Welcome to the next installment of this ongoing series. I decided to go ahead and keep writing and see where it takes me. As always, any similarities to anything you may have seen or heard before is a complete accident.
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I slowly became accustomed to the 'new normal.'
Most people wouldn't mind the new normal, really. I was with Emily, my best friend since I was 15 years old. Despite everything that happened between us, our relationship blossomed rapidly. It was everything I imagined it might be. It was indeed a steady stream of baseball, 80's movies, and wild, experimental sex. Once I truly got over Lisa, our relationship was off and running and I never looked back.
Emily literally had an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra, and we started going through it, page by page. A new position a day keeps the boredom away, Emily had said to me the first night. Not everything worked for us. I'm not a particularly flexible person so when the position called for me to bend in any particular way, it didn't work out too well, at least not for long. My bullet wound was still healing and my right arm and side would start to ache if I was leaning on it for too long. If a sexual position didn't work for us we would just move to missionary or doggie style or cowgirl and finish ourselves off a more conventional way.
When Emily had her period we would strip to our underwear and I would dry hump her through several orgasms. When she had her fill she would roll me over onto my back, pull my cock out and suck me off until I came in her mouth. Then she would always bring her face right up to mine and pretend she was going to kiss me with a mouth full of my cum until I recoiled. Then she would run off to the bathroom, cackling with laughter. No, life with Emily was never boring.
Even though I had sex with Emily virtually every day in some form or another, once a week or so I still found myself waking up really early, practically in the middle of the night sometimes, and sneaking off to look at porn. I wasn't sure why I did it, except that sometimes I felt like I might be missing something good. Maybe I really was an addict or something. I also wasn't sure why I felt the need to continue to hide it from Emily. Emily wasn't Lisa. The fact that I looked at porn probably wouldn't have bothered her. In fact, if I was open about it she may have gone so far as to even want to watch it with me, just maybe not at 5am.
Maybe keeping it a secret was just part of the allure, but maybe it was the type of videos I was watching. I was still seeking out the WAM videos, women in mud and other substances, stripping, covering their bodies in goop and masturbating. I was watching a lot of cat fighting videos too, but not the 'real catfights,' and not the faked belly punching videos. I liked to watch women rolling around together, scantily clad or naked, or tearing each others clothes off, and rubbing up against each other. There were rumors that Elvis used to get women to wrestle for him wearing only white cotton panties, so how bizarre could my fetish be anyway? If it was good enough for the King, it was good enough for me.
Emily had told me that she wasn't into the WAM stuff, and I never pressed her about it. We all had our limits, I guess. I wouldn't have ever asked her to get into any kind of cat fight for me either. I know there were message boards out there where you could search for people to fight your wife or girlfriend, but I couldn't imagine even asking. It was one thing when you were watching strangers or porn stars fight. I know I was turned on when I watched Emily and Lisa fight, but that was a spontaneous thing and I wouldn't think of actually asking Emily to fight someone just for my enjoyment.
Anal had never come up again, either. We had done it that one time, and frankly it was enough for me. I guess if either of us really, really wanted to do something, the other person would indulge them. That's what love was all about, wasn't it? Making the other person happy?
I know you're wondering what happened with Lisa's family and our house and all that. Well, luckily Lisa's parents never filed a civil suit. Every day that went by I got more and more hopeful that I wouldn't have to go through something like that, although I knew there was a statute of limitations that gave them several years to go ahead with it, if they ever wanted to.
The house was a different story. I got an offer on the house from a small independent production studio. They specialized in 'true crime' movies and they wanted to buy the house and use it to shoot a movie based on our story. Using the actual house as a location would add to the authenticity, they had said to me. They would make me and Emily executive producers and pay us well for our input. I politely but adamantly declined.
There was already a book out about our story, and there was nothing I could to do to stop it. It turned out there were people who could churn out a whole 'based on true events' schlock novel in a matter of weeks. They had approached me about giving my account and I refused. Emily was more willing to talk but she knew that I didn't want her to, and in the end she respected my wishes. The resulting book was awful, relying on second-hand accounts and police reports, and filled in the gaps in the story with all sorts of speculation and sensationalized nonsense. Sure enough it was a runaway bestseller.
It was a struggle sometimes, getting on with life while the story of what had happened, or at least a sensationalized version of it was still circulating. I could sense people talking behind my back at work. I did my best to ignore it, but sometimes I found myself getting so angry I started shaking. More than once I had to go hide in a bathroom stall for several minutes, shaking and practically hyperventilating, until I got myself back under control. I didn't tell anybody about it, not even Emily. My doctor had recommended that I see a psychologist when I left the hospital, to help me cope with the trauma, but I refused. I was a strong, independent mid-western man. Head-shrinkers were for East Coast intellectual types. I could handle myself. I would get through it.
I knew that Emily was still in touch with Angela, the Haitian voodoo nurse that took care of me while I was in the hospital. Well, she took care of both of us, once, when Emily decided to have sex with me while I was still lying prone in the hospital bed, and Angela helped her get off and then took care of me as well. Emily would mention Angela once in a while and I would basically nod my head and change the subject. It was good that Emily had a female friend, really. Her friends were mostly male. She was a foul-mouthed beer-drinking tomboy, and I think she felt more comfortable around men for the most part. At least that's what I thought.
I worked late one Friday night, late in the year. It was early November, shortly after the World Series ended. I was a die-hard Cardinals fan, but I was happy for the Royals. Good for them, I thought. They were due. I told Emily how I felt and she said something like fuck them and their hick fan base. But I digress. I walked into Emily's, I mean our apartment, and I saw somebody sitting on the sofa, a glass of wine in her hand. I noticed the long black hair and dark skin and immediately realized it was Angela. Frankly, she was pretty much the only black person either of us knew.
I apologize if that sounded racist, but it is what it is. Emily and I grew up in an affluent nearly all white suburb and we were both affected by the casual racism that we observed from almost everyone around us. No, I wasn't openly racist, and I didn't think I was even consciously racist. I wasn't one of those Neo-Nazi's or good-ole boys who waved confederate flags and pretended that the Civil War wasn't quite over, but I wasn't a perfectly colorblind person, either. There was always a sense of us and them. When I did interact with a black, Hispanic, Asian, or other type of 'different' person, either at work or anywhere I always strove to treat them just like I would anybody else, but there was always that almost subconscious effort to do so, and it always bothered me. Maybe the fact that it bothered me at all was more than most people could claim.
But anyway, there was Angela. She rose up to greet me. I quickly looked around for Emily. There was no sign of her. She must have been in the kitchen. Damn her for not even telling me about this, I thought.
"Hello Joe," Angela was saying to me in her lilting Caribbean accent, and I turned to look at her. I had only ever seen her in her nurses' outfit. She was sexy enough in those tight, white outfits with her ample cleavage spilling out. Here she was in a tight green dress that hugged her voluptuous body. Her ebony hair cascaded around her shoulders. The tattoo on her breast that I could just barely see in the hospital was much more in view now, a dragon that curved around her breast before disappearing under the revealing dress. The dress itself went to about mid-thigh and I gazed at her long toned legs. She was wearing four inch heels. She was dressed for more than a casual evening with a friend.
"Hi," I said cautiously. The waves of anxiety that I had been fighting since Lisa shot me were coming back to me. I struggled to keep my expression neutral and my hands from shaking.
"How are you doing?" Angela asked me.
"Fine," I lied. I dropped my work bag in its usual spot by the door and thrust my hands in my pockets. "How are you?" I asked. I could barely get the words out.
She was looking at me curiously, and I imagined that she could see right through me. "I'm okay," she said.
Angela looked like she was going to say something else, but we heard Emily's voice. "Oh good, you're home," she was saying and coming out from the kitchen. She came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek. "I took off early from work and I'm making chicken cordon bleu," she said. "I hope you don't mind that I invited Angela over for dinner."
