Nadrea

She was not the kind of girl you would introduce to your mother. She was not the kind of girl who would give a fuck about ever meeting your mother or anyone else for that matter. Nadrea was everything you expect from a fetish sex kitten, nothing different and nothing more. She was after all a trust fund kid of a Wall Street investment banker. She was pretty but even when dressed in a somewhat demure manner her look is still exotic and edgy. She’s 5’5” with dark reddish brown hair and a thin but curvaceous build. Life presents so many of us with choices and we must decide who we become. Since money has never been an issue to her, Nadrea has chosen to become the only thing she knew how. Perhaps it was lack of hugs and parental affection, or it could have been the that no one ever treated her as just a little girl, but almost always was she catered to as if she were a princess. She grew up with a magnificent view of Central Park from her bedroom and Fifth Avenue from her family room, and of course only the finest schools. She never took the subway although the station was just a few blocks away. But the family took a driver in a Mercedes Limo, they did not take the subway or train, not even once. Such things were just not done! Not long after her escape from New York to American University it became obvious that D.C. would become her home.

D.C. after all would add a measure of safety to her world, large and diverse enough to fulfill her needs, a short hop back to Manhattan if needed and distant enough from the prying eyes of her advisors, fathers friend’s, and associates who she was most certain had their own demons that were well hidden from sight. She was not as certain that she could or wanted to hide her lifestyle from plain sight and housekeepers who would inevitably become friends by working across the many different family residences and discuss her lifestyle. Her brownstone was, of course, in an affluent part of town in a predominately gay neighborhood. She was not gay, perhaps Bi Sexual at times, but she most often preferred the company of men. The home’s three stories stood there in a stately fashion more akin to the past than the present and the interior décor excluding one bedroom and the third floor was a traditional colonial American and English. Many portraits had come from a friend who was redoing an apartment on the Upper East Side. Tens of thousands of dollars of art would be wastefully discarded if it were not otherwise passed to her to adorn her walls. These were images of people and places long since gone, from an era long since past. Her tastes certainly didn’t fit her lifestyle, but it was elegant none the less.

Nadrea’s life had been filled with unrealistic expectations and social pressures, all of which came from being a child of two outwardly successful and high profile people. Her father found Wall Street to be a playground and the fortunes and egos such a place can create are vast. His was no exception on either count. Her mother had no soul, a strange characteristic for an educated woman who had dedicated her life to healing others, it’s not that she didn’t love her offspring, but showing a kind and patient love can be an awkward thing for a person so driven, it was best left to those more capable or paid to do so. Nadrea had been a bright girl but lacked the desire to deal with such trivial things as a parent’s attention. Her friends were few and far between and if anything her best friend growing up was not of the New York elite, but Sam who was the son of their single parent door man, Billy.

Billy always spoke to her. Perhaps spoke was the wrong word…he talked to her, he listened and kidded. He was as much her friend as anyone. He knew she was a lonely awkward child and he knew because he was much the same at her age. Sam, Billy’s son would be around through out the days in the summer coming and going without purpose and with a pleasant youthful abandon. Her time spent with Sam was simpler, it was refreshing, it was never about possession but about doing things, going to the park, playing ball. Once on what she considered to be an especially daring day they left the island of Manhattan and crossed into each of the other boroughs by train or by cab. She had never left the city to go to its other parts except for journeys to see her Grandmother on Long Island Sound or on week ends at the family’s summer house in the Hamptons. It felt as if she was seeing strange new worlds with each stop, each new cab ride. She marveled at how busy and a city unto itself Brooklyn Avenue seemed. At last, they found themselves in a small pizza place between a laundry mat and a Chinese nail salon on Staten Island. Feasting on thin crust pizza and stealing glances at each other. Sam was wearing jean shorts, Blue & White Nike Running shoes, and a Yankees T-shirt that was large enough to fit his father. She was in her black short shorts from Banana Republic, a Brooks brothers ladies Golf shirt and her favorite Prada Sandals. The pizza was perhaps the best she would ever have and often when the subject of pizza comes up she would remember the day with Sam and how good the pizza tasted. Sam could always get her to be braver than she ever intended and he ordered up Calamari for them to try. The appeal for him was it was something he imagined would connect her world to his. Little did he know that she already felt connected and such a simple thing as food could never bridge the gap between their worlds any more than his friendship already had.

On the One train back up from Battery Park, most likely somewhere around 37^th street, while the city was nearing dusk on a cool early summer day she got her first kiss, kind of. In actuality she gave her first kiss by leaning over toward Sam, Nadrea found hers lips gently touching the side of his face and ever so close to the edge of his mouth. As she pulled a way, heart pounding, flush with excitement, Sam turned and gently brushed his lips across hers, slowly and softly returning the favor and confirming his interest in her. That night he held her hand for the first time as they walked back from the station. What an adventure the day had been, she had traveled through the world in the lap of luxury but never even explored her own world, taken the train, sat in a pizza parlor or wondered the streets of Yonkers aimlessly. Queens was decidedly working class and not all that she imagined a place with such a royal name to be. Life would not always be so nice, so simple and so gentle to her, but this day was. It is the one day she thinks of most often when she is alone. She wonders what might have been, and fondly recalls her time with Sam.

Sam’s father Billy at the end of that summer took his leave as doorman and moved to Philadelphia to take over his father’s janitorial supply company. The father and son moved to the end of the mainline in Philly and as the business grew had the American dream for themselves upon the return of the prodigal son.

Nadrea went back to the shallow world of wealth and found others to keep the company of, but none of them could ever be Sam. Most were not gentle and honest, most were not kind and giving, no one would ever hold her hand as she walked off the train again. She simply wouldn’t allow it. That was something that she reserved for herself and her memories of that first kiss with Sam. In D.C. she took the metro everyday despite the fact that she never needed to and almost always and without fail she could be found closing her eyes and taking one slow deep breath before walking out on the platform and closing an empty had on itself. She was thinking of that day with Sam. Like most people with their first and second loves in a large and ambiguous pasts she wondered did her ever think of her. At least she could count on his remembering her, of that much she was sure.

Next chapter It Had Been Years

Copyright 2008 Michael Malflic