"we don't have to bury it"

Home alone tonight, almost all the way recovered from the cold that put me flat on my ass Friday morning. Abundance is doing startup things, Light's off with his D&D group.  The dog is being clingy, so I've stopped cleaning, but maybe I'll go back to it in a bit.

I thought about Egypt again the other day, trying to remember exactly how it all started.  The train of thought started with Asshat, because Light's headed to Slutcracker with Boisterous this Wednesday, and I still don't want to go because I associate it so strongly with Asshat possibly for no good reason. But I started thinking about people who are gone, and it twisted around to Egypt eventually.  And I remember so many weird little details, like his hand down my pants on my birthday and I'd worn ugly underwear because I was going out with my boss and my ex best friend's boyfriend and who needs sexy underwear for that.

And I remember that I didn't approve in the beginning, that when Red and I shared an apartment and she hooked up with him that first night, the same night that dude and I had a condom break and so she couldn't go get the morning after pill with me, and the dude bailed and I cried a bunch in a stairwell, because Tapestry was on the second floor (or maybe it was on the first floor, and I just needed to hide for a bit).  I remember curling up against the wall in our narrow llittle galley kitchen late that evening, I remember blaming everyone, her and the dude and him for her for not being there, I remember blaming myself for not having someone to be there.

And so when Egypt called all the times after that (Red and I had a single apartment phone, this was the late 90s), I was kind of a bitch to him.  Not because he'd done anything, but he was some sort of catalyst, that night was the beginning of the end of everything and I knew it in my bones, but maybe that's all retconning.  But I knew Red was leaving in all sorts of ways, and I knew that it was a little bit his fault and I didn't have to be nice to him.  And back then I tried to be nice to everyone, I tried to get everyone to like me, I thought there was some sort of safety in being a slutty cipher.  

And somehow, being an asshole turned into flirting, some weird sharpening our tongues on each other, but it wasn't ever going to happen.  Then I worked for him.  Then he was the only one who would go out with me on my birthday, and then we both put away waaaay too much booze, ended up naked in a rentalable by the hour hottub, then damp and smelling of chlorine at that bar with the purple felt pool tables, and then in front of my apartment in his gigantic car with our hands down each other pants.  And then there were all the moments after, notes dropped on my desk at work, invitations to his house in the wee hours of the morning, my first and only experience giving roadhead, kissing a stripper who was giving him a lap dance (at her explicit invitation), the occasional confusion he had between what he'd told me and what he'd told Red, me discontinuing wearing that hot topic glitter in my hair and my cleavage, him calling me crying about being a bad dad, calling me while handcuffed to the wall at the local police station after being picked up a cop who also was his high school friend.  He had a motorcycle that I never got to ride, these killer eyes and I'm not sure if I wanted him because he was older, because he was hers, because he made me feel like trash and I wanted the inside to match the outside. I kept hating myself for having fallen for someone that I had to wait around for, who I couldn't initiate contact with, who would go dark for days on end, sometimes weeks.

They're married now, Egypt and Red, they have a kid. I wonder if he ever told her about me. I wonder why his memory still shows up occasionally.   I wish there was someway to convince myself that I haunt as much as I am haunted.