Love

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About a week before Valentine’s Day, I texted Dave a message asking if he would be available that evening to hang. Because I know guys, and I know what they like, I decided to make my text a little dirty…because no matter where you are in the world, or whatever has just happened to you or anyone you love, that’s what guys like. I will spare you the actual text of my ill-advised text, but I will tell you that, whatever it said, Dave has since been keeping his own counsel.

I am used to this pattern. Since my late 30s, whenever I’ve expressed interest in a fellow, he has immediately disappeared, sometimes never to be seen again. Sometimes this happens after the fellow has been pursuing me but I’ve been cool to him. No matter what the context—if I show a little interest, the relationship, such as it is, usually goes poof. I remember relating this troubling fact once to Tommy, a bartender I had a crush on at Woody’s bar on the Lower East Side. “Yes,” I explained, “in my 20s I dumped everyone. Now everyone dumps me.” Tommy mused on this for a few seconds, then replied, “that’s sad,” and moved to another part of the bar—leaving me to think about whether it really was a good idea to share this with someone I had a crush on. Still, I spoke the truth. Matty, for example, had recently indicated to me that we were never boyfriends, that I was just someone he “hung out with.” Oscar, similarly, said that we never broke up because we were never together. And the rest? Who knows how they’ve repositioned our affairs in their minds and histories. Matty, Joshie, Kevin, [name forgotten], Marjan, Oscar, Elias. None lasted more than four months. The last three of them I wasn’t looking for. In fact, I’d abandoned the idea of being in love after [name forgotten], who is in all likelihood dead by now. I feel like Marjan, Oscar, and Elias all tricked me into considering loving them, by casually making themselves convenient to me over a period of time, while I innocently went with them to parties or spent the night, while my inner lovingness slowly and painfully pried itself open to them, against my wishes and certainly unbeknownst to me. It gives me grim satisfaction to say that I only fell fully in love with one of them, though, and that so far, that’s the only time I’ve ever been in love.

I don’t think I texted Dave because I want to love him, or because Valentine’s Day was nigh. I have never been that emotionally invested in Valentine’s Day, and to this day, I’ve only ever happened to be dating someone on Valentine’s Day two times in my life. Joshie and Shawn. For Joshie, I did some reconnaissance the week before the date, and selected a fancy restaurant that I could afford, and made a reservation for the two of us. When we got there, I realized that they had changed the menu just for Valentine’s Day, and that everything was twice the price I had initially observed. So I spent that Valentine’s Day dinner in a heightened state of alarm, wondering if my card would be declined at the end of the dinner. For Shawn, I simply went with him to the Food Bar on 8^th Avenue, where he unwisely issued me an ultimatum—he would stop dating me if I didn’t have sex with him that evening. It made me a little wistful to have to react this way, but I responded by literally waving goodbye to him and paying the check and leaving.

No, with Dave, I think that, in a best-case scenario, I am merely bored and wishing to flesh out a minor dalliance with next-level romanticization. In a worst-case scenario, I am attempting to “groom” a very young man by alternately giving him attention (which he ignores, but which young people are starving for, believe me, and can’t live without) and ignoring him completely. It’s Dave’s fault. When I text him, he ignores me, but when he texts me, I feel that because of my advanced age, I must make myself available and get in the shower and show up. Who knows when the next sexy time will be for me? I only sent him the dirty text because he had texted me some personal stuff in our previous text conversation, and I felt that because he seemed to be warming to me on a personal level, my “grooming” might have taken root enough that an actual relationship between ourselves had begun. No, my dirty text showed me that this is the lot a 46-year-old chooses for himself when the 46-year-old decides to play “Space Invaders” with someone half his age. I must wait for him to summon me, and when I am summoned, I must go.

At outpatient rehab the other evening, I shared with the group that I am happy. I am. I have felt happy and totally at peace for a couple of weeks now. As I indicated in rehab, it feels like being in love, but without the other person there to mess it all up. I wouldn’t have known to ask for this feeling, even in prayer, because I never knew that it existed. To have gone from a memory-impaired, throwing-up-blood-regularly, pooping-yellow-poop-type drunk to being able to identify a feeling of peace within myself, much less welcome it—is nothing short of a miracle. I used to wake up on Saturday mornings so hungover and depressed that I would immediately start drinking tequila until I passed out, so as not to have to be conscious, the weekend stretching out before me. I would wake up a few hours later and drink some more tequila, and then again and then again and again, until it was morning on Monday and I would wake up, throw up blood, and then drive to work, totally insane. Now I usually am in bed by 7 pm, in love but not needing to share it with a lover, happy. I have 32 days sober. I haven’t thrown up in weeks.

Sometimes Paula tells me that what she really wants for me is for me to find a person to love and to spend my life with, like what she has found with Luther. While this sort of arrangement would probably make things like affording an apartment easier, the thought of being in a relationship fills me with horror. Imagine having to make room for another person in my life, at this stage? To plug him inside holes in my calendar, or clear the ashtray, candy, and/or pills from my bed to make room for another person. To be in winter in New York City, walking beside someone towards my apartment, knowing that very soon I would be freezing cold and naked—or, even worse, wet and cold and naked, if I showered—and that I would have to be, in order to satisfy someone else’s desires. Men have unlimited horniness, and I don’t like the cold.  

This Valentine’s Day, I watched with bemusement as a few of my friends texted me, “Happy Valentine’s Day!!!” and I tactfully didn’t reveal my own ambivalence toward the day. What else happened that day? That morning, I was awoken by a horrible attack of heartburn (my last one to date—yay). Mitch McConnell announced that Trump would be invoking a state of emergency of some sort. Dave did not summon me. Lori told me her new dog was named “Gem.” The day before, I’d received both my first unemployment check (finally) and my first food stamps (ibid). Alia told me about a dog that had been rescued in the UK recently who was born with two mouths. She also told me about her latest plan to torture her own dog—to spray a foul-tasting chemical onto her dog’s paws to keep him from licking his own feet. So many things happened that day, just as so many things have happened in my life. So many things have happened to me that, sometimes, even for me to look back upon my life is exhausting. Still, tonight I am content. Tonight, I choo-choo-choose peace.