The morning came sharply, sunlight shot through the window and the part of the blinds that was bent the wrong way. I opened my eyes, and noticed Joe hadn't been home last night. Then I heard the key in the door, and he walked in.
"Good morning, long night for Joe." I said, stetching.
"Hey, sleepy head, did I wake you?" Joe asked as he placed a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup on the kitchen area counter and then walked over to his shelving area to put most of the folders he was carrying into a drawer.
"Nope, the sunshine got me before you got here," I replied.
Joe sat down at the kitchen table and wrote something onto a piece of paper in the last of the folders, got up and put that into the drawer when he was through, and then walked over to get his coffee from the counter.
"Joe, the stuff you are doing with the cops, it's not going to get you killed or anything, right?" I asked. I don't know why I was asking such a dumb question, because there was no definite answer. I guess, looking back, I just wanted Joe to know I cared about him and worried sometimes that the things he did were just too risky. Looking back, I know he worried, for the same reasons, about things I did.
"It won't get me killed, but then again, it might, but I doubt it," Joe replied. "What time did you get home?"
"Around midnight, maybe twelve thirty or so," I replied, and lit a cigarette.
"Early night for Capri," he said.
"Well, I had stuff on my mind, I guess, and just wanted to lay down and think."
Joe looked at me and lit a cigarette himself. "Everything ok?"
"Yeh, it's ok, it's just, well, weird and I'm not sure what I'm feeling, I guess."
Joe got up and came over to the bed. "Tell me about it," he said, as he took off his shoes and pants.
"Well, there's this guy," I started to say.
"As soon as you said you weren't sure what you were feeling, I knew a guy was involved," Joe chuckled.
"Or a girl," I laughed.
"Oh?" Joe chuckled deeper.
I winked at Joe. "Anyways, this guy, I don't know who he is or why he's come into the picture as he has, but he did, and he's now on my mind a lot. He just, well, he seems to want something from me but it doesn't seem like something I can give to him, or maybe it's just that he likes to make me feel vulnerable."
"Is he a client?" Joe asked.
"Nope. That's the thing, he knows what I do, he could get that, actually, he wouldn't even have to pay," I said. Joe made a gasping noise and said "HEY! Now, that's not FAIR!" and we both laughed.
"It's something else, Joe, it's like he's drawing me to want to know him more or something. And how in the heck should I feel about it? Aside from a little bit scared and confused, I'd like to just figure this out quickly."
"I'll tell you what's going on. It's not him, it's you," Joe said bluntly.
"Me? I didn't do anything, I was just sitting there, he's the one that keeps driving by. Stopping and looking at me. Asking me if I want to smoke some weed with him. But there's other things he's asking that aren't being said with words, and I got this, well, this premonition I guess you could call it, I don't know, this feeling that something about him, something with him, he's going to change my life, and I can feel that coming, and I don't feel ready but at the same time feel like I'm not supposed to walk away or run away from any of it."
For absolutely no reason, I started to cry. Joe leaned over to hug me.
"This is not good, why am I crying?" I asked Joe.
"Because you're more ready than you think," Joe replied.
"I'm not, Joe. I'm happy with things as they are," I said and wiped my eyes with my hand.
"You're just a happy person, but you're also a person who has been content to feel things around you without feeling them inside you to the core, the place this guy, somehow, damn him, has reached. But, again, it's got more to do with you being ready than him entering the picture."
"I'm sorry, Joe, I didn't mean to bring this all up with you," I said, knowing that Joe and I had become as close as a vet and a hooker could be, under the circumstances of both of our lifetimes.
"I'm glad you did, and I'm happy you're going to be moving on, and when you do, I know you'll be happier than you've ever been," Joe said, as he hugged me a little harder.
"I should go to Ohio for a few days," I said.
"Run away all you want, Capri, but eventually you'll have to get on a plane back home, alive and with no other options but to stay where you are, feel what you feel, and sometimes that means giving up some things and allowing other things to have a chance."
I held back the rest of my tears, and let them go in the shower, after I gave Joe a slow blowjob to help him drift off to sleep.
The apartment was crowded and smelled like mildew, dust and bananas. A wooden bowl of over-ripened fruit in the middle of a 70s style kitchen table with orange-back chairs appeared to be glowing a soft light of pale yellow, as I sat staring at it from the couch, stoned out of my fucking mind.
"Tony," he said, his hand on my knee, "can we use your room?"
I figured a bedroom would be the best place to be, for the things I knew how to do, knew how to give, but he wasn't exactly looking for just that from me. I should have known, but didn't, probably because the pot was so strong, and my senses were off, but once he got me into the room, and we both lay upon a very worn comforter, he began to ask me question after question.
"Why do you do what you do?"
"How old are you?"
"Don't you feel dirty?"
"Don't you want more?"
I'd been asked all these questions before in my life, but somehow, coming from him, I wasn't capable of giving my straight-forward, rational, well thought out and long, firm answers. I answered in one word answers. "Just because." "Eighteen." "No." "I have everything I want or need."
"Are you happy?" he asked me.
"Yes, I am," I said, and that's when he kissed me.
And I thought, good, now we can just get these clothes off and stop all of this wondering, and we'll just have at it and we'll have a great time, and maybe we'll do this once in a while and that will be that.
But that wasn't that, and what happened wasn't having at it, it was having in it, having around and inside it, having lightly touched surfaces go so deep when, with such delicateness, you'd think it not logical.
And I could not stop touching his face with my hands. And I thought, man, that was some great pot, and that's the only reason I'm feeling any of this, most likely, just some really good pot, that's it, and that's ok, ride with it.
But hours later, outside on the stone wall that seems to mark the middle of Acushnet Avenue, yet usually ends up the end destination of cars, motorcycles, vans full of headbangers and concert groupies, dealers and whores... we talked, quietly, surrounded by the loudness of the city noise.
And it was peaceful. And the high was long gone. And I didn't want him to leave. And I wanted to just stay, to watch the sunrise. And so we did.
We drove to the beach and took pictures of seagulls and a sunrise that, when I look now at those pictures, not faded at all, I remember why so many choices were made back then, all those years ago, and I think it all made sense. Even when I didn't want it to make sense, when I didn't think I was ready, it just did and I was.