Even Though I Don't Miss You (2 page)

Your friendship is merely an opportunity for me to spread my philosophical views.

Maybe I write because no one will shut up long enough for me to talk. Maybe I just need a quiet girl friend.

All I want from life is to creatively express myself.

And be admired for it.

And be rich because of it.

Sometimes when I'm laughing I realize how long it has been since I've laughed with or around you. I swear it gives me such a deep feeling of strangeness that it shocks me and throws me into this strange ultra-consciousness in which I can only move my body like it's a puppet and I feel so far away from myself that I can almost see the curve of the Earth.

Sex is so weird. There's always that moment like
who is going to undress me?

People like to pretend they don't want things when they want them very badly. It's kind of like how I don't like ugly people but it has nothing to do with their looks. It's their personalities.

Something about you seems so familiar. This is a weird question but do you have any personal philosophies having to do with pants? Perhaps some strong opinion about giving pants as gifts? And not to ever do it?

I would like to say something about how the experience of "now" is just a selection of memories being re-appropriated and slightly altered to benefit one's preexisting ideas about what how "now" should be perceived, and that the memories being appropriated for this are just old "nows" that have gone through the same process.

I feel like everything I write could be mistaken for theory about Adobe Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool.

I'm listening to fugues on YouTube and trying to find some way to compare our relationship to the fugues. They are so familiar. But I think our relationship is not like a fugue. A fugue is like a trap door in that it is pointless until just the moment when it becomes useful. Sometimes the simplest trap doors are the most profound. Anyways you didn't ask me anything about the fugue.

I momentarily forgot that you were not just an appendage to me and I said, "Do you want to make an OkCupid account?"

You said, "What are you talking about?"

I said something unintelligible while piecing together newly-forming ideas such as the fact that you were a separate body from myself, that we were dating, that what I said was unprofessional, and that 'unprofessional' wasn't the right word to use to describe my behavior, since this wasn't a workplace; 'inappropriate' was better, or 'confusing,' or 'bad.'

I made a goofy face and looked at my wrist as if I had a watch on, in reference of some kind of sketch comedy situation I think.

You said, "I'm not sure what's going on."

One time you accused me of ovulating and I said, "WHY? BECAUSE I'M TALKING ABOUT CHOCOLATE-COVERED HEART-SHAPED MARSHMALLOWS?"

The space in my life I've designated for you seems to be much too big, and you seem to have a low to medium-level interest in being there.

You said that my queef sounded like the end of a ketchup bottle and I somehow felt happy about that. It's like I'm trying too hard to feel happy.

Sometimes I'm so aroused and all I can do is frantically eat birth control pills.

I meant for that to sound more punk rock.

I am the strong, female lead in my own currently-in-development novel, and I can do anything I put my mind to, even if it is remaining in a very difficult and frustrating relationship with low emotional payoff.

Not that that's what's happening.

You said, "This conversation has no basis in reality but I guess that's because relationships are only interesting in concept," after I had said something like, "I'm not sure if you actually like me or if you're just here," although what I meant to say was, "Please hold me because if you don't I don't know what I'll do," but after I had said it I felt like you would interpret it more like, "I think neither of us could do any better but that's not really a reason to stay," and that you were about to ask, "Do you ever visualize us together in the future and feel disappointed?" and that the simple answer would be, "Yes" but more specifically, "Not even very far into the future."

Romance is such a funny term.

Funny as in, "I have a fake body part. Guess what it is."

The protagonist in my novel is called 'I,' and she doesn't even know that she's in love with the French antagonist until she kisses him and then explains that she, "normally doesn't kiss French boys unless [she] believe[s] that it will increase [her] overall emotional stability and/or preserve the positive aspects of [her] self-image in terms of spontaneity, recklessness, and international significance."

There is moment that foreshadows the kiss in the beginning of the novel where someone asks the protagonist and the French antagonist if they are dating and the protagonist and the French antagonist both say, "No," at the same time.

Then the French antagonist says, "That was one of those moments where one person is like," and he shakes his head vigorously, "And the other person is like," and then he nods his head vigorously.

And the protagonist says, "Were you going," and nods her head vigorously.

And the French antagonist says, "No."

It kind of feels like I keep writing the same thing but maybe I just keep being the same person.

Later in the novel, joint purchases are alluded to, and the French antagonist gets a haircut at the protagonist's request.

Protagonists in novels can be selfish and awful and manipulative and pathetic and still we read page after page and call them 'true' and try to see ourselves in them.

I'm jealous that that's the way it works for protagonists in novels.

I guess I'm still coming to terms with the fact that when I walk out of a room the story line continues in the room I just left instead of following me around like a security camera.

Sometimes you would look at me in this way that said, "I haven't heard a thing you've said in three years," and then you would make a joke about how shitty my new recipe was.

Well if you hate my new recipe so much why don't you get a restraining order against it?

I feel heartbroken today, but I don't know. Sometimes I get that way when I'm fucking hungry.

Sometimes it seems like the whole day is spent listening to songs about you. I think of what you might be doing in the world at that particular time, and I try to imagine you doing it. I try to think of something to say to you while you do this imaginary activity, and I slur the most important part.

I'm visualizing the letters that make up your name, but my brain has written it in Courier and the font size is too small and I feel irritated by it.

At a bar, you touched my knee repeatedly.

I happen to believe that people outside of myself can't incite feelings in me, that the feelings I am capable of feeling are the ones that I will feel when my body finds that it is the time to feel them, regardless of who happens to be near or against me at the time.

The touching seemed to be accidental at first, a very slight touch with the back of your hand during dramatic gesturing during climactic points in our conversation. We were drinking whiskey.

I said, "Happiness is my new favorite thing to talk about because it makes me feel horrible."

We talked about the different ways happiness is portrayed in books and movies. Finding happiness, losing happiness, cultivating happiness.

You said, "Happiness is so nice that it almost makes life worth living."

My friend Megan was talking to your less attractive friend. She had started drinking before we went out so that she would have the courage to appear composed and confident in front of you, but ended up talking to your less attractive friend and looking a little sad and drunk.

I attempted to make a non-pathetic and non-convoluted smile for Megan but a pathetic and convoluted one was all I could come up with. She didn't look at me and I thought maybe I shouldn't've smiled at all.

You made constant eye contact as you talked to me and your eyes were both too close together and too close to my eyes, which are having trouble figuring out what to look at.

Everything I said to you was so funny that I didn't want to stop talking to you and miss any of the funny things that might come out of me.

It is something to consider, if we're making a list things to consider, that most relationships are mirrors of yourself, and that those who you choose to be around is largely dependant on what you want to see in yourself at that time. There wasn't even enough time to say all the funny things I was thinking of, so I began excitedly typing them into my phone.

You said, "Who are you texting?"

I said, "I'm not texting."

You said, "I have the confidence to talk to you about happiness because I am drunk and because you gave me a nickname earlier today."

I said, "What was the nickname?"

You answered, or began to answer, but I couldn't hear the answer over the increasing volume of the bar noise.

You said, "Do you have a lot of ex-boyfriends?"

And I said, "No."

You said, "Do you stalk them on the internet?"

"No."

You said, "Yes you do. Everyone does."

I said, "I don't."

You said, "You don't go on their Facebook pages and stalk them?"

And I said, "I've been to their Facebook pages but not very often."

You said, "Yes you do. Everyone does."

And I said, "No, I don't. You're projecting."

And you said, "I'll admit it. I stalk my ex-girlfriends on Facebook. Everyone does it. I'll admit I do it."

I felt this compassion for you suddenly, which isn't something I feel a lot. I imagined you alone in your apartment, masturbating and trying to write an online dating profile based on the clues about yourself you think you've found on your ex-girlfriends' Facebook pages.

I said, "I don't know. I don't think so."

At the bar, I ordered another whiskey, even though I wanted beer, because I had told everybody that I was gluten-free and we had this whole conversation about how I couldn't drink beer. My stupid whiskey came and I stupid drank it.

"I wrote a story," you said, in a tone that indicated to me that you thought you had revealed something intimate about yourself.

If we were actors I think the camera would zoom in a little to appreciate the calculated tempo of my eyes as they shift from Point A (the top of your left shoulder) to Point B (your left eyebrow) to Point C (a hair on your chin) to Point D (a freckle on your cheek).

Megan and I had been on her porch earlier, sharing nostalgia for when we were teenagers, for when we lived together and shared everything, yelled goodnight to each other from our rooms on opposite sides of the apartment, and fought about the chore chart. She said we would never have the same closeness again.

On her porch I thought she was referring to our proximity, but I was beginning to think she meant something else.

I said, "What is the story about?"

It had been a few minutes since you touched my knee, and I wished that you would touch it, and you did touch it, and I felt silly for having wished it, and I wished you hadn't've touched it. You touched it again later and I felt silly again, but to a slightly lesser degree.