Title: 26 Ways to Find Loneliness
Author: MelWil
Rating: R - language and adult stuff
Disclaimer: They aren’t mine. I’m just playing.
Archive: Just let me know where.
Feedback: Is wonderful - lina_wilson@hotmail.com
Summary: CJ’s alphabet of men.
Author’s note: Inspiration from Simon and Garfunkle’s ‘50 ways to leave your lover’ and Susan Minot’s story, ‘Lust’.

~*~

A is for Adam. He wasn’t the first, but he should have been. He was tentative and nervous and he made her wonder what she was doing wrong. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes when he fucked her.

B is for Benjamin. He sat at the end of her bed and strummed a guitar. He promised to make love songs up for her, but they all sounded like heavy metal. He grew his hair long and it tickled her breasts, but it looked terrible.

C is for Craig. He held her hand in sixth grade, once daring to kiss her on the cheek while they waited for her father to pick them up.

D is for Danny. He had fire in his kisses, and kissed her in inappropriate places. He was inappropriate in as many ways as humanly possible, but she couldn’t help herself when she was around him.

E is for Ed. He brought a briefing paper to her place and she opened a bottle of red wine and they made out on the living room floor. He told her that she looked tired and she asked him to sleep with her. He left before she woke up.

F is for Fredreich. He was a big man on campus and he made a bet that he could sleep with her before first semester ended. He won two hundred dollars off her, and she won a series of hickies across her chest and neck.

G is for George. He was the first man to see her naked, when she danced to a rolling back beat. He laughed, and held her in his arms, and loaned her his leather jacket when she got cold.

H is for Harry. He wore glasses that fogged up when they kissed for too long. He wrote bad poetry and drank bad wine, and they would sit cross legged on his shag pile rug to share both the poetry and the alcohol. He called her the rosy bud in his life. She told him he was sad.

I is for Ian. He slapped her across her cheek when she walked out the door, her clothes bundled in an untidy pile. She left finger nail marks across his back.

J is for Josh. She never slept with him. They just kissed and cuddled and made great sweeping plans that they would implement when they reached the White House. He wanted more of her than she could possibly give.

K is for Ken. He taught her how to drink like a man. He took her to the drive in and they made out in the back of his pick up. They were always talking crap, because they were always too drunk to say anything serious.

L is for Leon. He was an army officer, clean cut and earnest. He battled demons in his sleep and she’d wake up to hear him screaming at his father. They always had sex in the dark because the lights hurt his eyes.

M is for Michael. He picked her up after class in his beat up car, laughing when she complained about the lack of air conditioning. He was too poor to take her out anywhere, and he accused her of being elitist. She threw his book out the window.

N is for Nigel. He took her to her Senior Prom and pinned a white rose onto her baby blue dress. He was a head shorter than her and rested his head on her shoulder. He wanted to fuck her, leered his intentions in her ear. She let him fondle her breasts.

O is for Oscar. He was the first, with clammy, sweaty hands, and a nervous idea of what he was doing. She was scared, and he smoothed the hair from her forehead, telling her that everything would be alright, that she wouldn’t regret anything.

P is for Pete. He always stole the blankets, wrapping them tightly around himself and leaving her in her naked coldness. She told him he was selfish and he agreed with her, because his mother had told him never to argue with a woman, and he always did what his mother told him to do.

Q is for Quinten. He had a poodle who would scamper around the bed when they had sex. She asked him if he would put the poodle outside, but he told her that the dog was his best friend, that the dog was going nowhere. She learnt to have sex to the tune of a whimpering dog.

R is for Robert. He was younger than her and he paraded her around, like she was a fish he had caught that he wanted everyone to see. He bought her expensive necklaces and bracelets, but he asked for them back when they broke up.

S is for Sam. It was the first year in office, and he turned up on her doorstep, wet and bedraggled, and searching for a warm pair of arms. She took him to bed because she was amazed by how beautiful he was. Men weren’t supposed to be that beautiful.

T is for Toby. She’s been sleeping with him since she met him. Not on a regular basis, just whenever the need grasped them. They’ve never needed words to tell each other how they feel, which is funny because it is words that they have always dealt with. She cried when he got married, cried again when the marriage split up.

U is for Um. The men she woke up next to, whose names she scrambled to remember at five o’clock in the morning. The ones who would call and leave longing messages on her machine, messages that she deleted with the single swipe of a button.

V is for Vince. He taught her how to dance the tango and the rumba, and they would careen around his living room to pulsating beats. He called her a goddess. She caught him fucking the girl from the next door apartment.

W is for Wendall. He killed himself five years after she broke up with him. She blamed herself, like there was a sign or something that she should have picked up on. There should have been something she could do.

X is for X. The men whose names she never knew. She slept with them, leaving early before the sun got up. They pretended it was nothing, and never saw each other again.

Y is for Yang. He declared that she was his girlfriend in the third grade. She punched him in the arm.

Z is for Zachary. He proposed to her on the beach under a full moon. She said yes and they went home and spilt ice cream on the sheets. She gave him the ring back a week later when she realised that she didn’t love him.