There's something deeply territorial about being in a relationship. I went out to a bar with a woman I had been seeing last year. I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back there was a tubby guy in his late thirties sitting in my seat trying to make conversation with her.
The guy wasn't an enticing specimen. He had a desperate tinge to his laugh and he was dressed in Mom jeans and a dumpy jacket that fit him like a trash bag. Still, I felt a cockishness tickle the back of my brain. Who is this doughy little weasel that snuck into our corner booth the minute I got up? I crossed in front of him and took my seat, trying to politely follow what they were talking about.
I remember consciously thinking not to make any physical show of being with my girlfriend. I forced myself to not put my arm around her, or rest my hand on her thigh. I wanted to show him that I wasn't threatened by his presence. I was lying to myself.
When I turned eighteen, my older brother broke up with his girlfriend and called another girl he had dated to assuage his tenuous ego. She had started seeing someone new and after some contentious teenage words my brother wound up on the phone with her new boyfriend. They threatened each other for a few minutes and agreed to meet the following night to fight.
The next night, four kids rang our doorbell. They were hulking boys, not quite men, but strong enough to make the difference seem arbitrary. They were country boys, four junior firefighters in tank tops that showed off their veiny biceps and lumpy forearms. My brother went out to the front yard alone to talk to them. After some nose-to-nose man-barking one of them hit my brother in the face.
Seeing the three others waiting behind their friend, my brother turned around and started moving back to our front door. The kid jumped on his back and kept hitting him from behind. It looked absurd for a few seconds. Two grown men in a piggyback ride, arms and elbows flailing sloppily.
My brother threw the kid off his back and made it to the front door when my dad stepped in front of the boy. My dad is a bony accounting professor. He has a funny Danish accent and I've never seen him angry. He's not a fighter and when he stepped in front of the other boy it wasn't in aggression. But seeing my brother disappear in the front door the four kids turned on my dad. They surrounded him and let punches fly in a flurry. I heard the sick thud of bone and flesh smacking at high speed.
I saw my dad put an arm up to try and buffer the blows. He dropped to one knee. "Stay down, old man," I remember one of them saying as he stood above him. I was fourteen. I had been watching the whole thing, too scared to move. They broke my dad's cheek and eye socket. He had blood in his eye for a month after.
Love makes you vulnerable. Relationships can seem like an answer to some pervasive question; the elliptical dots at the end of all our metaphysical uncertainty. We idealize them as conclusions, irrevocable affirmations that we can be worthy and desirable partners. The truth is relationships are as temporary and vulnerable as anything else. They are a long series of choices; everyday your partner must wake up beside you and decide that you're still what they want. Every night they must look around them and choose to come home to you in sprite of all the other available choices.
It's easy in the beginning, when the love feels revelatory and the gravity of a new body is strongest. Over time, it's much harder to keep both partners mutually interested in fighting for one another, choosing to stay together with each passing day. We've invented convenient institutions to ameliorate the fear of being left, mandating the irreversible dictum of "until death do us part."
Knowing that you could promise away so much of your life to someone who could still walk away is scary. After all the dew-eyed promises and sincere vows of the everafter, there's no way to speak for tomorrow. You can't ever say what will happen. Sometimes it's enough to make a man take a swing at someone else.
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Date Machine: Living Like a Bachelor
Sex Machine: Chest Hair, or the Shaved Eunuch
Date Machine: Macho Voce, or Women Who Sound Like Men
Date Machine: Sex in the Office
Sex Machine: Lying Lovers; or the Padded Bra
Sex Machine: Premature Ejaculation
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Date Night: Kissing in the Rain
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