It was lucky that we met.
When I look back, it seems impossible that I ever would have met N. Of all the things that had to fall into place, all the plans I made that didn’t work out, all the unexpected offers that led me into places I never though I’d wanted to go; at every step, one little change would have meant none of this would have ever happened.
If I’d been accepted at conservatory when I was 18; if I’d skipped the poetry workshop my sophomore year of college where my friend H planted the idea of interning at a movie production company; if I’d been accepted in the trainee program at the management company instead of leaving for Peace Corps; if I’d been hired at one of the random office jobs in LA I’d tried so desperately to get when I came back; if I’d taken my prejudice against San Francisco seriously and never moved there; if I’d decided to stay home last Easter because I was tired and didn’t feel like socializing; there are so many little details that could have thrown it all off. It was luck.
Before I met N, I thought I knew myself well enough. I had been through a lot, had fended for myself, taken lots of risks without any clear payoffs waiting ahead. I knew what I wanted out of life and I had a clear understanding of what I was going to have to go through to get it. I knew what I had to share with a partner and I knew what I would expect in return.
One of the first things I learned about N when we met was that she was moving to New York in two months. When we went out on our first real date I knew there was another man waiting for her in New York.
After our first meeting, I spent two hours on the phone with my friend S. I was convinced that I had to send N a wedding proposal in a text message. I knew this would have been fantastically stupid and so I begged S to explain to me in detail why I should wait for at least a second meeting before thinking about marriage. The proposal would have been a joke, and I would have meant it as one. But not really. Impulses like that don’t materialize at random. I’d never felt it before.
A week later we made plans to go out again. I was scared. I called my friend C and told her what was happening. We were about to start something overwhelming and inarticulate. It was like watching a whale coming up from under the ocean. I saw the smooth, alien surface rising just above the water and had no idea what it was. But I knew that it was big. I had already decided to go with it, but I was afraid of that choice. I wanted C to make sense of it for me; to tell me why I was going to do what I was about to do.
As N’s departure drew closer I didn’t feel like I had any place to do anything other than loosen my fingers and watch her slide away. That end had been beside us during every second we were together, even when I consciously turned my back on it. And when she left I watched her go.
N is the love of my life. When I was finally able to say that out loud without feeling embarrassed about it, I decided to move to New York. Love isn’t something you find, it’s something you give, and, though I didn’t know how to say it for a while, I wanted to give her everything. That’s why I moved. This is all I have to give someone. And I brought it to her.
We haven’t gotten back together. We talk. We go out together sometimes. When we’re together it feels like it did. But that’s not enough.
I’ve been lying to myself about the move since I decided on it back in September. I’ve tried to describe it in pure rhetorical terms. “This is all I have to give someone.” That sentiment describes the amorphous emotion that’s propelled me all this way, but it’s an incomplete description. It’s a sentence fragment.
I didn’t just come to give her something. I came to take something, I came to ask her to give me something back. Like giving someone a birthday present and watching expectantly as they unwrap it, there was an unspoken expectation in my coming here. I didn’t want to acknowledge that part. I didn’t want to say that part out loud. I don’t want to be that needy one, that demanding one. But I am.
My friend C told me that I’m in love with my own ability to be in love. When I wrote about coming here last month I said N had black hair. It’s not true. She has brown hair. I was wrong. I moved across the country for a woman whose hair color I couldn’t even get right.
The other week we had a fight. We were supposed to meet for drinks but she was in the middle of a busy week and had been out late the night before. I felt wounded. “I can handle not being your boyfriend, not being your sweetheart,” I texted her. “But I can’t handle feeling like an albatross, an asterisk appending your real life.”
How is somebody supposed to make another person not feel like an asterisk? How can anyone ask another person to make them feel differently about themselves? For all my opaque rhetoric about wanting only to give to her, here I am wearing my wounded emotions on my sleeve and wondering why she won’t do more to fix them.
I’ve given up on every woman I’ve ever been in love with. I never fought for any of them, I never tried to make a case, never made a show of what I could give them besides a passive and easy-going friendship. When you fall in love with someone you ask them to sacrifice for you. You ask them to amend their own plans for the future to include you, to forgo all the new experiences they might have had with other romances, to never experience another person’s body after your own. It’s cruel. It’s a prison.
“I wish we understood each other better,” she told me a few days after I got here. “I am often surprised about it both ways, how we do and don’t.”
I don’t know how this is supposed to end. There isn’t an answer buried in any of this. There is no ending.
I remember looking at her in a bar the other week. We were talking about music. I had just finished tearing down The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips for being grating and overly saccharine. She told me it was about Wayne’s father dying of cancer, the adolescent dregs of super hero fantasy turned into a coping mechanism for the inevitable parting of everyone you’ll ever love. We went to see The Reader. I laughed the whole way through. I was filled with incredulity for the stodgy camera angles, the baroque dialogue, and the hackneyed soap opera plot. She liked the actor who played the young boy. She saw past the surface, the stupid superficial flaws, and found the pretty parts underneath. She left the theater with those. I left with my own stupid punchlines and in-jokes.
I admire her as much as anyone I’ve ever known. She’s strong in all the places where I would come apart. She listens where I’d jump in to filibuster and orate. She’s direct and unapologetic where I’d talk in circles and avoid having to answer.
It was lucky we met. I wish I had more to give to her than this, my wounded feelings and dusty luggage.
I remember one of the first nights we went out together. I invited her to come to a friend’s birthday party with me. We had seen each other twice before. I had been in her bed and we had kissed for almost two hours on her front step. Still, I was nervous when I went over to her apartment to pick her up. I didn’t know where we stood with each other yet. I was afraid I liked her too much.
We walked down the sidewalk towards my friend’s place. We stopped at the big intersection by Church and Market waiting for the signal. We were both looking straight ahead at the red circle shining in its black metal housing across the street.
I tried to look at her without turning my head. I could feel her body next to me in the cold night air. It was like a little ball of soft energy. It was good.
The light was getting ready to change. I could feel the seconds moving by. We would have to start walking forward again soon. I leaned down towards her without looking, then turned my head and kissed her on the cheek.
I stood back upright and looked straight ahead again, watching the stoplight. After a couple of seconds I looked at her again. She kept staring straight ahead, but a smile spread across her lips as she felt me looking at her. The light turned green. “Come on,” she said. I put my arm around her shoulders and we stepped into the crosswalk.
Previous Posts:
Date Machine: Who Am I and Why Am I Here? or Let's Keep in Touch
Date Machine: How to Pick Up Women
Date Machine: Women at 30, or the Scent of the Medicine Cabinet
Date Machine: My Friend's Girlfriend is my Girlfriend
Love Machine: Dating Someone with a Handicap
Date Machine: How to Pick Up a Nurse at the HIV Clinic
Date Machine: Full Disclosure
Sex Machine: The Bare Minimum
Date Machine: The Seductive Art of Dancing
Sex Machine: Becoming A Virgin Again
Sex Machine: Come On My Face
Sex Machine: Because I Can
Love Machine: Am I Romantic Enough?
Sex Machine: Picking Up Women in Gay Bars
Sex Machine: Diary of a Sperm Donor
Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers
Sex Machine: A Revised History of Whores
Date Machine: Moving to New York in Pictures
Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move
Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents
Love Machine: Willing to Relocate