Joy

The summer that Melissa was scaring me shitless was the same summer that I worked at the gay bookstore in the middle of gay central of the south's gay epicenter mecca, Atlanta. It had to have been the same summer because she worked there, too. That was how I knew her. She'd corner me somewhere—at the espresso machine, near the bathrooms by the dirty magazines, between "fiction" and "parenting", in the supply closet or employee break closet, behind the curtains. Then she'd give me the eyes. Or block my path. Or breathe in that way that was quiet enough to shield against others but near enough that I knew she was responding to a smell other than just my soap.

Actually, it wasn't Melissa who scared me so much as it was her wife. The fact that she was married. And had a kid.

Of course, that didn't prevent me from making out with her, pushed up against my car, secreted by her van, between pools of parking lot lamp light and car shadowy darkness. It wasn't Melissa or her wife or her baby so much that freaked me out as it was the pull of heat I felt spearing through the lacy blanket of "should not"s.

She'd call me at my day job on my cel phone while I was out running errands for the radio station. I'd sit parked in that sweltering summer cargo van, listening to Melissa tug me in one direction just long enough to change course with a snap. Her words were the toy mouse, my heart was kitten arms. The whole thing felt terrible and impossible and dirty and disgusting and absolutely fucking wonderful.

She'd meet me in the park with her kid. She'd get me drunk while her wife was out of town, then offer me the couch. She'd sit half a cusion away, eyes locked on the space just beneath my throat and above my rib cage.

That was the summer I dreamed of escape. For something to change. To feel less pinned. A moth specimen the collector forgot to kill before pinning its wings to the mounting board.

That was the summer that a pixie floated through the front door along with a swoop of Atlanta baked street heat. She looked exactly like the love interest in the book I just sold. Her skin was latté with sweet cream. Her hair was little nubs of bleachy lion yellow. Her lips were plums. Her chin formed a delicate point. Her enormous, round, moist eyes were framed with thick fringes of black velvet. She came right up to the counter and asked for a recommendation of sodas. I directed her toward the key lime. She said I should stop by the museum sometime, where she worked. And so in a move not led by normal character, I did.

That weekend when I arrived she squealed and was embarrassed and shy and tingly exhuberant that I indeed in fact did arrive. We spent enormous amounts of time together. From the moment I arrived for the next 48 hours.

We went to the park and wrote notes, played word games on paper. We napped in her room. We swung on the hammock in my back yard and observed the way the black tree branches wound into the black night sky and silhouetted dark against dark like an Asian fabric painting or print. She said, "Tell me a secret." We went to a rave. She told me she was 18.

What?

Melissa, who was 30, said, "You don't want me because of my black baby. But I guess it's okay for you to have a black girlfriend."

"You're married," I said. "I don't want you because you're married. And you have a kid. I don't like kids. I don't want kids. It's messy. It complicates things."

"You're dating a kid."

Yeah. There was that. The next weekend, Joy took me to her favorite place in the world. Glitter on her cheeks and eyelids, invisible wings shot from her back and spread wide when we got to the woods, the trickling stream. I can still see her fingers, the way they were delicate and small yet long and the bones seemed strong. Short nails, bit down.

She sat on a wet log by the brook, said, "How come you don't want to kiss me?"

"I do," I said. "But you're 18."

I thought she would cry. "I want you to kiss me. I want you to so bad."

Bad. Fucking around with a married woman then getting coerced into a child's request... I kissed her. She didn't kiss back. She left her lips where they were. It was terrible. The most horrible kiss I'd ever experienced except maybe the one where I was way drunk on vodka when I was 17 and Todd and I did it on a dare. Neither of us knowing what the fuck we were doing. But by this time, I did. I couldn't help comparing, though, the firm and intent-filled kisses of the older woman to the nothingness of the younger one.

She said, "Why did you stop?"

"This doesn't feel right."

"That was wonderful, though," she said. "It was magical."

"I can't do this."

"Is it because I'm black?"

"It's because you're too young."

She asked if I would be mad at her if she told me something. A secret. I said probably not. She told me that she looked up something about me. Did some research. Some investigating. She said that the astrology book said that two Scorpios were an intense combination.

I wondered why, then, the only thing I felt was a dull yuck like sugarless cookie dough in my stomach. And why it was that there was still something so intense pulling me to Melissa. I drove Joy home and later that week cut my hand and Melissa had to drive me to the emergency room. I got it stitched up and she quit and later I quit as well, but that didn't prevent her from calling me the next summer to ask if I missed her.

That summer, I missed everything.