love

Giving More FXS

~ Natal Galvan

For that split second…

for that “flick of two fingers” split of a second he thought to himself,

“What the fuck are you doin’?” It was the perfectly phrased question when thinking about his life. The question only popped up into his mind once while he fucked her. But now every time they hung out, which seemed much more often than he was currently comfortable with, the question danced in his mind.

What was he doing with his life? What were his goals? He’s got dreams and fantasies, but what are his goals? A better question would even be what was he doing with her? Someone so grounded and career driven. A woman, he felt, was way out of his league. Not because he wasn’t “worth” it but because she’d never give him the proper time of day. He could provide a roof over their heads, cover the major bills, and still have enough to go out on the town with friends for some smooth jazz and whiskey. Still, all this without a socially accepted title, is an embarrassment.

For a split second…

for a split “blink of an eye” second he thought about leaving her. He still thinks he just might. Just let her sit there at the table waiting. Her deep red recently polished nails fidgeting with the white linen napkin that sat in her lap. His soul is much more valuable than some swanky new job title he’d now have to accept in order to meet her unspoken standards. He peered at her through the crack of the bathroom door. He had direct view.

She was beautiful there was no doubt about it. That kind of beauty that takes your breath away without registering why first. Her eyes were kind and you knew her soul was full of love, with just a tint of sadness. She was relateable and within seconds she could make friends of strangers. She was that kind of beauty. Yet, because of that very beauty he was almost ready to run past their table and out back towards the kitchen doors.

How horrible would it feel for him to have to live with such judgment, mostly self imposed, and such pressure? How would he measure up in her eyes? Could he ever be her equal? He would most likely feel second at best.. *Push yourself* something internally whispered.

She instantly turns her head towards the direction of where the men’s bathroom lies. He knows she cannot see him but he can see her fully now. That face, that stare, slowly taking his fear away. He snaps out of whatever absurd thought he was in the middle of having and straightens himself up before heading out the very doors he was just hiding behind. The look on her face spoke volumes. She was waiting for him and he could not keep her waiting any longer. Without her knowledge she had injected him with courage and he walked towards her fearless. Anything can happen. She loved him, he saw that in the flicker of her eyes as he approached their table. This story could turn into “happiness ever lasting”  just as easy as it could end in tragic heartbreak, but he gave a fuck and that’s why he won’t be running away. He cares about knowing the outcome to this story. He gives so much of a fuck that he will trek the journey and see to it he strives hard for a positive outcome.

He wont let fear govern his life, nor love, because he wants to live and he wants to love. Simply because he gives a fuck.

Before he reaches his chair, he slowly walks over towards hers. He reaches down, one hand wraps under her chin tilting her head up, and he swoops down like a vulture, taking her mouth in to his. He kisses her passionately but only for a quick beat, and then he lets her face go and goes to sit in his chair, not once taking his eyes off of hers. A slight smirk revealed itself, her red lips still perfectly painted, perking up in the corners. He waved their server over and ordered a second bottle of wine. Their finest, her favorite.

He’s got this….

Character Foundation

~ Natal Galvan ~ 1 Comment

My love of books and passion for writing grew from the manure of a childhood I had growing up. It was the perfect fertilizer. From the time I was born I was thrown into an atmosphere of anger and aggression. My father wasn’t an alcoholic or a drug addict. He was just mean or absent. A cranky and miserable man with an entirely too short of a fuse so needless to say he was never a really big part of my life. When it came to parenting he was a minimalist and once my parents divorced, the main male role model in my life would end up being my grandfather.

My parents divorced when I was about 4 and I do remember that being a huge turning point for me, and of course, so was all the other crap that was to come. After the divorce, my mother quickly had to go from having one full time job to having one full time and two part time jobs. While she was out working hard to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, my grandparents provided us with the care and supervision that we needed. They soon after began living with us and it stayed that way on and off for about ten years.

Many would describe my grandfather Cesar as mean and grumpy, a man of few words. He apparently wasn’t too popular among my aunts and uncles, although the love for him was never absent. They had their own daddy issues to deal with and most of my cousins weren’t his biggest fans. My grandfather, in my eyes was something else. For me he was a handsome elegant man who loved my sister and I to no avail. He spoiled us when he could yet we still showed great respect for him. If we did wrong, he would let us know, not once hitting us, but his verbal reprimands were like harsh, stinging slaps to our faces. We never wanted to let him down. My grandfather taught me what it was to have a man in charge. The head of the household. He may not have been a perfect father himself but he had obviously learned and had become the perfect grandfather for my sister and me.

My grandmother was an angel. She was a woman who had given to birth to 8 children and pretty much raised them on her own. My grandfather had been known to leave her for weeks without notice to go on drinking binges, spending the little money the family would earn completely on himself. My grandmother was a true housewife. Not only did she cook and clean, but she also tended to the farm (milking cows, killing chickens, ect..) and would hand make all of her children’s clothes. You can now just imagine the role she played in our lives. My grandmother taught us how to make homemade meals, and even homemade cheese. She knew all about universal energy and shared with us the importance of nature, love, and intuition. And when times were tough emotionally, she was the one who taught me how to get through it.

I’ve never had it easy. Whether it was my home life, school life, or the life I had among my “friends” there was always something I wanted to run away from. My grandmother was the one who taught me how to escape the bullying, escape the feeling of rejection from my father, escape from all the darkness, and all other things I had no energy to really face. She taught me how to escape through the magical world of words.

“El que lee se instruye.” She’d repeat. And I did.. I taught myself many things about life. Things I would have never discovered early on in life if it weren’t for the magic of words.

My Teacher’s an Alien by Bruce Coville was the very first book I ever read that hadn’t been assigned to me by a school teacher. I’ll never forget it. It had a bright orange cover with two school kids, a boy and a girl, looking through their school teacher’s living room window, as they spot the teacher zippering down his human disguise revealing the fact that he is, in fact, an alien. I was about 12 or 13 at the time and this book was the first book from the library I had ever decided to read on my own. It also ended up being the first time I had ever read a book cover to cover in one day. This is when I understood the magic that books held in transporting you from reality into a completely different world. From that day forward I had found my escape and I was addicted. At 14 I began to write. I wrote poems and short stories, most of the time using my life as a point of reference. Writing then soon turned into my other form of escape and also release. I ended up spending most of my adolescent years with my nose stuck in either a book or notebook while the rest of the time I spent observing. I learned to observe people and life around me. I began to get good at not only reading books, and people, but situations as well.

Today, I still find shelter within the pages of a book and expression within the words I write down. Who I am today and what I know comes from guidance of what I’ve read, and what I’ve experienced, but also from the wise words of whom my grandparents once were. My grandfather is no longer walking this earth. The day he passed was the day I knew I lost my fatherly guidance. Instead of sorrow, I expressed gratitude because to have him in my life at all was a needed blessing. I mean who knows how my view of men and relationships would have been if he would not have been present in my life. My grandmother on the other hand is alive, but she is not the version that I once knew. She suffers from Alzheimer’s and is totally wheelchair bound. She currently lives back in her home country of Colombia where she gets better and affordable care than she would here in the states. I cannot tell you when the last time was that I saw her or if I will ever get to see her again. I think about them every single day for everything I know came from the foundation that they helped build within me. Today, I give them thanks for the wonderful world they helped me create for myself, now all that is left is for me to make every day count for they did none of what they did in vain.

To Cesar and Maria, You will always be the great example of which to follow.

abuleitos

 

 

Pictured Infidelity

~ Natal Galvan

Have you ever caught someone cheating on you red handed??

Maybe not in the exact act of betrayal but you discovered evidence that could prove nothing else other than their total infidelity? My friend is going through something of this nature and it inspired me to take a look back into a deep past that I buried long ago.

This story takes place about 8 years ago and at this time I had freshly moved to FL and was dating who had been my HS sweet heart at the time. In the seven years that him and I had dated, never did I ever think that such betrayal between us was possible but with time I soon realized how possible anything in life could be.

He had left in the morning to go to the bank to deposit some of his money from his serving shift the night before. I was killing time waiting for him to get back to start on breakfast when I decided to get on the computer and switch up some pictures on my Myspace (remember Myspace?). I log onto the computer and begin to search some files looking for my new profile picture when I see a file that was left untitled. I found this interesting. What pictures could be in there? Not thinking anything negative, I excitedly clicked on the file folder thinking that I would find pictures he and I had long ago forgotten. When the file opened, my world which seemed so perfect at the time, shattered like fragile glass dropped from a tall building. Picture after picture, I find this strange girl partially naked with her legs spread open, her fingers teasingly in her mouth. Freshly shaved vagina and huge, black, Oreo looking nipples stared me in the face, almost mocking me and my broken heart. She was lying on his bed. There was no denying the bed sheets that I had bought him for Christmas just a month prior to this picture. The date was stamped just a few days after his birthday last year. My mind immediately sailed back to that time and I was bombarded by the memories. That year I had made reservations at a popular Cuban restaurant that had just opened. I made sure that the table had been set up with flowers, balloons, chocolates, and that his favorite drink  sat at the table, awaiting his arrival. That night we had made love in that same bed where just days later he had fucked her. Instantly I was fueled by anger and rage. How was it possible that I hadn’t suspected anything back then? How had I not smelled her on his sheets or had not felt her presence linger in the air? I had been totally blindsided. My best friend had betrayed me in the ugliest way possible.

I left the pictures up on the computer and made my way into the kitchen. If my timing was right, he would be back home shortly and so I had begun making breakfast, for just myself. I was still fuming when he had gotten back home.

“MMMMmmmm babe, it smells sooooooo good!” He said as he walked in through the door, though there was nothing cooking.

“Does it?” I asked as he walked by me, giving me a kiss on the cheek before walking into the bed room. I slightly smiled like a psychopath. I was anxiously waiting for his reaction because once that reaction from him came, that would be the signal to finally let the rage out, full throttle.

I heard him setting his keys on the nightstand. He opened the closet door, probably to hang up his jacket, and then shut it again. Then silence. There was no movement, not a peep coming from the room. I stopped chopping up the green peppers I was to add to my omelet. My hands were shaking so bad there were bits of the vegetable flying onto the floor. I stared at the door frame willing for his image to appear and when it finally did, he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. I said nothing. He said nothing. It felt like an eternity before I irritatingly asked, “So?”

“That was way before me and you got back together!” He tried to defend. The time stamp proved otherwise and so his words had pierced me like hot steel. Luckily I had set down the knife at that point because I felt like throwing it at his face.

“Be a fucking man and tell the truth!! That picture was taken just a COUPLE days after your birthday!!!! We were 100% together!!! How could you do that to me??!! How could you stare me in the face, tell me you love me, after being with her? FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR!!” I was fuming and it took all I had to not walk over to him and wrap my fingers around his neck and apply pressure. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to make him hurt just as bad as he made me hurt, if not worse. But I couldn’t. The energy I initially had to inflict such damage had drained from my body. He had shattered my heart and at the same time robbed me of my strength. I stormed passed him on wobbly knees and into what had been, up until then, our bedroom. I slammed the door and locked myself in there for fear of what I was capable of doing next.

To make a very long story short, this incident had sent our relationship spinning to a point of no return.  I had lost every bit of faith I had in him. He of course tried his hardest to make things better. It was weeks later when I finally decided to not throw away 7 years together over a one time mistake, when I caught him sending text messages to a stripper he met on a night out with his friends. Destroying now even the want I had to try to work things out and move on, I sent him packing. He moved out, leaving behind nothing but my heart full of pain. Even though this wouldn’t be the end of our story (oh yes, there was more drama to shortly follow), it had been the end of that chapter.

It took me a long time to allow myself to even want fall in love again. He had been my high school sweet heart, my best friend, my entire everything. The only man I thought I could ever marry. No one can ever compare to your first love. It was the first time you really came to see what it was to feel so much for someone that wasn’t apart of your family. That first outsider that you care for unconditionally, and without fear. Pure love placed in your heart and then again into that of another… to later be broken and tossed away by the very same person you wholeheartedly handed it over to.  You never do love the same after that. Of course you love, but it is not as innocent as it once was. You don’t love without questioning, wondering, doubting.

It wasn’t until a few years later that him and I ended up speaking again. I remember one of the things he said to me was how important we were for one another. We had made up so much of each other’s past it was hard to forget. He reminded me of the strong friendship we had had and how even that was something unforgettable. He reminisced as his stare went off into a moment of bliss, enjoying what he was remembering. For me, those moments were what they were, the past, and soon they’d be nothing more than just an old dusty chapter buried in a book, left on a shelf, and long ago forgotten.  Those moments he thought of as beautiful, held no light to those dark memories of betrayal.

To be honest, I couldn’t imagine my life with him. There is more to this story of heartbreak, but it will be left untold for now.  What I will add is the fact that Karma is magnificent and the Universe never goes without issuing out that which is deserved. Going through what I did wasn’t deserved but it was necessary  because I grew and learned from it. I became a little smarter and tougher. I grew independent and this is when I discovered that happiness is a choice and that it shouldn’t be something placed in the hands of another, your happiness being too precious, your destiny too valuable.

I give my friend that cliche advice that if it isn’t working out then it is because it is not meant to be, and that this is all for a reason. I tell her that she’s got something amazing coming her way. I tell her that the Universe is always conspiring in her favor and to trust in it. It all sounds like lines out of a cheesy movie, but it is the truth. I have lived it. I have been there and I have come out on top because with a good perspective and a positive attitude, that’s really all that is needed to rise above.