After that kiss, everything changed. You know that moment in your life where you're at a crossroads, up or down, left or right, a manicheist move that would most certainly create a parallel universe where your whole life would be different according to the path you chose. So he pulled the black from the gray, he just appeared in front of my apartment not even five minutes after we've been together and he swept me off my feet. I swear I could feel a breeze beneath my sole. He just held me in his arms and I allowed myself to drown in them, denying the floor I no longer needed, for I had him to hold on to.
There were a few things we shared and a fair amount of stuff we disagreed on. We were both very cynical at the time, and mathematically if you see him as both my anti-hero and my anti-romance-prince-charming - being that two minuses make a plus - I guess he became both my hero and, though with no such doses of romance, a bit of a prince. But he had always been quite charming for that matter.
It was quite practical, our relationship; same university, common friends, and we lived in the same building - though I had to share mine and he didn't. So his place became the stage of our love, and of all the things we enjoyed doing together or did anyway just to prove to the other how distasteful they were. He liked cheesy movies; I watched in silence and then mocked him loudly, until he would shut me up with a kiss, lift me from the sofa while I will wrap my legs around him, take me to the bedroom with the sound of things falling (and sometimes breaking) through our passage, not loudly enough to make us stop kissing each other and want to reach the bed so badly, where he would softly lay me, and then lay over me, and then the softness of all that, and the soft lines on his face, they all became rougher, stronger, eager to undress me and do what kids in love do: sex with an excessive use of nails and teeth.
I loved his face in the morning. I loved his cheeks and beard, his swollen lips revealing even more the piercing he had which always amused me, to the point where I almost bit it off during a rough afternoon sex session. His eyes were incapable of opening more than one millimeter as the sun entered the room, so I just left him there. I went to the kitchen, barefoot and barely dressed, I made some coffee, grabbed my pack of cigarettes, passed through the mirror to arrange my hair - what do you expect after having experimented new sex positions almost all night? - and went back to the room, left a cup of coffee on his bedside table and went to sit on the window sill, with the ashtray beside me, lighting my cigarette, opening the window just a tiny bit to relief the smell of last night's groin, sweat and smoke. It was when he proved me he was truly in love with me. Every morning. The light was hurting his eyes so much, he was wrestling with his eyelashes to protect him from the brightness, he would make the funniest faces in such an effort, a loving admirable effort, just to watch me. Once again, he was pulling the black from the gray, turning my (and some of his -yes, he was not demon-free) darkness into luminance, just for me to be the first thing he saw everyday, against all the hurting morning light, in my panties and wearing his Texas Chainsaw Massacre T-shirt. "You're not stealing it from me, I don't care how sexy you look in it" he would say, "it is already mine" - I'd reply. He turned from the light and hid under the pillow, waiting for me to finish my cigarette and went there to kiss him on his cheek, before I went to take a shower so we could go to the university. "Don't forget your coffee", I'd say, "it's getting cold".
We were in different courses so it wasn't like we spent 24/7 together, he was working at a clothing store downtown so normally I'd give him a kiss in-between classes (except for that one time when we didn't have morning sex and I dragged him to the rehearsal room to satisfy my lust), then after his shift we'd go for coffee near his workplace, take a walk in the center, take some tourist-like pictures, some artistic ones, and sometimes - often after he got his paycheck - we would have dinner around there. There were even some other times, when I was busier with school or just felt lazy, or it rained, or we just didn't feel like it, and I'd wait him home, we'd have pasta on the sofa watching bad TV shows and complaining about everything, but always with a sarcastic humor. The best thing about this evenings was, no matter the mood I was in, he always managed to get some tomato sauce on his beard by the piercing area and make me laugh as loudly as we often made love afterwards.
We spent nights watching horror and terror movies; the old and the new ones, the ones about zombies and the others on aliens. I was never scared; but every time I got spooked and jumped he held me closer and mocked me. Then we laughed together because, fortunately, we were closer.
He loved photography; and I admired his work more than I ever told him, because I wanted him to feel challenged and always improve the immense talent he had. I was always jealous of his models, they were all prettier, skinnier, and far more photogenic than me. But that wouldn't matter to him. Because he saw me naked, he loved me naked, around his house, among his favorite things, dancing to his favorite songs in my underwear, wearing his favorite clothes and leaving my aroma on his sheets. I was in his habitat. This state of intimacy made me a living part of his art, not only because he was in love with me, but because he surrounded me with everything he loved the most: the books, the movies, the clothes, the concerts, the songs, the food, the drinks. He set the stage for our love, in his apartment. And that made it his best photo-shoot, his masterpiece; and I, I was his muse.
When we didn't have to go home for the weekends, I'd let him photograph me as he wish, with modeling poses I never knew how to do, first in black and white with all the decadent things we loved - glasses of whisky, black lingerie, cigarettes, messy hair and dark make-up - and then as the spring came along, we took some outside shots in the rooftop of our building, in summer dresses and silky blouses. I remember this particular photo - it was somewhere else, I was laying in the grass and tired of having my picture taken, I was whining and asking him to stop; and as I finally reached the man behind the camera, he got the best photo of me - or at least the most genuine - I was truly smiling, while trying to hide. I was hiding from the camera, from a picture everyone would be able to see, to hide under his chin and smile only to him. The reason of my smile.
We did not thrash his entire apartment by drinking, smoking and fucking in every single division of the house - ok, we did, but we also went out. We were both into hardcore so we went to a few gigs on the other side of the river; after releasing some tension, shouting some lyrics, and meeting some friends we would get totally drunk and lose the last ferry - all there was left for us to do would be to sit somewhere (my head had his shoulder as an established place to lay on) and watch the sunrise before being able to come back home.
Actually, when he wasn't too tired from work or had the day off we would go out nearly every night with our friends from the university, and I have to admit I always got pretty wasted because I knew I had my not-so-romantic-prince-charming taking care of me. And he always did, after going from bar to bar, drinking every cocktail possible, there he was, my prince, carrying me to his white horse - or as we may also call it the night bus - and taking me safely home. He always took my socks off because he knew how much I hated sleeping with them; and he always made sure my feet were warm too.
We took a lot of pictures on the beach that year - summer started earlier, so we often just took a train and went there, met some friends and went for some beer afterwards; but with my camera of course, his could never go to these kind of hazardous places. He would never admit it, but they actually looked quite good. Very funny, splashy, salty, sandy, sunny. I hated when he came out of the water and laid on top of my really heated body from the sun, and just shake his head like a dog for me to get all the water and salt. I remember complaining to the point of denying him sex that night, trying really hard to pout - but, in fact, I loved when he did it, it was as if during the time he was swimming in the sea he was already missing me (and furthermore, despite my pouting, we had really savage sex that night).
As the summer was starting, so were the music festivals - and there was this one (the most expensive, of course) that we really wanted to go to - and somehow, we got tickets for it. I had my final exam that day so I couldn't go with him, but we were to meet sometime later. He was already there; I succeeded both in my exam and in getting quickly drunk afterwards; and was heading for the festival. But somehow we were missing each other. Something was wrong. I couldn't find him. I tried to contact him every way I could. I couldn't seem to reach him. I didn't understand what was happening. Where was he? And where was I? And most important, why weren't we together? Then, as I blinked, I was in the middle of a crowd, in Faith No More concert, listening to "Easy", in his arms, and kissing him. Like I just fell there accidentally. But I didn't.
The wrong thing was the blinking. Its duration - and content, was somewhat different; not the usual nanosecond of darkness in front of your eyes. The blinking meant the actual darkness that never left. It meant that when we were at a crossroads, we chose the other path - he let things remain gray. And I was afraid of the consequences that might had come with the light. He went to my apartment. He did kiss me. The world stopped spinning. "Good night". The world went back to its normal pace, and so did we. But still I watched his favorite cheesy movie quietly and mocked him when it finished; still, I smoked (though with clothes on) on his window sill; and we also did go to the rooftop listening to some of our old favorite songs, and even took some pictures; still, we went to that festival. We did not made plans to go together or to meet there, we found each other by chance, and we were both alone. And still, I listened to "Easy" in his arms and he did kiss me. But once again, we chose the gray. Once again, it was "good night" and a door closing, only to hear from him some weeks after as nothing as ever happened. Because nothing ever really did.
