+ The Journal Alex Glemzu Normal Alex Glemzu 2 249 2002-05-20T03:17:00Z 2002-05-20T03:17:00Z 2 908 5177 Gateway 43 10 6357 9.2720 The Journal By Rapier Prologue “Honey,” I told the beautiful woman next to me as I sat down, “I want to show you something.” I held in my arms an old leather bound journal that I had kept since I was a young man of fourteen. The eight years that I have used the journal had taken its toll on the book. The light tan covering itself told a story of its passage through time and the number of times that it had been shown to others. A dark brown stain on the back of the book that had occurred six years ago when a cup of coffee had been spilled and a splash of it had landed on the cover. A blue stains from the time that an artist friend of mine had accidentally splattered a few drops onto the book, which I had cleaned off carefully soon afterwards. The binding was speckled with a few watermarks that had occurred when I had been caught in a downpour three years ago. The book held a story, one which I had gone through a great many changes and feelings about the events that took place. A great many emotions were a part of the book I held. Most were good memories; some of the memories were brought on by the worst in me. The story had many things that had shaped my life. “What is that?” The woman cradled in my arms asked. “How come I’ve never seen it before?” I had a confession to make it about my life and it was one that could alter her perceptions of me in either way. Looking in her face, I found what I needed. I knew that I needed to tell her the truth before our relationship could progress any further. I placed the book into her lap, answering her question as I did. “Love, I want you to understand something about me and this is going to answer a lot about me.” She turned to look at me with her blue-green eyes flashing seductively in the firelight. She smiled at me because I was opening a new door in our relationship. “You know how I’ve never told you about my previous relationships.” “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t care about your sex life before me.” She interrupted quickly. I put my finger over her mouth quieting her with a compassionate look in my eyes. “I want to tell you, love.” I told her. “You need to know and this book will help me explain it.” “It was given to me as a gift for my fourteenth birthday and I’ve used it since that day as a chronicle of the women that I have loved and slept with. I wrote down what I felt should be written down about them, like their name, where we met, her favorite food, and a description of the best time that I had with her. I would then give this journal to the woman and ask her to answer five questions that I felt were most important.” I looked down at my lover’s lip, seeing it quivering slightly at what I had said, and I said to her with as much reassurance as I could. “I’m not asking you to write in this book. I want to share this with you because you need to know if we are to go further. You are more special to me that I don’t want to you to write in this journal. You are the person that I’ve been seeking for my entire life and I want to keep you for the rest of my life. I need to tell you this because I want you to know everything about me and that includes the good and the bad, which is covered in this journal.” Her lip stopped quivering as she started to try and speak again but I beat her to punch, saying, “As I was saying before, I asked them all the same five questions that I thought would be the most important questions that could be given. The questions were simple and I asked them all to answer these questions within a paragraph, or less, for each answer. How you do feel about your parents? Why did you give me a chance? What was favorite moment that we shared? What is your favorite food? And the final question, if you could tell the woman that I was going to marry something, what would it be?” “This book carries their answers to each of those questions and with them I can explain to you everything about each one of them. That is the purpose of this journal. I started it for myself but this journal became something more. It grew beyond me as most good things do. This journal is something more than a trophy that I would show to the guys and tell stories. I am the only man to ever read this journal. It’s not a trophy that a guy shares with other guys. It’s a point of pride now. There are over fifty women that have written in this book and each one of them has given this book a pearl of wisdom that has transformed this book into a string of pearls. I see this book as a piece of beauty.” My lover took the book in her hands and looked it in a light, a light that had view it for the past seven years. I took her hands in mine and I opened the book to the first entry. We looked upon the image young girl, no more than fifteen years old, which had been drawn upon the page with care. I had drawn that image with a simple use of lines that gave her picture a quality of youth and innocence, traits that she had given me. Her face was in classic heart shape that I had look like she had posed for the picture, though I had drawn it nearly a day after I had seen her. Her head was resting on her right hand with her eyes looking at something slightly above her. Her hair was cut short to just above her shoulder with her bangs falling over her forehead and covering the top of her eyes. She had a smile on her face that was human, not perfect, which made it real. One of her front teeth was uneven from a chip that had happened years before that had smoothed over. She was beautiful in flaws the way only a girl turning into a woman could be. She had her youthful naïveté that hadn’t been corrupted as all youths had gone through. “Love, this was the woman that took my virginity just as I took hers. Her name was Jennifer Craig, she was a cousin of mine though marriage.” I admitted to her without a hint of remorse or pride, just a statement of fact. “We were teenagers, we were two walking hormones that just happened to come together at the right time. It was only a one-night stand for both of us since we understood that our families would have problems with us getting involved with each other, though I did ask her to write in this journal a few days afterwards to begin it properly.”