Last Chances
In this city here, I feel an endless transience: for myself, no; but friends come and go and with violent abandon. I have such friends/family here, but yet their reliability is cobwebby. The only thing I can rely upon is the strangers who recognize me, the opportunists who kiss my ass, the heat and my cat.
My best friend Brilly has returned home, and it makes a world of difference, and yet so much has shifted.
And Ah Ren has also returned, appropos in inconsistant spurts. He contemplated staying for good, racheting up the F factor in our always confusingly flirty friendship.
There are moments when he feels like home.
Mutually? But, once he decided to return to his native shores again, a subtle distance emerged. Well ahead of my knowing of his decision.
He leaves tomorrow night. We’re hanging out in the afternoon. He showed up, at my invite, to an art event tonight. In tow was a young woman, a mutual acquaintence. When Ah Ren was here last November, she had tagged along to dinner with us and some friends of ours she knows. She is nice, but a bit clueless. She is almost a decade younger than me, and fifteen years younger than Ah Ren. Tonight I noticed that she is clinging to, crushing upon him. There was a vibe where I felt like he was playing the two of us, two women he knows like him, against each other.
It pissed me off. I know well that he enjoys stringing along adoring younger women, but… But.
“She’s kinda mousy”, Brilly or someone volunteered. “How can she be competing with you?” No, she’s a great young woman, but if Ah Ren encourages her schoolgirl crush, it’s just creepy.
That playing is an assholy thing to do, subtle enough for a male feminist but shitty in the romantic context.
I could also be faulted, I was slightly aloof tonight. Not deliberately. Not totally deliberately. I do not want to monopolize him. Well, I WANT to monopolize him…it just seems like I shouldn’t. Well expired beyond chasing, that window was almost two years ago. So fast gone. The initial fascination is gone, but such affection replaces it, and I find that there is always more to find about him.
I have done 90% with him, and now 49.99999999999999999999999% is all I can offer. I don’t know how to handle a spasmatic 37%. I know that I care for him, he is so dear to me. I don’t know what to do except let him go. Again. And again. And again. And again.
Which is the opposite of what I want to do, but I cannot imagine doing anything else. And yet I cry at the imagining. Is this something I should tell him?
I first fell for him as an idealization; since I have realized how very weird he is. I prefer the oddity to the projection, his quirks to his image. I continue to discover so much about him. I find it impossible to abstractly sexualize him, because….he is my friend, my Ah Ren, and I long sense isolated if not cauterized those emotions toward him.
Yet, here I still am. Loving, annoyed with, Ah Ren.
I never let myself fall. For him. Or for Worm. Is this wise? Or emotional suicide? Until it is too late. Too late.
This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you. This tornado loves you.
What will make you believe me?
