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I Heart New York
When one talks about loneliness, one usually talks about finding and losing, hoping and failing, remembering and trying to forget.
I have a story to tell, and it’s not about loneliness --it’s something similar.
What I feel is not something new to me; as I’ve always settled to be the third party. I had twisted relationships with the attached, the committed, the unavailable --many many times.
It’s not like I have lost them; they were never mine to begin with. It’s not that I hoped for a better situation, for more time, or for love to be eternal; I’m fine seeing them on a Saturday night and saying goodbye on a slow Sunday morning. I don’t need to forget about them, I find no reason to.
The weird thing about it is that it all starts with the same pattern --a simple conversation, a mild attraction, then as the night progresses, intimacy would bind us. I find it in my nature that I like intimacy with another human being. Too many times though, I find myself intimate with a committed man. One guy has been in a relationship for seven years; I’d like to think he’s just breaking the monotony. One was married and has a kid; I’d like to think he was kidding –but he wasn’t. Despite them having real relationship with real people, I maintain my paradox to be their fantasy, to be an escape, to be their temporary world. I prefer that I’d be that, rather than their real world. And so I learned well to forget about the outside world, to control my emotions, sometimes to not feel at all. And it’s not sad at all to not feel anything. It’s just safe, and nothing is ever sad about being safe. I just feel sorry that I had to escape too from my own reality.
My last escape was probably the most memorable. Allow me to share the story.
He came in when I was starting to lose everyone, including my friends. My mom left for Ireland so that makes me the only person in the family left in the country. RD and I were fighting crazy, and mostly it was my fault. Marjo and I were starting to have issues, and I find it hard to talk to my friends without feeling being judged.
He was here for a three-week vacation, and he got two weeks left before he returns to New York, so we thought of meeting up. It was like all other eyeballs with the most typical setup –in a coffee shop near the cinema, so we could see the next screening of Silent Hill in case we run out of words to say (contrary to that, we didn’t run out of words to say). After the movie, we walked and talked and since the moment felt right, I asked him to hang out with me at the pad (or should I say sex on the first date). Despite him admitting he has a Romanian lover back in NY, that didn’t stop us from being intimate with each other. We ended up talking about the most intimate details about ourselves, even to the point of feeling too vulnerable. We even found comfort in silence. Maybe I was lonely, maybe he’s lonely too (probably not), but that was not an excuse to justify what happened to us. We simply connected, and that’s all I need to know.
We continued seeing each other many time after that, I even slept over at his place, learning more and more things about him. And the more I knew about him, the more I felt strongly for him. And the stronger it got, the lesser the time we got before he had to go back to NY.
He showed me his pictures back home, the pictures of his friends, his family and it occurred to me that this guy was really something. He has a kind heart, a beautiful mind and soul, and a perfect life; I couldn’t help but felt humbled. Just when my insecurities would surface, he’d say something incredible that had it been from other people, I would not have believed it. He’d say the most common compliments with the most extraordinary sincerity. And once again, I felt like someone could really see through me.
He’s just a friend, that’s what he was, like all other men I slept with and gotten to know. And although he kept saying that it was just the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I felt something beautiful was about to end.
He left yesterday, and I was actually touched that it didn’t end there. As soon as he got to NY, he called me up and checked on me. The thought was very sweet but it made me miss him more.
And somehow, like all any patterns, it comes to an end. Slowly. Without explanation, without apology. You just know, because you feel it. You just need to accept. Good thing for me, I don’t find it hard to accept that the happiness I feel with them is ephemeral. It’s just a matter of perspective, in the end.
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