O Tangled Web
- 4 years ago
- 17
- 0
His Tangled Web free porn video
He expected me in velvet.
‘I always see you in velvet’ he said, when I admitted velvet skirts were my favourite clothes for relaxation. A style left over from the swinging sixties. A time of love, peace and goodwill to all men. A time I wanted to be part of, but missed by several years, hating the torn t-shirts, safety pins and spiked hair of the punks who coloured my adolescence.
I wanted to float, to dream, to spend time doing nothing except watch the sunrise and sunset and the glories which fall between.
Life isn’t like that. When you finish feeding your mind with facts other people want you to know, there is work and work and more work. If you’re lucky and find the right person, there is love and play and homes and children and joy and cares and tears and laughter.
I used to watch them. The mothers walking their children to school – clean clothes, neat hair, book bags dangling by their sides. Skipping along holding hands, with the light of enthusiasm still bright in their eyes. I watched them grow older as they changed schools. Boys with shirts hanging over their trousers, ties askew, girls in tight, short skirts and no coats no matter how cold the weather.
It didn’t happen like that for me. There was never the right time, the right place, the right job. I thought there was the right man, but he was taken when I met him, bound up in commitments to wife, mortgage, children. There was passion, but he offered no promises, suggesting future opportunities, but the future has a habit of disappearing, subsumed by the present, making me realise the futility of allowing my future to be fashioned from the crumbs of another’s possibilities. After fifteen years, I said farewell, taking my leave, determined to find a sunset of my own choosing.
I was growing old. The endless chatter of students brushing past me as I took my lunchtime walk in the park annoyed me. They spilled out over footpaths like a mindless sea, brushing aside anyone or anything in their way. I was invisible. The middle aged woman in the long green coat, merging with the hawthorn hedge or disappearing into the yew grove when no-one was looking.
‘Will you come and hear me sing?’
The question surprised me. He lived so far away, why would he want me to come and listen to his songs? It wasn’t as if we were real, we’d only been talking over the internet for a short time. It felt like a short time. Late at night in the darkness of winter when spring was still a glimmer of hope suggested by violets we came across one another. An evening of laughter. He made me smile. I appreciated the quick wit and banter, but did not expect to talk to him again.
I was wrong.
We found so many things to talk about. Music, books, work, play – the list was endless and immaterial. We talked. We shared experiences, hopes, the small minutiae of our daily lives. I learned the names of his colleagues and cousins, heard about their children, lives and events. I shared the pressures of my daily life,frustrations with my clients, the uncertainties of my job.
Somehow it made it easier having someone else to tell. He became my sounding board for new ideas, a sponge absorbing my emotions, helping me back towards a sense of balance. He was my friend.
We joked about meeting one day, about visiting art galleries in our wheelchairs, chaperoned by uniformed attendants who would push us where we wanted to go. I knew it wouldn’t happen. He was too far away. There was no reason to spend so much money on just a trip.
I knew he would never visit me. Things were so different for him. It was as much as he could do to earn enough to keep himself and his son. His ex-wife had a drink problem and didn’t work so he gave her money to keep her from losing a roof over her head. He blamed himself for what she had become, no matter how much I tried to show him it wasn’t his fault, that we all choose our own path and walk it alone.
So how did I come to be standing here, outside the bar where I knew he was singing tonight?
Chance? When conference organisers wanted someone to speak on my specialist area in his city, I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity. Maybe this was the time to lay my ghosts, to get to know someone at a deeper level than before.
I didn’t tell him I was coming. I said I was attending a conference and would be away for a while. I didn’t want him to be concerned when I didn’t appear online for our nightly chat. I knew he worried about me. I had emails from him asking about my health, my car, problems with the central heating boiler.
I was just as bad. When he went down with a prolonged chest infection, I phoned his house, leaving a confused message with his son who couldn’t understand my accent. We laughed about it afterwards, but I didn’t phone again, embarrassed by my own fears when he wasn’t mine to worry about.
So here I was, standing outside the door where the taxi dropped me, watching the lights streaming through the curtained windows onto the dark street. Hearing the buzz of human voices whenever the door opened and someone entered or left. If I turned my head, I could see the illuminated bridges spanning the river, their huge arches holding up the roads leading to the centre of the city.
They were the first thing I saw from the plane, coming in to land at this unfamiliar airport – the lights beautiful against the darkness of the swirling water. He’d told me about the river, about trading in previous centuries, about pirates and smuggling and underground tunnels leading down to the quays. Such history seemed somehow incompatible with the modern metropolis, even with the early settlers in their covered wagons fighting their way across mountains from the eastern states.
His people weren’t settlers. He’d lived in northern England until his mother returned to the West Coast when he was ten. He liked to think he was Scottish, citing a father from one of the cities, but in the quiet of one early morning he admitted the truth – he’d never known his father and his mother wasn’t saying who caused him to be born. She was French with vague Irish connections, but it helped him to create his own background, to believe he had a bond with the visiting folk singers who trotted backwards and forwards between Scotland and the West Coast.
I couldn’t stand out here any longer. It was time to go in.
‘Open mic?’ I asked the bartender, wiping one of the tables with a damp cloth. His shorts and sandals in April surprised me, but then Oregon always was a melting pot of cultures and ideas, trying to forge their own identity against the broad sweep of neighbouring California.
He pointed towards a set of steps leading into a back room. Tables with chairs and benches were arranged around the walls, leaving a space towards the far window where microphone stands denoted live entertainment. I slid into a chair half way down the room where I could hide behind a group of bearded men in padded red lumber shirts, but still get a good view of the stage. A gum-chewing waitress came to take my order and I asked for fish’n’chips with a cup of black coffee.
The room was dim except for the stage area. A group of two men and a woman got up and began to sing sea shanties. The woman was dressed as a pirate’s moll with a bright red corset. Her voice was clear and true and she soon had the room bellowing out the chorus and stamping for more when the set was finished.
At the table nearest the stage sat a striking woman with long, waist length auburn hair. She tossed it around as she talked, laughing at the songs and calling out to the singers when they asked for suggestions about a new number. A young man, thin faced with long brown hair sat beside her, nearest me, while another, younger woman sat to her left, dressed in the ubiquitous jeans and jacket. Another man sat with them, his back towards me as he leaned down, picking something up off the floor.
He stood up as the pirates resume
d their seats and my heart began to thud. He was here. I picked up the water glass in front of me and took a long, cold drink. Half of me wanted to run out of the door and back to my hotel before he could see me, but the other half retained an intense curiosity which made me stay where I was, trying to still my suddenly shaking hand.
He was not as tall as I’d expected. In my mind, he stood as high as my previous partner’s six foot three, but I realised I was very mistaken. Would there be other things I’d misjudged about him as well?
He was wearing a green plaid shirt under a black sleeveless vest with black leather boots under his black corduroy trousers. His hair was short, greying at the temples, but still tightly curled against his head. His face was oval with high cheekbones and a generous mouth under his dark moustache – an older version of the boy with long brown hair.
I realised the boy had to be his son, Daniel, while the woman with the striking auburn hair was Maggie, his ex-wife, except she wasn’t acting like someone who was no longer part of his family. Her smile as he took his seat on the stage was of genuine encouragement and pride. You didn’t look like that when you didn’t care about someone. He flashed her a grin and I realised the feeling was mutual. The other woman at their table turned around to speak to Daniel. Seeing her face for the first time, framed with her father’s curls, I realised she must be his daughter, yet he’d never spoken of her. What else would I learn about him tonight?
The waitress returned with my food. I was grateful for the interruption to my thoughts. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I would listen to him sing and then leave. There was no reason for him to know I was here.
But then the waitress moved and I found myself looking straight into the eyes of the singer on the stage. I saw him frown as if he recognised me, then shook his head in disbelief. He turned his attention back to his guitar as if dismissing me – just a woman on her own in a room packed full of friends and regulars there to hear him sing.
I thought back to the first time we’d exchanged photographs.
‘You have such a cute smile,’ was his first comment, ‘I’m sure if we met, I’d know you anywhere.’
But he wasn’t expecting me and it is always hard to recognise people out of context. I was a face behind a computer, not someone who sat in the same room, listening to a greying folk singer strum his twelve-string guitar.
I don’t remember all the songs he sang. I was surprised I knew them well enough to sing along, but then I’d fallen into the habit of playing the CD he sent me on the nights he was away from his computer. It was a comfort to hear his voice when we couldn’t communicate over a screen.
He was good. His audience knew him well, appreciating what he played for them. They asked him for special favourites and he obliged, his hands picking the strings of his guitar like a well tuned lover.
His hands fascinated me. The fingers were long, blunt ended, his hands large and capable. They moved up and down the frets with accomplished ease. In the dark of night he described how they would move around my body if he were beside me. His words thrilled me, making my skin tingle and my heart content to be so cherished.
But that was then and this was now. Reality never lives up to longed for dreams. It can’t. Dreams are ethereal, not meant to exist in the light of day.
On the stage, he began to introduce his next song as he retuned the guitar. ‘This is a new one, you won’t have heard before. It’s not one of mine, a friend sent it to me several months ago. I’m not much for score reading so it took me a while to sort out the chords’n’such, but it’s done now and I kinda like it. See what you think.’
I could hardly believe my ears. This was my song. Something I’d sent him on a whim, never thinking I would hear it played, not by him! His warm, rich voice softly sang the words I’d given him –a gift to me, yet offered unwittingly, without knowing I could both see and hear.
As the words died away and the crowd showed their appreciation, I hid my tearstruck eyes and looked away. When I raised them again, he was standing by my table, a wide smile crinkling his face.
‘Pardon me,’ he began. I could see him hesitating, wondering why he felt compelled to speak to an unknown woman. ‘I guess I just thought I’d apologise for staring at you earlier. You’ve not been to a session before have you?’
I shook my head. I could see his eyes searching my face, taking in my long green velvet skirt ad the matching velvet ribbon at my throat. The ribbon was his present for my birthday two months before.
‘I have a friend, the one who wrote that last song. She looks so much like you, I thought for a moment….’ His voice trailed away.
‘You thought it might be me.’ I smiled at him, watching his face as he registered my voice. We had talked over the phone several times, but our words were always coloured by nervous excitement and gentle teasing. My mouth was so dry, I could not be sure whether I sounded like me or not.
This wasn’t fair. Meeting people was supposed to be easy, not this tortuous game of truth or consequences. My earlier resolve crumbled. Now we were face to face, I could not leave without telling him who I was. I stood up and held out my hand.
‘Hello, Mike.’ I gulped air into tortured lungs. ‘Thank you for singing my song. I really liked it.’
He stood there, stunned, for what seemed an eternity. I felt him begin to open his arms as if to envelop me in a hug, but then he stopped and shook my offered hand in both of his.
‘I never thought…. Why didn’t you tell me? How did you get here?’ The words tumbled from his mouth in quick succession.
‘I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come. I’m at a conference, we finish tomorrow. I didn’t want to intrude on you and your family.’
My words fell on deaf ears as Maggie touched his arm and he turned towards her.
‘I’m going to take the kids home, hon. Caitlin’s not feeling too good.’
Immediately his face changed and I was forgotten. ‘Is she ok? Does she need to go to the hospital? I can drive her there if you want.’
‘No, hon,’ Maggie patted his arm, ‘she’s fine, it’s just a woman thing. All she needs is a sleep and some ibuprofen. Just be sure not to wake her if you come in late.’
‘I shouldn’t be too long. I just wanted to see Paul about the gig on Sunday. Oh, Maggie, just before you go. Can I introduce Kathleen Saunders, the one who sent me The Singing Tree, that last song I sang tonight.’
‘Is that so? Nice to meet you, Kathleen, Mike’s told me all about you. You’ll excuse me dashing off, but my daughter’s not feeling well. We tend to be very protective since she had that cancer scare last year. She’s fine now but every little ache and pain, you tend to panic.’
Maggie bustled away, sweeping the two kids before her out into the night.
‘You’re still together.’ My voice was flat, the sentence blurted out into the silence. I’d planned this moment a thousand times in the past few weeks, but now it was here, none of my carefully crafted phrases made sense.
He was married. His wife loved him, the feeling was mutual. It was likely she never had a drink problem. He had a daughter who’d battled cancer, but he’d never bothered to mention her to me. Were his care and concern for me merely words as well?
The warm, close relationship I’d created for the two of us in my dream world suddenly crumbled into dust along with all my other childhood hopes.
Mike’s face flushed red. His shame and embarrassment showed clearly. I saw humiliation in his eyes as he realised he’d been caught out.
‘Yes, we’re still together. We went through a tough time when Caitlin was sick five years ago and I did leave for a short while, but we talked it through and things are fine now. We still have our ups and downs, but you expe
ct that in a marriage.’
‘Why did you tell me you were on your own?’
‘I don’t know. I figured if you knew I was married you’d stop talking to me. You told me you didn’t want a friendship with a married man. I know I made up a story, but it wasn’t meant to hurt you… We’re friends. We’ve been friends for over a year. You mean a lot to me, our friendship means a lot to me. That’s the important thing.’
‘Is it?’
His eyes held mine.
‘Yes.’
His hand reached out and touched my arm – tentative, conciliatory, warm. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing made sense except the man standing in front of me holding out his hand to save our friendship.
‘Come on, let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it – somewhere we could sit and talk and let the silences breathe?’
I nodded, grabbing my bag and letting him help me on with my jacket as if we’d done this a thousand times before. He slung his guitar case over his shoulder and together we walked out into the night.
He took me to a coffee house just off Hawthorn. The winding stairs and small, intimate rooms housed sofas covered with far eastern throws and low tables. He sat me down in the corner of a sofa, stopping any thought of flight by sitting beside me. A waitress came by our table and he ordered a large lemon and ginger herb tea for me and a coffee and steak sandwich for himself.
‘I can’t eat before I go on, so I’m starving,’ he explained, meat juices dripping down his chin as he bit through the thick, ciabatta bread. ‘Is your tea ok? I know they have a good selection here, which is why I thought this would be a good place to come.’
I nodded, sipping the hot tea and gradually relaxing into the soft cushions of the sofa. My velvet skirt didn’t seem so out of place here amongst the throws.
He finished eating and ordered two portions of pie for the both of us, then turned and sat, looking at me as if he wanted to record every feature of my face in his memory.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Kath love? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Didn’t you trust me?’
I felt colour flooding my face as I bit back the words which said maybe I was right not to trust anyone anymore.
‘I..I..don’t know,’ I stammered, my fingers clutching the tassels of a cushion to stop them from reaching for him. ‘It was a last minute thing. One of the conference speakers pulled out at short notice so they contacted Leonard. He’d read my article and suggested me to fill in. I agreed before I knew the conference was going to be in Portland. I didn’t want to inconvenience you if you already had plans for this week.’
‘Listen to yourself, woman! You travel thousands of miles to be here. You come to the open mic looking like the dream child I always imagined you to be, then you say you don’t want to inconvenience me?’ He ran his fingers through his hair in unexpressed frustration then took a long, deep breath and very gently took both my hands in his.
‘Kathleen, you have no idea how much I wanted to meet you. Talking to you each day for the past year has meant more to me than you will ever know. We were going through hell thinking Caitlin’s cancer had come back. You were such a breath of fresh air. You kept me together when I was in danger of breaking down. Seeing you here, now, is more than I thought possible.’
His smile became more rueful and he rubbed the backs of my hands with his thumbs. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.’
‘You asked me to come and hear you sing, so here I am.’
I shrugged my shoulders, trying to make light of his words when deep inside all I felt was numb. I could have shouted and screamed, asking him why he’d led me on, why he’d lied to me, why he couldn’t be the man destined to love and cherish me, but there was no point. Anger and screaming help nothing. I was the one who would have to deal with my pain. I would do that in my own time, I always had.
People meet on the internet every day. Lots of them come together in real life, some marry and some find happiness, but for every two who do there are thousands more who are disappointed, who learn to live with their regret. Mike and I were friends. We had a choice – let the friendship stand and see where it led or walk away and lose what we’d already gained.
Lynne
- 22.02.2022
- 8
- 0
