Decadence (27 page)

“That night I wanted you too. But the timing wasn't right.”

“I haven't seen you in two months. There is a new energy. I sense the distance now that we are face-to-face.”

“It can be like that, Prada.”

“While for me absence, as the cliché goes for those in love, made the heart grow fonder.”

“Unfortunately not being face-to-face, not being available can work both ways.”

“It has not served to diminish what I feel for you. I'm in love with you, Nia.”

“I know. I feel your energy. I know that you say that now, that you feel that way today.”

“Madly in love with you as I have loved no other.”

“But why?”

“You can't question what has no answer. If I knew then it would not be true love. It would have
because
attached. I love you
because
of this reason, or that reason. Real love has no
because
attached.”

“How did you get to that point, Prada?”

“What do you mean?”

“I ask you that with envy. I have been there, but I have never been able to return to that place. How do you conquer the fear? I ask you that truly wanting to know how . . . how? Again, I have been in love before, a few times, not all of the same depth, but each affair ended. How do you get back to that point? How do you end a war, then go back into battle before the shrapnel marks have healed? How?”

“After all this time, after so many conversations, how did you not get to that point with me, Nia?”

“We've only had sex one weekend.”

“Loving you is not about sex nor is it about the number of times we are physical.”

“What is love without sex?”

“It is still love.”

“That connection matters. The connection is what defines the level of the relationship. If we don't have sex, it's one type of relationship. If we have sex all of the time, it's another. If we have sex every now and then, then don't see each other for over two months after, yet another.”

“But there is more than sex to life.”

“If you're impotent or suffering from erotophobia or genophobia or tocophobia, sure, get off the field and let the big boys and girls have their fun while you kick rocks or go skydiving.”

“Serious. More than sex to being in love.”

“Love is love. Sex is sex. There may be things better than sex, there may be things worse than sex, but there is nothing exactly like sex.”

“And there is nothing exactly like being in love.”

I smiled. “You don't understand women. Maybe you do. You just don't understand me.”

“Educate me.”

“Love is my strength, and it is my weakness, where I rise, where I fail, my sole foible at this point in my life. During this season I am no good in love and I would be no good for you, Prada. But who is to say that each time I share myself, that each time I learn someone new, why can't that be a form of love? In those moments, during those connections, during that session of praise and giving and selfishness and pleasing and being pleased, I believe that there is love there. I crave love. I am human, and love I do need because love fuels us, but with the fear that resides in my heart, and now, not now but lately, very lately, realizing I have an unhealed wound, I can't cathect love, can't invest emotional energy into something so wonderful yet so destructive. And that does not mean that I don't believe in love. Sure it could work forever, but the odds are that it will eventually expire. I'm an artist. I am a writer. I am fickle. One day I am loved, the next I will be hated because I am uneven. I am like jazz, one long improvisation without an end in sight. I am no one genre. I am a funky mixtape and I am deeply felt and I am happy and I am bitter. I am underrated and yet people expect too much. I am restless. I am not a woman who feels that she is put on earth to seek out a husband, but one day I will and know that in the end he will suffer. I don't know if black will be the color of my true love's hair. I am outrageous in private and yet I am at times shy in public. Take me as I am. Accept me as I am. Take my fears. This is me. I told you that I was damaged. Most are damaged, so that only makes me normal. Without lies. Without pretense. Now I am free and I give you freedom and that is why this feels good. In love I would be too demanding. I would become like every other woman you have ever dated, then in the end couldn't wait to leave, couldn't wait to break up with, couldn't wait to jettison so that you could breathe again, so that you could exhale. I would lose my creativity and join mainstream society and become the woman that drove you to other women or made you seek noontime solace with a woman of the night. I would become intense, needy, my requirements would be many, my honey-do list never ending. Then I would be no one special. Then you would only abandon me in search of a woman who is like I am today, a woman who stimulates your mind and abuses your body with a sensation that feels like love then sends you on your way and gives you room to breathe and be as successful as you can be with your businesses. If I submitted to you, if you became the victor, your disposition toward me would change and I would resent you for your inconsistency. I would hate you for inspiring me to leave my career, to change my life and would remind you of all that I could have been. I would show you this film and yell and tell you that I could have created many more. You would fail me and I would fail you. When always looks like forever and it fails to last an eternity, I am disappointed. I'll be tired of your infidelities, and there will be infidelities, and not only by you because I am no saint nor am I interested in having the résumé of a nun, but then again during the course of things, as in life and based on statistics, there are supposed to be infidelities. We tire of each other and we desire strange. That life, your infidelities, my need to have indiscretions, it too will bore me. And then I will be sitting in a coffee shop and stare at a stranger, a man with dark eyes that dare me with excitement and danger. And I will remember who I am now, who I am at this moment, and I will want this back. And I will hop into a hand-me-down Mercury, or get on the back of a Harley or Ducati, and leave with a scarlet pimpernel and go wherever the road takes me. I'd leave you without a note, without a good-bye. I'd leave with a man but I would leave you for me. I wouldn't pack up my things. I would not leave a heart-shape image on a mirror, one with a frowny face in its center, nor would I leave a final billet-doux that would bring tears to your eyes. After the arguments and fights you will want to keep me. I will be in your blood. I would be the toy that you would hate to lose, despite all of your peccadilloes. You would be the toy that I no longer desired to play with. You would love me as much as you hated me. I would hate you as much as I loved you. You would go mad trying to find me. But I would be gone. I would be gone and trying to become who I am now, but it would be too late. My faith would be gone. Your relationship was what you believed in; became your religion. Then you found out that what you believed in was a lie. You found out that the relationship that you thought you were in didn't exist. And you lose faith. That's what happens to too many. We simply lose faith. I've been there before. God, my mother has been there before. Anyway. In the long run, you'd be good, but no good for me. God, I am going on and on and on. See what happens when you ask me things? I answer. I give detailed answers. Unlike you. I don't avoid. I have my own fears but I'm not afraid. I'm physically available for you, but not emotionally. Again I could be, I could give in to the light side of Gemini and put the dark side into a cage, but when the emotions are turned on, when I say that I love you, I would expect all that comes with love, the joy and the pain. And the pain would not be beautiful, not with me. I can care for myself financially but you would be responsible for my sexual and emotional upkeep. I would consume you. I would become a fire that burned and raged and gave heat and eventually destroyed. And call me selfish, but I don't want to let you go. I like knowing that you are there. I enjoy you in my life. Maybe that's why it took so long for me to bed you. Foreplay is always the best part. Sex is the beginning of the end.”

“You don't love me, can't love me now, but you don't want to let me go.”

After my diatribe, you respond with only one sentence.”

“I am listening. Receiving. Not being rude and interrupting.”

“I'm a swinger, Prada. But I am still a woman. I am still human. I understand why men have wives, but have other lovers. I understand why the cultures that allow a man to have more than one wife attract both men and women. I understand why mistresses prefer married men. I understand it all.”

“I love you.”

“As you have told many women before me. To how many women have you spoken those words?”

“I love you.”

“As a few men before you have told me.”

“I love you.”

“As I have told only one man. Saying that is nothing I would do for kicks or as manipulation.”

“I love you.”

“You love me. How do you know for sure? How do you know, Prada?”

“When I'm with you time doesn't matter. All that matters is love.”

“Can you love me as I am? Or would I have to change?”

He paused, then spoke in the softest voice, a voice of shock. “My beautiful Nia. My sweet, sweet Simone. You're a swinger? A libertine, a female philanderer . . . my intelligent, beautiful Nia Simone.”

“A mermaid. A nymph.”

“I am having a hard time processing this new information. You said that you are a swinger.”

“I did say that. I am a swinger. I guess that my spirit has been that way awhile. Since a summer in Atlanta and North Carolina. After I left Memphis and moved to Atlanta, I had an experience a few years ago and it changed me. I did say swinger. Maybe I shed my skin at night and become someone new, or I am really a soucouyant from Trinidadian folklore. But I am not an old woman. I would rather consider myself a libertine. I prefer to think that I have evolved from the child that I was into a woman who is morally and sexually unrestrained, a woman who should be given the same level of respect as a dissolute man. An independent with politics and a freethinker in matters of sex and religion, liberated from all things unnecessary and undesirable. Libertine. Marquis de Sade with breasts. John Wilmot with a yoni. I work hard, then I seek out life's pleasures. Not a swinger. Maybe because most swingers have a partner. And they either share their partner or bring someone into the relationship. I haven't actually had a boyfriend or someone to share with a new lover. I am the free spirit amongst troubled souls.
Swinger
. Let me examine that word. That concept.
Swinger
is not an attractive word. Saying that you are a swinger can carry many negative connotations. Being a libertine implies both freedom and wanderlust.
Libertine
is a beautiful word. It flows from the tongue, challenges the mind, and reeks of both money and intelligence. It's not a slutty word. It rings of liberty. Of freedom. Being a libertine implies that you partake of . . . the decadence life has to offer. It sounds like it's a constitutional right to be a libertine. Ayn Rand would think that it would be. As would Anaïs Nin. There. I've said enough. More than enough. Are you still listening, Prada?”

“I want to hear more.”

“There isn't more to say.”

“Tell me more. I need to process this, for my own clarity.”

“Let me be clear. Let me be very clear. Unbeknownst to you, since we last saw each other, I have evolved. During this season I am non-monogamous. I have chosen to be non-monogamous. Monogamy bores me. Monogamy is a prison. I am a woman with an unconventional lifestyle and even though I will never broadcast what I do, I am not ashamed of who I am. I am someone who lives an unconventional and hedonistic life. I will exchange sexual partners with others. I belong to a club. I am part of a beautiful society where singles or partners in committed relationships are liberal, engage in sexual activities.”

“I figured that you had had another lover. Especially the last fortnight when you were missing.”

“I assumed the same about you. In the plural. A woman in every port. Or the number to an escort service. I guess that if I were a man, if I were you, with your wealth, I would be that way, in Yoniville.”

“Love the way you see me.”

“Back at you. You assumed I had another lover. As in a steady lover. As in a boyfriend.”

“But I had assumed it was the soldier.”

“Have you had other lovers? Has someone sucked your lingam? Have you tasted yoni? Have you fucked anyone since you met me in Trinidad? Have you had lovers, girlfriends, whores?”

“Let's finish exploring this first. Let's remain focused.”

“You ask me questions, many queries, which I answer, then you dodge my inquiries. Like the CEO of a company who is used to giving out orders and becomes riled when his authority is questioned.”

“Nia Simone, I have been questioned extensively, have been questioned as if I were a hostile in a foreign country, and I would rather be the one obtaining a few answers at the moment, if that is acceptable. I want to focus on you. I want us to focus on you. Is that acceptable, or should I run it by your father as well?”

“We will focus on me, for the moment. But I will want answers as well. I will want the truth, not pretense. I want to hear about you. You are an industrialist, but from the night I met you I sensed that you were a philanderer, Romeo, Lothario, seducer, adulterer, satyr, stud, player, whatever term you want to use, whatever romantic label or euphemism they have given men.”

“We will chat about me. After we conclude this interesting and possibly heartbreaking conversation regarding you.”

“Suddenly so serious and businesslike. Are you perturbed?”

“With the long flight to get here, the long evening, and the questions, I am a bit irritated.”