The last guy I dated made me feel like something was missing. Not from us; from me.
I last saw him when we went to San Francisco. After telling myself that I would never get into a long-distance relationship, I did. We hadn’t seen each other for three months and decided to meet up in San Francisco out of convenience: his mother lived out there and he was visiting her for the holidays.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
After giving him early-morning head, I got dressed, walked out to the front of the hotel, and called my friend Iris.
“I haven’t felt insecure in years.” There was a silence on the phone. Well, Iris let out a sigh that dissolved into the silence. “We haven’t kissed once since we’ve been out here.”
An older white man walked by me, staring at my inevitably conspicuous nipples poking through my top.
I turned my back to the man and folded my arm across my chest. “It’s so cold here,” I said. San Francisco was a strange city to me. There was an inexplicable heaviness looming at every street corner, and the people pulled it with them as they scurried, strangely, leisurely, through the streets.
“I don’t like it out here,” I said, my voice was hushed. For some reason, I was worried someone was going to hear my confession and tell me to leave. Get out and don’t come back; there’s plenty of people who would feel overjoyed to be fifteen minutes from Fisherman’s Wharf. “I’m gonna go,” I said, interjecting my self, “I think he wants to walk around the city today.”
“You know what you have to do, right,” Iris said.
I was quiet. I didn’t have to do anything. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”