heartbeats

I've never dated a drug dealer before. I guess there's a first time for everything. In all fairness, really, he's not. He was just filling in for a week while his roommate was out of town. In Amsterdam, of all places. But it meant wearing the shoes of a weed salesman's, and let me tell you, those shoes were big and lofty and hard to walk in. Or maybe that was just my perception of it.

So I found myself in his room late Friday night, waiting for clients to show up. Two were coming, and it was almost midnight. At least he was honest about it. The view from his bed was a map of Northern California, somewhere in the wilderness, somewhere where fires rage out of control. It was more a topographical display of the land, really, but it was all greek to me. In any case, the squiggly thin lines that made up the borders or the elevations or whatever it was were moving, slowly, morphing into each other, swaying one way and then the other. The effects of the mushrooms I had eaten earlier that afternoon were wearing off, but still, obviously, startlingly, prevalent. We waited. I stared at the map. He opened a window. I tried to eat some of the calzone that he had ordered, attempted to ingest a piece of the cheese and artichoke filled doughy thing that lay in the box on the floor, half-eaten remenants from earlier. He eats like a wild animal. With his hands. Fast. Determined to scarf as much down before the others come, whether the others are dogs or wolves or lost children.

I couldn't eat much of it at all, really. All I could do was put the box on my lap and stare down at it, unsure. I took a piece of it in my hands and only dirtied my fingers. I eventually gave up and set the thing back down on the floor.

And still we waited.

Midnight. On a Friday. In Davis. With an early morning of work looming around the corner, I stayed with him, anxious for the moment where there wouldn't be anyone coming 'round anymore and we had the night to ourselves. I'm always anxious to have the night to ourselves. I waited for both customers to come and go, curious as to what would transpire. It's no wonder curiosity killed the cat.

A bit past midnight, the first guy finally arrived. He came inside, in the house, and into the bedroom, into our space, sexual energy so thick you could cut it with a butter knife, with the half-eaten calzone on the floor and the music from the computer playing and an unmade bed and me in a paisely, floor-length, cleavage-revealing, stolen dress, holding up the wall, between the doorway and the dealer, where he sat with scales and equipment and baggies. I was uncomfortable. I thought I could handle it; thought it would be beneficial somehow to be the female presence during the deal. I was so wrong. Maybe it was the psychadelics, maybe it was the night, maybe it was just me, but I just couldn't do it. I excused myself while they finished up and small talked and shot the shit and walked into the living room. Drugs and money exchanged, the guy he left. I cordially threw out a goodbye from the living room (where I was hanging out, nervously, with the dogs, the brown one looking up at me, worried) and walked back into his bedroom.

I told him something about space being sacred to me, personal space, private space. The space that permeates the bedroom, that fills up the air and drifts in and out of the window. It's a place where energy is localized. It's becoming familiar, his bedroom, his energy, the maps on the walls and the clutter on the floor. Aided by music and incense and unmade bed and even calzone - I needed it to be mine; I needed it to be ours, and only ours. I told him I needed it to be completely free of all strangers, especially strangers who come calling for drugs. Desperately.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Just let me know what you need and I'll do it," he said.

The next customer didn't come close to the bedroom. Richard went out to meet him instead, into the kitchen or the hallway or the living room or I don't really care and don't know, it wasn't the bedroom and that was fine by me. I felt safe. Somehow he has the ability to constantly reassure me, and it works, well. Perhaps I do the same for him, just in different ways. He also listens to me, hears me, and sometimes even modifies his behavior (if modifications are necessary). It's not that I want to change him; I don't, I wouldn't change a thing. It's just a "Hi, my name is ___, it's nice to meet you, this is what I like and this is what I don't like" sort of exchange. The kind of thing that takes place in the beginning of a mutually beneficial re... you get my drift.

In the way that someone getting to know another human being is scary, he scares me. I like what I'm discovering and I long for more. I guess it's a gamble, every time. Sometimes you put in nothing, sometimes you put in a little, sometimes you put in everything. You either win big or get taken for everything you've got. The rest, the in-between, doesn't even really count, really. I don't know what's ahead of me; I don't know where my path will take me or who I'll end up walking with, all I know is that it's time to step up to the table and place some bets.