In the morning, things were good and fine and adequately imperfect. But in the evening you were suddenly fickle and I wasn't enough to butter your bread. As if the world is so overflowing with friendship that there is a surplus to be tossed out the car window without rolling it down all the way.
Did you really want to start a bussiness with me this morning? The first hip place to drink and hangout in this small town. Was this my idea or yours? Did we really go looking for property, laughing the whole way? Exitedly examining abandoned buildings. What happened? I keep searching in my mind for the critical invisible threshold we stumbled across. Was the birthday cake we ate that evening so sweet that I couldn't measure up somehow or was it simply that I missed the moment to have reciprocated your flirtatious whipcream on my nose?
I made the fatal girlfriend error of treating you like a friend. That's what we said we were, friends. I let you convince me that I should confide in you, as if we were two girls talking about boys, over kombucha at a cafe. Vomiting my bad day in your lap. I warned you that I shouldn't, that my "baby daddy" breaking into my house to steal our sons passport was one of many unsexy details of my life that in no way will illuminate me for the better. Only painting me as a critical character in an episode of jerry springer's talk show drama, girls in heals hurling chairs at each other in the background.
Is this what did it, what tipped the scale, from good to bad? Maybe you were just never that into me. Never wanting to take me in the bathroom at a restaurant because the need was too great to let it wait. There was always something lurking in the background despite our endless hours of fun. Are you breaking up with me for sexier, younger girls with no children or ex-husbands? Girls who stand still looking pretty and laugh? Did you allready meet one? I don't know.
As my friend I imagined you would listen to it all and still show up for coffee the next day. I guess as soon as you kissed me hard on the lips we were no longer friends, not really. I missed that distinction. That critical moment where from there on I should be coy, and charming and delete all the ugly bits. But I can't. Just like using whiteout with an old typewriter you can always see that there is something there, hidden beneath the illusion of paper.
You suggested a walk, so thru the ricefields we went as my son tried hard not to go to sleep near by in my bed. Him wanting my company way more than you wanted mine in that moment. Me feeling guilty for selfishly wanting you, letting him go to sleep without mom snuggles.
With iPhone flashlight aps protecting us from dark and snakes, we walked through the night sky looking at fireflies. You feigned interest when I described their romantic biological tale of sexy flashing. Instead, repeating like a mantra "we have really gone and done it, haven't we?" The question bringing the conversation back to the topic at hand. The insinuation that we liked each other too much. The lie to apease my heart from hurting, that this feeling of too much want was somehow mutual. Is that a white lie? Or a stray elephant? I think I have lost the metaphor for this type of benign betrayal that seemed harmless until minutes later when you turned on your own invented truth.
We sat with our feet dangling in the ricefields. The crickets chirped. "I think I haven't wanted to end it because I didn't want to loose a friend." you said.
But really without using words you boldly wrote in the night sky that you don't like me enough.
Fuck it, why not just be my friend. Is this such a terrible consolation prize? Right, I forgot, we can't. Somehow when we consumated what affection we had for each other, we opened something that can't be put back. Like an unruly jack- in-the - box whose lid refuses to close once he has popped out. Something that can't be put back.
The crickets kept chirping, but I could no longer look at you.
The next day you couldn't talk to me either because you had gone to watch cricket by the beach. The odd drawn out sport that may or may not be named for the chirping animal that serenaded us as you broke up with me for the fourth time in as many months.
I had thought we were just friends. But we were more. I will forgive us for not making it to friendship, for getting stuck in the "in-between" as you called it. Friendship is different than this. Friendship forgives all. It allows for bad hair days and unsexy moments of truth. Friendship is better than sex. Friendship is what I want more than sex. You however want it all and with the right person. I am not her. Good luck to you sweet man, may you find it.
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