November 27, 2009

SAM SHARPE

Beth answered her door wearing fitted brown slacks and a slinky camisole that clung gloriously to her torso. She looked just as beautiful as she did the last night that I saw her. Beth was glowing. All I could think about was kissing her lips.

“Scotch, on the rocks, very little ice…right?” she said as I hung up my jacket.

I was impressed. She remembered how I liked my drinks. Beth and I had dated for about eight months during my third year at university. The relationship was brief but relatively intense. At the time, she wasn’t anything special. Her body was pretty nice, but I think her face would be most accurately categorized as “reasonable” (or as Skye would say, she was “walkable”).

As I sat down, I reflected on how we reconnected—me staggering drunkenly into my neighbourhood watering hole and bumping into Beth and a group of her friends. She looked sweeter than she ever did when we dated years before.

Beth returned from the kitchen and handed me a glass. I took a sip, leaned back and exhaled deeply.

“Don’t get too comfortable, we’re going out dancing. I wanna see if you’ve still got the moves or if after all this time without me in your life you’ve slipped a notch or two,” she said with a glint in her eyes that was equal parts challenge and come on.

After an evening of pressing our bodies together on the dance floor, Beth and I lurched out of the elevator and stumbled down the hallway towards her apartment. Before we could get all the way through the front door she had her tongue in my mouth and was separating me from my shirt. We made our way to her bedroom so smoothly it almost seemed choreographed, slipped between the sheets and proceeded to become reacquainted with each other.

I awoke to the sound of Beth singing ‘Killing Me Softly’. She always did have an amazing voice. I could smell bacon. Man, I’d forgotten how much Beth liked to pamper a man.  There’s a reason why scores of people believe that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—because there’s a lot of truth in it (see the Power of Five). As I lay there in my boxers I laughed with myself. How fuckin’ lucky was I? I just spent the night with this gorgeous chick, who was now throwing down in the kitchen and based on what she told me last night while we were busy doing a little shake shake shake, there was plenty more goodness in store.

Feeling energized, I hopped out of bed, flung on a t-shirt and made my way to the kitchen. Beth was still singing and humming. I walked into the kitchen as she was taking the bacon out of the frying pan. As I approached she turned to greet me. I froze. She looked nothing like the girl I’d spent the night with before.

The sweet, smooth mocha skin from last night—gone, by the light of day it was blotchy and uneven. Those tender brown eyes—couldn’t see them through the thick (picture the glass used to make coca cola bottles) lenses of her glasses. I mean goddamn. I’m sure she could see the past and the future with those things. And her hair? Don’t get me started on her hair. At least her mouth still looked the same, but it was hard to focus.

So hard to focus in fact that I didn’t realize that there was sound coming out of her mouth and that I was staring blankly.

“Sam…. Sam…. do you want butter or margarine?”

It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts.

“B..b…butter…please.”

As we sat down to eat I couldn’t stop wondering who snuck into Beth’s apartment between last night and this morning and…and…and to put it mildly fucked her up. She didn’t look like Salma Hayek when we dated previously, but she didn’t look like a female version of Shrek either.

And who was that person I was with last night?

“What are you thinking about, you’re awfully quiet?”

I’m plotting my escape! “Nothing much, just tired.”

It wasn’t one of my proudest moments, but I ended up concocting some convoluted excuse to explain my hurried departure and then caught the next train out of town. I spent the four hour journey vacillating between beating myself up for being a superficial prick and consoling myself (I probably should have been consoling Beth) with the thought that you can’t choose what you’re attracted to. And I’ve always been attracted to natural, fresh-faced girls (lots of makeup tends to turn me off), not women whose looks were reliant on makeup and styling.

When I got home and was unpacking my things, I noticed that there were brown, powdery stains on the shirt I was wearing when Beth and I had gone dancing. It was foundation. Parts of whatever she had on her face, were now on my shirt. I dumped the shirt in my hamper, slumped onto my bed and went to sleep.

—

When I see a woman on the street or on television who “appears” to be gorgeous, I reserve judgement. No woman will hear me say “You’re beautiful”, unless I’ve seen ‘em first thing in the morning.

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