Another Skaldthetical, naturally, once again brought you by the Coalition to Write This While Waiting for Lunch to Arrive. Let’s sAee if I can do it.
Today’s story stars Andrea, an ostensibly lesbian woman of about 30. I write “ostensibly” lesbian because, while Andrea hasn’t touched a cock since college, she’s not opposed to it on a visceral level. She calls herself lesbian rather than bi partly because of politics, partly because it’s less likely to get her unwelcome attention from jerkwads, and partly just to be ornery–not because there’s no man on the planet who can get her motor running. Not that it’s often an issue: Andrea is decidedly ordinary looking and rarely garners masculine attention.
Which brings us to Andrea’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Alexander. Alexander is about the same age as Andrea and made of hotness, reliably attracting amorous attention wherever he goes. By all accounts, Alexander is exclusively gay (though in fact Andrea has never actually asked him if he has any appreciation for the female form) and quite … studly, shall we say. Certainly he’s extremely confident; men and women both flock to him, and he never blinks at approaching a man he’s interested in. But Alexander also clearly loves Andrea. He once beat the crap out of a guy who got handsy with her at a party and refused to back off; when Andrea had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, it was Alexander who ran red lights getting her there, and when she woke up from surgery, he was sitting beside her bed in rumpled clothing, holding her hands; he’d stayed up all night out of worry, and his eyes were wet from crying. (She’s done similar things for him, incidentally, though nothing quite so dramatic.)
Being best friends and neighbors, Andrea and Alexander spend a great deal of time together, and both being officially uninterested in the other one’s naughty bits, they’re fairly casual about clothes and nudity around one another. So when Alexander dropped by one recent Friday night to talk, Andrea, fresh out of the shower, didn’t bother getting dressed beyond throwing on a robe. They sat in her living room at opposite ends of the sofa, and for no particular reason reason she placed her bare feet on his lap as he told her why he was there. He’d recently gotten not one but two job offers: one a promotion with his current company, the other a somewhat higher paying gig in a city thousands of miles away. He was torn about which to take?
“Why?” Andrea asked. “Sounds like the Toronto gig is a no-brainer: more money, more responsiblity, more of all the things you want. And you hate Memphis.”
“Not completely,” Alexander replied, absent-mindedly rubbing her ankle as he spoke. “Not everything about it. I have friends here, you know.”
“You’ll make friends anywhere you go,” Andrea said. “And you’ll get laid just as often.”
“Maybe. And maybe I’m just being stupid. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid of leaving home. Maybe it’s something I can’t articulate. I don’t know.”
“Well, I know. I’m gonna give you the same advice my best friend from high school gave me when I left New Orleans. It is time to leave nest. Go west, young man!”
Alexander stopped rubbing her ankle. He looked at her, nodded, and said, “You’re probably right. I don’t have to decide till Monday morning. Anyway, I’m off to the Pumping Station. Wanna come with?”
“People at the Pumping Station generally want partners with plumbing I lack,” Andrea said.
“Generally, yes. See you at brunch Sunday!”
With that he left. Andrea got up to go to bed. But Morpheus did not join her. She couldn’t forget Alex’s smell, or the feeling of hishand stroking her ankle. Suddenly the notion of Alex being any further away than the apartment next door was terrifying. In fact she wanted him a lot closer–in the space Morpheus was refusing to occupying, in fact. She was in love.
That realization was Friday night. It is now Sunday noon, and Andrea is sitting at her usual table at Brother Juniper’s, where she and Alexander always have brunch on Sundays. She just saw his car pull up outside. When he takes his seat, what should she say to him?
No poll today. The burgers are here.
