force of habit

Yesterday I kissed a girl. She was recording a TV interview with us and frankly doing quite a poor job of it. She kept asking the most boring, inane questions and while the others were patiently smiling and trying to come up with meaningful responses you could clearly tell she was just reading off the cards and not actually caring about any of the answers. She even repeated some of the questions a few times and all I could think of throughout was about how badly she was doing and how to salvage the broadcast somehow. I cringed each time at her stilted, high-pitched laugh and kept thinking of all the questions she could've been asking us instead of doing her awkward, intermittent squawking. I imagine this must've made me seem a little preoccupied or distant. Not that I was trying to be. I was just focussed on getting through the interview smoothly, for both of our sakes.

Later on as she was packing up her stuff, the others had stepped out and we were the only two in the room left. Suddenly she straightened up and said to me, apropos of nothing, 'You're quite charismatic, you know.' Although she said this, it didn't feel like she was praising me. She said it with a flat, affectless, matter-of-fact sort of tone and I noticed as well there was a kind of cold disdain in her eyes as she said it.

'Okay...' I replied, not quite sure how to respond.

'And quite pathetic,' she continued.

'... What did you say?'

'I said you're quite pathetic.'

I turned round to look at her properly and she was standing there just looking right back at me. Staring right at me -- almost into me, it felt like -- not in an accusatory or mocking kind of way. Just sort of watching to see what I would do. And as I looked at her, my feelings went from confusion to curiosity to desire like water morphing from ice into vapour. Suddenly, she seemed incredibly different. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. Not as the inept interviewer, but something more -- something beautiful and unattainable. Something close to a goddess. She was pretty the way interviewers for mainstream publications are but not extraordinarily good looking. It's hard to explain. There was something bewitching and weirdly intense about her presence. It was more than just looks. She possessed some strange allure I couldn't escape. Then I felt a sudden paroxysm of desire well up inside of me and I realised with a kind of growing dread and simultaneous relief that yes, it was exactly as I had suspected.  I wanted her.

In that moment, it was as if every atom, every molecule and fibre of my being had dropped what it was doing to worship her. I wanted her. Every single action, thought or sensation of mine was overwritten by this one crude, overriding imperative. I was reduced to an almost Neanderthal level of consciousness, as if all my executive functioning had gone out the window. It was as if my every impulse, my sense of inhibition, my reflexes -- even my autonomic functions were enslaved to this one directive that totally consumed me and filled my mind with its singular demand, repeating frantically, louder and louder each time so as to become deafening. At this point even the mere thought of resisting was so wildly far-fetched that it had ceased to exist within the realm of possibility for me. It was as much a choice as gasping is to a drowning man. I wanted her. I had to have her. I didn't stand a chance.

The rest happened in a blur. I walked over, legs moving by themselves, half mad with desire and grabbed her really quite violently and kissed her roughly on the mouth - and to my surprise she kissed me back, with equal force and passion. Then we we were both on the floor and the moment we kissed I can only describe it as -- as a gust of sunshine blowing through me. Utter bliss. A magnificent, warm sensation felt deep in my core spreading slowly, filling me to the brim. I could feel her smiling as she kissed me; the twist of her lips, coy and triumphant. As she rolled on top of me and removed her blouse, I kissed her again, driven by overwhelming fever-craving and pushed her to the floor with my weight. She lay there with her blouse around her shoulders and yielded to me in a gorgeous way.

When sanity descended upon me again, I lifted my head to look at her. She was glorious, glowing with satisfaction. Her head was tilted back, resting on the floor, hair splayed out beautifully on the ground like some kind of halo. She looked down at me out of the corner of her eyes, smiling. I smiled back at her. We basked in each other for a while. And then I looked left and noticed a mirror.  And I was horrified by what I saw.

It was a full length mirror, standing just a little way off such that it could show me clearly all of our tangled limbs as well as all of our ugliness. I was on all fours, on my hands and knees, hunched over her. But I saw none of that spectacular tenderness I had experienced. I saw nothing of our perfect passion. Instead, what I saw was not us but two fakes. Unpleasantly angled creatures that resembled us. Two skinny teenagers. One positioned awkwardly atop the other in a clumsy embrace, a mess of limbs and my face bewildered, blinking blankly back at me, not yet comprehending the full wretchedness of the situation. She glanced over too at the mirror and saw our loathsome images, but she only regarded us with a brief and mild fascination before turning back to face me. She caressed my face and tried to pull me in close for a kiss but I couldn't stop looking at my artless, ungainly figure in the glass. Scrawny, unimpressive, my eyes wide with disbelief. Pitiful. Pathetic. I hated the sight of it. I couldn't stand the thought of myself looking like that. When I finally turned back to face her, she was ordinary. The magic or whatever madness had gripped me just moments ago had faded. It had evaporated, dissipated completely. I stood up carefully and stared down at the floor. She looked up at me with a puzzled expression. And then with a quiet voice I asked her to leave, taking care to avoid her eyes. Her glare changed slowly from one of bewilderment, to incredulity and then finally resignation. She gathered her things, and without a word stepped out, closing the door behind her.