Notes from the dating underground.
I've held back with him. I'm worried that I'm getting a little slutty because I don't really care about the people I'm dating. So, chaste. N tells me he wants to hang out with me before I go back to Oberlin. Confoundingly, he takes me to the grocery store to shop for the imminent arrival of his new girlfriend. Asks my help and we, cracked, domestic, pick out bread and fruit and he maybe goes to get condoms while I stand with his cart. I bruise like peaches.
Later in his apartment, further away from transportation than I would like, and in the cold and dark, he asks me to help clean his place in return for a ride back to civilization. That inner sub, that part of me that I usually only let one person see, is wrenched out into the open. He takes a shower and I vacuum his apartment, sweep, shine his shoes. He comes out in a dress shirt and boxers, and I have to ask him to put his pants on. I don't like the way he looks at me when I'm cleaning. The reformed whore. A powerful women, award winning filmmaker and poet, wrenched down out of the spotlight, testing the brilliance of his dress shoes. He must love this shit.
2. O's smile is so brilliant that it makes me uncomfortable. We push each other playfully in the hallway, give each other knowing looks, and babble in French. On set I can't even keep my composure. I'm the director, coyly snapping photos of my gaffer, undermining myself. He's so horribly ideal that I almost don't bother.
I stand barefoot in my hallway and pick up my phone to ask him out. No answer. No answer. And on for weeks and months and no answer. Everything on the tip of the tongue, every intention stuttered and blurted. He stands me up my last day in Prague, and this time, I'm the one with the knowing smile.
3. Fully 12 hours after landing in DC after four months of Czech, I am sitting next to M in his car. I am jetlagged but impeccable. It's six in the morning and he just got off work. He is America incarnate and I am watching him, my whole country, driving me somewhere he doesn't even tell me. I don't care.
At breakfast, we talk politics and film school respectively. He is a receptacle for knowledge and I am a receptacle for him. I collect the small pieces I get and arrange them in front of me, trying to make sense of them all. He's confounding. And the two of us, not a damn thing in common, look at each other as the sun rises over the parking lot. He leans in to kiss and it feels like rehydration. Full up of the soft sweet water of my home. Tasting of coffee trucked in from somewhere else. We'd do more but he hasn't slept in two days. Dazed from my own lack of sleep, I call him a tease and press my face against his neck. We make promises to see each other but I think we both know it can't happen. It doesn't.
4. D writes me a message on Facebook. Mr. Ball In His Court hasn't been happy that I've decided to be distant. It's been over a year since I've heard his voice. Over a year since I've had to see him or smell him, over a year of no new photos and no new music. In my head, he's driven off a cliff and died. Which is why it surprises me to see a Facebook message. Corpses can't wall post.
"i'm sorry, avi.
for so many things. i am. for what i couldn't be, for what i didn't have to give to you, for all that was not good for your soul. i only wanted to the opposite of such.
there is a part of me that understands you wanting to not know me, and vice versa. there is also a part of me that wonders whether you know how much i was, and still am, affected by you.
i mostly keep quiet because of shame. and because i've been given the notion that that is best. it wish it were otherwise.
in any case, i wish you an extraordinary year. i know that you'll be doing amazing things no matter what.
d"
The sick feeling comes back a little. And the gentleman who set me up for the above complexes: the submission, the shame about my assertiveness, the fear of calling too much, decides that he gets to decide when we get to be okay with each other. I want to tell him that I am not interested in being charitable, that I am not sorry that he's single again. I want to tell him that I will not be girlfriend roadkill on his highway of cheap, lame self-discovery. I want to tell him that I don't give a fuck about his new album, that everything I pulled out of myself and put to use was in spite of and not because of him.
I realize though, that the scariest thing for him is no response at all. So I don't say one goddamn word.
5. I have to wonder, what does this person look like? What does the next person who falls for me even look like? Scruffy like D, polished like N, imposing like M, weedy like O? How could they be anything like me? I hate too much of the same. And how could they be so different? I don't understand too much of that either. How do I synthesize the feminist persona with the girl who scrubs floors? Because sometimes, I feel so universally unappealing. Neither side feels appropriately developed. Both sides skitter away from each other given the slightest chance.
Every single man I've been interested in falls into two categories: the ones who just want to fuck me and the ones who want to be my friend. Those who desire me, who tell me point blank that they want my body, want me to shut up and do what they think I do best. Those men seem to think I'm some sort of sexual dynamo, some bad girl, certainly no one worth caring about but probably a good lay.
The other men respect me, listen to me, and laugh with me. And through the conversation and commiseration, they forget that I am female and erase those parts of me. We have fun together and then they share about their romantic and sexual yearnings and make me feel like a leper.
Where's the both? What's the secret emulsifier?