MODERN DI$PARITY: Prologue, scene 1
Prologue
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1
It was July 7, 2007, when I moved from Iowa to Malibu and began an affair with a woman eighteen years my senior. She was married with a child, but beautiful for any age and an incredible fuck. My apartment had an uninterrupted view of the ocean and I spent more money than I made. I would be a liar if I told you it was anything less than glorious.
I slid into a job a few months out of college as an assistant editor for a high-profile magazine for the rich and famous and anyone who wished they were. My first day on the job one of the interns gave me her number. That Friday night after work, following a few drinks and very little effort, she blew me on the balcony of my apartment as I stared across the ocean and the night—an expensive cognac in my hand, a cheap cigarette hanging from my lip, and the August moon illuminating the moving water’s endless nuances, the breathing of the waves and the wet sounds of the intern’s mouth enveloping any silence that might have otherwise crept into the evening.
Several weeks later, the escapade with this married woman began. She flirted with me while I had been standing on my balcony enjoying the fading sun of a Malibu weekend, an imported beer, and a phone conversation with a girl who would never really love me—but who I loved irrevocably. The married woman and an equally blond, equally beautiful friend of hers approached the paved parking area below me. Yelling up to where I stood, she introduced herself, so I told the unrequited love of my life that I would have to call her back. When I closed my cell phone and asked the two women what they were up to, the flirtatious one replied she was flirting. She then came up to my apartment, gave me her number, kissed me on the cheek, and left. The following Thursday we blew lines off each other’s bodies and fucked for several hours. It would be an understatement to say her sexual hunger was unequivocal.
Her name was Cali. The girl on the phone who would never really love me, her name was Sadie. They were both beautiful and both perturbed me in their own remarkable ways: Cali so desperate to pour her passion into me; Sadie so reluctant to let me pour mine into her. It is now only with an amalgam of longing, self-loathing, and regret that I think upon the few exquisite moments Sadie let me close to her, the handful of kisses she allowed me, and the cool, sweet taste of her mouth. I cannot tell you what a downright depressing feeling it is to be always caught between too much and not enough. But I guess that’s the drag and pull of the world today—and who the hell am I to fight so bravely against the current?
