't want you coming over my house anymore," she replied.  "I never gave you permission."  I asked, wasn't that permission implied for me or anyone to visit her house anytime they wanted, by her printing her address in the publicly-available Phone Book?  "No," she said.

Gina came back carrying a pot of coffee.  "You're a pig!" she said.  Before she could come any closer with the pot I knocked it violently out of her hand, spilling the coffee on the carpet and on Gina's shoes and feet, and unfortunately Lynn was hit pretty hard with the handle of the pot on its way down.  "What's wrong with you!" people began screaming.  Couldn't they see?  It was love!  I was sick with it.

I frantically started unwinding my bandage, for Lynn.  She told me to get out of there or something to that effect.  "Shall I slash my wrists for you?" I cried, falling to my knees.  It was somewhat of a dramatic put-on, but saying the words, I was moved by the true emotion of it.  "To you I grant my blood, so that you might drink it and live two lives, and my love might find its fulfillment."  Well by this point the room had mostly cleared out, but Lynn was still sitting there with a sort of stricken look on her face, so I thought maybe I was doing all right.

We sat there for a while, staring into each others' eyes, or I was staring at her eyes and she was looking more at the floor.  "I need an answer," I said.  I tried to say it in a more low, sensual voice than the one I normally talked in.  She ran, as if for her life.

I was alone in the office now.  In fact, checking the door some time later, I realized that Lynn had locked me in from the outside.  But for now, I sat, ripped up and alone, wondering where I'd gone wrong.  Had I waited too long to express to her how I felt?  I'd allowed her to grow comfortable with the idea of knowing me only as a co-worker, and the thought of loving me, though perhaps extremely enticing, was too much of a shock for her fragile heart to bear.  I wouldn't make things so easy for the next one.  I'd force a confrontation much earlier and hope to catch her off guard that way, perhaps in a situation in which she felt especially vulnerable.  But how could I ever fall in love again?  Who could match my darling Lynn?

It all reminded me of something my father said to me once: "Your love will always be misunderstood."  But he was a shit, and a worthless drunk.