RED DRAGON

Prelude...

What Truths May Come

I have a secret I’ve been holding for most of my life, ever since I gained appreciation for the opposite sex.

I’ve denied it to friends and family. Ridiculed others who shared the same affliction. I’ve even gone out of my way to excuse myself when it looked as if my secret would go public.

But this morning I realized that my ghost has taken a life of it’s own and demands attention. It won’t go away, it no longer will fit in my closet of secrets. I must let it out once and for all.

I like fat chicks.

My one saving grace is, while I like “chunky” women, I’m not so far gone that weight is the only quality they have that attracts me. Facial appearance, shape, breast size, sexual energy, they all factor into it. And, I’m not into the obese or grossly overweight. Nothing can make a women covered in cellulite pretty in my book. But, I can’t hide it anymore, I like fat chicks, and they turn me on.

I think it started with Hispanic women. Most of them are hefty to say the least, but they wear clothes meant for much smaller women. Their confidence and freedom immediately drew me to them. So did their ample bosoms, shapely figures, and round butts. Walter Mosley also had something to do with it. In Easy Rawlins books, he writes fondly of hefty black women; “big mommas” who cradle their men like infants in their cleavage.

As a young man, I would often find these women attractive, but join in when my friends would berate them in public. I would turn my head in disgust while sneaking a peek at them when no one was looking. I successfully convinced all, but my wife that was like everyone else in my disdain for the larger females. Sometimes, I would slip and had to do damage control before anyone caught on. I’d make excuses and even go so far as using some of the words often used by the BBW propaganda machine. Usually, my friends would forgive my lapse of judgment, figuring I was a “breast man” horny for big boobs and that sometimes blinded me to the truth.

I went along with them as long as it kept me secret hidden a little while longer. But, in the dark of my living room, alone, in the early hours of the morning, I would take out my copy of Black Holes or Booty Dreams and salivate over big women with small breasts, fat butts, and kissing thighs.

This morning I awoke from a dream that I’ve never had before. IN it, I was separated from my wife and lived in a small apartment where my neighbor was a blonde BBW who out weighed me and was much taller. None of this happened in the dream, my brain just knew the back-story and plopped me down in the middle. I was in the BBW’s apartment and succumbing to her advances that lead me to her bedroom where she gave me oral sex. That’s all I wanted, and I enjoyed it, but as she proceeded I saw my penis dwarfed by in comparison to her size. Most BBW’s prefer men with large penises because they are so big themselves it’s easier for a well-equipped man to get around them. In my case, the woman was not only bigger in size, but also taller than me, so my average length proved more difficult for her to manage. Things got worse when she positioned herself for a sixty-nine and while I was able to spread her thighs apart, her mound was too far away. I couldn’t reach her to return the favor she was doing me and the whole thing ended abruptly. The last thing I remember is being dressed and walking out of her apartment, questioning if I should ask her to take special care not to mention this to my wife. Or, if by doing that, I would almost guarantee she would.

I lost my virginity to a BBW when I was seventeen and I know from experience how delicate a situation it can be. She was bigger than me and whether I was skilled or not, I was unable to satisfy her because of her girth. After that, I decided that it was best for me to date more petite women, but my Charlie Brown luck kicked in and I learned petite women prefer taller men to shrimps like me.

Rejected by big women and small women leaves me feeling like a sexual anomaly. Just like trying to find a pair of pants that fit perfectly, I need a woman somewhere in the middle.

...End of Prelude.

JG wrote me today.

I keep dancing closer and closer into the danger zone with her. One of these days I’ll either say something totally out of line or I’ll creep her out and she’ll disappear.

Luckily, she hasn’t read my latest entries, so I have time to change them.

It’s hard chatting or writing her because when I do there’s something in me that’s awakened and I want to open myself up to things I should leave well enough alone. I regress to the kid who jumped on any girl that liked him, even if it was just a little, or just wanted to be friends. I may have done that today when I asked her if she would give me the time of day if I were single.

Ouch. Could I be more desperate? What am I doing? Why am I so fascinated by tempting fate? Thank god I don’t gamble or I’d have nothing left.

What?
What was the answer?
Oh, that’s the worst part. She said she didn’t know. That she doesn’t have the hindsight to answer a “What if” question like that.

Just shoot me dead where I stand.

I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, asking a question like that.

I’m married. I have kids.
Where am I going with this?
Is it jus the excitement of it all?
The drama?

Per chance to find some validation for living or believing that I may have some self-worth?

Desire is a big thing for me. It’s proof that a person is wanted, that they have some value to someone. Without that, what’s the point of living? If no one desires you, then you have no reason for being. You’re worthless. You could drop dead tomorrow and no one would know. There are differences in desire that could give you some value, but there’s only one that really matters, to me anyway.

I put a lot of weight on the shallow things in life. Physical appearance and stuff like that are far more important to me than anything else. Maybe it’s because I’ve had the other, deeper, qualities in abundance for so long? After a while, you crave what you don’t have over what everyone sees in you. The love of your wife dims in comparison to the primal need of a woman who wants to mount you. Even making love isn’t as exciting as pure fucking. Soon, you begin to question, if not for those emotions like love, would your significant other be attracted to you at all?

I keep asking myself if my wife loves me, or if she’s learned to love me? Is she attracted to me, or does she just appreciate me? Does she rationalize our marriage by assuming her life would be much worse if not for me?

My marriage is such an anomaly that I can’t help, but to question it. How did my wife go from someone who did everything she could to get rid of me and almost overnight changed to someone who couldn’t live without me? And, this is before I became a man. This is when I was a child, still grasping to unrealistic notions about marriage and relationships. How? How could this have happened, when it never worked with anyone else before?

And, I guess that is at the core of it. I’m not some horny husband looking to cheat on his wife. I’m looking for validation, because if someone else can find me desirable, then it would explain why my wife is with me. Without knowing that, I just can’t believe she’s with me for the right reasons.

There’s an event that sticks out in my mind and no amount of counseling has been able to get rid of it. My wife and I had been dating less than a year and already we’d broken up several times for various reasons, most of them stemming from her not being ready for a deep commitment and I was pushing for nothing less. This time around, an old boyfriend had come back and she was calling it quits with me to be with him. I remember it vividly: we were having our last lunch together at Ralph’s on LaBrea and 3rd Street. My wife, let’s call her “JM”, and I finished our meal and she explained why we were breaking up because someone else was in the picture. I was begging her not to leave me, but there was no amount of poetry that would work on her. She wanted to end the date right there in the lunch area, but I insisted I walk her back to her office. There, on the street, in front of anyone walking by, at the front door, I begged for one last kiss. It always worked in the past and I was hoping it would again. But, JM was ready for it. She said no and when I pushed, she pushed back.

I remember the look in her eyes at that moment. I disgusted her. I was the lowliest man she’d ever seen, if I qualified as a man at all. She pushed me back and told me to: “Get the fuck away from me! Leave me alone, I don’t want to be with you!” she went back in her office and let me crushed on the sidewalk to stand alone at the bus stop where everyone had witnessed my undoing.

This is the woman who I know call my wife. That same girl who screamed at me and told me to get the fuck away from her now pledged her love for me.

I always tell my friends never to measure the success of their relationships by what I went through because it was a miracle. A miracle…

As miracles go, this one had a weird sense of humor. As much as I remember that day, I don’t recall how we got back together, but we did. And, as bad as that day was, the worst was yet to come. Fake suicide attempts. Arguments over the phone, infidelity, and lies about blood cults, and the ghost of a fictional dead lover; we went through it all. Somewhere along the way, JM says she fell in love with me. To this day she says she always loved me. Even though she broke up with me, she could never get me out of her head. The one time the tables turned is after I cowered back to her, saying I would let her see someone else, as long as she stayed with me. She was seeing the ex-boyfriend from before and I was getting the leftovers. She told me that seeing two guys was killing her. She was guilty and it wasn’t fair to either one. Hearing the pain in her voice did something to me.

It was a Sunday night, and for the first time, I felt strong. I told her how I didn’t want to be a source of pain for her. If I had to let her go, I would. If she couldn’t make a choice between us, I would do it for her. I let her go and told her to be with the other man. After I said that, the tides turned and she was the one on the phone crying. She was begging me not to do it, not to leave. She told me she didn’t know what she’d do without me. I tried to hang-up the phone, I was going out with my brother to the West End, but she wouldn’t let me go without promising I’d see her the next day.

That Monday afternoon, after we had lunch at the same Ralph’s, we stood in front of her office, just as before, except now, we were kissing passionately. She promised she’d dump the other guy and stay with me. And, I believed her.

She continued seeing the other man for another month before she confessed what was going on and ended it. We were still in our infancy, we hadn’t even passed the six months and we’d put each other through hell. And most often, I was on the receiving end. And then, it all went away. Just like that. I just woke up one day and she loved me. No more fighting. No more denial. No more arguments. We were finally in love. After that, came the day when her mother gave her the ultimatum to go home or stay with me. She chose me and we moved in together, got married, had kids, and the rest is history.

It’s been ten years since we were married. Eleven and a half years from the day we first met. And, as happy as I am, as much as I love her, I still question what happened. What changed in her and why? I ask her all the time if she can remember when she fell in love with me. She’ll say she always did love me, but she was afraid, and one day she just stopped fighting and accepted it.

Accepted it.
Like, “accepting” death?
Like, surrendering?

Did she learn she was in love with me? Or, did she learn to love me?

Things just don’t add up and it’s plagued me for years. JM and I have a deep love, but our passion has always been one sided. I’m hot for her and she’s warm for me. Is that love? Sure, kids can douse the flames of passion, but what if they weren’t there to begin with? Is JM’s love based on me being a good man? Or, is it primal and relentless? Is it the same kind of love I have for her that would make me do anything, denounce God, throw away my pride, and sacrifice self-respect just for a kiss?

And shouldn't we want more than that? If we don't, then aren't we surrendering to the mundane? I want to feel that fire, that passion, that unquenching desire when a woman must have her man. I want to know what that feels like, when a woman surrenders herself to desire and falls into my arms. I want to be on the recieving end of that hunger. it physically hurts not knowing what they feels like. Wondering if I ever will. And realizing that I'm not one to inspire it, not even in my own wife.

I am the Red Dragon Thomas Harris wrote about. I am one who wants to be desired by others, and sometimes I feel like I could kill for that feeling. I look at women and wonder what it would feel like to be wanted and desired by them. I always thought my weight was the one thing that kept me from that, but I was wrong. I lost al that weight and nothing changed. When that happened, I saw no need to be skinny. My own pleasure of accomplishment wasn't enough to sustain me, not without fulfilling my dreams of being desired.

My wife did desire me more, but that only left more questions unanswered. If she treated me one way when I lost weight, then what was she thinking, how did she feel before? And, what would happen if I gained the weight back? I did gain the weight back, and her passion died with it. So, how does she feel? What does she see when she looks at me? What is her love based on if she's with someone she's not attracted to? And, how long before she can't live like that anymore?

Doc said I have no faith. And, in matters of the heart, you need faith. He’s right; I have no faith. To me, faith is admitting you can’t find the answer so you say there isn’t one. But there is an answer. Maybe it’s beyond us. Maybe we’re too afraid of it to see clearly? But, there is an answer for everything. There’s a reason why JM loves me, if she loves me, and I want to find it. If she can’t tell me, then maybe I can find it through someone else? If they can want me, maybe it’s for the same reasons JM does? If someone else finds me special, then maybe that’s why JM does?

Every woman in my life, save one, has rejected me for one reason or another. And, the only one to accept me, at one time, did her best to get rid of me. So, why is she with me now? Why does she love me, when there’s nothing about me that anyone finds desirable?

I'll do anything to find out why...

And that scares me.

JPG.