Yet More Monica

With the experiment in having an open relationship over and done I invited Monica to move in with me and Chris. She agreed to do so and things were looking bright again. I called my mom to tell her that Monica and I would be living together. This was not an easy converstation but I knew I had to live my life according to my own values not my mothers.

"You know that I will consider her my daughter." my mom replied to the news.

"Yeah, ma. That's alright. I love her very much."

And that was that. I didn't bother to tell my mom that while I would be living with my girlfriend we weren't having sex. It wouldn't be believable but oddly enough it was true.

But, of course, we did hav sex, eventually. And it was nice. We took it slow, we weren't wildly experimental, but we did play around with each other a bit and it was a satisfying sex life.

I took a shower and wearing just a towel I found Monica laying in our bed reading. I leaned over and kissed her. She looked up at me, looking me in the eye. "Are you going to rape me now?" She said it so sweetly and innocently.

My mind realed. I went numb. "Why would you say that?"

She started to cry and I held her. We never mentioned it again.

Our apartment was the hang out for our crowd of friends and it seemed there was always someone sleeping on the couch downtairs. Monica and I got along for the most parts but we did have our fights. I would yell and be sarcastic, as I figured one should do when fighting. Monica would infuriate me with her wonderful responses to this.

"We love each other. Why should we be yelling. Let's talk later when we're not so angry." she'd say, calmly, her eyes tearing up. And what could I do but walk away, find a wall some where to punch? She was teaching me a lesson in how to do things differently than my parents, but it was not an easy one to learn.

There were nights when I'd get so upset and I'd lived with the idea that a passionate person, an artist, should express their anger with a flare. Once, when the living room was full of people, I jumped from the top of our stairs to the bottom taking the one lamp out with me on the way down. Before anyone knew what happened I charged out the front door. It would look great on film. It was of course not the kind of behavior that was easy to live with.

While we had issues to work out, trust was not one of them. Our friend Alex was addicted to being slutty. She'd once slid up her mini skirt and had sex with a man whose lap she was sitting on in the middle of a party. Alex would be out until three or four in the morning partying and then she would show up at our place as Monica was leaving for work at Greta's Cafe. My caring girlfriend would send poor little Alex up to our room to crawl under the covers with me. I'd wake up to find this cute girl wearing a see through shirt with duck tape over her nipples cuddling up to me.

I was not Jealous either. I'd been working at Greta's as well, with Monica and Bryna. When I quit and Monica suggested I let her pay the bills for awhile while I worked on my painting, I accepted. When she became very close friends with Jon, a younger musician, reader of philosophy and all around swell guy, I didn't worry about it. I was distracted anyway as my old roommate Christian had come to live with us and helping him get sober was a twenty four hour a day project.

By the time Christian fell off the wagon again Monica and Jon were best friends, and she had started planning a trip to Europe for herself.

"Why don't we both go?" I suggested. I'd wanted to go to Europe since high school. I'd even saved up quite a bit of money but then I moved into the Condo with Christian and spent it all.

"I need to do this by myself. To find myself." she answered.

This stung, but when she announced that Jon would be joining her the hurt became so great that I just turned numb. I convinced myself that she would go to Europe and come home to me and everything would be as it was. Of course I knew inside that this wasn't true as evidenced by the way I treated Jon. We'd got out together, Monica, Jon, Jon's best friend Pete and I. I would refuse to speak. I would throw food at Jon, and otherwise make everyone uncomfortable. I was lost with no idea how to compete when he'd seemingly already won.

Durring one fight with Monica, a typical fight that was me getting angry and leaving, I decided to do something that would keep me from going back to this fucked up situation. I ran into Alex and asked her point blank if we could find somewhere to fuck. I considered how this would hurt Monica, in fact that was the point. Alex fucked everyone all the time. It didn't occur to me that having me, one of the few people who was sweet to her, trying to utilize her as a tool might be very painful to her. She suggested a couple of places where we could maybe go, but she wouldn't agree to letting me lift her skirt in the ally. I didn't understand why not. We walked toward an abandoned apartment buildling where she sometimes crashed and my conscience sabotaged my efforts. I asked Alex what sex mean to her.

"I don't know. I don't get off on it. I've never cum. It's nice to make guys cum and it's nice to cuddle afterwards." I told Alex I had to get home. I kissed her on the forehead and split.

Not one to give up easily, I quit my job and took Monica down south to meet my family. She saw the nightmare that is Corona California. My oldest brother John and I debated religion, we called it debating, to her it was fighting, so ceaselessly that she burst into tears after spending a couple of hours with us. The trip failed to impress her with my magnificence.

So, we returned home and Monica continued selling family heirlooms, including her classic "Solo In The Spotlight" Barbie Doll, to raise money for her trip. Jon brought some of his own belongings to cash in when she had a yard sale in front of our apartment. I bought a huge stack of records from him.

The night before she left we had sex. It was for me. She let me take her from behind, a position she wasn't crazy about, and it felt shallow and one sided. I tried to enjoy. I tried to get what I could. A sleepless night passed and then I stood in the ally and watched Jon' s car pull away with my Monica in the passenger seat. As they turned the corner and disappeared from view, I fell apart. The months of denyial and holding back just came unglued and I was a sobbing mess.

I put on a video tape of Disney's fantasia to try and distract me and I watched it, crying, until the phone rang an hour in. It was my mom.

"Are you okay?" She knew I wasn't. I could kid myself that I was going to be fine with Monica's leaving, but my mom knew.

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