The Electric Girl

The Electric Girl
By Kit Smith

Making love to the electric girl. Nothing was ever painless. I met her
here, in the rain. It always rains here. I suppose I should have known
when I met her. Water and electricity, well they just don't mix do
they? But I suppose I didn't know then. I didn't discover until the
third week. The first time she let me touch her. She warned me, but I
told her that I loved her, that I would take the risk. And I gently
stroked the back of her hand.

Making love to the electric girl. Nothing was ever painless. The first
time we kissed, in the park. Again she warned me, and again I told her
that I loved her, that I would take the risk, that I was prepared to
take the pain for her. My tongue was scalded.

The first thing I noticed about her when we met were her eyes. Bright
blue, electric blue you could say. And her hair, long and blonde,
strands standing straight up into the air as if held by some kind of
mystical static. I suppose I was caught up in the mystery of it all.
But I did love her.

"You only love me for my electricity" she said, that night in her room
as I knelt by her bed. She turned her back on me, wearing one of those
white cardigans she always wore. Well what could I do? I had to do
something. So we made love.

Making love to the electric girl. Nothing was ever painless. Voltage,
high voltage would course through my veins, causing me to scream out.
No one, surely no one could love someone putting them through that kind
of pain. But that's why I took it. That's why I put up with all the
lying and the cheating and the crying and the beating and the fucking
electricity racing through me when we kissed, sparks flying from her
eyes into mine in a neon yellow storm, and all the violent vicious
static that clung to her cardigans.

She was the electric girl and I loved her, but she couldn't stay.
And as I stood lonely in the rain that evening, watching the lightning
that covered the sky, I remembered. I remembered all the burns and all
the scars, all the screaming and the bleeding, all the cold baths I
used to take to ease the pain. And I remembered how she could never
understand how she hurt me so much, because she didn't know. She just
didn't know.
"How can I hurt you my friend?" she would ask, "For we are friends
aren't we? For we are lovers?" And it hurt me more that I couldn't
explain.

And now I find myself longing for that electricity. For although the
pain was unbearable, it was all I ever had from her, and all I have
now, along with the scars from fading and decaying burns, and all I
ever will have to remember how much I loved her and how much she loved
me.

After we made love that night there was no more pain. But by then it
was too late, and the electric girl had gone.