The Misbegotten

A mild shove against my shoulder woke me. I opened my eyes and found myself looking into Tirza’s. I sat up and glanced around trying to get my bearings, realizing I was sleeping at the foot of my bed.

The girls were a tangle of arms and legs and bodies at its’ head.

I wondered who'd tossed from my spot, but shrugged off the question. Maybe I got up to take a piss and one of them took my spot. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t important.

Tirza put a forefinger to her lips, the ubiquitous signal to be quiet and held out her hand.

I took it and let her help me to my feet without a sound.

She tugged at me once I was upright.

I noticed at once, she was leading me away from the bed and toward the bathroom.

She didn’t let go of my hand. It should’ve felt as hard as rock, but, to me, it felt as it always had.

After all the fighting, the vows of never again, it did seem strange to feel something as familiar as her touch once again. As always, my hand swallowed hers, but I remembered how to hold her without hurting her. I positioned her tiny fingertips within the crease of flesh at the end of my palm, the beginning of my fingers.

She dug-in her nails like she used to when something as simple as holding hands wasn’t such a big deal.

My vision was still on our conjoined extremities when she led me into the smaller room. It was bizarre how our hands would know where to go, what to do, while our minds had grown so far apart. What was once indistinguishable was vastly different now.

At one time, I thought in my deepest of hearts, we would marry. Tirza, I loved you that much.

But how would that have worked with Katie on the side as your mistress? That would’ve gone over real well with the family. I’m so sure.

With Tirza, there was nothing but confusion.

“Close the door, Estefan,” she commanded. Her tone was level. She let of me, so she could stand near the light switch.

I did and the light came on once the door latch engaged.

She moved to sit on the toilet.

I sat opposite her, on the edge of the bathtub.

She ran her fingers halfway through her hair, and then stopped once they came to the top of her skull. She made claws of her fingers. For three, maybe four seconds, she massaged the skin of her scalp with untold aggression. Just as quick, she pulled them from her head, staring at me through a waterfall of hair. Her chest filled and unfilled with fitful breaths.

“Jeez, Tirza, what’s wrong? Are you ok?” I asked. She was starting to freak me out. She was beginning to look like that crazy Japanese ghost from The Grudge¹. Though it was an older movie, it still scared the crap out of me.

“You incense me, Estefan, that’s the problem,” she answered. She gathered her hair, whipping back over her head, her eyes accusatory daggers.

I put both of my hands in front of me in supplication. “Teezee, have I done anything to make you mad?” It astonished me to see her gaze intensify. “And if have, I’m sorry, ok!” Unaccustomed to seeing Tirza gaze at me like I was better off dead, I spoke like I was regurgitating.

“That’s the problem,” she said, but it only made me more confused.

I spread my hands wide. “I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.”

“Of course you don’t, Estefan. Why would you when you’re up to your neck in pussy! Why would you take the time to think about how someone else might be feeling?” She had slipped to the edge of the toilet seat, pointing a little finger in my direction. Though it was small, it seemed like a sword slicing through the air.

Then her point began to register. “Tirza, you told me, pretty emphatic I might add that you and I would never be ‘together’ that way. Those were your words, and I agreed to them. We made a pact. We created common ground between us. I thought everything was cool between us and now you’re telling me different? What’s going on, I don’t understand.”

She glared at me like a statue for two heartbeats, maybe three. A single tear fell from her left eye and splashed onto her exposed knee.

In my ears, it sounded as loud as a thousand pound J-DAM² detonating below ground.

Her face began to flush pink as the cords in her neck began to strain. “I can’t turn it off,” she uttered. All at once, she was like a deflating balloon. She wrapped and folded onto herself as if she was admitting some unimaginable shame.

For some strange, unexplainable reason that pissed me off. A million, million flashes of thought and emotion came ripping through my consciousness. In the blink of an eye, I was there again. “And you think it was easy for me to turn it off? Are you fucking kidding me?

“I said one errant name. I made one mistake and you fucking threw all that we had away in less than a millisecond. Everything! You tossed it all aside like it didn’t mean shit to you, Tirza!

“I endured your dip-shit father. I made friends with your adorable sister. I went to Church with you when you damn well know I didn’t believe in that shit. I went on retreats. I gave speeches. I volunteered. I did everything you asked of me. And because I said my cousin’s name ONCE… you threw me aside like a used tampon!” I was breathless, and couldn’t have said more even if I tried.

She was breathing as heavy as I was, though she hadn’t said a word. “You said her name, while you were cuming inside of me. You arched your back. You threw you head backward. You thrusted your dick as far as you could inside of me, and you came… and I came… and you said her name! Right at the moment when I was bringing you to the point of your orgasm, you said her name. Right when I was giving my body to you, you said her name. I was fucking you, Estefan!

“My parents taught me, over my entire life, to find a husband, to wait to have sex, and then – and only then – to make babies. Yet, there I was fucking! I wasn’t trying to make a baby. You and I weren’t married. We were fucking!

“And you know what? You know what makes it all the more worse?” She paused to catch her breath.

I didn’t move.

“I was enjoying it! I liked fucking you, because you were so good at it. Everything you did to me was wonderful. You made me want to question myself and my upbringing. You made me want to do things for myself. You made me strong enough to want to stand on my own two feet. You made me want to be my own person and not someone who’s constantly spoon-fed by her parents.

“Don’t you get what I’m trying to say?” She was distraught now, almost pleading for me to understand, but there was no need.

I knew exactly what she meant.

“And then you said her name.”

I felt myself slump to the floor. The edge of the bathtub was no longer sturdy enough to hold me and not let me fall. The whole room rumbled as my weight hit the floor. “I have no defense, Teezee. I have always loved her. When she was first out of diapers and could walk normal, she was captivating to me.

“But that doesn’t take away from what we had back then. Katie was taboo. You weren’t. Katie was a dream. You were, and could’ve been, my future. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think circumstances would be perfect enough to allow Katie and me to be together. I was ready to let all those earlier - younger - feelings go, because I believed in us.

“But, I made a mistake. Ok, Tirza, I admit it. I made a mistake.” Now, tears were threatening to fall down my cheeks. Sonofabitch! “I regret saying it, and not because being with Ramona was been bad or being with Katie is either. I regret it, because of what it did to the two of us. We had been friends so long before we finally got together. And when we did, when we became boyfriend and girlfriend, it just grew better day after day, week after week, month after month. I would’ve done anything for you, anything you asked.

“Finding it all gone, so fast, with such profound brutality, it tore a hole in me I have been trying to fill ever since.” I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop the tears. I was not going to cry in front of her. I’d be damned first. “I got lucky, though,” I went on looking up at her.

She was still on the toilets’ edge, her knees touching, her ankles spread wide, making her look pigeon-toed.

“I found Ramona and she made things easier. She made things seem less raw, less current and more past tense. I needed that more than anything at the time.” I stopped, because I had to. Otherwise, I would’ve broken down. I didn’t want to do that.

A long, thoughtful silence fell between us. All I could hear was her breathing and my heart thumping in my chest, making my ears ring.

“I was stupid, Estefan.”

I brought my head up to gaze at her once again.

“I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself or the situation. I didn’t do anything, but run away. I should’ve at least tried.” She was wringing her hands atop her knees.

“Twenty-twenty is a bitch, huh?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Her face was stricken, the jibe went unnoticed. She peered at me in earnest.

I could tell there was more she wanted to say, but something was holding her back. Her pride or maybe some inner fear, or both were preventing her. I was struggling to distinguish the feelings she wore in plain sight upon her visage.

“Well, at least, we can still be friends, right?” I asked, hopeful something good would come of this wretched conversation.

She stood in a rush.

The sudden movement took me aback, and I raised myself from the floor to the edge of the bathtub like before. My eyes searched her face, her demeanor, the way she stood, trying to comprehend what she was feeling.

She stared right at me, all sense of uncertainty and self-consciousness gone. “No, we can’t, Eff. We cannot be friends because, no matter how many times I tell myself otherwise, I’m still in love with you. And it fucking hurts so much!!!

“I can forgive you for being with your cousin, but I can’t, if you and I are intimate. And yet, I love you so much, I almost don’t care. It’s so confusing. I don’t know what to do!” She let go then, staggering against the counter, crying hard. Still, she tried with every ounce of strength she had within her not to make noise.

I bounded toward her, supporting her by an elbow, unsure if she was going to collapse or not.

She didn’t shy away from my touch. She stayed her ground for a moment or two before she turned into me and crushed me in a ferocious hug. “I love you, damn it!” she mumbled against my bare chest. “I want you so bad. I don’t know what to do, because every single one of those girls out there loves you too. It’s tearing me apart.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do, Estefan? I wasn’t raised this way. I’m not supposed to share a man with another woman and be okay with it.” She sniffled through her tears. “And here I find myself entertaining the idea of sharing you with four other women! What the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I so fucked up in my head? Why can’t I just walk away and say you’re a sick bastard for fucking your first cousin, and let it lie? Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I just recant my emotions and label you destined for hell? It would be sooo much easier. I could pound my Bible and disavow you and yours for all time. It’s not like many people wouldn’t disagree with me. Most of your own family would. Why can’t I do that? Why!” She shuddered in my arms as though she was in sub-zero temperatures. Her entire body shook to the marrow.

Then, she did the bravest thing I had ever seen her do.

She went on. “The answer is so simple, so agonizing, it’s vexing. It makes me seethe with rage, because I don’t want things to be this way. But, it doesn’t matter what I want or think. It’s what I feel that takes the cake. It has the final say and I am powerless against it.

“I love you so much. I’m willing to damn myself in the face of the church I love almost as much. But, nothing means more to me than you.” She looked up at me; her gaze was incredible, intense, like peering into the crushing void of a singularity. She drew me so fast, with such pugnacity, it was painful. “I have no family. I have no home. All I have is you. What am I going to do?”

“I told you before I will never leave you until you want me to.” I reminded her of my vow.

“I don’t want you to go,” she murmured. She made certain I believed her by brushing her lips against my chest.

“Good.”

“But,” she began, but her throat constricted and she was unable to speak for a few seconds. “But, h-how am I going to deal with all those girls? They love you too. They all do. I can see it. I don’t even need Ramona’s Mutation to know it for truth. How am I going to allow this to happen between you and me, and yet, not get jealous when one of them kisses you or wants to be intimate with you and you go off together? How am I supposed to deal with that when I don’t even know Sandy or Leda?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“I don’t! How they manage to do what they do and not get mad or jealous or feel left out is a complete mystery to me,” I said. I held her by either side of the head to kiss her upon the forehead.

“Don’t do that,” she warned.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I replied at once, frozen in her grasp.

Her voice remained stern. “Don’t ever kiss me like I’m your sister. If you want to kiss me, kiss me on the lips or don’t kiss me at all.”

I couldn’t believe how mad she was, but then…what? Had she just -?

She had!

I let the tension flow from me, relieved.

“Are you sure?”

“If there is one thing, in this whole fucked up world, I can be sure about, it is this,” she murmured, pulling me.

I bent down and kissed her on the lips, because my mama didn’t raise no fool. I was not going to let the opportunity pass. I still loved Tirza and I wasn’t going to let her slip away from me again. Not a chance.

Funny how I didn’t even realize the number of girls willing to share me had just increased to five.

Fucking Mona!

{ ¹The Grudge: a 2004 American/Japanese supernatural horror film, and the first installment in the American horrorfilm series of the same name. }

{ ²J-DAM: acronym for Joint Direct Attack Munition; is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs, or "dumb bombs" into all-weather "smart" munitions. }