Standing in the improvised art gallery, we embraced our own social awkwardness and she said:* “Frances, can I be entirely honest?”
Yes is the only appropriate reply and besides, I covet others thoughts too often and too much to pass up on such an offer without first having to offer a penny, nickel, or grass-blade (though in truth, I have never offered the last item, only accepted, because apparently I am the modern-proverbial “cheap date.”) in exchange.
“Back home we had this sort of joke that in winter there is a sort of enhanced (I don’t want to say sex-drive) attraction between people. I don’t know if it’s maybe due to… hibernation or cold or mating habits buried deep in that cave man part of our brains. But.” The moral of the story was, he smoked and she hadn’t liked him enough in the first place to try to get past that, to be driven into his arms by this barren season.
Somewhere else a boy told me that he had often walked past me on campus and I, arms crossed, head down, “always thinking,” he said, had never noticed him. This had happened sixteen times. I took a small victory in this because it meant I hadn’t been looking for him, despite the joy I took in his empty elevator kisses and the moment he touched my ear once while we sat in my bed when touching my ear became touching my hair and my roommate, who he finds to be quite beautiful, stirred in her sleep and he dropped his hand. I touched his knee and he left. “Come get me before dinner.”
At another time, he revealed to me naked arms. They were more slender than I expected, I made him let me feel his bicep so I could be sure he was strong enough for my appetite, though I never did tell him my motivation for anything. He looked at my collarbone and, at one point, grinned.
These last ten weeks have not been enough to make me feel like an adult capable of making sense or justifying these dysfunctional relationships, nor have they been enough to drive us to coupling. Because of that, I can be thankful, in the best way, for the fling and that it means I don’t have to tell him about that date I went on that one time while he was writing a paper or ask him why he disappears every weekend.
Tomorrow I will spend some time reading by the bay, trying to catch the eye of men with dogs.
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*I often take great liberties with conversational elements. And events. What I’m really saying is, I often lie.
