Contemplation

"Come to my house. I'll cook for you." I invited him as he drove me to work the next morning.

"But you don't cook." He looked at me funny. As if he was worried about the food I fed him would be subpar. 

"I used to cook." I told him that I was a good cook, once. I made mean Thai curry.

"I have dumplings. My father made them. You can just heat it up."

"Does it count your father's cooking or yours?" He asked.

We went on like this for a while, on Battery, as he passed my old building. 

"You used to work here." He said. Perhaps he remembered how he used to drop me off. At the beginning, he used to court me, picked me up from my office, dropped me back up and then when he kissed me goodbye, I felt that I was as school girl, first time in love. Then he broke my heart and I just went away for a while, regrouped, but with much wary, you could have innocence once. I had long stopped dating. When I first met him, it felt like dating for the first time: I did not know any of the rules. I did not know what it was like to be asked out, how to play it cool. I was simply, ecstatic about falling in love, I was that naive, in my late 30s, like a teenager. I was tedious, and intense, I was easily hurt and quickly broken. Then, like anything else, I wised up, and grew up. In lieu of a young girl desperately trying to win a man's affection, I became contemplative, slow to react, and ultimately filled with sorrow but knew how to put on a brave face to handle any unforeseen situations. Perhaps the best way to describe this, was when all the hopes were gone, you became hopeful again. You had nothing to lose, so you no longer feared anything.

He proceeded on Battery, which turned into 1st. I told him to turn right on Howard, and then left on Second. He said, "Our office used to be here." 

I all of sudden remembered his old office, it used to be on 2nd and Harrison, and I had been there once or twice. It was the very beginning, and I had brought something back from Germany for him.

"You always bring things from your trips." He commented that morning.

When I flew ANA business class, I had picked up two small pouches of mouthwash. I thought of him because I knew he was obsessed with mouthwash. I thought it would be cool for him to have a portable mouthwash, as if it was a small pouch of tissue, except it was filled with liquid. Those Japanese knew how to package things.

While in Asia I had found things that I thought that he'd like. It was just coincidentally I found a hat that was essentially the same style as his red one. I knew that he might like it, and he did.

I knew the perfect present for his birthday. It would involve me heading to France, which I would be doing in July. I would get a piece of vintage art, something with crisp lines or an old photo image, and have it framed here with light wooden frame and give it to him for his birthday. I knew the exact kind that he'd like, the exact kind that would match his decor.

In varies points of my life, I altered between being complacent and being deeply unsatisfied. There was always a possibility that he'd leave me. Perhaps out of self preservation, perhaps out of my own very nature, I fantasized a life without him as often as I fantasized about being with him. I'd live in this world like I was on a people mover. I would be going forward without even trying, when I arrived at a new location, I'd check it out, I'd live in it but the place would never be lived in.

Once I wrote to him that I thought he and I would have been great friends, because we liked the same things, same activities and shared same interests. But we got sidetracked by the sexual chemistry we developed for each other, and forgot that we were still rather alike outside of that. Now we would never be able to develop that level of relationship.

I thought about him in my idle moments: he at work, he at play, he at home, he falling asleep. I wondered what my life would have been had I never crossed path with him.

In the middle of fucking, he would quiz me and ask me if I was fucking others. I used to. But not anymore. I told him that each and every time, as if to assure him. He in return would then tell me that he had not been with any other women. When I asked him why, he said that because he did not want to. He only wanted to be with me, he only thought of me.

I sort of did not believe him. I couldn't believe that he could go three or more weeks without sex because our interaction was so limited, but I did not think he needed to tell me anything, I would have fucked him even if he did sleep with others, I was never the jealous type. I liked women as much as I liked men. But for him to keep on telling me that he only wanted to be with me, even there was no real purpose of it, seemed a bit like his way of declaring a permanency, or wanted to assert a certain level of control. I always knew he liked to be in control. I was easily controlled by him, because I wanted him to control me.  

I was dim-witted at times. I had told him that I was thinking about moving to Asia, and he immediately told me that he did not like the idea, because he did not want me to go. I sounded surprised when I said, "Really? I did not think you cared." He gave me a weird look. For one reason or another, I had been trapped in this world of not believing in anything he ever said. He told me that he was not seeing others when we first dated, and yet he did. He told me that he cared, but then he disappeared from time to time. It was hard to believe that he would actually care, and it felt most of the feelings I experienced was one directional. In some sense, this mentality worked for me. Because deep down I feared intimacy. If my feeling was returned by him, for real, if he truly loved me, where could it go? How could I stand the thought of being loved by him? In truth I did not want to acknowledge that he did care.  I thought of my being with him was simply a sense of convenience: it was convenient for him to choose to be with me, because I was not demanding and I required no promise of monogamy from him.  I had trouble believing in his love for for, not because I did not want to, but because I feared if he did truly love me, I would not know how to handle it. 

This was how I derived the conclusion. He was okay with me being married but not okay with me moving. I did not want him to feel okay that I was married. But he said that it just happened that way. My being married was a fact. My wanting to move away was a choice I would make. I wanted him to feel happy for me with my career, and he did not want me to go away. That scared me somewhat because his wish of me staying put meant something. I found myself stopped entertaining the idea of moving because of what he said, and that angered me a little. 

It was extremely difficult to acknowledge that he cared about me, enough so that he did not want me to move; yet he had no problem with me being married. 

For all those times I asked him about his opinion of me being married, and he said "no I do not care", I question where this relationship would lead, how and when, whether it would end.