KELLI. Trying to make sense of what my mind went through on a typical weekend would probably make the best of psychologists go insane. I think all girls were probably the same. We got up on Saturday, and even if we have nothing planned for the day, we struggled with what to wear, what to do with our hair, and what to do for shoes. After I tried on everything that I had in the closet for about five seconds, then tossed it on the bed, tried something else, and tossed it, and continued that for a half hour, I would finally settle on something. I did this for years. Only recently had I set limits for myself. If I couldn’t decide in about five minutes, I would default. My default had become shorts, a tee shirt, and Chucks. In the last two years, it had become somewhat of a staple, and my trademark weekend attire.

What I was going to do, and where I was going to go was always a struggle. I felt, for most of my life, as if I needed someone to make decisions for me. Having someone tell me to be at a certain place at a certain time and to be dressed a certain way was comforting. Some girls looked at it as control, but I looked at it as relief. Relief from making decisions that I normally struggled with. I’m like a duck on the pond; what you see above the water was still and calm, but what was hidden are the little feet that were paddling a hundred miles an hour. On the outside, I appeared to be a calm, intelligent, collected woman. On the inside, my entire life was a huge compressed pile of worry. Worrying what I was doing, if it was what was acceptable, and what people, primarily men, would think.

Until I met Erik, I really did not care, long term, what a man thought about what I wore, and where I was or what I was doing, but I did. I cared about their opinion and their feelings to a certain extent, by nature. I didn’t so much care for them. There was a part of me that I always wondered about and never really cared to talk about - the part of me that felt that I had to do whatever I had to do within my power to make a man happy. If the man was disappointed with me, I felt that it was my fault. It literally had the ability to crush me. If a man was satisfied with me, and expressed it, it was like Christmas morning. I would be so happy that he was happy that the feeling would often carry over for weeks.

From time-to-time I would wonder if this was one of the underlying reasons that I had never been in a relationship. If I allowed myself to care for a man, I would feel as if I had to please him. If I had to please him, I couldn’t tell him “no”, and if I couldn’t tell him no, I would be fulfilling his wants, needs, and desires. Making certain that he was always pleased would consume me and that would allow me to have no life other than to please him. Pleasing him would be my life. I knew enough about myself to know that if I cared about a man just a little bit, I would eventually be consumed by my own shortcomings.

To think about it all made my head spin. 

Until I met Erik, I never really thought about it. The thoughts, generally speaking, entered my mind. On weekends, when I had idle time, I would think. When I got sick of my mind beating my soul to death, I would consume my day with activities. When I became still, or without tasks to deplete me, back to thinking I would go. The thoughts were always just general thoughts. What if this happens, Kelli? What about that, Kelli? Kelli, you’re fucking up, you need to drop that guy, and he’s getting attached. Kelli, Kelli, Kelli…

Ohmyfuckinggodmyheadisgoingtoexplode.

So, my idle time would be consumed by general thoughts about my desire to please men. With Erik, I was consciously thinking about these things. I was thinking about the fact that I wanted to please him. I was planning what I was going to do to please him. Ultimately, I was slowly becoming what I had feared for my entire life, a woman that is stuck and reliant upon a man.

And in my short time on this earth, I have learned that men can’t keep a woman. Erik, by his own admittance to me, wouldn’t keep me. We weren’t, according to him, even in a relationship. It was a relationship, but it wasn’t. As soon as I fucked up, or as soon as he felt I needed him to survive, I would be tossed aside. He would spend a month, year, or decade recovering, and on to the next woman he would go.

Even knowing these things about him didn’t stop me from wanting him. I wanted him more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I wanted to please him, provide for him, make him happy, make him proud, and make him want me as much as I wanted him. The odds of that happening were slim, but I continued to feel that way.

When we first started seeing each other, I felt like it was going to be nothing more than a few good weeks of fucking; just some really good sex. After a week, I started wondering what my friends might think about him being fifteen years older than me. I decided I wouldn’t tell them how old he was, and if they asked, I would say that I didn’t know his age. After a few weeks, I didn’t care about what anyone might think. I only thought of Erik, and what his desires with me were. Fulfilling those desires were all that really mattered to me after spending a few weeks of time with Erik.

I was beginning to understand what it felt like to actually experience having loving thoughts for someone other than a family member. The irony in this entire situation was that Erik would eventually want to stop seeing me, and at some point in time the summer would end, and I was going to school in New York.

The question, I supposed, was which one would come first. For fear of Erik reacting with immediate rejection, I decided not to tell him of my commitment to my father or about school. I did not want this to end, at least not by my making.

Driving to meet Erik for lunch, I yearned for him to touch me, to tell me to do something. To hear him call me Baby Girl. To place his hands on my neck and squeeze it lightly as he spoke to me. To press me against the wall and have his way with me. Every time we met, he became a little bit more in control of me. Partially because I became more willing to try to make him want me, and partially because he was beginning to include more challenging sexual tasks in our time together.

Thinking of Erik and lunch, I began to tingle. We were to meet at Il Vicino again. A simple thought of that place made me wet. As I exited the highway onto Rock Road, I crossed my legs. His hands. His posture. His voice. His smell. His presence. Erik. Fucking. Ead.

Ohmyfuckinggodmyheadisgoingtoexplode.