Magic, and moving On

Rebecca’s been meaning to say this to Jack, “I want love. Specifically, be loved. That’s what I want. You asked. So I’m telling you, I want to be loved.” 

Jack had not asked her that question again. Instead he told her that he is seeing another woman. “Right, I can’t have relationships. I’m not ready for one. So I see you and I see her. Two half relationships, make one relationship. That’s how I justified it. Are you upset?” He asked Rebecca.

“No, I’m not.” Rebecca answered it over the phone, a little too fast. She already knew, but the discussion of why he was doing that, she did not know it before. She called him from abroad, on a business trip in London, she used her VoIP to call Jack for free. It was crystal clear when he asked of her, “Are you upset?” But her mind was not so clear.

She knew Jack was dating another woman. He made it clear on their second date. He cooked her dinner that time and told her that he didn’t want relationships. She would be perfect, she was his “erotic encounter.” She was different than the rest of girls he saw. He liked her from the beginning. She was smart, low maintenance and funny. They would get together and have hour long conversations before having ex. The best part was that she was not really available. She had children, and was married to a man who traveled a lot for work.

Rebecca told her life story by the first date. She also told Jack that she was fresh off another relationship. 

“I had been seeing someone. My heart was broken. I was loyal to a fault. I loved him. Then he just disappeared. He left me and therefore I was broken. When he resurfaced again, I was not so love in with him, I liked him but as a friend. I stopped loving him. Being with you is great. I don’t feel any pressure. You won’t hurt me. I can tell.” She said.

On their third date, he asked her, while being inside of her, “I can’t figure you out. What is that you want? Why are you here?” She just closed her eyes, so that he couldn’t see her expression at all, and she said, “Don’t you worry. You need not to worry.”

There used to this woman writer Rebecca liked, she was from Taiwan and she wrote lovely stories. She traveled everywhere and wrote stories that took place in exotic locations, some were love stories, and others were simply her travel logs. One day she died, there had been a bus crash, she was in a remote village in Africa, and she died alone, without a husband, without children, not even with a lover by her side.

Rebecca thought she was like that, she’d die alone, without husband or children, except she was married and had children. And when her lover left her, she thought of dying, not literately, but figuratively, she wouldn’t kill herself, she was depended on, she had obligations and responsibilities.

Jack had been in several relationships.  Jack liked blondes. Rebecca was a brunette, and she was not white. An Asian woman with large tits and wide hips and faint accent, no one could tell where she was from. She did not even have an Asian last name. Jack’s other woman was a blonde, and the woman before her, and the woman before her. Jack liked all women, he didn’t have a type, and he obviously was not one of those men, THOSE who dated only Asians. Rebecca, was not a typical Asian. She liked stories, adventures, and lived by her own rules. She went on trips by herself, she took on lovers. Not one, not two, sometimes three, other time four. They varied. They were all white, some were younger, some older, some were Scandinavians, some were from the East Coast. She bounced from one guy to another, she was happy and content, she had them for different reasons, and all of them liked her.

She was not always like this. She had only one boyfriend. She was in love with him. He was bored of her. Often did not write to her for weeks on end, and when he did write, it became clear to her that he was not that interested in her, and when all of that became a little too clear for her, she started to date others. It was easy. First one person, then another, then another. She was whoring, in a selective, healthy way, until she met Jack. Jack reminded of her the ex. In more than one ways, Jack was a nicer version of her ex. They were quite different, Jack had an even temperament, her ex was more like her, sometimes up and sometimes down. They were both manic depressive. They fed off each other, and they were two peas in the same pod. Until they were no longer in sync.

Jack read to her, hugged her, gave her massages, and made her dinner. He spent hours on end talking to her on the phone. She adored Jack as she did with other men. But she was not in love.

On occasions, she remembered her lover who she fell for, she’d cry. It was not that she still loved him, it was that she was in love with the feeling of in love. She had loved the man so much so that she thought she’d not be complete without him. But when he hurt her she sealed that part of life and just went on to live her life as if it never happened. She shut off her memory and started a new chapter. That defense mechanism always worked. She was able to move on without having to feel any bitterness, or lose contact with the person, she just shut off her feelings.  She treated him like someone she’d met for the first time, there were no history to go back to and there were no lingering feeling of obsession or passion. There was not even any pain. It was fresh and new. It was still fun, but she’s no longer the person she once was, not with him anyway. Everything got reset. Life, got reset.

Magic was just like this. Magic was there, magic was gone. Sometimes, reset is the only thing that could reignite magic, or at the very least, wipe away all pains. That’s why we are what we are and who we are. Our ability to rebound, to rebuild, to reinitialize is vital in our survival. It’s true for everything.  It was the only way to move forward. New people. New experiences. And forgetting anything that had ever happened.