Every single night in bed
A black cross says “Perhaps you’re getting better
I’d like to thank you for efforts
To promote what really matters
Whenever you’re about to fall
Remember this, it’s not a news flash.
Don’t pretend to know it all, but go ahead
Call it a cocoon crash
What I really see in you
Is nothing like the things you do
As you are doing them right now
What you would really love to win
To become the air as well as trash
To get rid of all your skin
Go ahead, call it a cocoon crash
Call it what you will, call it what you will
Go ahead, call it a cocoon crash”
Suddenly the ego that I used to have
Is no bigger than an eyelash
Clearly I remember someone told me,
“Hold on tight, here’s your cocoon crash
-Cocoon Crash by K's Choice
Chapter 1:
So five years ago I told this guy, well the guy really, the big love of my life guy, that I wasn’t done baking. That I couldn't have a relationship and expect it to work until I figured out who I was.
I didn’t really mean it.
I was just trying to get rid of him. Not really sure why I wanted to get rid of him. Probably because I was trying to avoid all relationship issues at the time.
So I sent the big hunk away, out of my life with some sort of vague wait for me promise, and went home to the other guy. The not the love of my life guy the. . . well the other guy. I don’t really know how to describe Spike, never did. The first word to come to mind was always annoying. But maybe also devoted, and vulnerable, okay, and if you really twist my arm I’d admit that total hottie also comes to mind.
But I’m getting sidetracked. Neither of them are the point. The point is that the smartest thing I’ve probably ever said, the whole cookie dough not done baking thing, was said just to get my ex out of my hair so I could save the world. The point is, I didn’t listen to my own advice.
So a year and a half later when I met Sam, who had just gotten his MBA and was touring Europe before settling into his first real job, well we hooked up, traveled together, and after three months of vacationing together got married.
Can you spot my mistake? Never marry a guy you’ve only been on vacation with. It’s important to see the human male in his natural environment.
Not that Sam was messy, or mean, or well anything all that negative when we got back to the U.S. He was just, not so fun. He had his big important job climbing the corporate ladder and he just didn’t seem so trendy and fun anymore. I know, that sounds kind of shallow but the real point is that he was normal. So. Amazingly. Normal.
It’s what I always wanted. To be normal. Not to have to put my life on the line everyday. Maybe if we’d gone slower, not gotten married, just moved in together things might have gone better. Sam really was a nice guy. Maybe if I’d gotten an early taste of normal, tried to make my own life in the middle of all the normal I could have done it. But I didn’t, I just moved into his life, his friends, his job.
I’d thought of going back to school, finally getting a degree in something, but it was too late to apply for the current semester when we were first married. By the time I could have gone back to school, I had a career. Sam’s career. I was helping him up that corporate ladder. There were always parties to host and Sam always needed things done, he didn’t have a secretary yet. So I sort of became his secretary.
There just didn’t seem to be much time for me to pursue my interests. Not that I knew what my interests were. Besides, we’d talked about trying to have kids after our first anniversary. We didn’t. We’d talk about it, but I was already starting to feel less than satisfied with the way things were going. I was scared to bring kids into a marriage that maybe wasn’t going to last.
So eventually I did go back to school.
I got my degree in English. Weird I know, but I didn’t know what to study. I tried to think of something academic that I liked and that was pretty hard. It’s not like I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was still definitely cookie dough. But then I remembered back when I had quit college to take care of my mom, I was taking this poetry class I really liked. There was also him, the other guy, Spike.
Our last night we slept together in my basement. I mean that literally, all we did was sleep. But before we fell asleep in each others arms, we talked. I thought I was going to die in the morning. I think he knew he was going to die, which to be honest, if I’d thought about that amulet I would have known too. But denial is an old and dear friend of mine, especially when the world's about to end.
So we talked, and I realized that he knew all kinds of stuff about me, stuff that I would die from embarrassment if anyone else ever found out about. I told him it wasn’t fair, that I should get to have a secret of his. Something he couldn’t stand the others knowing about.
After some wheedling (and tickling) he gave in. He told me that all that stuff about him always being bad and tough, was a load of crap, and that when he was human he was actually a poet.
“No, really,” I said, “I want to know about you.”
But he insisted, and to prove he’d been a poet, he started reciting poetry to me. Not his own. He said that no power on earth would ever get him to reveal any of his compositions to me. But other stuff. Keats, Eliot, Shakespeare, and even some Dickinson just to show that he knew poems by girls too.
When he recited poetry, his voice changed. His accent rose by about five social classes and he almost sounded like Giles. Except Giles’ voice was never so sexy or velvety. I rested my head against his chest, closed my eyes, and felt the vibrations move through his whole body as he recited love poems to me.
Most of them I didn’t know and I forgot, only to be reminded when I’d run across them in class years later. But one poem I did remember, or rather I remembered enough of it to ask Giles about it. It was Emily Dickinson:
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
It was the last two lines I remembered. “Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.” The sort of thing that makes you wonder if this Emily girl died twice and was resurrected by her meddling friends.
But I digress. (See I’m an English major now, so I can say things like that, although many of my professors were as convinced as Giles that what I speak isn’t English). The point is, I like poetry, and so I became an English major. The major of people who haven’t figured out what they want to do with their lives. Okay, I suppose that’s really Philosophy, but English is a close second.
I finished my degree, but I was still Buffy Anne Summers Adams. (Yes, my husband’s name is Sam Adams. His parents were Quakers and didn’t know they were naming their son after a beer.) Things weren’t that bad, and everyone always said that marriage is a work in progress. So I was trying.
We started talking about having kids again now that I was done with school, and not really looking for a job. But all the old fears were still there. I just wasn’t happy and what if a kid made it worse? On the other hand, there was something missing, and maybe that’s what it was.
I knew I should just leave him. He deserved better. We both did. But it’s funny, you put on that ring and suddenly there’s this huge gravitational pull on your life. It’s not easy to break out of. I remember once wondering why Xander was so terrified of marriage. He always went on about it being forever, but it’s not like it’s that hard to get a divorce. Still here I was, stuck in a marriage I wasn’t happy with and what was I doing about it? Not much.
So one day I was doing the grocery shopping and decided to pick up a copy of Cosmo. Or any magazine that said something like, “The 10 Things He Wished you Did in Bed,” or “Five New Ways to Please Your Man.” Not that I needed the advice. I knew tons of stuff we’d never tried, never even talked about trying. On the other hand some of that stuff, well all of that stuff, I’d learned from a vampire, so I wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t freak out a normal guy.
Not to mention we’d been married for several years now, so I thought I need an explanation of how this stuff had occurred to me. He didn’t know about Spike, and there was no way I could explain Spike to him. Sam knew nothing about me being the Slayer, just that I had weird friends and my hometown had been swallowed by an earthquake.
So I scanned the magazine racks in the supermarket hoping that different sex would solve some of our problems. That’s when I saw the cover of Rolling Stone. It had one of those captions that are supposed to grab you and make you want to read what’s inside, “Who is John Doe?” in big dramatic type, which I thought was a particularly dumb question. But I was only thinking about that because I didn’t want to think about the guy on the cover.
He had curly brown hair, but it was bleached at the tips. A look I thought of as “Crazy in the High School Basement.” He stood against a white background, a guitar slung over his back, his legs spread apart, and his hips jutting forward. His thumbs were hooked through the belt loops of his faded jeans and his fingers framed his crotch. If it wasn’t bad enough that the whole photo seemed to emphasize that part of him, he had this look in his blue eyes which said, “Come on, you know you want to suck my cock.”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t that explicit a look, but I knew him. I could here his voice teasing me, “See something you like, pet?” And he did look smug, smug and sexy; vintage Spike. Except that it couldn't be Spike because Spike was dead. I'd watched him die in a big blaze of glory.
And besides, what would Spike be doing on the cover of Rolling Stone anyway?
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!