Terms of Entrapment

03/28/80

She comes in again tonight, to sit and to stare at me, drumming her fingers on the table – the tap, tap, tap of sharp red nails – pretending I am unimportant to her.

Her long blonde hair and bright red lipstick ought to make her stand out against the dark backdrop of the bar, but does not since there are some many other blondes with red lipstick and finger nails, the current uniform for barflies these days – though almost every guy behind every beer mug still stares at her and the others, hopeful as they all are to draw her attention, then looking elsewhere when she ignores them, too.

She’s here looking for something more than the one-night-stand other women come here for, or pretend to anyway, and thinks I’m the one who will give her what she wants, when I’ve told her over and over, I’m not in love with her – she just doesn’t believe it.

I don’t even belong in this world where people pour out their souls as fast as Tommy, the bartender, does their drinks – men more than women, but sometimes women like her, looking for something from someone that I certainly can’t give – an illusion of house and home and family that isn’t possible coming from a place like this or from a person like me.

Each time she comes in, I tell her the same thing, only less and less gently until I feel guilty hearing the cold note in my own voice, and still, she persists, following the bad as if she another groupie from bar to bar, only never looking at the lead singer the way all the other groupies, too, and when I’m not with the band, calling me at home, or when I refuse to answer, leaving notes under the windshield wiper of my car the way as cop might leave a traffic ticket.

Tonight, I make up my mind to end this, knowing that she will never give up and won’t accept even my cool kindness; she won’t settle for anything less than love.

So, I walk up to her table, stared down into her face and tell her, "Go away."

I watch the hurt ripple across her face as if she is a pool of water into which I have just thrown a heavy stone.

It is a deeper hurt than I intend, but I don’t know any other way to stop this, she believing I have led her on when I have done everything possible not to.

She, like some others I’ve seen here, fishes the water, using sex as bait, hoping to plant a hook in a man – though most not looking for marriage, but for something else most men want to avoid.

Her hurt turns immediately into rage as she stares straight into my eyes and growls about my ego, and how mistaken I am, and I say nothing, too stunned to speak, wondering just what new angle she is coming at me with.

I just walk away.

She never stops staring. Yet is no longer love-struck, and her doe-like gaze, gone, her eyes full of fire and rage.

I ache to make it up to her, to try and explain, and to make her understand I’m not looking for love, at least not yet, and certainly not here, and that I live alone because I like it that way, and still licking my wounds over some old romance I still feel deep inside of me, and cannot let go of even though it let go of me a long, long time ago, and how I’m not yet ready to let myself fall back into a trap I know if I fall into I might never again escape.