A Thin Line Between Love and Lust: A Poly Love Story

TRACK 3 - INTERLUDE

I call this chapter interlude because interludes are parts of a music album that differ greatly from the rest.

To the untrained ear, they may seem to break the flow of an album, because they aren't your standard song. Yet the artist still felt it necessary to include at that specific point for a purpose.

It's because interludes, if you look below the surface, hold the key to explain every other song that follows.

This is an interlude.

If all you want to hear are the songs, that top 100 billboard single you bought a whole album to hear, then you can always skip this track and move on to the next. I won't be mad at you. But if you'll indulge me for a moment, I have to slow the story down. I promise to try and make this as quick and painless as possible.

Everyone has a past, including me. I'd like to share an important piece of it with you.

I was five years old...

***

My sister and I sat playing the only videogame we owned one morning, War.

One of us was white, the other black. It was a battle to see whose color would take over the screen. We mashed at imaginary buttons on imaginary videogame controllers.

"I'm winning."

"I'm winning."

"Now I'm winning."

"No I'm winning," we yelled back and forth.

The outcome was always the same. I turned off the broken TV, which showed nothing but black and white static, and the victor was chosen. Black.

"Okay I win."

"No fair," she cried.

"Life isn't fair," I said coldly to my three year old sister. I did not understand the real meaning of those words, it was just something I'd heard someone else say. "I think we can go eat now," I told her to make her feel better. We both walked out the house. There was no need to tell anyone where we were going.

It was a nice morning. The streets were quite. It was the time of day where the neighborhood belonged to a chosen few. Everyone else was in school or at work. I should've started kindergarten that year but there was no one around to enroll me in school.

In a routine way, we walked to one of our favorite houses. It always had the best sweets and it was the easiest to get into.

"Wait here," I said. My sister kept lookout while I climbed the fence to get in the backyard.

When I landed, I saw an all-white, red-nosed pit bull. Its neck and shoulders bulged with muscle, making its head look small, but doing nothing to make its face less threatening. It ran at me, jaws open, eager to get a taste of my flesh.

"Hey key-lo," I said, giving him a quick scratch behind the ear. He licked my face, his tail frantically wagging his whole body with excitement.

I crawled through his doggy door and he crawled through behind me. I walked through the empty house to the kitchen, Key-lo followed behind me everywhere I went, making sure to protect me, even though I was the intruder. I opened the refrigerator. It was packed full of goodies like I'd hoped.

I looked for things there were a lot of, so no one would notice if I took any. There was a bucket of left over KFC. I took two pieces of chicken. There was also a large case of wrapped pastries. I took two of those too.