Letter From a Hunter to Her Lover, Left on the Bar at 2AM
I have something to show you before the end of the night. I want to show it
to you personally. I want to see what it means to you.
This is what happens when you play like we play. People are bound to leave,
to get hurt, to decide that the game is over and cash in. People are bound to
trade an arm, a leg, a heart for freedom. They are prepared to make the
necessary maneuvers to ensure survival. Survival is all that human beings
know. The fittest survive. The fittest are the hunters.
You have made me a hunter. You are a gatherer and I am the hunter. It seems
funny how our gender roles have reversed- but I am not bringing back what I
have caught this time. This time, it is mine, something I have wanted,
someone I have wanted for years, and more, and more, more. But you knew that.
That’s why you chose her. Didn’t you think something like this would happen?
You choose strangers. That is what you are supposed to do. There is an
outline to our behavior. There is a formula. You must keep with the formula,
or everything else falls.
The formula is this:
1. Before hand, we agree to meet at a certain bar at a certain time.
2. We get there separately.
3. We meet, perhaps in a bathroom, the stairs, a dark corner.
4. We take what we want from each other.
5. You take the locket from my neck, the one that I know is mine,
for I have sealed inside it a lipstick thumbprint from my own hand.
6. We part. We leave separately from the bathroom/stairs/dark corner.
7. We watch each other.
8. You pick the girl. She is someone that we do not know.
9. You make sure I see you give her the locket and disappear.
10. I buy her a drink. We may dance.
11. I take her home. We take what we want from each other.
12. I get the locket back.
13. You and I meet back in the bar and go home. You take what you want from me.
These are the rules. This is the formula. This is the control that I let you
play out with me, and I have never faltered in my loyalty and obedience.
This time it was different. You broke the rules. You did not follow the
formula.
This is what happens:
There is music. There are 4 shots of crown sitting in my stomach, a woman in
front of me I have wanted all my life. There is sweat, and there is her
breath on my neck. There are hands on my waist, pulling me off the dance
floor. There is a voice in my ear saying, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
There is stumbling on the street, there is the scratch of a cab’s rough
backseat on my bare arms as we crush ourselves into the purring monster.
There are giggles; there is the taste of salt and sweat in my mouth, on my
tongue. There is unlocking of doors.
There is me pushing her inside, forcing my tongue in her mouth, alcohol in my
gut. There is her pushing back, meeting me halfway. There is a tearing off of
clothes, urgency tripping out bodies up as we hop across the floor. There is
smoothness to her skin I cannot describe, nor have ever felt before. There is
more, there is more, more.
There is the scream, the covering of eyes at the thought of leaving you, at
the thought of knowing that it must be done, that your form of loyalty may be
a prison. There is pain knowing I can no longer take what I want from you,
for you do not have what I want to take. There is the scream that follows
when finding out who she is. Who she is to you.
There is death. We have become a death to each other. It is because of you.
You chose her. You chose her. You.
So I will show you what I mean by a small death. I will show you what I mean
by sickness, by a desire to lead. A choice that leads to the end of something
tarnished which can only be described as mercy. I know why you chose her now
– that every small pain that is given bleeds for revenge, to stay open a bit
longer, that a pain never closes that was left open by desire.
This is the time when I will tell you, show you, when I am still wrapped in
the warmth of her smell, imagining her bed. Now, when I see you as you are
etched upon my mind as you will be, forever and always, without the
resignation of guilt or silence. I want to remember you confident, a fool,
sick, dependent on a hunter, the fittest. I want to remember you as cruel, as
you are.
I will not have you. You would have me choose you – leave her in the dust as
I have left all the others, given my loyalty only to you with the stamp of
“love” plastered to a notion more closely resembling codependence and safety.
Your confidence is not a mask you can hide behind. I can see the shape of
you, smothering in the dark, pressed to the floor in fright. I now understand
why you wanted to use me. Why you wanted her smell on my fingers as you trace
my body with your hands in the darkness.
I won’t be coming home tonight, holding hands with you under the streetlamps,
drunk and smelling of another woman. I won’t be coming home any night. This
time, I am not bringing back what I have been given, what I have caught.
My hands are empty. My locket is gone.
This time, I will not feed you with the sweat from my body.
Olivia Carteaux lives in the triangle area of North Carolina. She graces the
airwaves with her voice, gets people who have more money than you do to give
you free stuff, and serves fish to you and your kids in a lovely restaurant
setting. She also writes, a bit. She has a college education, but if you ask
to see her BA she might accuse you of trying to get fresh. Her work has
appeared in other places besides this, but you needn't concern yourself with
that, love.
