Torn

Allow me to introduce you to Saturday Smith and Trixie Balloux. Saturday is slightly girlish and a little old-fashioned, prone to dreaminess and fits of longing for chivalry—against her better judgment. Trixie is more, shall we say, sexually focused, and fuck all with the emotional side of things. She’s rude, cynical, brassy, and enjoys her whiskey. Here is a transcript of one of their recent interactions. 

Saturday:

(Wistfully twirling a strand of hair) A partner. An ally. An alibi. I want someone to join forces with and conquer this life, with all the zeal and verve that can be achieved when you know someone has your back. And is also great in the sack. 

Trixie: 

(Takes a shot of whiskey) I agree with the whole thing about “great in the sack.” However, in what century were you born that you feel you can’t “conquer this life” with zeal and verve all of your own accord? Are you not a grown, confident woman with solid resources?

Saturday:

Well, yeah. Duh. I’m just saying if I don’t have to do everything alone, then that would be awesome. Why shouldn’t I hope for a partner who wants to travel with me, work at what he’s passionate about alongside me…

Trixie: 

Bitch, please. Do you not have friends? You have the best friends a person can ask for. Don’t you feel a little greedy thinking you’re due a soul mate too? God, I hate that term: soul mate. It sounds fucking fatal. 

Saturday: 

Don’t get all dramatic. Jesus. You know my feelings on the whole soul mate thing. We have many soul mates. It’s not like I actually believe there’s one perfect man out there just waiting for me to magically appear. Or vice versa. Or whatever. 

Trixie: 

No, you kind of do think that.

Saturday: 

Psh. Do not. 

Trixie: 

Do so. 

Saturday: 

Do not!

Trixie: 

(Smiles knowingly) So, if you don’t believe the whole single soul mate thing, then what exactly is this life partner person? Besides imaginary, of course. 

Saturday: 

I told you. Someone who I can travel with, work with, live with…

Trixie: 

And the difference between this person and, say, any number of your friends…?

Saturday:

(Blushes) Well, there’s that little something extra. 

Trixie: 

Yeah. It’s called an accessible penis. 

Saturday: 

Well, okay, it’s that, but it’s more than that too. It’s declaring your affiliations, it’s shouting from the rooftops, “World, this guy and me? We’re a team.” 

Trixie:

(Stares blankly)

Saturday: 

What, you have no interest in having someone on your side? In being on someone’s side? Making a commitment to them? 

Trixie:

I’ve made a lot of worthwhile commitments to a lot of wonderful people in my life who are dearest friends to this day. I don’t see the point of seeking out this supersized romantic commitment you’re talking about. 

Saturday:

So. You’re telling me you don’t want that relationship—to align yourself with someone who loves you for who you are, which would be miraculous because you are such a pain in the ass. 

Trixie: 

I’d like to align myself with lots of people. I’m aligned with lots of people already. 

Saturday: 

You know what I mean. Don’t get all semantical. 

Trixie: 

You’re asking me if I want a monogamous lifelong relationship with some imaginary dreamboat of a guy? 

Saturday: 

(Sighs heavily) More or less. If you had to paint it in your usual broad, jaded strokes. 

Trixie: 

You do know that monogamy is just the mutual capitulation of two people to their insecurities, right? To say nothing of the fact that it basically sets everyone up to be highly disappointed at best and badly hurt at worse. 

Saturday: 

I totally cannot talk to you sometimes. 

Trixie:

(Snickers) You just hate it when I’m right. 

Saturday: 

We’re not talking about monogamy. We’re talking about…

Trixie: 

Actually we’re exactly talking about monogamy. Because I’ll bet you a million bucks that when you have your little reveries about Mr. Awesome, you’re the only lady in his life, aren’t you?

Saturday: 

(Shrugs, looks away) Not necessarily. I like to think I’m more modern than that.

Trixie: 

No, you say that. But do you really, really mean it?

Saturday: 

I really, really mean it—theoretically. 

Trixie: 

HA! See: “theoretically.” 

Saturday: 

I really want to mean it. I don’t want to be that girl. 

Trixie: 

Oh, you mean the one that girl who can’t function unless her ego is being constantly reinforced by the presence of a doting man and thereby his implicit approval of her? 

Saturday: 

(Giving Trixie a dirty look) Yeah. That one. 

Trixie: 

Too late! Did you learn nothing from all that feminist theory we studied in college? To  say nothing of our general principles…

Saturday: 

I know! I know! It sucks, but I can’t help it. Sometimes I just want…you know, a boyfriend. Sometimes.

Trixie: 

(Shudders) But why? As is, your life is all your own. You answer to no one, you can go anywhere, do whatever you want, sleep with whomever you want…

Saturday: 

But don’t you think we need to eventually choose? 

Trixie: 

Why? 

Saturday: 

Because we want to. 

Trixie:

No. You want to. I’m good. 

Saturday: 

Okay. Fine. I want to. 

[Long pause]

Trixie: 

Well, that doesn’t get us fucking anywhere, now does it. 

Saturday: 

(Shrugs) I guess we’ll have to fight to the death then. 

Trixie: 

(Ties back hair) I guess so. But I’ll have you know, I’ve been practicing kung fu. 

Saturday: 

(Cracks knuckles) You don’t scare me.  

Wants & Needs

I woke up to you kissing my shoulder. And this was strange because there is usually a noticeable dearth of shoulder kisses in these situations, unless they were accompanied by an eager thrust and an urgent hand making its way to more consequential places than shoulders. But this time it was as if you’d woken, spied my shoulder and deemed it suddenly kissable. 

It was just another one of those things, those crazy flings, as they say, that happened every now and then between you and me. There we were, in the same place at the same time, by happenstance. Though we both knew where to find each other—it was just a matter of how hard either of us happened to look. But this time it seemed that no one had looked, it had just happened to happen that we were on consecutive barstools with objectives that evolved similarly as drinks were slowly and civilly consumed. It had happened before, you know. 

Then we went from the barstools to the street corner, hidden from the amber streetlight by a rustling tree. Then it was morning and you were kissing my shoulder in this soft, sweet way that filled me with a strange, elusive happiness that I recognized as love—and for those long moments of having my shoulder kissed by you I did fall in love with you…but only for those moments. For a hot second there, my imagination spun up a world where every morning I awoke to you kissing my shoulder, the warm morning smells of both our bodies filling my nose, the warmth of you stretched against my back and your arm around my waist. I imagined destroying my alarm clock in favor of waking up to your lips on my shoulder every single day for the rest of my life. 

But the problem with all of that is that I don’t want people kissing my shoulders. Or rather, to be brutally specific about it, I don’t want to want people kissing my shoulders. And that strange happiness I felt was elusive because I knew it was false—I’d felt it before. I’m not a fucking moron; I know how these things work. Some perfectly decent man puts it to you the way you like—and that should be enough, shouldn’t it? But no, he starts kissing your shoulder and you start having delusions of matrimony. Fuck that.

I have perfected wanting. I have organized it, micromanaged wanting with such precision, I scarcely notice that I want anything. I have organized my many wants in tidy labeled bins, color coded by how possible they will be to achieve. The red ones are top-priority, life-improving, self-enriching, do-it-now, action items; the wants that are arguably philosophically existential needs. The blue ones are a little dreamier, but they are certainly in the realm of possibility, but they can be done without too. The pink ones are the stuff of deceitful imagination. Like, winning the lottery, eating brie every day and not getting fat, fucking Javier Bardem, time travel as a legitimate means of non-linear conveyance, and, of course, happening upon a partner—that elusive man willing and worthy to spend some quality time with. These are the desires that have proven, by way of fact, consequence, experience, or the laws of physics to be wholly impossible, and therefore, nothing more than indulgent figments. 

So when tender shoulder kissing suddenly becomes real for a few moments, suddenly that goddamn pink box opens up like Pandora’s own and a world of wishing opens up and I fall back into it like it’s a cool pool on a hot day, submerged in delicious, fabulous hope as I see my life as it might be (though perhaps without the time travel), or might’ve been if I’d made different choices, comported myself in different ways, was, you know, someone wholly and entirely different than who I am.

That’s when I think of the red box, so full of goals and commitments and important objectives that are to be achieved in order that I may be a fulfilled individual, blah, blah, blah. I don’t have the time to travel time or fuck Javier Bardem. I don’t have time to go buy lottery tickets. I don’t have time to troll the city, the internet, the office, the world for a suitable man to be with, to say nothing of the inevitable false starts, self-delusions, and bad decisions that are inherent in such pointed searching. And I certainly don’t have time to have my shoulder tenderly kissed in the mornings. Do I?

So it is better that you and I no longer find ourselves happenstance on consecutive barstools anymore, drinking slowly and civilly, working up to that tree under the streetlight and then the morning. Because I simply do not have the time to want anything quite like you.