Dear _____,
Today I walked through a misty silver forest, knee deep in orange and brown fallen leaves, past stone walls, tinkling sheep, laughing baking villagers,
and I thought:
You should be here.
and I laughed over vino and gateau basque in espanol/anglais/francais, and I was golden, delighting people, the way I once did you, walking over velvet lush rolling hills, the softest place I’ve ever seen.
I missed you.
and you
missed me.
“ So, journalist, eh?” the guy chewing on the swizzle stick across the table from me was saying to me.
“Yes, yes,” I sighed. I didn’t know well enough then. Didn’t know not to engage this sort of fellow.
He snorted. “Well, I can ask good questions,” he boasted. “Just try me! I bet I can ask better questions than you. Oh, I know – a contest!”
I got that feeling in my throat. I wanted to cry.
But I didn’t. And I didn’t yet know: This isn’ how it’s supposed to feel. If you want to cry within the first few minutes of a date, you shouldn’t stay.
But stay I did.
And I let him ask questions that escalated in their riskiness, in their personal nature, in their shock value.
He asked me all the standard Grade A “Truth and Dare’ throwaways: Where was the first place, the most crazy place, the place you always wanted to? What’s the best lie you ever told? What would you cheat for?
It reminded me of eighth grade, playing scruples with my best friend J and our two best guy friends. Little did I know they’d be the first of many fake boyfriends I’d have throughout my life.
Swizzle Stick’s questions didn’t shock me actually at all, nor did they impress me or particularly pique my interest.
What it did do was annoy me. I felt invaded, intruded upon, for of course, I was.
Then he went to the biggie, a gleam in his eye.
“On a scale of one to ten,” he smirked, “how attracted would you say you are to me, right now?”
He sat back, utterly pleased with himself, oozing pride.
I grimaced, actually flinched. It was that painful.
But I did not leave.
He smiled, almost cruelly, and drummed his fingers infuriatingly on the table top.
“Oh, I can’t answer that. I don’t know,” I stammered.
“No really. Mizz Journalist! Do it, you can say. C’mon.” He pushed, I resisted. It would have been romantic, a mating dance if it weren’t so utterly terrorizing.
“C’mon,” he needled, “Just say a number… 1 to 10, c’mon!”
I squirmed, stared, started, bit my lip to keep the words inside, but still, I didn’t leave.
“Fine, I don’t know, 6.” I’d inflated the number it should go without saying. Substantially. Why, I’m not sure I could say, even now, some several years later.
He nodded. He smiled. He took it all in. “hmm…” The smirking continued.
“Well,” he started, though I hadn’t asked for reciprocation, and certainly didn’t want it. “Well, I would have given you a 9, but… you’re not very confident, so I lowered it. I give you a 7.5.”
I didn’t leave. Still.
“Well I guess you’re going to have to go back home then.”
I thought the punk was flirting with me. He was 19, blond and smirking.
And not kidding. or flirting.
He sent me to customs where I cried. I’d left my passport at home. It was only Canada after all.
The tears got me through but it turned out, the snarky, not-flirting Canadian border patrol was right: I should have gone home.
Because once I emerged — teary and frazzled and terrified and thrilled — into the sea of waiting people, dead straight into your strong arms, it was too late.
***
“This is great!” you said, surprised, your hand on my knee in your car. You knew your way around the snowy February old city. You were both confident as if we’d been lovers for years and tender as if every touch was new, important.
I wanted it to be so very much. I wanted to be new and life-filled and young and beautiful. I wanted it for you. You needed it so much.
