(no subject)
A man 10 years my senior effortlesly kept her attention with a prefab but living dissertation about the benefits of Omega 3s on the human organism while his fiance and I locked eyes and smiles every few minutes, conspiring innocently to keep up the appearances that we were all in this conversation together. And yet the woman across from me was, questioning the facts and figures that were so generously offered to her, wondering about the sustainability of harvesting Omega 3-rich fish and what this meant for the already fragile oceanic ecosystem.
Her disputations were foreign to her interlocutor but familiar to me, though this contentious spirit of hers was not. I could do little but rest my head on my hands and lean forward, dreamily lookin straight ahead with an uneven smile on my face. It was a ridiculous expression, the kind you'd see in an old-timey cartoon featuring little boys, muddy dogs, baseballs, and Coca-Cola in a glass bottle to be drunk with a straw. It's the kind of face you don't see much and make even more rarely, but it's the only face I had. Parts of it were up, parts of it were down. It was an effortless expression, really, even though I was quite conscious of it.
One does not look at women this way. It's simply not done.
But I couldn't help but do it for the vast majority of the evening. At times it was tempered, I will admit, with a darkness. It would be the last time I saw her, perhaps forever. It was a love -- fine, infatuation, if you must -- that would be smothered in its crib. I didn't have the words for this, to say nothing of the words for her.
Luckily, I didn't need to have them because my friend, a man I'd met precisely once before, was doing the heavy lifting during this dinner among strangers.
Later as I reached out to touch her arm, to offer my art, I realized that I had no plan for where or how hard to make contact. It was likely a grab a little stronger than necessary, forcefulness compensating for a lack of ease with myself. And yet she turned so lightly, without any hint of worry about the stormy insides of the new friend behind her, me. And I still did not know how to give her the drawing I did, that I spent several hours over two days on, sketching and inking and coloring, filling with symbols of our one day together, with hints that were anything but subtle that I'd been completely enchanted by her. I could have ripped it, not having had the foresight to remove it from the sketchpad before.
But she accepted it. She was delighted with it. I told the story of the picture twice: once to her, once to our dining companions. I told her to her face that she was the most unexpected part of the trip. That I expected paperwork, bureaucracy, signing on dotted lines. I did not seek nor did I expect inspiration. But that's what she gave me. It's something beyond words, perhaps even beyond feelings we can recognize and label.
I stumbled away from them.
No, I walked away from them, perfectly sober and together, though shivering a bit from the onsent of cold. Parts of my body suggested that it was time to cry but those are the parts best ignored. But it felt like I was stumbling away from something but hardly towards something. Still. All that was not difficult. It was all I could do.
Her disputations were foreign to her interlocutor but familiar to me, though this contentious spirit of hers was not. I could do little but rest my head on my hands and lean forward, dreamily lookin straight ahead with an uneven smile on my face. It was a ridiculous expression, the kind you'd see in an old-timey cartoon featuring little boys, muddy dogs, baseballs, and Coca-Cola in a glass bottle to be drunk with a straw. It's the kind of face you don't see much and make even more rarely, but it's the only face I had. Parts of it were up, parts of it were down. It was an effortless expression, really, even though I was quite conscious of it.
One does not look at women this way. It's simply not done.
But I couldn't help but do it for the vast majority of the evening. At times it was tempered, I will admit, with a darkness. It would be the last time I saw her, perhaps forever. It was a love -- fine, infatuation, if you must -- that would be smothered in its crib. I didn't have the words for this, to say nothing of the words for her.
Luckily, I didn't need to have them because my friend, a man I'd met precisely once before, was doing the heavy lifting during this dinner among strangers.
Later as I reached out to touch her arm, to offer my art, I realized that I had no plan for where or how hard to make contact. It was likely a grab a little stronger than necessary, forcefulness compensating for a lack of ease with myself. And yet she turned so lightly, without any hint of worry about the stormy insides of the new friend behind her, me. And I still did not know how to give her the drawing I did, that I spent several hours over two days on, sketching and inking and coloring, filling with symbols of our one day together, with hints that were anything but subtle that I'd been completely enchanted by her. I could have ripped it, not having had the foresight to remove it from the sketchpad before.
But she accepted it. She was delighted with it. I told the story of the picture twice: once to her, once to our dining companions. I told her to her face that she was the most unexpected part of the trip. That I expected paperwork, bureaucracy, signing on dotted lines. I did not seek nor did I expect inspiration. But that's what she gave me. It's something beyond words, perhaps even beyond feelings we can recognize and label.
I stumbled away from them.
No, I walked away from them, perfectly sober and together, though shivering a bit from the onsent of cold. Parts of my body suggested that it was time to cry but those are the parts best ignored. But it felt like I was stumbling away from something but hardly towards something. Still. All that was not difficult. It was all I could do.