We are sitting in my car in the parking lot across from Tags Hardware listening to Cinnamon by Lana Del Rey. The car cycles between too hot and too cold. I consider reaching for his hand in the times when I can see my own breath, but the moment flees from me like he is bound to.
I stopped eating the day before he confirmed our plans. I’ve always been a bit of a doomsday prepper in that way. Eating leads to bloating— leads to rolls over pants—leads to purging in the Wendy’s drive-thru on my way home. I can’t imagine a fate worse than the raised red C-section scar left behind from my goal-weight jeans, that is if I ever took my jeans off. Though we’ve been seeing each other for two months now, we still haven’t had sex. This failing falls squarely on my shoulders, I am sure. Most men want to have sex, that’s their whole thing. But not, Ty.
We haven’t even sort of had sex. I mean the closest we’ve gotten is a few kisses that lasted longer than a few seconds, just enough time for an exploratory tongue to get through the guards. Just enough time for me to get slightly harder than usual, or harder than is welcome, a fact of which I can’t tell is perceived as entirely good.
I have walked this tightrope for the last few weeks, unsure whether my responses make me the pig I have learned to avoid, or whether the onus falls on me to initiate. Maybe he prefers to be chaste, maybe he prefers to be chased. I can’t really be sure.
Ty was two years older than me when we started dating, and three when we stopped. He, like every man who has broken my heart before and after, was an artist. I have created something of a brand from this certain proclivity. You call it a type, I call it ‘skipping dialogue.’ Like in a video game when a cutscene drags on a few minutes too long, standing between you and the good stuff, you press X on your controller and skip ahead in the story. That’s what this was for me. I knew all the trappings of the artist type, knew how to massage their egos and support their art, knew who to reference and who was considered uncouth and unflattering a comparison. I knew how to react to their work (always positively and instantaneously), and how to allow for long breaks in communication. This was their time to create.
I also knew that this was bullshit. Knew that nine times out of ten (or hell all ten times), they were really just at home jacking off to the same porn scene they’ve used since they were 16, or getting so stoned that their poetry actually was good. So I would sit patiently awaiting a response to very simple texts.
Just following up, we still on for tonight?
Hey
Hey.
Ty loved to keep me waiting. I’d wait for his text, wait for his sex, wait for his interest, wait for him to finally have been too inconvenienced by my presence to stick around any longer. This is the natural life-cycle of any relationship. Or at least, any one that I’ve been in. My friends say that this is not my fault, “It’s just guys our age,” they assure me. But I know better, I see the way I fade from the minds of the men I love, watch as I recede in their eyes even as I sit in front of them. I make men amnesiac, make them forget who I am entirely, and then after that is wiped clear, I make them forget to forget me.
I watched this happen with Ty, watched myself become smaller and smaller to him—watched myself become less.
I can imagine it’s hard to love someone who intends to vanish. Must be quite a disappointment to sign for a two-bedroom, with all its ample space, only to discover you’ve fallen in love with what amounts to a studio. I was on the lease, sure, but made myself into a house guest, a visitor— and one who was overstaying their welcome at that. The more Ty knew me the less I became, until I stopped being a home to share and started to be little more than a car to live out of. Still, I wondered why not me?
“Goodnight Graham, let me know when you get home,” he said. He began to reach for the door as I leaned in for a goodbye kiss. Our weights shifted so far from each other, I figured the car would tip. And wouldn’t that be a sight, the two of us stuck in a car rolled over awaiting the jaws of life. I wonder if then, stuck there entirely in that way, if he would finally be mine, or if he would rather saw off his own leg than to spend another forty minutes in my presence.
“Wait, are you free next week?” I managed to stammer out. “We should see each other again”
“Should?”
“Well, you know, I guess I just mean— I’d like to see you again.” Would he?
“I’ll have to check my schedule, finals are coming up.”
“So is that a no?” My face was getting hot once more and not because of the car which was currently in its cold cycle, as Lana began crooning over the last great American record.
“It’s not a no. It’s an I don’t know. It’s a we’ll see Graham.”
“Alright, well will you text me?” This was clinging, this was needy, this was showing my cards and showing my stomach and providing the place for his knife to plunge deep into me.
“Yes, of course.” He began to get up. “But if I get busy and forget, don’t hate me.” Truer words were never spoken, because I knew he would forget, and also, that I would never be able to hate him.