Matchstick love
I met this girl the other week. She's from my continent, but not my country, and we were separately visiting a land foreign to us both. We didn't talk for long in the place we met, then a bar, before she was kissing me; I was kissing her back. (That's the order.)
It was juvenile love, us smashed together, clothed or not, speaking, moaning, loud or soft. We talked in the morning about one night stands — but we'd somehow crammed a year or more into that one night. We'd skipped the conversational foreplay and went straight into the depths. We became self-referential before the sun came up.
I'd ended up spending the next day with her, not doing much besides talking and looking at her, my arm on her shoulder or around her waist as we meandered through the old city. Rain and drizzle, gray skies all day. More inside jokes forming. More self-references. Lots of looks from strangers. Were we walking slow, or does everyone just walk fast? Making out in the middle of pedestrian streets. Nowhere to be but here. Teenagers again.
We checked into another hotel. I'm sure the whole place could hear us. That makes it a two-night stand. Is it even a “stand” then? Somewhere in there: the realization of how natural it all feels. She's clever as fuck. Where did she even come from? I never anticipate this. And this is never the same as the last one.
The next morning I'd had to leave for the day. I told her I'd like to see her when I got back, and she didn't believe me. She believed me later. We drank and talked till 2am. Kept the neighbors awake till 4.
More in the morning. We were insatiable, even if we'd verbally agreed we were sated. I showered, she watched me get dressed. She was already thinking about the future. I wasn't thinking past the present. The train station brought another reality, one only she saw coming.
In another reality I would've spent those last days abroad walking the streets alone, a distant observer of the world. I would've watched the people walking by and the couples holding hands, trying to make sense of it all, fitting all the pieces together without fitting myself into it at all. I realize that's how I've felt for a long time now — detached from the surrounding world; a man watching the movie of life play out from the theater seats.
It's been hard to pinpoint this feeling of alienation, but after meeting this girl, I see it — this fear or apprehension or paralysis that keeps me sunk into the seats, afraid to be a part of the show. With her I was finally reckless enough to step on stage and, fuck, did I need it.
On the way to the train, she told me she'd finally found the positive in the situation: she'd witnessed what she wanted a relationship to feel like.
“Oh yeah?” I looked at her.
“Yeah.”
When I got home, I'd found my positive too: I'd seen what I wanted to feel like in life — the feeling she'd given me. It made me feel like I could do anything, because somewhere in the world, someone loved me that fucking hard.
I started to engage a bit more, instead of running scared. I started speaking first, instead of waiting to be spoken to. What once seemed insurmountable was suddenly quite small. I want to keep doing this. I want to feel like I can fuck with the universe instead of being subservient to the people and things all larger than me. I want to be a part of the whole thing, instead of a distant bystander. I want to be in it.
Maybe some things we just can't get past in life on our own accord. With her, after her, maybe now I can move again.