Don't Hate Me

At last, Friday night is here! After a long and heavy week of work, all I want is to go out and have some fun.

I call my girls and we plan what promises to be the best night of the year. A new club has opened, and word is it is amazing. I wear my sexiest dress, a tiny, red piece of fabric that will render more than one guy speechless, and get ready to party.

The time comes and I meet with the girls at my house. They all look gorgeous, but if I must modestly admit, not as gorgeous as I do. We do some final fixes to our almost perfect attires and go out.  We decide to go by cab –we don’t want to risk getting caught driving drunk again.

The cab driver, a nice, little old man is more than glad to have such beauties riding with him. We talk and laugh, and make a party of the yellow car. The old man bids us the warmest farewell as we arrive to our destination. I guess he wishes he could come with us, but hey, party night is not for everyone!

Although it is still early, the place is already full. A long line of people grows ever longer outside the club, which if its outsides do any justice to its insides, it is really an amazing place. We line up and luckily for us the line moves along pretty quickly and we go inside the club in less than an hour.

It is indeed amazing. Breathtaking, I would dare to say. The show of lights, the music, the decoration, the service: everything contributes to make this place the best club of town.

We catch the party mood quickly and began dancing to the funky rhythm. We drink and dance as if the world depends on it, and soon all the woes of my mind begin to disappear.

In the middle of one drink and another, I find myself talking to a stranger: a charming guy with a sexy smile who somehow made his way to our table. He seems nice, at least nice enough for me to dance one piece with him.

His smile isn’t the only thing that is sexy. My, he’s such a beast on the dance floor! We dance and laugh and drink and dance some more.

Without warning he shoots for my lips, and I feel the alcohol building up on my resolve and shoot back. We kiss passionately as we keep moving our bodies to the rhythm. He tells me that he wants to continue the party back in his place. Something tells me that I shouldn’t: last time things went bad. I ended up hurt, and I definitively don’t want that to happen again. But that voice of conscience is soon silenced by the alcohol and his bewitching smile rocking and messing my mind.

I reply with another passionate kiss and we take off to his place. On my way and amid more kisses, which now are a lot more passionate, I somehow text one of my girlfriends and tell her of my sudden escape.

We reach his place and as fast as rabbits we take our clothes off. The lust of the moment makes everything even blurrier. The ecstasy, however, feels quite real. I’m feeling like I’ve never felt before. This man that is holding me so tight completes me in so many levels…

I let myself drown in the sensations that invade and overtake me. The feeling grows more and more intense, until neither of us can take it anymore.

I wake up with the first rays of sunlight, and so does my night partner. Bathed in daylight, things begin to look different. My head hurts intensely, and I begin recalling last night’s events. A deep feeling of guilt is the first one to overcome me. Then, fear. What have I done!?

The guy with the sexy smile stares at me, and I see he’s horrified.  I began to blabber, trying to tell him that I never meant to do that. In a mess of words I tell him that I am sorry. He doesn’t say anything at all and just stares at me. I feel the pressure and slowly begin to cry. First a tear falls off, then as my fear for this ending just like last time grows, more and more fall. I cry and manage to say between sobs “don’t hate me.”

He opens his eyes wide, and I fear he’s getting angrier. I cover my eyes with my hands, fall on my knees and once again say “don’t hate me.” And I say it again, this time as a mere whisper. I keep crying, unable to stop. Is the cause of my tears a fear for my life or a fear of rejection? I cannot say. Maybe it’s both. Probably it is.

I feel a growing void consuming me from my inside and wish he would say something, anything at all.

I hear him walking towards me. I look up with my eyes filled with tears and my heart clenched and I see his still-horrified face.

“Don’t hate me,” I say once again, “for being a man.”

A long silence falls over us, only interrupted from time to time by my weeping. Suddenly he moves my hands towards me. I am paralyzed with fear. But instead of hitting me, he softly places it on top of my head.

“Why should I hate you?” he asks not with anger but with kindness.

At his words I suddenly stop my sobbing. I look at him with confused eyes, and notice that he is smiling warmly at me.

“Why should I hate you,” he says again as he kneels down, “if you have done nothing wrong? Why should I hate you if you have only fall victim to your most precious desires? Why should I hate you if… if I’m just like you?”

Until this moment I had not realized that the man in front of me was another special soul like me, lost in a world not fit for the different and just trying to find a way out.  I realize that he was just as terrified as I of being rejected. Just as me, he is looking for someone who could accept him despite him not being “normal.”

I clear my tears off my eyes and smile at him. He suddenly embraces me, not with the passion of last night, but with the kindness of the morning light. I hold him too as my fears vanish and I, for the first time of my life since I was a little kid, feel safe.