A girlfriend once told me I didn’t “bitch” or “gossip” enough and it was a problem for her. She found it “annoying.” She was pretty, and wealthy, and a model, and she didn’t have time for this particular personality flaw of mine. It was a hurdle to our getting on smoothly. So, in order to appease her, I started cutting myself up and offering the pieces of my own problems, struggles, and limitations—and it was just as entertaining for her as highlighting or hacking at anyone else’s. She fucking loved it. Because honoring the multidimensional and miraculous nature of who we are is a bit uneconomical, and a bit inefficient. It’s tricky to sum that shit up in a forty-five-minute lunch break. It’s faster, and cheaper, and easier, to just hate each other, the planet, and ourselves.
“Love the look, hun.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“You look familiar?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, do you know Sunny?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Or Em?”
“No.”
“Emma K?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Oh, I know! You remind me of my stepsister! Hey, doesn’t she totally remind you of my stepsister?”
“Ha-ha! Yeah! Totally.”
“Why?”
“She dresses all noughties and shit.”
“Right.”
“Who do you know here?”
“Not that many people.”
“You’re very pretty.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“My partner actually saw you earlier and said she thought you were really pretty. We, like, rate people. And you got a very high score, little lady!”
“Thank you. I think.”
“Do you like my coat? My girlfriend can’t get enough of it, and I have this photographer friend who can’t get enough of it, either. The whole see-through thing makes everyone go mental.”
“I see.”
“Snap!”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“Me. Too. Hmm. Let’s get our picture taken! Oi! Get over here!”
“Oh? Sad face?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Or, why not?”
“I just . . . like being in the moment.”
“We are in the moment!”
“Yeah, I just don’t really want it to be captured and shot at, if that’s ok.”
“LOL. Ok?”
“You called?”
“Nah, nah. False alarm. Your pretty little friend here wants to ‘stay in the moment’ with me rather than have her picture taken.”
“Oh.”
“Hmm.”
“Can I go now?”
“Yes, baby. You can go now.”
“Is that your girlfriend?”
“More like my long-suffering husband.”
“How long have you been together?”
“Just over two years. She’s actually my fiancée. When the law passed I popped the question. The wedding is in April.”
“That’s sweet.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Hmm.”
“Ever been with a woman?”
“Kind of.”
“That means no.”
“Ok, then. No.”
“I have to pee.”
“Ok.”
“See you later, maybe? On the dance floor?”
“Maybe.”
She just kissed me on the cheek, and I suspect that it would’ve been on the lips if I’d been more open to it, which I wasn’t.
She was startling, and bright-eyed, and she had big breasts, which I love. Yet there was something about the see-through jacket that created an atmosphere where the only way I could make room for myself was to retreat from it. Plus, I began to feel responsible for the sanctity of her union with her partner. Probably because making out with her wouldn’t have been the right choice for me.
I have a theory that being in an amazing relationship with someone can be very frightening, because then there’s nowhere else to go. We’re stuck with amazingness. So we create drama, and fantasize about other people, and draw dimwits to us that we’ll inevitably want to run away from, and attract those who will inevitably want to run away from us, and constantly dream of leaving, and we turn the amazing person that we’re with into a piece of shit, so as to give ourselves an excuse to run away from them when we get scared enough.
Because once we’ve committed to waking up and looking at the same person every morning, and to sharing our lives with them, and to being honest with them, we risk losing everything, every day. The stakes are much higher than if we’re dating a whole bunch of people, or a few of them, or no one in particular.
When we’re in a committed one-on-one relationship, we can’t just bounce between whoever or whatever suits our agenda, or our ideas of ourselves, or the bite-sized chunks of intimacy that we can handle while juggling multiple partners.
Whenever I’ve had to coordinate with more than one partner, I’ve learned nothing except for how to devalue myself. My energy has become everyone else’s. It was about texting this person, and organizing things with that person, and going to this appointment with the other one, and having an intervention with them about that, and considering something they said in a text, and how that relates to something the other person mentioned at coffee. I mean, I can barely breathe let alone think in an overcrowded space. So there’s no way I’m ever going to thrive with multiple partners.
I also read somewhere that we’re becoming more inclined toward one-on-one relationships as a species. In the beginning we were designed to propagate, yet now there’s no need to. It’s more important that we channel all of that creative and sexual energy into building sustainable and well-connected communities, not into giving birth to more of them.
There’s no longer an evolutionary drive for more relationships, and more children, and more rogue semen, and more mess.
35.
Some guy just knocked into me and spilled his drink on my shoes, and I’m not even sure that he realized, and I can’t even bear to look at him, because I can’t even be bothered having to deal with that. You know. His face. Thankfully, my shoes are patent pleather, and the contents of his drink just casually dribbled off their surface and onto the balcony’s well-worn wooden planks.
It’s started to get pretty hectic up here, and I have a fear of foundations caving beneath me. I dream about it all of the time. It’s become ridiculous. I literally wake up laughing when it happens now, and Porkchop gets the fright of his life over, and over, and over again.
I can see two guys sitting in a corner of the backyard downstairs in dark-green plastic chairs, and I feel compelled to go down and join them. They’re lunging, and parlaying, and lunging, and parlaying, and looking around the party, and sipping their beers, and lunging, and parlaying. It reminds me of watching my father and his friends around the dinner table engaging in something I could never keep up with, between mouthfuls of Camembert, crusty baguette, red wine, and the occasional grape.
Dueling must be bonding for testosterone-driven creatures. My therapist once told me not to take people’s attempts at “intellectual debate” and “casual chat” so seriously. Like, when someone asks “what I’ve been up to” or “what I think about that” or whether or not “I agree” with something, it’s important to remember that it’s “just about the back and forth,” he said. “What you actually say is of less significance.”
Which I interpreted to mean that it’s best to treat “casual conversation” like a game of ping-pong, fencing, or tennis. It isn’t about cultivating a deeper awareness of one another or learning anything. It’s about “I haven’t bee
n up to much, what about you?” or “Absolutely right!” Or “No way, mate!”
So I’m going to go downstairs and over to those guys, and I’m going to sit down with them and see what happens.
“I don’t think privilege even exists.”
“What? How can you even say that? It’s so embedded into our culture. It’s everywhere! We are so much more privileged than everybody else. Especially in this country.”
Oh, crap. I feel like I’ve just sat down in the middle of a court case, and I’ve swiftly been appointed judge, witness, jury, prosecutor, defense, and transcriptionist. They’re both becoming more self-conscious. Their eyes and mouths are moving faster. My role here is important and yet I don’t want to perform it. I want to rewind everything back to when I was up there on the balcony, deciding whether or not to come down here, and I want to choose a different path. A different door. A different box. The blue pill not the red one.
My solar plexus has started throbbing like it used to when I was alone in a room with my father, and he would raise a subject that I didn’t want to discuss, because I knew it would inevitably lead to my holding him accountable for something he didn’t want to be held accountable for.
Dad couldn’t tell the difference between being blamed for something and being responsible for something. Every discussion was about one person being right and the other person being wrong. There was nothing else, and no in-between, and no other options. He didn’t see himself as someone who was equally answerable for what unfolded in any given communication.
So if I came to a different conclusion about something, or if I requested that he change his behavior in some way, or if I asked him to explain something that he had done, which I didn’t understand, it was always seen as an attack, and a ploy to persecute him. It was never simply a call for change, or a need for softness, or an evolution of the relationship that we had. It was never about learning or growth. It was war.
“How? What’s an example of me being more privileged than anybody else? If anything, it’s just the opposite. I feel like I’ve been prejudiced against because of who I am. I’ve felt misunderstood. It’s relative.”
“Well, there’s lots of different privileges. For one, you’re less likely to be sexually harassed or raped. Every time a woman goes out she has to be thinking about how to stay safe. Do you know the statistics? They’re out of control. I can almost guarantee that every woman you know has probably been harassed, bro.”
“I don’t think that’s true. None of my ex-girlfriends have ever mentioned anything like that. And my sisters are so chill going out on their own and being independent. Like, maybe a small percentage of people have had problems. I just don’t know anyone who has had those experiences.”
“What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“Do you feel like women are going through this all of the time?”
“Yes.”
“So, what? Every time you go out, and every guy you speak to, you’re worried that he might be a rapist?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Every man I know has had the potential to be a rapist. And I’ve been raped, so.”
“Well, fuck. Sorry. I still . . . just . . . can’t reconcile that that’s every woman’s experience.”
“Bro, the fact that you can’t comprehend that shows the level of your privilege. Like, the fact that you don’t know what other people are going through is the definition of being privileged.”
“Well, no. That’s the definition of being ignorant. Anyway. It’s women’s responsibility to talk about their experiences, then. It’s not my fault that they’re not sharing that kind of shit. Fuck, though. Ok. It’s just that I’m not a creep. Sure, there are people out there who probably do some fucked-up shit. It’s just that I’m being defined by them. Don’t you think that that’s unfair? Like, I’ve never raped anybody, or sexually assaulted anybody, and none of my friends are like that.”
“I think it’s healthy for you to be questioning your behavior, and having more open discussions with women about it all can only be positive. Because, you’re right, your privilege isn’t the problem. Being unaware of it and using it irresponsibly is. I wouldn’t be so sure about your friends, either. If you’re not in the room when they’re fucking some chick, you can’t really speak for them. I suspect that you’d be surprised. The nice guys who get on super well with all of their bros are usually the ones to be wary of, in my experience. I have to go to the bathroom now. It’s been nice talking to you both. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”
36.
I wonder where the fucking bathroom is. Going to the bathroom is always a bit of a thing in situations like this. My focus has to become spatial rather than social. I have to figure out where the toilet is based on the sense of the environment that I have so far, which requires a different part of my brain.
It’s nice to have something tangible to work out, though. Now that I have to go to the bathroom, I can walk through the different rooms of the house with a sense of purpose. Whereas, when I haven’t had to go to the bathroom, I’ve had to walk around pretending like I’ve got something tangible to do in order to seem purposeful.
Idleness, or appearing to be lost or alone, or like you’re just reflecting upon something, isn’t valued in social environments. Even standing still for a tad too long or just noticing the fact of existing is considered to be distinctly unproductive and antisocial. It implies that we haven’t been chosen.
When we’re busy, we’ve been chosen. Someone or something wants our attention. Being in a state of oversaturation, or overwhelm, suggests that we have a tribe, and that we fit in, and that our attention is going toward something outside of us, and that we belong.
Focusing on our inner world has no social currency. I mean, no one is standing around waiting to congratulate us for stopping to feel how we feel, and to consider what we want, and to question why we choose to behave in certain ways. If anything, our doing this makes others uncomfortable.
However, I’ve noticed that when I treat my inner world as sacred, every interaction that I have with the outside world becomes sacred, too. How I treat myself is a reflection of how I treat the world and, in turn, how the world treats me.
Nevertheless, I make sure to adapt in social situations and to do everything I can to shift myself into a purposeful, energetic, outwardly oriented space, because I know it serves the neuroses of the people around me. It’s important to acknowledge the process of adapting, too. Otherwise I’d have nothing of my own at all and I’d just become an adaptation. A mindless shadow following everyone else around.
So when I acknowledge the choice to adapt, I have consciously chosen a course of action and exercised my greatest power as a human being: choice. I am choosing this. I am choosing this. I don’t have to choose this. I am choosing this.
37.
There’s a sign on a door that says “bathroom,” which is promising. Although, there’s a massive fucking hole in it, and I can see the back of a girl dressed in black standing there, talking to someone who must be using the toilet. Nice. This could take a while. Even once I’m in there I’m going to have to be quick, because I don’t want someone’s entrance into my toilet time marking the end of it. I want to mark the end of my toilet time when I deem it appropriate to mark the end of my toilet time.
Ok, so a man has just approached where I’m standing and everything has slowed down. He’s waiting for the bathroom, too, and I’ve become acutely aware of my face for some reason. The same thing happens when I’m getting a massage and they roll me onto my back and start working my arms, and hands, and the muscles around my mouth start tensing and flinching in a weird way and I can’t stop them. There must be some ligament in my arm that attaches to my mouth or something. The practitioners I see probably go aw
ay and write things in their diary when they can’t remember my name, like, “Twitchy Face Girl on the 10th” or “Weirdo with the Face Works for Lymphatic Drainage on the 30th.” That’s what I would do. That’s how I would remember me.
Anyway. The long, rectangular body before me is dressed in a very thoughtful way, and from what I can ascertain via conducting a few quick perfunctory glances is that his face has clarity and softness about it. The angle of his jaw, and cheekbones, and brow are square and defined. Yet his eyes, and skin, and facial hair, and lips, are less sure of themselves. They’re more unruly, and ready to be tested. He’s like a Viking who figured out which direction to take across the ocean in order to discover a new land, while everyone else was running around, and raiding, and stealing materials to build huts, and hacking off their neighbors’ heads with ice picks.
His mouth keeps tightening as if he might burst into flames or cascade into laughter. Our bodies can’t contain whatever this is. We’re both struggling to keep the sparkles inside, which is a magnificent sign during a first meeting.
He’s holding a beer, and there’s a sweater draped and tied around his shoulders in the way that I imagine the Kennedys would have draped and tied sweaters around their shoulders when they were throwing parties and watching polo in the Hamptons.
All of a sudden, I’m really glad I didn’t go with the chopsticks in my hair. It’s a miraculous thing that those chopsticks are very far away from where I am right now. I have a feeling that people with sweaters draped and tied around their shoulders don’t necessarily warm to those wearing kitchen utensils as hair accessories.
I just took a deep breath and saw a bright-pink web tracing its way from my heart and vagina to his heart and penis. It’s strong and effervescent. The mere idea of it is making me blush. I want to weep, and fall to my knees, and whisper to the universe how grateful I am for being here, and for feeling what I feel, and seeing what I see, and knowing what I know.