Someone To Love

Big Suprise

It's my birthday.

I arrive late to Professor Look-At-Me-Naked Elton's class and take a seat next to the thin-lipped girl who greets me with her traditional snarl.

Figures. It's going to be a crap day all around, I can tell.

I came so close to telling Cruise that I have feelings for him. That I don't want to pretend to play this sick little game I thought was cute a few short weeks ago. That I actually want to engage in a monogamous relationship with him and do everything with his body that he would ever want, but the words wouldn't formulate on my lips. Technically, it was his fault for sidelining me by asking me to conduct a body-scan before breakfast. Hell - who am I kidding? I would have inhaled his body for breakfast, but a part of me is holding back. If Cruise doesn't want just me, then I suppose I shouldn't want him in that way - and, frighteningly enough, I think I still do.

"The finality of love." He belts it out like a song, looking hotter than a bonfire in his dark corduroy jacket, his inky jeans and cowboy boots - my heart lurches just laying eyes on him.

To hell with it. I'm jumping in his bed tonight and having myself a nice little birthday. He's wearing cowboy boots for God's sake. The man doesn't fight fair.

"Today, I thought we would touch upon the vulnerability we face once we've fallen in love." Our eyes meet, and he gives a quick wink. Obviously, he thinks love is a joke, and only he and I are privy to the punch line. "Can anybody tell me why a person becomes vulnerable when experiencing love - especially for the very first time?"

Miss Thin Lips spikes her hand in the air like she's about to have an accident. Personally, I'm rooting for the accident.

"Cheryl." He nods with a prolonged blink.

Ha! She is totally getting on his last nerve.

She clears her throat and cuts me a look as if she heard. "It's because love embroils its participants in a psychological power exchange that takes place once you trust someone with your heart." She wiggles proud in her seat after dispensing the armchair psychiatry. "If I were to fall in love with someone, and they broke that sacred trust, I would forever be wounded and therefore protect my heart from ever being crushed in such a violent manner again. Naturally, I would build defenses. I might even resort to meaningless sexual exchanges as nothing more than a device to satisfy myself - there wouldn't be any real love involved because I would probably stop believing in it."

Cruise leans against his desk. His face blanches out as he considers this. It's as though he realizes she diagnosed him so correctly he's only now aware of the fact his manwhore ways were nothing more than a ruse. In the end, that's probably all our affections will be reduced to, a meaningless sexual exchange - nothing more than a device to satisfy ourselves - no real love because we don't believe in it - only now, I think I do.

Cruise takes a breath. "So the power exchange is what creates the vulnerability between sexual partners, and when the balance is disrupted, it crushes the weaker of the two units."

"Not necessarily." Cheryl straightens at the prospect of conducting a lecture all on her own. "The power exchange doesn't need to have sexual underpinnings. It could take place with a child and its parents. Plenty of girls are victims of deadbeat fathers and statistics show that girls who grow up without a paternal influence in their lives seek male attention in other ways. Any stripper in the country can testify to this."

Cruise cuts an involuntary look in my direction.

I know what he's thinking - that I'm rife with daddy issues. He thinks he's pegged the very reason I've decided to descend into whoredom, no thanks to the malnourished wealth of information next to me, espousing her not-so-sage wisdom. And, sadly, both he and she would be right.