Saturday, August 20, 2011

Minx Fanfic Chapter 1


(Marissa's Diary Entry: Friday August 19th, 2011)

Dear future Marissa,

There are times, like now, that my felicity with words is just not enough, times I wish I was a writer first, and a lawyer second, so I could express emotions in images and colors the way the poets do.

I love Bianca. If I were a man this would be an ordinary statement, or as ordinary as real love can be in any context, but it would be an accepted one. It would be the love that society understands, the same love that launched a thousand ships, that drove Antony to Cleopatra, that made Napoleon whisper Josephine’s name with his dying breath. 

I am hopelessly, drunkenly, passionately in love with her. I don’t know how else to say it.

Sometimes we can only speak in someone else’s voice. Describing a woman he saw in a fleeting moment, Baudelaire wrote:

A woman passed, lifting and swinging
With a pompous gesture the ornamental hem of her garment,
Swift and noble, with statuesque limb.
As for me, I drank, twitching like an old roué,
From her eye, livid sky where the hurricane is born,
The softness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills

Bianca is the softness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills. I am the hurricane.

She is the softness that fascinates because her every breath, every move, every inch is intoxicating. Everything about her makes me want her: the way her soft curls frame her face, the curve of her slender wrists, the way she smells, the way clothes fit her like all clothes were made for her alone, the feminine movements that betray she was a dancer, the way she says with her eyes more than anyone I have ever known.  I miss no details about her, I see and remember everything. From a thousand miles away I could sketch the curve of her lips.

She is also the pleasure that kills. I cannot go back now having been with her. There is no way to become again the old Marissa, the one that sought the normal, the familiar, the acceptable life. I thought that if I was with her, even just once, that I would never be satisfied again without her;  I would become like a bottomless cup, full only in the moments we were together, when I poured her into me and myself into her, that when we were together I would pour her and pour her and in the pouring be satisfied, but that when I was alone I would never again be filled. I was right.

I am the hurricane. I have wanted her for so long. I have dreamed about her and imagined being with her over and over. It was a curiosity, and then a longing, and became a hunger, and yesterday rose to a fever pitch. And last night, at the hospital, it overwhelmed me. She was standing there, concerned about her sister, but happy, too, about Zach, and I was overwhelmed with wanting her. She was wearing boots, and I love her in boots. I’ve worn boots a million times. To me they were meaningless. But on Bianca? On her legs? They are like gifts from God. She was wearing a tunic with a belt, too, which highlighted everything sexy about her—her hips, her breasts, her perfect curves. I looked at her—I was searching for something. Her brown eyes looked back at me with longing, or maybe they reflected my longing back to me. We talked for a while and I felt like there was a rope between us, growing tighter and tighter, as we spoke. And then I couldn’t help myself. I stumbled over the awkward words, trying to explain. But how can you say in a few words the thoughts that could fill libraries? What words can convey casually this physical ache, like a thirst, fueled by thousand desires below the surface? She gave me that questioning look, the one that says she is daring to hope but terrified at the same time. Then, miracle of miracles, she agreed to come back to the hotel with me.


Before I write about last night, I have to process it myself.

I have come to love Bianca more than I have ever loved anyone.  She loves me in an extraordinary way, too, I know that now. But that is not why I love her. If she despised me I think I would love her all the same.

Bianca is as strong as an oak and as fragile as a hummingbird. She’ll fight for me and AJ, and for her girls, and she’ll stop at nothing to protect us. I know that. Wherever she goes she empowers and reassures everyone around her. She’s a lighthouse in any storm.  But she is also incredibly vulnerable. She did not, could not, believe I wanted to be with her. I’ll never forget the day in the park when she pulled away from me. Pain like that gets seared into you, like a brand, and that’s something you don’t forget. But I see now that she was just afraid.

She is broken in some ways. The scars Reese left have not healed, and the ones from Michael may never disappear entirely. I would do anything to erase that pain from her life. And I would sacrifice anything, save AJ, to protect her happiness in the days ahead. That’s one way I know I love her.

Am I gay? A lesbian? Or, stranger still, a homosexual? The words are foreign. Like the scientific name of a flower I’ve known since childhood. They’re words that people use to explain something they don’t understand. They don’t change anything. They don't change me. I don’t really know what I am, really, other than a mother to AJ and a woman who loves Bianca Montgomery.