Part 35

Posted by Barbanne on September 21, 2002 at 23:21:54:

PART THIRTY FIVE


RELATIONSHIPS




I was sitting at the front reception desk, pounding the keyboard of my PC unaware of just what I was writing as a turmoil of thoughts raged in my brain.
I had lain awake last evening waiting for Alex to return, my head filled with thoughts enough to make me quite frantic.
Why had he gone out with Sibyl?
Was it, (I was half convinced of this) that he was reacting to my promiscuous and hateful behaviour toward him.
Why did I think I had some demand on his love?
Why had I acted as I had, rutting like some oversexed cat, why had I fucked with Dave and allowed myself to seek and take pleasure with any and everyone of either sex?
I was crap and I was being punished for it.
Maybe my harping and insistence on doing sets my way when I knew Alex had his own ideas which didn't include my promiscuity? Maybe that was it?
Was it that Sibyl, witch that she was, had enslaved him with some spell and had him in her thrall.
And then the cruelest thought of all. Maybe in the gorgeous Sybil he saw a beautiful and fascinating woman the like of which I could never be.
He had just plain fallen out of love with me.
I was in agony.
I had sort of stopped seeing Candice, thinking myself cured, but realised I needed her now.
I tossed and turned, my head filled with thoughts.
Then, when finally I heard Alex come home I feigned sleep, too cowardly and frightened to face him. He came in to where I lay and bent over and kissed me, first on the forehead and then on the mouth but I pretend snored throughout.
After he had left I resumed tossing and turning tortured by my conscience.
And now I sat here typing nonsense and still punishing myself.
I was a creepy little shit but I loved Alex and wanted him back.
In a rational moment I realised I wasn't even sure I had lost him.
One date that's all he had had.What made me think that was so devestating?
I am a mass of insecurity and self hate and I knew, I KNEW, that he had seen sense and dumped me.
I was crying without thinking of it, tears coursing down my face trailing dark smudges of mascara and leaving me looking like a clown with water works.
I was a mess.


I deserved everything I got.
And then he came up behind me and said, "Hi Barb, what are you up to?"
"Erm typing some stuff," He leaned over to look at it and I covered up the nonsense on the screen as best I could. Then despite not wanting to do it, thinking I mustn't say it, I blurted out, "D'you have a nice night?" and then without waiting for an answer, "You going out with Sibyl again?"
"Yes Barb and I think yes."
The tears ran like Niagara.
"I'll see you later," said Alex and left.
I decided I would kill myself.
I would leave, go, get out of here, go back to waitressing. Nobody wanted me anyway, nobody liked me, they never had.
Nadine came in.
"Hi Barb, how's it hanging?"
"None of your business."
Looking hurt she said, "Sorry I asked," and scooted inside.
Kathy came in.
"Don't ask," I snapped.
She looked at me like one does a rabid dog and walked on by.
Dave came in.
"They're inside," I said.
"Barb," he said, "I want to talk to you about........................"
Then he saw the tears I couldn't stop and he mumbled, "Maybe later," and followed the girls inside.
I got out of my program, got up and went inside and walked past where they were having coffee and went into my bedroom and fell on my bed and howled into the pillow.
Then after that was out of me I got up, wiped my nose on my sleeve and collected my bag and walked out again and said, "I'm leaving. I'm going out to look for a real job," and stormed out slamming the door behind me.


I came back with a waitressing job at the Fortune Court chinese restaurant starting that evening at six and had seen a place I could move into, a bed sit with hot and cold running roaches, for eighty bucks a week.
When I walked back into Playdead Nadine was dead on the floor strangled by Kathy who together with Deborah was stripping her corpse while Jas, and Laurise stood nearby, Sherilee already lay naked and dead and trussed up like a fowl waiting to be joined by Nadine. It was a girl gangster thing I had written weeks earlier and Dave and Alex were filming it as a team, Dave operating the camera and Alex directing.
"Barb," said Jas, "Hi, where you been?"
I walked straight past her, grim faced, seething and hurting and determined not to share anything with anyone.
"Barb?" said Alex.
I stomped into my bedroom and started packing a bag with my miserably meagre stuff.
I was in my pissed off mood and filled with self pity and seething with the loneliness of wanting not to be wanted.
"Barb?"
Alex was standing behind me in the open doorway.
"What?"
"What are you doing? Where do you think you're going?"
"Away from here."
"Oh and why?"
"I'm neither wanted nor needed anymore."
"BARBANNE!"
It was a roar and I jumped despite myself. I turned around, eyes narrowed and mouth tight and my jaw jutting forward.
"I am so sick and tired of you," shouted Alex and I could see that everyone else was watching us, killing and dying forgotten and Jas and Laurise open mouthed and fascinated by this totally unexpected outburst from Alex.
"You are such a bloody drama queen. I know life hasn't always been perfect for you and I know you've put up with stuff from childhood on that would have broken many others and I sympathise. I also know you are imaginative and clever with ideas and words but you are also the most frustratingly difficult and self opiniated and pig headed, self destructive little bitch I have ever known. Sorry I shouldn't have said bitch but God woman you damned well get under my skin."
"I'm......................"
"Shut up I haven't finished. You know your problem Barbanne?"
"I........................."
"That's right you! That's all you ever think about. YOU! You're incapable of letting others in. You're so bloody independent and self contained and buttoned up when what you really want and NEED I might say is to let someone into your life. Let me into your life. Let me help you. Confide in me. LET ME LOVE YOU."
"I....................," he stood staring at me breathing hard, "what about.......you and, you know, Sibyl."
"Sibyl and I are working on a new approach to some of what we do at Playdead. An approach that uses her unique talents. It has nothing to do with you and me. I love you Barbanne. I have for months. I want you and I want you to want me, need me."
"You're just saying that. Anyway its too late."
He roared like some sort of primal roar.
The others were gob smacked.
He grabbed me and lifted me up like I was a child and tossed me over his knees and I shrieked, "What are you doing? Let me go you bully, put me down." and then he hoicked my skirt up and pulled my panties down and hit me with the flat of his hand and I screamed, "Don't you dare," but he was impervious to my screams and kept on smacking me and I heard gasps and then Jas said, "Give it to her Alex," and they were laughing and clapping and whistling and I was crying and damn it, those big whacks with the flat of his hand were stinging like mad, and then, along with the others, I was laughing, giggling hysterically and then the pressure inside me became intolerable and an emotional dam burst, a dam that had been holding me back for years, stopping me from letting myself accept anyone, stopping me from loving and, with tears of happiness and pain pouring down my face, I twisted around and grabbed him and hugged him and kissed him.
He enfolded me and I became totally boneless. Just sagged helplessly in his embrace like a child of two or three years.
I accepted fully that I couldn't do it alone, that I needed help, that I needed someone to share with and I was so incredibly happy. I was laughing, hiccuping, crying and the others were laughing too, although I don't think they were quite sure what it was all about. Then Jas was behind me and she hoicked my panties back onto my bum and said, "Jeez Barb, you're going to have one mother of a red backside love."
I didn't care I just wanted to hold Alex and never let him go.
He seemed a bit amazed at the whole thing including his part in all of it.
I got off of his lap and tweeked my dress down and said, "I'll wait upstairs until you're finished.
I walked slowly up into his flat aware that every eye was following me.


Later that evening I lay in Alex's arms and I whispered to him that at last I knew what it was to truly love someone.
I turned to him and rolled my top down and said, "Whatever you want take it."
He pulled me to him and said, "You have mistaken sex for love for too long my darling. Not that that means you're going to get out of anything, oh no, sex and your fiendish games are something we've only started to explore, but for now all we need is to be close. Close and together."
I made little kitten noises and snuggled into his arms. Still quite boneless, my body feeling like warmed honey and my mind aflame with everything tomorrow promised.