With Sweaty Palms

by Gareth Edel

We change in these moments. Moments of growth, transcendence, degradation, challenge, or calm which make us. Moments of monumental importance for ourselves, even if unworthy of notice for the world outside. Sometimes these moments are unnoticed even by others present for them. Many of these moments are described in our culture. They are the eighteenth birthdays, sweet sixteen, Bar Mitzvahs, injuries, accomplishments, which we are told from an early age we will remember forever. That we are told, and believe, will feel important. Moments which we expect to have an effect in our lives and our personalities.

I remember graduating from High school, and not feeling different. No dramatic sophistication overtook my thinking, not even a real sense of accomplishment. I remember only that I was thankful to be done with the drudgery of that form of school, only to learn quickly that I was in for more of the same in college.

I graduated from a liberal arts college, with a sense that I had done something wrong, since I have never felt I have pointed my way into the future, and mapped a course to a meaningful contribution to the world. I remember the rhetoric that they beat into me about liberal arts, making a person better, making you think better, learning skills that would allow lifelong learning. I have been unemployable and stagnant since graduating, and I wonder when the sense of progress will wash over me and I will realize I am an adult, and find my place. I realize I am too much the same person I was as a youth.

I remember my first kiss. It was not a shattering of childhood innocence leading on a path of growth to manhood, nor a sweet sign of blossoming love, but instead it remains a step in a long and muddled track of confusion with women. Maya was beauty, and I read almost every book by Stephen King, so that I would not have lied to her about being a fan after she told me she liked his work. It took me years to realize that was why I started reading his books, but by then, I was a fan. I choose to think of this as having been prophecy rather then a lie. Today I will say it would have been worth reading a dozen books I hated for her single kiss.

I remember my first open mouthed kiss as meaningless, during a game of spin the bottle, with a lesbian, who shrugged and said, whoever she kissed it felt good. She had a lip ring, and it was 8 years before I kissed another lip ring. I mostly didn't know what to think. I remember thinking that it was a shame I wasn't in love with the girl. Because to my mind at the time, I felt that would make it more meaningful. Alternatively, should I say that it would have made me feel strongly, as opposed to numb. Tired of sanitized feelings that I knew day to day. I looked for in each of these things the sort of depth of emotion, and overwhelming feeling of a movie kiss between those meant to be together. It did not come.

I waited to have sex, not for lack of opportunity, nor desire, but rather, because I had mixed feelings. I was old fashioned and wanted it to have meaning, but not necessarily to be a scene where the character says, "we didn't fuck, we made love." Instead, I simply felt that it had to have context. I had to be sane enough and my partner had to be sane enough that I could envision it as being a moment I would hold as revelation, as changing me for the better. I was nervous and insecure about how well I would be able to satisfy my expectations, or for that matter my ability to offer gratification. I mean I didn't want it to be bad sex, despite the basic urban legend that all first times are bad. In no small part due to my lack of security in my sense of being an adult, even after I legally began to drink, I worried that I would be unable to perform as I expected. I worried that I wouldn't feel enough, or that I wouldn't feel the right things.

I sit here with a sense of disappointment, thinking about what sex has come to mean to me. I sadly find myself regretting. I doubt the honesty of my reasons. Perhaps it was simply fear; was I over estimating myself, when I said I wanted it to mean more that masturbation with a partner? If I start to doubt those reasons, then I should have had sex whenever I had the chance. I look back after a little time, and think, sex is just not all it is cracked up to be, and more than anything else I had been afraid that that would be how I feel. I think that I knew it would not live up to the dramatic view I had developed, but I had hoped that it would be something special. A blowjob was better than Jerking off? There was another person, there was excitement, and there was some sense of connection. Therefore would not the pinnacle of sexual acts, be that much better than a blowjob, both in physical pleasure and emotional impact?

With sex, I sadly found myself feeling much the way I did about graduating high school. As with high school, I almost wish I had skipped it, and found something better to do with my time. And much like high school, I really had no choice. Although I could have dropped out, I had been taught to go to school so strongly, that I didn't realize until I was in college that I had had another option. Recently I wondered who I would be today if I had simply started fucking without real emotion a long time ago. I find that even when I try to fuck with emotion after all this time, I feel very little. Maybe The reason I fall in love with the women I do is because I know they are as confused as I am. I have never been able to explain my attraction to those I am attracted to, and so because of this inability to see inside myself I doubt my own motives.

About four ounces of rum down and I start to think that I can go back to the story I wanted to tell. The story of why I fell myself pulling towards a person without knowing how they will handle it. Not that this is common. Usually I pull away, every complaint in every cheezy movie about men who are scared of intimacy and commitment, could apply to me. I am a little different though.

I want to say to women "I love human flaws". I love movies about them, people with them. To tell a girl that she can tell me anything, and I will like her even more, for the fact that she is a human, and not an alien. I mean alien metaphorically, that she is someone like me, broken, with shards, pieced together. I think that perfection exists in a small number of people, these are the aliens, the people who accomplish everything I wish I did, feel pain as something rare and fleeting, and whom are able to control themselves. I look at my feelings and feel strange that they don't match my expectations.

I don't want to have sex, not the way people are supposed to, I want to be close to someone. To feel them next to me. The rush of orgasm, the sweating and heat of passion does not come easily. I am not able to let myself see some things, to them, I am blind, I sometimes think of an ostrich, which legends say buries its head in the sand, so as not to see that which frightens it.

In reality, ostriches are tall and are less visible if they bend over. They bend their knees and stretch their long necks out to avoid being seen, and to a person at a distance it looks like they are hiding their head and hoping it will go away, whatever frightens them that is. I feel connected to ostriches, they aren't hiding foolishly. This defense has a second part, they are fast, running away is their other defense. They hide until the object of their fear draws close, and cant be ignored again, and then they run. And believe it or not, most of the time they get away. But I wonder, how many of the ostriches are like me, how many run, and tire, from the fear and exertion, without having had anything to really run from.

As I started this I hadn't intended to write about ostriches, but I was going to try to explain something, and started to think about what to say to make it clear. I want this to be a piece of the puzzle of me, we are all these exciting puzzles, to be understood. I love that about people, and occasionally about myself. That we aren't simple. I hate simple people, and find that if I give people enough time, I generally find even the simple ones complex. If that makes sense, I will buy you a cookie, just let me know where to send it.

A faculty member who I worked with in college once said I am "self sabotaging" and I think that is how I am with commitment and intimacy. I start from the position that I am unworthy, and will eventually screw things up and from there, I try to end things or avoid things before I have a chance to hurt anyone, or be hurt. I always "know" that I wont win in the end, at the beginning of every game.

I used to play poker at college regularly. I don't know why, but one day I started cheating but I never won, so no one saw me cheat. One day we talked about cheating and I said I always cheated. And they asked me: 'how, if you always cheat, do you always lose?"

I told them I always cheated to try and make someone else stay in longer. I assumed that I wouldn't win, and if I did win I would feel bad for cheating. However, if I could make sure I was the first person out, and everyone won something before I left, then everyone would be happier, even if I wasn't. I still enjoyed playing, and was able to feel good for my part in their happiness. They didn't believe me.

As we played every week from then on, slowly they noticed, not my cheating, I had gotten good, dealing from the bottom, ordering the deck, and holding out, and then palming in cards, I had gotten a handle on those. They started to notice that whenever they let me near the cards, until I went out, everyone won at least once, that the game never favored anyone too much. The person who lost the previous week, always seemed to be a little higher handed than the others... needless to say, I was removed from the bullpen of players until I promised no longer to cheat.

What does this story mean? I don't know, I meant it to show who I am a little better. I will keep working on it. Maybe to explain why I usually get involved with women whom my friends say aren't a good match for me, or for anyone. Maybe just to try to justify to myself my feelings for someone I now know.

I wanted this to be a story about previous ventures in love: how i lost Lily, because she tried too hard, and changed her mind. How I lost Linda because I didn't try hard enough. How I never had Michelle because I didn't take the time to think, How my first love was never mine because I let others frighten me from her, all sorts of stories. These were to show (rather than tell) why and who I am what I am today. I am at almost 6 ounces of rum, and won't tell it right, I will be maudlin.

I woke up on a Thursday morning past, during a dream, which I was surprised to realize had been heartbreaking. I started. That would be the literary way of describing how I woke up. "I started, from slumber to wakeful confusion, not realizing I had been dreaming." I should get to the dream, before it fades any more than it already has.

I was in a court building or other similarly official and civic center, and friends were with me, their identities don't figure into the dream in any important role. It had been a nice dream, with humor, and flirtation. I suppose only I would dream about flirtation as opposed to sex, but I digress. And in the dream, I needed a cigarette badly, which is no surprise, since I am in real life, the amazing walking chimney boy, or at least that would be my carnie name.

I rushed to get outside, with the sole intent of lighting a cigarette, and the elevator was slow. This slowness mimicked my feelings about the real elevator at the Queens county Civil Court House, which exasperated me on a recent Jury Duty. I burst out of the elevator, and was so excited to be on the first floor, I got confused and lit the cigarette that I had withdrawn from the pack on the ride down. Trotting quickly through the lobby attempting, self consciously, to hide a cigarette billowing smoke, I approached the security desk near the front door, and was stared at by a guard who was older and frumpier than any I have seen lately. This, unlike the elevator, was not the doppelganger of my recent court house experience, since the real guards had mostly been white and at least fairly fit.

As I passed the guard, he looked and started to open his mouth to speak, and in my dream mind the only thing I came up with to say was: "I just lit it back there, sorry." To this enigmatic nugget the guard responded with a smile and ceased his preparations for elocution. I stepped outside. Despite the smile the guard had presented, or perhaps to avoid the friends who were following me outside. I stepped behind a small glass booth (where it came from I don't know) that resembled the ticket booth at an old movie theater or a carnival in those films set in the 1930's through 1960's. I can only suggest that if you are curious, I think it was most like the one in the John Goodman vehicle Matinee.

As I stood smoking the cigarette, whatever confused desire I had held to hide behind this transparent structure ended and I began to step our from behind it, and saw, or moreover nearly bumped into someone I recognized walking with several men. She looked beautiful, older and more mature than when I last saw her in real life. She has always walked with superb posture, as if proud, and almost heroic, and this has not changed. It may sound strange, but she has small breasts, which always makes me think that she should be self conscious, and therefore slouch, but she never has. She walks upright. It makes her beautiful. Hair that would have hung in a perfect bob, if it wasn't curly. The Curls although ruining the bob, gave her more personality and a certain slightly messy charm. She has these eyes which, as I call her name, as I look, cloud from peace with a look that verges on disgust.

We met during Passover, as we all know the best relationships start with wine and the trappings of tradition. It could only have been better if we had seen the slaughter of a lamb. I remember the weak attempt at religion, and mostly the wine. They had estimated poorly the amount of wine that was needed for the crowd and that at the end of the night, some of us sat, passing around innumerable huge magnum sized bottles of Kosher wine. I remember the sweetness of our first kiss after hours of flirting, and the desire to follow her in when I walked her to her dorm. We had planned all night to finish the wine, but there had simply been too much. I do not remember what happened to the Excess wine that we failed to consume. I wish I could still laugh at her gay friend interrupting our kisses, and saying he felt left out. Drunk as we were, we both kissed him. In the end, we dated for a month or so, and then we went separate ways, and although we intended to, we did not keep in touch. I hadn't seen her in more than three years when she appeared in my dream last night.

"Aley?" and as the word, her name leaves my mouth I only then connect the look in her eyes and my presence. And her pace quickens to carry her past me, and she raised one hand held at a ninety degree angle to the shaft of the arm, which looks painfully stiff, held out to block my presence from entering her vision, after that first glimpse. I try to continue speaking, but the weight of her hand snapping up like that, and it's rotation, to continually block my face from her vision, have made me unable to form words. And she and the group of men who cluster around her continue on.

I stand immediately sure that she thought I was someone else, our breakup, if you can call it that, was not bad. My role in her life ended several years ago. She couldn't still be hurt by it. And as this thought enters my dreaming mind, I look again at her walking away, and see that her shoulders are slightly slumped forward and that her back is curved.

I started, from slumber to wakeful confusion, not realizing I had been dreaming and in the dream my phantom friends had not yet found me behind my transparent hiding place, and I had not yet looked away from her. I ask myself why I always feel as though I did something wrong with girls, as though my interest were an insult, which I need to apologize for. Why I stumble along and am never able to see what I have before me until I trip. But that was my dream. The girl I kissed before Aley was Lily. I think back over the short catalogue of those wondrous moments when I kissed people. Lily, who I said earlier, tried too hard. Who wanted even more than me to feel something she didn't. And from thinking of a night time dream I fade to remembrance, to what becomes for me a day dreamed memory. They are connected. I should explain that both relationships I felt as if I had wronged them. Aley for not loving her enough to keep us together and Lily for not making her love me enough to keep us together. In between these two loves I was involved with and kissed one woman, and in that relationship neither of us expected to fall in love. But Lily, I had wanted to fall in love with, and I think I had With lily the story still hurts me sometimes as did the memory of Aley after the dream. I ask myself what all this means and don't find answers.

I kissed her again as if the pause had not happened. She still failed to respond. Now, lying with arms at her sides, motionless, and more frighteningly, expressionless, as I kissed her lip then her cheek, thinking that she would kiss me back. She was still, and slowly I became still as well. I sat up and sat silently for what seemed like an age. Lily just lay there and I wanted to cry out, or cry, or hit her, but I knew that I had to stop kissing her. What did she want me to do? That answer would come as much as it ever would three years later.

I can't help but wonder sometimes about the weight of the world. What does it weigh? I mean, there is the old analogy of the weight of the world on your shoulders. Which means you take too much responsibility? Nevertheless, what would the actual weight be? Well I cannot answer it, the fact is i would be disappointed if anyone could. It would take the question away from me, I may be strange, but I think there are questions, which I don't want, answered. So I must be asking silly questions.

This is a thought that goes through my head most frequently when I think of women. That I don't want answers to my questions. I would ask whether I had made her cum, but what if she said no? This distaste for the answer to a question does not make me ask it, or not ask it. It just is part of the question. A better example for me is the old does she like me jazz. I mean, we all have been interested in someone who we could not tell how he or she felt. I personally have very bad instincts about these things, so it may be more of a problem for me then most. Similarly, do you like the person more than they like you do once you are involved? These questions can be asked without us necessarily hoping for an answer. Sometimes the inability to answer them is what makes it interesting to ask them.

I do not mean to answer these questions here, but to put a memory (or as near as I could offer to a memory) on the page. In addition, with any luck to entertain us all.(Yes. I include myself.) Or to make you confused. I don't mind if you end up confused. It would amuse me. So with that as an introduction, I will continue the story about a girl named Lily, well her name wasn't really lily, but she did have the name of a flower, so, close enough.

When I arrived at college my sexual history read like a Christian tract on abstaining. It consisted of many ideas and approximately three kisses. Three kisses: One at the corner of my mouth, which I consider my first kiss. One kiss on the lips by a friend, and another, which although on the cheek was the cause of a whole realm of fantasy more rich then middle earth.

So here I was at college, full of a reality that was based on movies and rock songs. There is a line in the movie of High Fidelity where Jon Cusack's character implies that love songs warp our expectations, and I am thinking of that line. I thought and still think that some day as I walk down a street or enter a party there will be a moment when I realize I have met the one person for me. I know that it doesn't work like that, but I can't help but want that, that mad passionate uncompromising movie love.

I stood on campus the first few days literally expecting to bump into a girl who I would want to marry. However, that was not what happened. My brother was in an orientation group that was mostly girls. He introduced me to them, and although he had too much backbone to follow them around and take their grief, I was happy to be that guy, I don't think most of them really liked me. A few of the group did, but after orientation as I followed them around, I entered the group enough, that I played my first and only game of spin the bottle. My first open mouth kiss, a lesbian, who although beautiful, was not a nice person. She had a lip ring, and dyed black hair. Followed by another lesbian, then one girl who was too quiet and then a boy. The last kiss was from the one of the gang who I now see was a real friend. Consequentially the only one who spoke to me as a person after that night. I believe there was another girl also, It doesn't really matter, you must understand by that point that I was a beginner at the game of politics we know as romance.

It was around three weeks into the term (as I guess the time line) when I met Lily through my friend the enchanter and my brother who had already met her. I can't say I was smitten, I simply started spending time with her. I had not really spent time alone with a girl since I had my first love at summer camp, although I never told the summer camp girl how I felt, she was the source of my first kiss. But Lily and I walked in the woods, explored town, and sat and talked, I learned about her family, and i started to fall for her, and I still believe she fell for me a little. We went on Pseudo dates, to a movie or other activities, and for a few weeks, it made me happy. We started holding hands and cuddling, and I began to watch videos with her, maybe a half dozen times, just the two of us lying cuddling on her bed.

Then one night it happened.

As we lay watching Interview with the Vampire, a diabolically bad movie, she touched my hand, and we started hand flirting. You probably have done this, the touching fingers, almost holding hands, thumb almost wrestling, stroking with a finger. The point is we touched in a relatively intimate way, and slowly she put a hand to my cheek, turned my head towards her, and nearly pressed it forward to kiss her, and I did. I can still feel my breath leaving me as I remember it, lying there, kissing her, and falling the rest of the way in love.

And with each step she showed me what to do, placing my hand leaning in, helping me decide, and eventually, gaspingly, nervously, gropingly, on top of her kissing her arms around me. She looked at me, I leaned to kiss her again, and she didn't kiss back.

I kissed her again as if the pause had not happened. She still failed to respond. Now, lying with arms at her sides, motionless, and more frighteningly, expressionless, as I kissed her lip then her cheek, thinking that she would kiss me back. She was still, and slowly I became still as well. I sat up and sat silently for what seemed like an age.

I asked how she was, and she didn't say anything, so I said it was getting late, the movie had ended while we touched, and I lacked the ability to ask her what was going on.
I put my boots on and didn't tie them, leaned over and kissed her head, she remained silent, and I can say with clarity it was one of the most frightening moments I remember. I stood and nearly ran out of the room,
I wanted none of it to have happened.

And when I saw her the next day, none of it had. We were still friends, but we never held hands again. I couldn't ask her about the night outright out of fear and confusion so I hinted. She never mentioned it. I was friendly with her best friend on campus, who apparently got the story from her with no explanation, and from me, but she either couldn't or wouldn't explain it. She was helpful, since she was the person who I could tell the story but, in the end she had no idea why Lily had acted that way.

Our friends knew I had a thing for her, and that I was troubled, but we all ignored it mostly. Well, they did, I spent a serious depression on her, which seems like a waste now, since I did not even lose my virginity. But those are the breaks.

Three years later, she was at home in Maine, and I was in NY. I spoke to her on line, chatting in text. I had been somewhat unhappy that day, and felt I had nowhere left to go but up. I finally asked her. Why she ad stopped. You know, the answer made sense in a heart breaking way, the sort of answer that had to make sense to hurt as much. She said that she had liked me, and thought we were compatible and I was very "intellectually" attractive and personally interesting. Nevertheless, I was not physically attractive to her. In an effort to be fair to me, she had wanted to see if she would feel anything if we kissed, since that was how you could tell if you have chemistry with someone.

I thank her now, for not having actually said she felt nothing when we kissed. But she never did it again.

Now as I think about it I have been her friend through a half dozen boy friends and assorted relationships. Should I feel bad for not having been with her, no. To still have a negative feeling about an almost, from that long ago, would be silly. But our friendship wasn't as good as friends as it could have been, and although I wouldn't want to know the answer, I always wonder would we have made better lovers?

See I told you before, I think about silly questions. Maybe you could answer them with more stories, maybe not. I could tell you the one about the marble, that never stays lost? NO! Well maybe next, time. I hate Saint Valentine's Day with an absurd passion. I really do. No it is not because of a girl, it is because of her sister.... Who, if you must be fussy was also a girl. However, that also is a story for another time. To what end did I recount these things? Why did you read them? Was there wisdom? Was it titillation for you? Did you glean insight from these words? I ask silly questions and I tell you these silly stories. I hope that you answer some, and ask your own, and with my mention of Lily, and Aley, and my fumbling with sweaty palms through life, you find something to comfort you when you have a day like those, or ask yourself these questions. But I still have no answers. I look at the face of the person I love now, and don't know if history will repeat itself, or if I will find the feeling I have looked for before.

The End...
But Not Finished.