Breakfast With Murphy

I wake up the next morning, fresh and early. Well, not fresh, actually. I never even brushed my teeth yesterday evening. And not exactly early, either. It’s 10:30 am. But I’m up and I’m eager to face the day. Actually, I’m not even really eager. But I’m up. I turn off my alarm.

I’m scheduled to have breakfast with Murphy this morning. There’s this cute breakfast place where they make the best breakfast burritos. It’s our little tradition. I pull out a pair of yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt. It has a large hand printed on it, making a V shape, like Spock on Star Trek. I’m a collector of weird oversized T-shirts. Sarah and I cut them up and braid the back, to make racerback tops. This particular one has it’s sleeves cut off, but I haven’t gotten around to braiding it. I get dressed, brush my teeth and run a hairbrush through my hair. I’m ready to face the day. Well, not exactly ready. But you get the idea.

Murphy is sort of my ex. But it’s complicated. We were sort of together, for a while. Murphy doesn’t really do monogamy. Come to think of it, maybe he simply doesn’t do romantic attachments, period. He once described love to me as a drug you can choose to be on, for a while. A few other women have been on trips with him since he and I decided to mostly be friends. Sometimes we run into them, in the kitchen, in the morning, making coffee. Sometimes they introduce themselves. Sometimes they don’t. Murphy never talks about them.

I show up at the cafe a little early. I kinda like being early. It’s the one thing about me that’s notably German. I remember pretty little about growing up in Germany. We moved when I was four. My parents speak German at home most of the time, and I speak the language pretty well. But mostly I identify with being a Californian. We’re our own breed, us Californians. The most American Americans, if you ask me. Murphy shows up a little late, out of breath. He’s wearing his bike helmet under his arms and his hair is ruffled and a little sweaty. I wonder whose place he slept at last night.

Our romance trip, Murphy’s and mine, lasted a little bit less than a year during our time in grad school. I remember the way it felt to wake up in his bed. My animal body happy, my sense of self softened and expanded. Like I was precious to him, but never taken for granted. Because I could walk away whenever I wanted to, no hurt feelings. Surprisingly enough it would feel like I had shared my soul, too, when giving my body to him, without really meaning to. Like sharing my body was sharing my soul, no matter how much we framed it otherwise. Reliably, I would start making plans for the future, after spending a few nights in his bed. Reliably the sex would feel less good, less free. The soul sharing would stop. He’d start thinking less well of me and letting it show. I’d start being annoyed with him and letting it show. We’d fight, and one of us would exercise the walking away option. Only to be drawn back into each other’s orbits, and beds, after a few weeks apart. 

Murphy scoots into a chair across from me. “Morning!”, he says grinning sheepishly. He’s wearing a pastel rainbow sweater, which shouldn’t have worked on a guy. But somehow he’s pulling it off. There’s something about Murphy that allows him to get away with things. It’s hard to stay mad at him. He just does his thing, expecting everyone else to do the same. “Morning!” I grin back at him.

I remember the way it felt to have sex with him. We’d hang out on the couch, smoking weed, watching a movie. The cuddling would always start out platonic. Nice, and sweet, and caring. Like he was giving me refuge from the world. But not sex. Not until I asked for it. By the end of the movie, a staring contest would ensue. You can have sex if you ask for it, his stare would say. I’m not so sure, my stare would reply. I don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t know if I want to want sex. I don’t know if I want to or how to want to. How does any of this work, really. Reliably his stare would outlast my stare. Like he was looking at the part of me that had already said yes and was just waiting for me to notice. 

His touch, in the beginning, would always be firm. Confident. Equal parts reassuring and exciting. Somehow he understood that too much caution would make me run away, hide my desire. That I couldn’t deal with the question of what we were doing. That maybe I needed, a little bit, to pretend not to know. His gaze would hold mine, firmly, as if reaching inside of me to the all scared and timid places seeking reassurance, telling them to cut it out. To get out of the way of my pleasure. His hands would touch my neck while kissing me, one hand wrapped around my head, playing with my hair, grabbing and gently pulling it to exert his will over the position of my head. His other hand would frequently find its way to my throat, running his thumb gently over its center. His kisses made me feel lightheaded, breathless, and pulled, like a puppet on strings. 

Lying next to him in bed, I would rest my head on his chest, curling into his bigger body. His hands would start their play, his attention firmly capturing all of my responses. It felt like I was a book he was reading, mesmerized by the story, always trying to predict the next paragraph. His hands and attention would draw me into the the story of myself too, as if I was simply reading it, not struggling to write it. Somehow my state would shift, sometimes gradually and sometimes all at once, away from my normal self and towards a different self. One that knew how to touch, and move, and feel, without having to think about it. I’d always thought, previously, that sex had to do with giving each other pleasure. But this other self knew that sex could instead be about simply being pleasure. Murphy was good at sex.

“Leia?” Murphy asks, interrupting my trip down memory lane. “Yeah, I’m here,” I say. “What’cha thinking about?” Murphy asks. I blush a little, fiddling with a plastic straw wrapped in paper. “Sex”, I say. He nods. “Are you having any? Or just thinking ‘bout it?” “Just thinking”, I say. He nods again. “Why just thinking?” he asks. With anyone else I’d be offended. Like they’re telling me that I’m not good enough, just because I don’t have a boyfriend. Like there’s something wrong with me because all the dates I’ve been on recently have been horrible. But it’s Murphy, and his curiosity is genuine and infectious. “I think maybe all men are terrible.” I say, with a deadpan face. He nods and grins, then puts his face into a serious shape. “Okay Leia. What happened?” I grimace. “Just a long string of bad dates recently. Just no chemistry. It’s like…is it possible that I’ve just forgotten how to like boys?” He grins again. “Are you sure you haven’t instead forgotten how to like yourself? You really need to come out that shadow you’ve started living in, my darling Leia.” I take the plastic straw, rip the top of the wrapper and blow the paper at his smug face. That’s what he gets, for being so silly. He laughs and makes a V shape with his hand, just like Spock on my shirt. "Live long and prosper." I'm just about to think of a clever comeback when the waitress shows up with our burritos. "Guten Appetit!" I say solemnly. "Guten Appetit", Murphy responds.