Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Because

because
©2007
by Rosalind Christine Lloyd



Is there a right way to break someone’s heart?

If you’ve ever been a victim of rejection or unrequited desire, you might be able to relate to this tale. You might even root for me in the end. On the other hand, if you have not had the misfortune of experiencing the pain of being unceremoniously spurned, then maybe it’s possible that you may have in fact been on the opposite end of this scenario. In other words, if you happen to be a real heart breaker – then this story is dedicated to you.

And it is in this spirit that I must confess, that I’m not entirely proud of the story I’m about to tell.

Indigo Parker. The name still sends shivers through me. The woman was in a word: stunning. I mean, in an unbelievably blinding way. Now I say this because normally, I don’t find myself attracted to this type of woman. Call me strange, but the superficiality of good looks is not sexy enough to keep me interested. It’s just not. I find myself drawn to things like a crooked smile that sets my heart on fire. Or a subtle scar that I can’t avoid tracing with a finger. What keeps my attention is a brilliantly unforgettable quote, a flawlessly prepared vegetarian dinner, a respectable reading list absent of best sellers, a stylishly decorated home filled with eclectic, even personally hand crafted objects. To me, all that’s hot - all perfectly acceptable attributes in a woman as far as I’m concerned. A woman who possesses a sublime physical beauty rarely turns my head. Until Indigo kicked in the door to my heart, set it on fire leaving practically nothing in its place. I was completely and totally destroyed.

You see, Indigo Parker was not only heterosexual – something I could not hold against her. But she was a homophobe. You know, there’s hopelessly straight and then there’s straight-up homophobic. And she was one who happened to be very vocal about her position. She was the type that enjoyed reminding the world about the virtues of her orientation and how she couldn’t possibly live without the very concept of the opposite sex. She was the type that would make a biological lesbian like myself actually feel ashamed about liking pussy as much as I did. It was that intense.

*

I own a coffee shop and bookstore in the base of the residential building where Indigo lived. She would come into the shop all the time, sometimes with some pretty boy some darker shade of brown – men who looked like they could have been fresh off the runway for Marc Jacobs or Versace or Sean John. Overly coiffed metrosexual brothers with chiseled cheeks, eight pack ripples on their smooth bodies with carved muscles and pouty lips, penetrating stares. Pretty, pretty boys with a purely gay masculinity. I couldn’t figure it out. There are fag-hags and there are those you just can’t quite figure out. Some even went as far as to marry these men – think Terry Macmillian, Star Jones, Tracy Edmonds, Chante Moore. Indigo fell right into this questionable category with an almost too cozy ease.

When she began coming into the shop, I was instantly floored by her. This was when the trouble began.

President-Elect Obama

To say that I am speechless, humbly, by our newly elected President Barack Obama - is a natural understatement for me. Even as I blindly stumble through this suffocating block, it would be unfair not to record the overwhelmingly abundance of emotion that I continue to experience in light of recent political events. Our ancestors would be proud.