On some disturbance distracting him, Matt turned to me, “Oh it was you!” when it was not: “What was me!” He explained he was leaving to see his mother. “I want to talk to you,” I followed him out, about the time he took me in his arms and I submitted to my man, him, a novelty that, since I’ve never in my life submitted to anybody (except briefly to avoid grievous bodily harm and only to retaliate thereafter) nor to my own man in me far less lovingly. He couldn’t remember. “What!” He subsequently remembered saying ‘we’re not kissing’, which I couldn’t remember.
What I didn’t understand was how he thought my buying him socks was my possessing him. He said he didn’t like being possessed. He was her son to his mother, brother to his sister, I pointed out. He didn’t like that either. When he’d taken me in his arms, he was rationalising as a hug – what’s a hug? – he was being possessive and, though I don’t think I said it, if my man was in him he was being spiritually possessed and there was nothing he could do about it, so there. I wasn’t possessing him with socks. I wasn’t at all. I was pleased my rebuttal at the time, without saying I wasn’t possessing him, was the right thing to say since he didn’t like being possessed and that’s how I’d interpreted his clutching the socks to his chest as he asked, “Are you possessing me?”
We couldn’t settle what ‘my’ to me he was. Friend wasn’t right. Matt he went for, my Matt – my door mat.
