Waka Pass Diaries (A New Kind of Salsa)

August 4

When I saw him walk into the venue, I felt a familiar crushing mix of resentment and desire. This was a guy who I both hated and wanted. And just when I was on the path to shutting him out in the back of my mind, we both had to be present at the same function.

“You just have to ignore him, Pinky,” I told myself. “Ignore him. Don’t look at those China eyes of his. Don’t even let your eyes wander anywhere close to his lips. Ignore, ignore, ignore.”

And I was doing a good job.

I was hugging everyone but him. I was beaming my smile here and there but at him. I was frosty in my response when he said “Hey”. If I had a weave, I’d have flipped it in his face with attitude. Yes, I was on full Oscar nomination mode. Charlize Theron had nothing on me.

Then the event started. He was one of the speakers called on to talk about depression and writing. And as he talked, he shared some of his pain that made my heart break. I still hated him, but now I felt some empathy pushing its way in to join the mix of emotions roiling in my heart.

So when the moderator took over from him, I signaled for his attention. He looked. I mouthed at him: “Let us see after you’re done.” And he nodded his understanding.

When he left the high table, he walked toward me. I stood and we stepped outside. Then we stood face to face. I didn’t know what to say. There was hurt, acres of hurt between us. There was regret. There was desire too.

I started talking. He talked too. “Let’s walk,” he said. So we walked as we talked. The venue for the event was a school, and on a Saturday like this, only the classroom we were using and its environs had people milling around them. So pretty soon, we’d walked to a section of the school’s building where it was just us. Just me and him. And up until that moment, we’d been addressing the hurts and the regrets.

But now we were alone, the desire took over. I honestly wasn’t expecting it. He snatched me into his arms, and I had just a moment to register the fact that we were not behind closed doors, before his lips descended on mine.

Those lips… They just fit. Melding and meshing with mine in a kiss that drove all caution away from my mind. I kissed him back. I curled into his arms. He reached behind me to grab my derriere. I moaned against his mouth. Our tongues dueled. Ohmaigod, there was a fire burning in my soul, its flames reaching out to lick across my nerve endings. I was hard. He was hard. And we were outside under the indulgent all-seeing gaze of Rainbow Jesus.

Even after we stopped kissing to talk, every now and then, we came together in brief seconds to capture another kiss or two. It was like our lips were magnets that once connected, couldn’t stay apart for long.

It was during one of the periods that we were apart talking, that a girl walked past. We barely spared her a glance, but her presence was like a douse of water, reminding us of where we were.

But we refused to stay reminded for long. Still we hugged, kissed, separated, talked, hugged, kissed, separated, talked. It was like a dance, a new kind of salsa. Hug, kiss, separate, talk.

And when we were kissing, the girl walked back past. I was facing the direction she was coming from, and I had my lips on his when I saw her see us.

But how I reacted amazed me. Still amazes me.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t recoil. I didn’t push him violently away. I enjoyed the sensation of his lips one more microsecond before I gently disengaged. He heard her footsteps, turned to see her as she walked past. And said, “Why won’t this girl sit one place and let us enjoy what we are doing.”

Just like me, he didn’t recoil. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t act like someone who’d be caught doing something wrong.

Because we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just two people using our desire for each other to mend the past.

And after, as he tried to will his erection into flaccidity behind his chinos trousers so we could go back to the event, we took a selfie.

Written by Pink Panther