The American

I wrote a story about love. Why? Ha, like hell I know. I guess it’s always on my mind. Anonymous Shrink says that whatever is on my mind is probably what matters most to me. What a fucking Einstein, I am starting to wonder if he actually went to any real school. So yeah, it’s the beginning of something I have been working on for a long time. Its called…

The American

I met her because my parents owned the inn she was staying at in my little town of no importance. She was visiting from California, and she was beautiful. But she wasn’t beautiful in the way that the girls that hold up those signs during boxing matches are beautiful, she is the kind of suffocating beautiful, the kind that makes you want to look away, because you don’t really deserve to be looking at her. I assume that not everyone thought of her that way, for she wasn’t really the conventional type of attractive. I believe to this day that my attraction to her was something I couldn’t control, so it would not have mattered whether or not she had any kind of beauty in her, it was only lucky for me that she did.
Her first words to me were that she probably could fall in love with someone like me, which made my heart stop. But the way she said it left me in no doubt that she found it unlikely she would. However I believe she said it merely to give me hope, to let me marinate in those words for a while, so as to decide what exactly I could do to win her heart, but I never thought of it as winning her heart. I merely thought of it as going on a journey, one that I intended to enjoy extremely.
We met again when I was working outside the inn one day, in the field where we let the guests ride our horses, I was picking up the apples that had fallen from the tree in the middle, and stopped to eat some in the process. We put the tree there so that the horses would eat the ones that hung down on the lower branches, an action that seemed to delight the guests. Although I pretended to be surprised to see her when she sat down beside me under the tree, I had really been watching her skip across the field to me. She smiled and asked my name. I told her it was Shamus, she seemed to like that. She told me that my name merely confirmed what she had thought earlier, that she could fall in love with me. I asked her why she thought that, but she merely laughed and said she would rather keep me guessing. I told her of her beauty; for a silence had grown that I feared might lessen her affections towards me. I mentioned that she was the kind of beauty you fell in love with, as opposed to the women who held up signs at the boxing matches. But she frowned at this. She told me that those women were probably beautiful in a lovelier way to the ones who loved them.
She also spoke of their beauty to me. They were an ideal, yes, one which may destroy the self-esteem of many young girls, but that’s the way it was. She said that if the girls were going to let it get to them, then that was their deal, and society shouldn’t form itself purely around the stupid things that others might make of things. They should do what they do, and let others do as they do. For, she thought, letting each other just get on with our lives was the only way to make each other happy, as long as there was some way that we could have others lifestyles not effect us, we really couldn’t complain, could we?
I laughed and said her views were interesting, and asked her if she’d anyone to share such views with. She said she had had a girlfriend back home, but they had fallen out. I was shocked. She described herself as bisexual, which made little sense to me. In my small town, we had little to do with men and women who desired those of the same sex as theirs. It was not that we did not have rumors, nor that the thought of a woman with another woman did not excite young men, it was only that it was not thought much of. We had no laws, no protests, no formal relationships, nothing of that sort. We had not even names for them. I had heard of some, gays, lesbians, faggots, dykes, the latter two being insults I presumed. However, none of these words were ever brought up in conversation, let alone were any relationships of the sort thought of in such a way as a lifestyle, they were more like perversions, and fantasies. So naturally the word “bisexual” never even entered the realm of my mind, let alone any conversation I had participated in. however she said it as a natural thing, and described her love of both men and women as something wonderful, and beautiful. She even spoke of her old girlfriend, and the love she felt for her. She spoke of her small waist, and her small breasts, and of her soft hair and dark eyes. She did not seem to miss her, but to still have a level of respect for her that fascinated me. When she fell silent, I commented that it was all for the best, for it would be a shame for someone of such perfection as herself to be limited to one of the sexes alone. She laughed and playfully hit my shoulder with the back of her hand. I suddenly saw that this comment may have come off as one said in a moment of discomfort, as some cheap flattery spoken to fill the gap left by how little I understood of her situation and feelings, though it was not. For I unusually understood her, and as I said before, I never thought of any experience I had with her as one spent trying to win her heart.
She pulled out a chocolate bar from her pocket and started to eat it, I swiftly took it from her, and switched it with an apple, causing her to jump and smile. She then pulled out a pocketknife hidden in her shoe and cut the apple’s side, taking a bite of the long flat piece she had carved. It was in that moment that I felt I could love her. I had always known that she was the type that I could love, but it was then that I knew that she went past the “type”, and became a person whom I could love, and probably would. Looking back, it surprises me that I did not then see that I already loved her, more than I could ever know.
I wondered why it was silent, and yet beautiful outside that day, with me humming, her eating an apple. The whole thing was completely surreal, something that I knew could only happen with her. If I was another man, I would be only sitting thinking how long before I could kiss her. And if she were another woman, she would be sighing, bored with my lack of intelligent words. But she was her and I was me, and as simple as it sounds, it is the most important thing in the world. It is what makes love work, and is only understood when one is in love, when one experiences the unspoken understanding that everything is connected, and that every moment is perfect, and planned by god. It is then that you find the secret to love, the thing that keeps us all together, the quiet solitude of being understood without having to explain, of being loved without having to try. That’s what I mean when I say I never tried to win her heart. She was mine before we ever even met, and she knew it, and I knew it, so there was no need for untrue words, or vows of love and loyalty. Everything I said to her was said from the bottom of my heart, every moment I spent with her was spent completely there, not wishing we were doing anything else, or that we were with anyone else. I believe that I could spend one hundred years with her, never speaking, just the two of us, and I would be ok. I laughed, right next to her under that tree, just at the thought of spending one hundred years with her. She asked me what was funny. And I told her I was thinking of spending years alone with her. She looked curious, and I explained that it wasn’t funny; it just made me happy to think of. She should have believed that it was a line, one that I half believed but mostly said merely to win her heart. But as I said before, when you really love, there is no need for untrue words. And I loved her.

Its not that hard to see that this is like some type of fantasy of mine. I wont show Anonymous Shrink, though I told him I wrote it. I am afraid of what he will think of it.