He said he’d worship me for the rest of my life.
~ Vintage from the 1920s ~
By Alison Lea.
He proposed to me and then blocked me on Google chat.
I can’t believe it. I click on his picture-less name. There is nothing but vacuous white space inside a digital square that once held a photo of his dog that he purchased off some chick who had him locked in a cage covered in filth.
This man had recently crashed his car into the gate of a public school after relapsing one night. “It’s time for you to care about something other than yourself,” his mother said to him, $70,000 later. So he bought the dog, stalked my blog, then flew to D.C. to say he wanted to make a wife out of me.
If six out of ten of the billionaires in this country came from the same two families, then four out of the remaining ten were most likely at the brunch he took me to, to meet his parents, my future mother and father-in-law.
The dining hall of the country club was filled with the sons and daughters of the colonial warriors who founded this country. There was hollandaise, and the women at our table wore big diamonds, and didn’t speak unless spoken to, and there was a whole buffet of topics, which will never be discussed because everyone here is white and old and tinkering with the idea of opening an offshore bank account, and thus, all of society must be functioning like a well-oiled automotive.
He wore a shirt that hid his tattoos, and made nice and smiled when his father asked what I did for a living, because here she is, a woman wild enough to join him in giving the people buttoned in Brooks Brothers a stroke.
One of my friends told me, “He sounds horrible!”
He said he’d worship me for the rest of my life, and I could go on his corporate health insurance, and spend my summers shaving alpacas in British Columbia if that’s what I’d like. I kind of fell in love with that idea.
I’ve kind of been in love with him for six years.
He said he would crunch numbers and count beans while I frolicked around the Middle East, in some Arabian desert perhaps — he said it was his goal to keep me free.
Is that kind of conviction psychopathy or a steadfast dream?
The truth is, the common denominator in all my failed relationships was me. Yet, I have loved them all, and they have all loved me — for the spirit we shared that drove our dysfunction.
PhDs say a sense of comfort is created when we come in contact with people who understand the world through similar perceptual patterns. This made me worry — do I attract people who want to pull fire alarms for no reason?
He freaked out when I questioned if our kind of fire could last a lifetime or if it would destroy me with the rapidity of loss that comes with a torrid kind of romance , the fusion of two radicals that can look safely into each other’s eyes, and say, “I know you,” instantly.
The lessons learned upon collision made up for the woe of letting go so quickly when the embers disintegrate.
The heart is a muscle, not a bone. It can only bruise, not break. Right?
Maybe loving another man like him is just another form of exercise.
“It’s about appreciating your body for what it can do, not what it looks like,” says my friend. That’s her motto!
“When I reach for that box of brownie mix to make batter, I can feel my every metatarsal. Who cares how much I weigh? You can go to Disneyland inside your own body every day. I don’t need to go shopping!”
This whole gender-bending craze makes me sizzle.
It’s true, I have an in-hole between my legs, revealing an organ I do not despise. Yet feeling like I need him, or someone with the temperament to trade stocks, and file my taxes, and fill up this gap fastened to me by biology, just makes me want to build a bigger bicep and grab a steel U-lock to smack the crackheads outside my car who froth at the mouth and stare as I walk down the street wearing tight yellow pants I intended for someone far better-looking to see.
These power plays are tricky. The weak woman latches on to a strong man, only to find the roles have reversed, and it is she who must carry the weight of being all things to all people, and refrain from crying when life seems to be working steadfastly against her, so she can pull her partner out of a funk, because that’s what she fell in love with: his sensitivity and intolerance for organized reality.
My friend’s dog has a massive underbite. She bought him from the pound because that is her life memo: creatures less than perfect in their form are still worth loving.
Because most women aren’t sticks, and bodies have skin that sags on some, and beauty can be large and strong on a woman, just as much as it is lithe and shrinking.
Kick ass and eat cookies. It’s a feminist revolt in this nation state.
I shouldn’t still wonder about him but I do. I keep clicking on his name, thinking about my brush with aristocracy. Maybe if I take a traditional Karate-do class, I can make this stop happening.
*****
Alison Lea is a journalist and writer of absurdist flash nonfiction. Because life is absurd, but it sure is word-worthy. She lives in a mobile home named Moby, with her platonic life partner Alexa, as they travel the country interviewing millennials for The Be You Be Sure Project. To learn more visit: beyoubesure.org. Expect a novel from her in 2014.
*****
{Revolt!}
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