Mr. Gone, Maxx, and Myself

By Palmtree Peaceful

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Mr. Gone.

He looks like a walking penis. Well. Some penises. This one long and bumpy and stubbly-so icky it's cringe-worthy. The kind that rams torture into you after you scream for it to stop but all that happens is the hot poker keeps getting hotter and sharper; and it doesn't care if you're bleeding, or tearing, or mute afterward; so weak you crawl through the damp stinky alley on all fours like a trembling...no. Rabbit would be too easy. More like...a stray kitten. A trembling stray kitten. Wet, sad, mewling. And nobody hears you, or cares.

Except for Maxx. Somehow he found me, picked me up, and carried me home in his arms. My first rabbit instincts were to kick him, bite him, anything. And run away.

But he tenderly, softly, dabbed my wounds and my soul with an unspoken balm that kneaded my heart and my psyche.

Not all at once; because I was a tremoring mess under his sheltering embrace.

A sip of tea here. A bite of cracker there. A dab of medicine. I don't know if he knew what he was doing or not-or if he had nursed someone back to health and sanity before or not-and it didn't matter.

What mattered was that I learned to feel not as afraid of shadows and sounds. I learned to stop clutching him so hard my fingernails pierced his caring hands. Er, claws.

"Go ahead," he said softly. "Hold as tight as you have to. You can't hurt me."

It took a few weeks to learn how to stand instead of cower, walk instead of crawl, sleep instead of retch.

He spooned me soup, and a cup of warm milk with a drop of honey along with the latest Cheers story he'd made up in his head. God, I hate that show. What is there to be so cheery about? Some dark, wet sanctuary where you go to pull the weeds from your life? Who needs it. You can do that sitting in the bathroom or the underpass.

"You'll be okay, Julie," he said in his low, kind voice. The kind reserved only for me. At the rest of the world, he seemed to roar and growl. With me, never. Not even when I was breaking his heart. (But that's another story for another time). "I'll take care of you."

I believed him. Something about him told me he would keep his word. And he did. He did more than just take care of me. He defended me, protected me, consumed me. I became his world, and I tried hard not to become his. But the more he loved me...the more I loved him back.

"Why should I trust you?" I asked him as we walked out of the wet purple alley together.

He held a newspaper over my head to keep the rain off. It's the little things like that that captured my heart in his muscular, velveteen trap.

"You shouldn't," he said with his arm around me. "Not unless I earn it. It will be hard for you to trust anyone after what happened. I have to prove to you that I'm worth your trust."

He could have said "trustworthy", but the other way he said it...meant more.

Was he worth my trust? Did I even want to hang around him to find out? What did I owe him anyway? I never asked him to pick me up and tend to me like a baby chick; he just did. If someone saves your life, does that mean they now own you and that you owe them?

I don't want to be owned by anybody, or owe anybody, and I told him so.

"I would never dream of owning you," he said in that sometimes wise voice he had. "That would be like putting a butterfly in a birdcage. And what do you owe me? Not one thing in this world."

(But maybe in another?)

He never said, and I never asked.

Well. Okay. He said the right things, did the right things, but so do a lot of other guys in general, and they turn out to be the ones who hurt you the most.

I mean really. Who can you trust in this world? I can count on three fingers the number of people I've trusted in my life, and they all let me down in one way or another.

Is that just human nature? Am I expecting too much? I've let people down too, so who am I to talk?

I just have to right some wrongs, put some bandaids on, cause a few smiles, lift a few heads. I am driven to do that. It's in my genes. Jeans too, Maxx would say. Heh heh.

Mr. Gone says I do social work more for myself than others. Maybe he's right. Maybe every case, every bruise, every teardrop, is me.

"You're trying to save yourself," Mr. G told me in that obnoxiously intelligent tone that leaves little room for objection. "From a past that was never your fault. Poor Julie. You have a lot to learn."

How could such a sexual sadist know anything about me?

I hate to admit it, but he's probably right.

I do have a lot to learn. About Mr. Gone, Maxx, and myself.

The End