Blink

The problem wasn’t them, it was my own greed. I lay there, jealous of her sleeping form, wished I could block out the world with such speed and completeness. But there were two kinds, I knew this. There were the ones like her and the ones like me. The ones who accepted everything as it came – stoically, in the true Roman sense of the word – and the ones who were destined to analyse every decision, including those not yet made, before sleep would pity them and take them at last.

But back to my greed. I knew it to be greed because it was beyond rationality in the way only greed can be. Her naked form appeared tiny alongside my own. She was gorgeous, a truly magnificent fuck too. With some women I felt I was part of some performance, as though their reactions, their every gyration, was choreographed. With her, it was different. She was in it for pleasure’s sake only. It was the reason I couldn’t get enough; I had always been infatuated by a lack of pretence. I didn’t need to be fucked the way Sex and the City told me I wasn’t meant to be fucked. I needed that truth, that reckless abandon. Because in that I saw hope, something infinitely more valuable to me than gasps and moans.

So all told, I was lying next to the best sex I had ever had, yet I was being gnawed at by my own inability to be satisfied. Because I wanted the impossible. I wanted what I loved and what I had, at some earlier stage, decided I should love. And because she wasn’t – couldn’t be – the latter, she was destined to remain the fuck of my life and nothing more. Someone I would think of from time to time, jerk off to at a low point or a slow point. It was a peculiar feeling – to lay in that bed alongside a warm, breathing, stationary body – and watch it slip from my grasp.

I was convinced I couldn’t stop it from happening, so I decided to at least dream about what it would have been like – her and me. Just as was in my nature to do: farewell things that hadn’t yet departed. My body stuck to the cheap sheets as I imagined her moving into my apartment, I pictured the reaction of my friends, our early disagreements, our obliviousness as we slipped quietly into the most mundane of routines. I watched as drinks at the bar became dinner parties with other like-minded couples, how stability and predictability increased with every day that passed.

Suddenly, I was talking to my closest friends about the engagement I was planning, how it was going to be executed flawlessly. Then it was her father – acting according to a tradition I didn’t care about. Doubts dismissed, money spent, the moving picture gained pace. In front of some vista, yet rain. Always something beyond what I could control. I saw myself withdraw the tiny box just the same. Her hands clasped to her mouth, the entire thing one big Hallmark movie scene. Told myself I didn’t believe it for a second, reminded myself it only mattered that she did. Swept her into my arms, sex in a bed that wasn’t our own – a hotel? Her eyes always on me, filled with something I’d never seen before – surely more than love – surely I had seen that? Satisfaction? Madness? Hope? I didn’t know but I couldn’t escape the gaze.

Months pass, normality returns, only changes are jewellery and titles. More planning, this time met with my own feigned interest. A rare beer at a bar. A party for everyone else, paid for by me, I say. A joke, but has truth. Countdown begins, I act affected. Just another weekend, just another party. The honeymoon has more allure than the ceremony, even the reception. Still a way off. I blink. A bachelor party in the old tradition with none of the commitment. Drinks forced on me like a freshman, consumed voluntarily but without relish. Music, karaoke. Strippers who pay taxes. Tell me they’re studying medicine. Are actually studying medicine. A hangover multiplied by a factor of the number of years I’ve spent on Earth. The end of it all, fresh hatred for my friends. But also a brief satisfaction in knowing I have them. Remembering that some men do this without them. An undesirable prospect.

Then there is sun. I’m lost, in unfamiliar territory. I’m on…a stage? No, a platform. Christ, it’s the day. How did I miss the preamble? Was there even anything to miss? Doesn’t matter, my turn to talk. Hear the words, question the reality of their meaning. Question my own responses. Forever? Nothing was forever. Statistically it wasn’t even a decade. Push my own matrimonial misgivings deep down. Tell myself this isn’t about me. Surely, I challenge, it’s a little about me. Ignore a valid argument from an argumentative side of myself. Say I Do, hear applause, know that I have done very little to warrant an ovation. Kiss, smile, wave. Do what I’m told. Domesticated well, acceptably trained. I feel a sense of loss, as though I’ve made some trade I hadn’t thoroughly researched. Ignore the feeling because its outline resembles a bad feeling and this is a good day.

Beaches, sex, pools and cocktails. Sometimes separate, sometimes together. Thought I could do it forever, but feel bored a week in. Happy though, and I’ve been taught that happiness trumps discontent, some hierarchy they never published, never showed me. Picture myself picturing myself as a cartoon man plugging holes in a boat’s hull with my fingers. Running out of fingers, somehow use my toes, then my nose. Water keeps appearing, rising, I am desperate for a distraction.

Standing amidst the screams of the delivery room. Found the distraction, no other thoughts now. I feel small, the world feels big, somehow more manageable. Hold a bundle – it’s my son…No! My daughter. Why had I always assumed it would be a boy? Gender biases I didn’t care about, lectures from girlfriends past. My daughter. Possessive title seems odd. Decide unless she’s someone else’s, she’s mine.

Other lives appearing, changing, evolving with mine stuck in freeze frame. Life stops being about me, is about everyone else. Don’t feel that same sense of loss at this realisation. Maybe I just don’t feel as much anymore. Perhaps I’ve felt too much, hit my quota earlier than forecast. Some lives leave the scene, others doggedly remain in frame. The one constant is age, time only seems to get faster, years accumulate more rapidly. I don’t have a say, in too deep now, too fast to stop. Other metaphors of submersion and motion flash by, unwritten.

I think I’m dying. Perhaps I blinked. After all, they were always telling me that was the secret. Dry eyes, but at least you wouldn’t miss it. But the blink seduced me with its comfort. Fucking missed it, but wasn’t sure what I had missed. Faces gathered round, peering down; the young ones just wanting something to happen, some finality to all the drama. Hands on my own, still no say in the matter. Eyes close, the big blink. Reopen briefly – did I see expectation on a face? Too tired to accuse. Eyes close again. Last time I would miss it.

Wake up to noise in the kitchen. Feel my own face – young enough. She always wondered why I looked so tired in the mornings – I never bothered to explain why. Didn’t matter. After all, I had just lived that life. Didn’t see the point in living it twice.