She was an exquisite kind of fine. The kind of beautiful
that makes you look and never break your stare. You wouldn’t care who was
watching. But it wasn’t her features that grabbed my attention as I stared at her
across the overfilled train. It was the small gold hamsa that hung daintily
from her wrist. It initiated our conversation. And me asking for her accompaniment to my favorite restaurant in the West Village on 8th Ave. And her
saying yes while she blushed beneath her perfectly applied make up. Mac. I
could tell. It ended with me asking for her number, and her writing the
combination of digits on a piece of bright yellow, unlined paper with a baby pink pen in blue ink.
She purposely held my hand a little longer than she needed to. I didn’t mind at
all.
After our fated encounter, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She was it. Everything that I felt like I was missing. And not because I had
some repressed fantasy to be with someone that was just like me. Not because I was bi-curious and was
using this as an opportunity to find out how it really was to be with one of
the same. I had been with many like me before, and many different than me as
well. But she had a shyness that rendered her seemingly defenseless. And a
ferocity that threatened to swallow me whole if I wasn’t careful.
And consume me she did. After our date to the dimly lit
restaurant in the city. After the movie in Queens. After shopping and dinner in
Long Island and late night personal sessions in Brooklyn. Those were my
favorite. Her always wearing her Hello Kitty boy shorts. Her perfect mix of
innocence and enticement. The epitome of her. The embodiment of everything that
was so necessary for me during that time and in that space.
But as much as I loved my one in the same, I was that much
ashamed of her. Not wanting her to hold my hand in public. Failing to
reciprocate her perfectly placed, affectionate kisses in front of our friends.
They all were aware. But I was too reluctant to demonstrate what they already
knew. I was not her same lover, her same friend, her same partner when her four
walls weren’t surrounding us. I cowered in fear when we weren’t protected by
the privacy of closed doors and pulled blinds.
Eventually she grew tired of me. Her exceptional kind of
fine turned into something I didn’t know how to handle. Into ignored phone
calls. Into being stood up. Into boring days and excruciatingly lonely nights.
Into a feeling I didn’t think could come from one of the same. Feelings I had
reserved for those that were different. But relationships are not so different
when the two people involved share the same softness. The same desires. The
same vulnerabilities. The same hopes that it wouldn’t end as it always did this
time.
She needed me to be different. She needed something
constant. Something invariable. A person that was unchanging when she woke up
cuddled against them in the morning and when she fell asleep in their arms at
night. That would prove to her that not everyone was out to cause her anguish.
She needed confirmation. The exception. Her salvation. But I disappointed her.
And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Because when she needed me to be different, I was
more of the same.
