My Moon, My Man

I've never had a worse lover than the moon. I had to drop his dark-side ass. I want more than a moon. It’s like every planet has one. Some have two. Some two-hundred-and-two. Even more. I wonder if the moons orbiting the other planets are as cocksure as our little heartbreaker. It’s just a reflection. Our moon doesn’t glow. It’s a trick the sun taught. The sun! Now there’s a lover! The moon is a waste. He’s a scumbag.

He stalks me even to this day. Some people think of the moon as a woman, but he certainly didn't present himself that way to me. He said little but was always leering. You know that man. Eyes open. Always inspecting. Always stuffing his brain with the many pictures he's taking of you.

Because he wants to see you. He wants you to be something that he can see. To remember you the way he wants. And when the moon sees you, he wants to see the things that make him lie. He wants to see his own glow in you. And he did glow… with me. I wanted the lie to be real. I wanted to be seen in the worst way.

I've never had a partner as selfish as the moon. A true narcissist, without a doubt. All of the red flags were there. It was a fast romance. He seduced me. It was one hell of a sweaty romance. It was day after day. Every night. Something new. He engaged me. Everything he said and everything he did was exactly what I wanted but didn't know.

He seemed so confident and together at the beginning. He was subtle and witty and cocky in bed. I felt like I was in the hands of an experienced lover. I was. The sex was “other-worldly.”

Every time I was with him, I was reminded of just how inadequate every other lover had been. Because he opened me. He found my history. He made the connections. I wasn't afraid to confess the secrets I had. The desires that no one would let me speak much less have.

He didn't see me as a victim. He saw me as a surprise. He saw me as something better, and he had seen them all. His list was long. And of all the bodies he could be touching each night, he chose mine. And it was what I needed. It was what I couldn't find. Because if I tell my story, I become fragile. I needed protection.

I told him everything. He listened to me like a priest, but he offered no absolution. He said, “you are you.” And then we would kiss. Kissing the moon sounds romantic because it is. I swooned. No lie. He knocked me off of my feet. It was divine. Every song or poem written to the moon filled my earthly mind every time he took me into his darkness. Breathing became an option. I didn’t need it. I felt invincible. I could fly over him so gracefully. Just a touch of gravity and a long stream of climax. We watched the sun rise over the Earth. It was a poem to be his lover. I was a sonnet in deep. I was vulnerable. I needed a lover to hold me even when we are both too tired to cuddle. I needed a man.

But the moon is not a man. He didn't “protect” me. He wasn't afraid to put his hands on me. It was as if he was unraveling the strands of me to the point that he was letting me free myself. He embraced my trauma. And everything that I had been before suddenly became a costume, and I could step out of it with the moon. And in his borrowed light, it was okay that the line between the things that happened to me and the things that I wanted was barely there.

The brighter he would glow, the less the line could be seen until eventually it all was gone which is something I never found anywhere else. No one else ever let me hug the past with the arms of the present. With the moon, it was all he could do. I wanted to be what he wanted, but need was a bigger word for him.

That was when the moon became a dead rock. In the end everything he did for me was what he did for himself. He freed me so that there were no ties. No connections. There was no one who could see me but him. I was so bright in his light. I was invisible. Maybe when you look at the moon you can see me as a faint shadow on his surface, but no one can see me whole.

And that's the way it was between the moon and me. And then one day I told the moon that I wasn't going to see him that weekend. And I discovered that all I had to do was close my eyes, and the moon would disappear. The night I closed my eyes so tight that I felt the moon sink into the city was the first night in months that I slept without fear.

I never meant to hurt the moon, but he came to me damaged. You see, from the moon, the Earth glows. But we have actual light that when you look close enough - you squint - you can see our ridiculous light. The moon found the glow in me. He tortured me and beat me and cut me, and I loved it. I wanted his abuse. I asked for it. And he, the sadist, loved hurting me. It was his way of loving himself. He gave himself permission to hurt me because I refused to say “no.”

Until one day I did. I shouted at him in front of anyone who walked down the crooked street in front of my home.

And so I add the moon to my growing list. He was unearthly. Obviously. But he was just a number. I was left disappointed in myself. Sometimes I catch myself looking up into the black sky until I find him hovering over my bedroom window. He doesn’t even say “hello.”

Hello, my moon. My lover. How the fuck are you?