The stupid thing about aphorisms is that I can never remember where I heard them first. At some point in my life someone told me that you're never supposed to go to bed angry in a relationship. It might have been a greeting card, a sit-com, or in a paperback I leafed through during a lazy summer. Now I've absorbed it as a subconscious truth without having ever really thought about it for myself. When I think back on it, there are plenty of times I've fallen asleep angry, lying next to someone I loved.
One time was in Madagascar. I spent my two years there orbiting around in an unrequited love for T. Towards the end, things had reached a sad point of strain. I was coming to grips with the myriad reasons why things hadn't worked out between us. I was withdrawing. The closer we got to the end, and the further I withdrew. I tried to let my emotional investment in her fall away.
Seeing her those last months reminded me of the loneliness at the pit of my bowels. I still loved her but I realized I didn't fit in her life in the way I wanted. I would make a point to sit with other people the few nights we were in the capital together during our final departure conference. One of the last nights together was in the Peace Corps flop, crammed into a twin mattress in the top bunk of a room shared with six other people. We fell asleep back-to-back. I didn't know why we were even sharing a bed. It seemed like a structural formality, or a social obligation since beds were in short supply.
I had a terrible nightmare that night. I dreamt I was walking through a bright and sandy village with lots of roadside stands made of bamboo and palm fronds. I walked through some huts and wound up in a dugout canoe with a Malagasy person oaring me down a rivulet, steering away from the ocean. T was in another canoe heading in the same direction. My friend M was in the canoe with her. M was seeing T's best friend and had a natural friendship with T, free of all the weighted angst that dragged on all of our interactions. They were looking away from me.
Soon my canoe started floating aimlessly T and M kept moving onward at a steady clip. I watched them move further away from me, heading inland.
I woke up with a sharp inhale, sweating intensely. I was filled with sadness. It was almost 4AM. In my sleep I had turned so that I was looking at T's back in the darkness. My heart was beating fast and my brain felt like a gyroscope rotating on a wobbly axis. I turned back onto my side so my back would be to T.
I heard T exhale behind me. I felt the mattress shift as she turned over. I couldn't tell if I had woken her or if she was still sleeping. She pressed her torso into my back and reached her across my shoulders and chest. I put my hand on her forearm. She exhaled loudly, like a vent. I was worried I was too sweaty in her arms and shifted away on my hip a few inches, but she pulled me back even closer and didn't let go.
I felt my brain slow down, her skin was familiar under my hand. It smelled like what was underneath all the perfume, and scented soaps, and mango moisturizer that was her chemical trace. It was the unadorned version of herself, the smell of a body without an apologetic medium in between. She'd told me she loved me before, but I never believed her. She never acted like it, when she said it to me it sounded like an aphorism, like it was the next line in the script of our own private sit-com.
In the morning I told her I had had a nightmare and asked if I had woken her. She said she had slept the whole night through.
Don't go to bed angry. Or else do.
Previous Posts:
Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner
Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night
Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time
Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend
Sex Machine: Getting Laid
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date
Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After
Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans
Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog
Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home
Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party
Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays
Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date
Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson
Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap
Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction
Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex
Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog