My Hunger

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I’m sitting in my mother’s hospital room where she is sleeping soundly, her body trying to fight off stage 3 breast cancer. I lean back in the recliner, pretty sure my normally neatly trimmed blond hair is standing on end and turning gray from the hell of the past three days. Nearby, my father pays attention to his notebook computer, no more rested than I have been for the past week. We were sideswiped by the cancer diagnosis, the timing vicious since I’ve just lost someone close to me. Worry for my mother and guilt over that death eat away at my mind and body.

To most, Rebecca had been an employee at my San Francisco art gallery. To some, she’d been known to be my submissive, a woman who shared my home and my life. To me, she was so much more than either of those things—so much more than anyone, including her, will ever know. Knowing I couldn’t be what she wanted me to be, I had let her go, and I’d believed that for months she was off traveling the world with a rich man she’d met. She’d called me and promised to return, and I’d promised things would be different. But she never showed up, and I’d believed she’d blown me off. Instead, she’d been murdered by another woman I’d brought to our bed at a time I’d desperately been fighting what I felt for Rebecca. A woman who’d killed her out of jealousy. I’m not sure how I can live with that. Right now I’m only doing it for my mother, and barely doing it at all.

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