| Aftershocks | Commitment | The Memo | One of Us |
I remember the afternoon everything changed - the day she told me she was tired of the way our relationship had been going.
"I want a real, committed girlfriend," she said.
We were on Market Street rapidly entering and exiting leather stores in which I was supposed to be picking out an expensive jacket she had insisting on buying for me for my birthday. I didn't really want her to spend that much money on me, but she'd worn me down over the course of a month arguing that I was really doing her a favor by letting her buy this gift.
Maybe it's just me, but what little honor I do have seems to be expressed through my inability to accept free meals or presents - particularly expensive ones - from someone who's not my real girlfriend. We'd gone into literally every store on the street and I had yet to find a jacket I'd want to wear.
"What about this one," she asked holding up a brief, black number cropped at the waist. With its plunging neckline and numerous zippers, it exuded the same sleazy aura as the type of catalog lingerie she was always trying to buy me. I raised an eyebrow and winced.
She was, to understate the case, irritated with me that afternoon, as if I were purposely turning down her gifts to hurt her feelings. I guess after that last lover - the one she supported for seven years, who cleaned her out after the breakup - she's just not happy unless the Visa payments exceed the term of the love.
"I want a real girlfriend," she reiterated as we sat in a green plastic mall cafe and eyed each other over soggy, turkey sandwiches.
"Then you should get one," I replied casually, flippantly almost. And I meant it - at the time. That she should have someone to love, honor, cherish, squander all her money on, seemed both reasonable and fitting.
"You still don't want to?" she asked.
I shook my head. We'd been through this many times, and though I'd tried, I just couldn't get myself to fall in love with her, and it seemed to me, it would be a problem to make a commitment under those circumstances.
"Why not?" she always wanted to know. "Is it just because you can't be interested in anyone who doesn't ignore you?"
I hate it when my lovers say that, and they all do eventually. It's like they learn those lines out of the same self-help book and then parrot them back at me as if they were revealing some startling insight that will either wound me or transform me into the perfect mate instantaneously.
No, the reason I couldn't be her girlfriend was because I couldn't compromise.
"But all relationships are about compromise," she'd say, implying that she was conceding much.
Two weeks after our unsuccessful shopping trip, she gave me the ultimatum.
"Either we have a committed relationship, or none."
This seemed so dramatic and unnecessary to me. Weren't we going along just fine? I wasn't seeing anyone but her. She wasn't seeing anyone but me. Why did we need these formalities? She wasn't getting any worse a deal than my last girlfriend, except that my last girlfriend had lived with the illusion that a commitment would keep our relationship from dissolving like Jell-O in a rainstorm. An illusion, by the way, that was shattered for both of us the first time she met someone else she was remotely attracted to, and ran off leaving me with a cheap ring and a lot of indecipherable poetry.
It put me in a panic though, this ultimatum. If I said yes, I would be insinuating that I believed we had enough in common to build a life together. I would be committing myself to watching the endless, boring soccer tournaments in which she and her friends played. I would be trapped in her world of sterile, black, Italian furniture with matching black table settings at which I would have to entertain those same soccer players - and the type of people who did marketing and sales for a living, and enjoyed it. They would engage in uproariously superficial conversations. I would sit silently and then retreat to the bathroom where I'd hide long enough to start them wondering if I was regrouting the tile.
Sure it was the best sex I'd ever had. Sure she was smart and loyal and understanding and nurturing.
Sure she'd buy me anything I wanted, take me anywhere I wanted to go, move away and start a new life even, if that would finally make me happy. She even laughed at my jokes, though I'm not sure she got them.
I appreciated that she had grown out her shaved public mound when I told her I was slightly sickened by the idea that I was going to have to feed her animal crackers and milk after we'd finished having sex. I was happy that she stopped wearing t hose leather clothes that made her look like a refugee from an '80s heavy metal video. She even quit trying to sway me with her incessant, earnest speeches on positive thinking - speeches that would have nauseated even Werner Erhardt.
But there was an aesthetic I craved - a mind set I needed, and nice just wasn't enough.
"I guess you'll have to find someone else," I mumbled sadly, my mouth full of turkey.
"What if you're making the wrong choice? What if you regret this?" she asked one last time.
"Then I'll have to live with it."
It was a calm breakup, pleasant almost. After all, she wasn't my real girlfriend.
Then two weeks later, at a party we'd attended together, she met someone. At first it didn't bother me. She'd slept with a lot of people during the year we were dating. She hadn't really liked them though, so I hadn't cared.
But this girl - this girl who was ten years younger than me and an heiress - this girl was different. She was seeing her every day - every night. She wasn't calling me much anymore, and she had this barely concealed smile of satisfaction just under the surface of her face every time I saw her.
It's not that I was sitting home on the weekends waiting for her to call or anything. I had things to do. I just thought it was appropriate for me to mourn a little; to be alone to contemplate what had gone before and to cut a clear path to the future. And, well, all my friends were in relationships, and you know how you can never pry anyone away from their lover once they get pussy-whipped.
Then one Saturday night, lying in bed at 8:30 under the influence of half a Xanax, I was struck by an insight. I guess sobbing for days will do that. It'll push someone's mind down unfamiliar routes until finally they see the thing they'd missed all along. And I saw. I saw that maybe, just maybe, I had been unfair to my lover. I had been perhaps, selfish even. I had not been willing to compromise for her and I regretted it now. I truly did.
I was sorry about constantly reminding her I was in love with someone else. I was sorry that I'd criticized her hair, her house, her taste and her fat, bad-tempered cat. I was sorry that I'd stopped being interested in sex because I'd gained so much weight I didn't want anyone to touch me. I mean, it's not like I was rejecting her.
I did love her. I had all along. How silly of me not to have seen this before. It's just that she hadn't been what I expected. She didn't look like my fantasy, or dress like it, or act like it much in any way - and that must have been why I was so blind. But now I saw clearly. Yes, I could see our future: rich years of love and adventure all leading down a straight path to a golden old age. Lying there with the sun going down and the blankets over my head, it was crystal clear.
I could feel her arms around me and her soft, perfect breasts cradling my head. I could see the fabulous house, wardrobe and electronic gadgets I would finally let her buy me. I could imagine us on the beach at all the resorts she would take me to - me lying on the hotel logo towel in a bikini and that cropped leather jacket.
I knew, now, deep in my heart, that she was the one. I was not going to find a witty intellectual who made love so passionately. I was not going to get new clothes or a commitment from the type of self-centered neurotic artists I usually went for. Who, but she would love me unconditionally? And who but I, could love her in kind, knowing all her flaws intimately as I did?
It had only been a month since we'd stopped sleeping together - since the party where she met that child she was dating - yet surprisingly she was not overjoyed when I told her of my revelation.
"I think I may have found everything I want in one person," she said dreamily, and she wasn't talking about me.
"But I've changed. I'm sorry. I love you," I cried out with genuine tears shining in the corners of my eyes.
"Why now?"
Why now? Why does a writer only find her muse the hour before deadline? Why do murderers only repent when lethal injection is immanent? As usual, she had found the most irrelevant question to ask. Yet, I held my tongue.
She smiled that new smile, that distant smile. That smug smile.
"I don't believe you," she said.
It's only been a couple of months now since the break up. The more I think about it, I don't think she ever loved me. How could she have if she was willing to forget me so soon. I guess it's easier for her with this young, soccer-playing toy she has to work out her angst on. Easier for her because she has this rebound relationship to use to heal from the breakup of our incredible year of passion. Did I already mention that the little girl is an heiress and ten years younger than me?
Anyway, those rich girls, they always like gifts. It'll be nice for her to have someone to blow all her money on. It'll be nice for her to have a naive young girl to play sports with, have shallow dinner parties with, and to live with in the house we were supposed to have together. I'm sure they'll get one soon, at the rate they're going.
I guess some people don't have the nerve to be alone. Can't face themselves. That's what I always thought of her anyway. That's why I could never commit. I didn't think she was honest with herself. Not the way I am. I can be alone. I can face myself.
I wish I could be happy for her in this new relationship. Really, I do. Because, of course, I care about her as a person. But I just can't help feeling she's made a big mistake. I only hope she realizes it in time, because I won't wait forever.
This is one painful lesson I don't envy her.
Commitment © Suzanne Rush 1995 - Winner Santa Fe Recursos Young Writers' fiction competition
