Stealing from friends' lives

I was inspired to write the final exercise for this week from something a guy told me about, when we went on a dinner date. (Well, I thought it was a date; he thought it was just two friends going to see a movie and have dinner. Ho hum.) He told me about a relationship he’d had with a Spanish guy, and I thought “Wow, good idea for a story.” We were supposed to do our exercise based on a song we liked, but this piece came out instead. I almost HAD to write it. Am I stealing from other people’s lives when I do this? Anyway, he loved the story when I sent it to him, so I guess that's OK. But what if he had hated it? What if it made him angry?

Week 2, number 5, "From a song..."

Whenever Carlos asked me if I wanted him to stay here in Australia, I always said “Don’t stay for me, stay for yourself.” Eventually, after a number of such conversations, he left. Mother said to me afterwards, “I guess that was a really important lesson for you to learn.”

She loved Carlos to pieces. Unreservedly. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she saw him as the father of many potential coal-haired grandchildren. But I think she also loved him more generally, just for being such a good man, especially in contrast to my fuckwit drunk of a father. And of course I was crazy for Carlos too. But what I couldn’t abide was my need for him. I desperately needed not to need anyone, and this was a huge battle for me. I guess you could say that Carlos was simply the battlefield and my broken heart was collateral damage.

On the night of my last don’t-stay-for-me declamation, Carlos was wearing that pale green T-shirt that we bought together in Bondi. I remember the way the black hairs on his forearm stood up in a kind of ruff and silver glint off his watch. He was the sexiest man I have ever known. I still dream about having sex with him again, usually in kitchen, for some odd reason.

Something subterranean shifted that night, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. Three weeks later Carlos announced that he was going back to Spain. In response I was all solicitous concern and mature understanding. Now, I can’t think of this without cringing. His eyes that night were those of a serious little boy, dark and speculative. I could have saved us, even then. But instead of begging him to stay, I hung him out to dangle in the cold, where I was also freeze-drying my heart.

I had an email from him four months ago, telling me that he got a good job near his parents in Alicante. I hear on the grapevine he’s got an English girlfriend with big tits and red hair. I wonder if she asks him whether he wants her to stay in Spain. I wonder what he says in return.