Athazagoraphobia

Chapter Four

"Neither of us were out of it," I said, trying to calm him down despite my eyelids lazily hanging open by a thread.

"I'm going to hell, it's as simple as that." Vincent's hands were pressed behind his head. I couldn't laugh because he still hadn't put on pants, but god I wanted to. "I slept with a crossdresser, I slept with a man. I fucked a whore. I'm married." That was his stream of consciousness as he found his necklace on the floor via its texture, unhooked the cross charm from it, and threw it at the wall in disgust with himself. He unclipped all four golden rings in each ear and just dropped them on the floor, on the verge of tears. I knew I could do nothing but watch as he had a crisis in my bedroom. I cocooned in the top blanket so I could be comfortable while I listened to him be anti-my-existence while knowing full well how to work his mouth to get a boner springing.

"You said you loved me." My face turned into a shit-eating grin.

"Not helping." He dug through more of our clothes, put on some pants, and found his gloves on the side table with his wedding ring still on, almost tripping on the lamp. "By all..." I thought he was going to tear up just from putting his clothes back on (to be honest, me too).

I put on briefs and my leg, which had fallen to the wayside after our shower. "If I look like a girl, is it homosexual? If you're blind, is it homosexual? Not like you can see whether it's a man or a woman," I thought aloud, putting the ribbons back in my hair. I was messing with him, obviously in part by misgendering myself, but he wasn't having it.

"Isa..."

"If you didn't bust, it wouldn't be a sin."

"Shut up. You've not touched a bible in your life."

I muttered some choice words out of his hearing range. Vincent went into the kitchen, and I felt the need to follow him after I put on a robe.

He was making waffles. Post-coitus care – whatever worked, I guess.

I grabbed orange juice out of my fridge and started mixing it with ice. I shook my head to get my brain back on track and stood next to him as he cooked. His dead stare was focused on the food, as he was unable to look me in the eye.

"I had sex with a woman with a penis..." Vincent kept repeating under his breath while he pressed the batter into the iron, as though saying it over and over would make it disappear off his record. Or his memories. Or make me grow a vagina.

"There's a first for everything." I could see he was clenching hard just thinking about it. It took a moment to settle in, but I realized, as non-religious as I was, I didn't have a higher power to answer to. Vincent believed that a deity saw his every move, knew all, and despised me. I felt some sympathy for him then. I didn't tell him to stop, and just drank my watery O-J while he vented. "Vee, sometimes your true self shows up when you're tipsy."

He paused, and tried his hardest to ignore me, but I saw that his lips were pursed in chaotic thought. "Isa."

"Yeah?"

"Am I a homosexual?"

I took a moment and shrugged. "I don't know, man, probably not if you shoved your tongue down my throat. I think you respect me enough to not see me as just another man."

His shoulders tightened and he inhaled deeply as he moved the waffles to the plate, but also started making more. "Those are for you." The muscles in his neck protruded as he kept pulling on his collar and readjusting the fabric on the front. His top teeth were nearly piercing his bottom lip, and his shoulder made redundant rotations despite his hand holding nothing. "Isa."

"Hm?"

"Am I a bi-sexual?"

I made the three-tone sound that indicated my unknowingness, and he murmured something that was likely a prayer.