Allison
For the next few days, as I go about my regular work, I feel as though there are two women living inside of me. I remember when I was younger, in the days when I wanted to be a librarian but was convinced I would end up becoming an accountant, when I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time; I related to it immediately. Two parts of yourself, both pulling you in different directions. Only back then I thought that doing what my parents wanted made me a good person, and doing what I wanted made me a bad person. Now, I feel the same sensation, only about Rust. One part of me is sure that I did the right thing, that giving myself over to passion like that, in public, with a man I barely know, would have been a mistake. Another part of myself is furious: furious that, after all these years spent reading steamy romances, I didn’t give into my passion and let him fuck me right there. I think of it often, in the exhausted minutes before sleep takes me, or when I’m standing in the shower, water clinging to my nipples, trickling down between my legs. Hot water I can imagine is his hands.
I lie on my back after dinner, in bed, reading one of my romance novels. I skipped the billionaire romance, and grabbed a barbarian sacking a medieval village out of my to-be-read pile. He takes a village woman as his prize. At first, it’s just passion that pushes them together: wild, animal passion. As I read the description of the passion, I find myself reacting far more viscerally than I normally do, my clit aching, my nipples throbbing, and pretty soon I discover that I am not reading the barbarian’s name. My mind is superimposing the name ‘Rust’ over the barbarian’s; I am imagining that Rust is the one fucking this woman. Only he is not fucking this woman; he is fucking me. In these moments I am the angriest with myself. Why didn’t I just let him do it? Why didn’t I just throw myself into it? I’ve spent so long fantasizing about these alphas, and yet when a true-to-life alpha comes into my life, I push him away; I am unsure. Why?
Because at work, tomorrow’s appointments include helping a freshly sober guy understand how to build a life that has nothing to drugs, talking to a woman who just out of prison after drug charges that were really about her boyfriend, and talking to a young woman who was looking for alternatives to abortion. Plus whatever walk-ins needed our service over the course of the day. That’s why I need to be responsible and professional, all the time. People have to trust me, trust that I will help them. A professional social worker does not fuck a man in an alleyway. A college girl, sure—not that I ever had!—but definitely not a professional social worker. How could I come into work with my professionalism intact after that? How could I stand in front of the mirror every morning, secure in the knowledge that I am capable of what the day will bring?
Ah! I slump down on the couch after work, and the pendulum swings in the other direction; on one side there is passion, on the other, there is reason. Passion is furious with reason for being such a prude, and reason is furious with passion for being such a whore. I think I would be able to deal with this if I had my mind made up. If I could just say: okay, that was a mistake, I never should have kissed him like that. Or if I could just say: okay, that was a mistake, I never should have pushed him away like that. If I could say either of those, alone, without interruption from any other interfering feelings, I could return to my normal life without this tearing in my chest: tearing of two opposing emotions, using my mind, my body, my everything as a battleground. But I cannot choose one position; the pendulum invariably swings back, and forth, and back…
I think about the way he could make me laugh without seeming to even try. That’s often the problem with other men. They try too hard. They’re too eager. They’re like schoolboys who have been dared to come and approach you, fumbling, nervous, all too keen to please. Perhaps that isn’t fair, but my body doesn’t care about fair. My body only cares about passion. And these men, fumbling, awkward, never produce any passion within me. But Rust—Rust—Rust—
Days go by, and I often wake up whispering his name into my pillow, my body feeling scorched and alive, truly alive, my fingers digging into the bed sheets so that bits of the fabric rip loose under my fingernails.
One day at work I’m eating my ham and cheese sandwich on my lunch break and reading a romance novel. This one’s a little tamer, without as much heat as my usual selections. After all, I don’t want to be squirming in my pants all afternoon. Says the girl who almost fucked a muscular, sexy, charming biker in a grimy alleyway. I’ve just got to a steamy scene when Marjorie, the head librarian, comes over with a crooked smile on her face. Marjorie is a tall, wide black woman with gorgeous, natural hair she wears in a twist out, and dark brown eyes. She is often smiling, even if she can turn into a tornado of rage if something in the library—more of a new-fangled modern-media center—goes wrong. Now, she grins at me as though she knows a secret, and at once I feel a pit in my belly. Have they cancelled the social work program? Am I in trouble? This job is my life; my work is the most important thing to me.
But when Marjorie comes and stands over me in the breakroom, I see that there’s no malice in her smile. She makes a whistling noise between her teeth, and then pulls up a chair and sits opposite me. She glances around briefly as though surveying the surroundings—the bulletin board with various charitable and work events, the posters of famous book covers, the sink and the fridge—and finally leans close to me.
“Uh, hey, Marjorie,” I say. Marjorie and I aren’t enemies, but by no means are we friends. I place my book on the chair beside me and wait.
Finally, Marjorie says, “Heard you got yourself a new boyfriend.”
“What?” I snap, way too quickly, way too sharply. But I can’t help it. It never occurred to me that anyone at work would know about Rust taking me out for a drink. Detroit is big, after all, and it’s not like I’m someone important. No paparazzi following me around.
“Woah, calm down,” Marjorie says, squinting at me as though confused. “Cassandra just told me. Tom, your 11 o’clock? He came in earlier when you were on outreach and gave Cassandra this.” Marjorie reaches into her pants pocket and brings out one of those toy plastic rings you find in gumball machines.
“Oh,” I say, taking it, and smiling. Yes, her comment threw me off, but Tom’s a sweet guy who’s really trying to get his life together after a bout of serious depression and a suicide attempt. It was nice of him to leave something for me.
Marjorie tilts her head at me. “Hmm,” she mutters, before getting up and leaving.
After that, it’s incredibly clear that I’ve got a problem. I know I’m thinking about Rust too much. I know that there is something dangerously wrong with the way my mind keeps turning to him no matter what I am doing. Dangerous, because if I allowed my mind to do totally as it liked, I would never think about anything else. I am furious with myself, completely enraged that I can’t just put this man out of my mind. Although I suppose I should be familiar with the problem; god knows no one ever got together in a romcom because they considered the other person so forgettable. But I’m a real person in a real life, and I’m supposed to be able to focus.
Over the next few days, I decide to do the only thing which seems like it will have any results. I decide to turn myself against Rust, instead of toward him. Like a form of strange meditation, every time my mind turns to him, I force my mind to turn to a different aspect of him. My mind tries to turn to his muscles, his clean-shaven, strong-featured face; I force myself to think about what a Neanderthal he is, a violent enforcer, someone completely unsuited for a woman like me. I wake up moaning his name—and I start to think about all the horrible things he must have to do on a day to day basis, the blood, the pain. He was attractive to me back in the alleyway, fine, but in the long-term, or even the mid-term, he would swiftly become unattractive, more of an animal than a man. What sort of relationship, real relationship, could a woman like me have with a man like that? And even if I gave into what a part of me clearly wants, what after? How will I feel about myself?
No, I tell myself, over and over, until it becomes a reflex every time my mind turns to him: I will not give into my animal desires with a man who is completely unsuited to me. It is cruel, but one night when I wake up in a hot sweat with the bed sheets sticking to me like pathetic imitations of his warm hands, I begin listing his negative attributes: uncaring, distant, arrogant, selfish, emotionally stunted, most likely just using me for sex. I have no evidence for some of these, and yet I am sure he is uncaring. I picture the way he just left me, hands in his pockets, whistling. An emotional man, a man who gave a shit, would not have done that.
When a week has passed since I saw him, I’m sure I’ve succeeded in changing my mind.
I stand in front of the bathroom mirror early one morning, hands on the edge of the sink, the enamel cold on my palm, and stare at myself wide-eyed, blood-eyed, and I mutter: “I do not want Rust, I do not want Rust, I do not want Rust.”
I envision him approaching me from behind, appearing in my bathroom doorway, filling it with his massive shoulders—and then I envision myself spinning on him and screaming: “You’re a cold, unfeeling, uncaring Neanderthal and I want nothing to do with you!”
Then I go into the kitchen and make myself some cereal, muttering under my breath as I pour the milk: “If a social worker can’t master self-denial, who can?”