missmelpomeni:

“Late one night Charles and I wandered through the city and ended up at a small hotel. It had been my idea. We’d gone from bar to deli to café unwilling to let go and, despite Charles’s misgivings, had found a room. A bare ceiling light exposed the limits of our tiny chamber as clearly as Charles’s uncertainties illuminated the obsessions and jealousies in his head, the demands he knew he’d be unable to control. He was in no hurry to make love: sex was not the issue; he had little interest in seduction. His abilities to engage a woman through passion were an old story. He wanted love, a shared location on the map. Despite our embraces and all the tumble of words, he was far more aware than I was of the trouble ahead. We dressed without speaking and then dawn crept through the window and extinguished the cold bulb, and shadows from the courtyard came and softened the uneasiness and we undid our clothes and made love again and banished any premonitions. Then as the weeks passed and our encounters became a passionate affair, he insisted he didn’t want an affair, he wanted a life together, love with an address.” (p. 50 - Tonight At Noon: A Love Story by Charles Mingus’s widow Sue Graham Mingus)