My Date
Part 3 The Poem
Jason Carter
Copyright ©2003
So there I was trying to look at Donald but my eyes were being drawn back to the little mountain of supplies on the counter. His eyes followed my line of sight down to the condoms and lube and then back to my eyes. Then he cocked his head and said nothing but smiled a little bemused smile. An accepting and reassuring smile I hoped. Then I didn’t feel compelled to look at them any more. I could just look at him. Differently now.
Now he wasn’t the man on the phone two days ago asking for a guide around Acadiana for the weekend. “No one knows the area like a native,” he had said. A Cajun guide in Cajun country. He shifted gears instantly to dinner at Bywater Barbeque when I told him I was taking my Aunt to the airport in New Orleans and spending the weekend in the city.
But here was Donald not a foot away from me, alive and in the flesh. I started thinking this was really a very bad idea. A ridiculous idea. I couldn’t understand how I’d ever thought I wanted to go out with this guy. A man who was older than my immediate biological antecedents. A man who has sons who’re way older than me. Why did I ever say yes? I couldn’t even remember what I’d been thinking when I said yes. Everything just seemed so wrong. How could I have been so stupid? So desperate? So desperately stupid! So stupidly desperate! If it hadn’t been my apartment, I’d have just walked out. I almost did anyway. Just when I was going to tell him I’d made a mistake, just when I was going to ask him to leave, he said he wanted to give me something, a poem. I said I’d like to read it but he said it wasn’t written. He would have to say it for me. On the loveseat he took my wine glass from my hand and set it on an end table. He told me to close my eyes and just listen. Let go of every other sound and every other thought and truly listen. Just listen to him. Listen just to him. Then he chanted the poem he cast when his father died.
His voice, his words, his ideas were like nothing I’d ever heard before. They all just penetrated me as easily as an x-ray. His voice is deeper than most men’s and on exactly the pitch that resonates at the core of my being. I could feel his voice. Even after he finished speaking, his words reverberated inside me. He made me look at my life differently. His poem wasn’t about how sad he was his dad died but, instead, about how throughout his life he couldn’t express his love for his father or his sons. Just like my family. I remembered how, just a month earlier, we all kissed and hugged my nephew Eric when he killed his first deer. Our faces were all smeared with deer blood from kissing him. We won’t kiss him or hug him again until his wedding. And then, probably never again. I asked Donald to sing his poem again. When he did I thought about kissing Kevin, how scared I was the first time but how easy it was for him. Kevin kissed his mother every time he came home and every time he left and some times for no reason just cause he was passing by her. On the lips. It always horrified me. I thought about how I never kissed my mother, neither does my brother Brent. She doesn’t kiss us. Just a brief little bounce, cheek to cheek. She doesn’t kiss her grandchildren either. I sure didn’t kiss my father. Except once. Two months before then. When it was safe. When he died. Just like in Donald’s poem.
Donald pulled gently on my neck and said, “Come here, little one.” As I leaned against him, he wrapped his arms across my chest and held me close to him. I felt safe.
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copyright
©2003 Jason Carter
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Coming of
Age stories join:
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I’d be
pleased to
hear your thoughts about My Date
Email me
at: jasoncarter85@yahoo.com
Monday,
November 17, 2003
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