I wrote this for the New York Times annual "Modern Love" writing contest.
He was wearing a red plaid shirt. I was wearing red lipstick. I glanced at him as he sat down next to me on the busy promenade. I was reading an obscure book of short plays and he fumbled with the buckle of his bag. A homeless man with a banjo played a delicate tune near us.
“Whatcha reading?” he said in a surprising British accent.
I showed him the cover and continued to read.
It was the perfect beginning to some generic indie movie. The girl with the red lipstick would pretend to be uninterested for a few minutes as the British boy attempted to start a conversation. He would flash a dashing smile and suddenly the girl with the red lips would drop her feminist frown and spend the rest of the day talking about nothing and everything with the boy. The girl would resist for a while but after a montage of them spending time together she would soon be throwing her arms around him. Then there would be conflict, maybe he was from a lower class family and didn’t think he was good enough for the girl. Perhaps the girl had commitment issues and couldn’t shake her anti-love act. They would break up and look out their windows as it rained, longing for the other, but too stubborn to admit it. Inevitably they would find their way back to each other after the boy found the obscure play the girl with the red lips was reading the day they met.
This was not the first scene in an indie movie.
“Okay, come on. Lets go,” My sister said as she exited the store.
I smiled and said “see you later” as I stood up. I would not see him later, or ever again for that matter but it was more hopeful than saying “see you never.”
This new hopeful attitude was odd for me. I had never been a romantic optimist. In high school I seemed to always find myself in a relationship without knowing how I got there. I was one of the boys, the girl who refused to celebrate Valentines Day, and a reluctant hand holder who resented red roses.
My decision to take a full year off from being someone’s “person” happened in a swift moment at the beginning of my senior year of high school. I quickly explained that I didn’t have feelings for my current victim and delicately admitted I thought that I probably never had feelings for him at all. He stared at me blankly and told me that he fell in love with my wit and honesty. I returned his blank stare and replied, “You were in love with me?”
After a year of actively insuring my single status I moved away from home, and began my college education. I spent the first few weeks of school going to parties, having mediocre conversations with moderately attractive guys and going back to my dorm room alone feeling utterly unfulfilled.
I decided to observe my new friend, my first real “girl” friend and the way she carried herself at parties. She stood tall, wearing sassy boots and a vacant expression on her face. She somehow achieved looking interested and uninterested at the same time. Her eyes remained wide and curious and her body language was welcoming.
I turned to a boy leaning against a wall with a red cup in his hand. Glancing over at her again, I copied her body language perfectly and started up a conversation. He replied with one-word responses to everything I asked and I finally gave up. As we stumbled home I realized that imitating my friend would get me nowhere.
I decided to not pursue love, like or anywhere in between in a direct way. I was not desperate. I merely wanted to continue my studies as a self-proclaimed “Relationship Anthropologist.” I learned to carefully place myself at a table directly next to “happy couples” and take down their conversations word for word. Though creepy, I learned more from those afternoons eavesdropping than in any of my classes. Through this fieldwork I made the alarming discovery that most college couples did not talk. They looked at each other for a while, would occasionally kiss, and then drink coffee in silence. I am a total fan of comfortable silence, but in most cases I felt the awkwardness all the way from my table. I became terrified for my generation. Did people not have decent conversations anymore?
In the dining hall I sat opposite a boy who was nearly a man and he made me laugh. Really laugh. It had been just over a year since I decided to swear off relationships when the boy-man asked me to be his girlfriend. The idea of being a girlfriend usually made me want to vomit but his timing seemed so poetically fitting that, against my better judgment, I agreed. He was the most popular RA in a different building and I was all too suddenly his girlfriend. I had my own identity with my friends but when he was there it was like a disappearing act. I found myself fading into the wall as he gestured wildly in front of his friends. It was if I was an outsider examining my own relationship from the next table. Most nights I bundled myself in his rare full size dorm bed and read my Biology textbook as he sat at his drafting table and sketched. I found myself studying him more than my textbook. My heart jumped into my throat when I came to the shocking conclusion that he was a perfect combination of three of my high school boyfriends. That was when I realized; I was only in it for the bed.
I headed back in the dangerously wonderful direction of recklessness. Desperate to figure out the secret of the seemingly boring, comfortable and for me, somewhat illusive college relationship my fieldwork became much more hands on. I devised a goal: Three weekends, three guys. I was not necessarily seeking a sexual misadventure, just a decent conversation and answers. Much to my surprise, it happened. They all seemed moderately interested in me and I shared the same nonchalant desire to continue our conversation. I made the same jokes, told the same stories, scientifically; all the variables were the same. The X variable, or the experimental variable, was the particular dude I was going to bring back to my room to have said conversation. I would position myself in a chair by the window; nowhere near the bed to make it clear what was going to happen, or I suppose what wouldn’t happen. They were three very different guys, with three very different majors, and yet they all had the same response at the end of the night. When I decided it was time for them to leave, they stood, and pulled me in for three of the most passionate kisses I have ever had. When each of them reached the door, they looked back momentarily and said something along the lines of “see you later” but it was their faces that told the real truth. Their faces said “see you never.”
College has become so sexually charged the scariest form of intimacy had now become having a conversation with someone. This brings a whole new meaning to the term “one night stand.” For all intents and purposes I had the equivalent of three one-night stands.
We pass each other like strangers around campus now.
I hypothesized that our conversation was more mortifying to acknowledge than a one-night stand for the simple reason that after a couple hours of talking to someone that you’re attracted to, feelings begin to develop.
One more weekend, one more guy, one more experiment except this time, completely different variables.
I split a bottle of rum with a cleanly shaven boy, attempting a different tactic. Strategically, I placed myself on the bed in a comfortable way. This time, he occupied the seat by the window and we began to have a decent conversation. We both knew where the night was heading but pretended as though we didn’t. I excused myself to use the bathroom and when I returned he sat, perched on my bed looking intently at the photos on my wall pretending to be interested in them. We faced each other and stared.
Genuine human connection is terrifying and fleeting. College relationships are superficial at best, a placeholder for the next thing to come along. It becomes hard to distinguish truth, and turns into a competition. Which of us can be the most aloof? Which of us play the most hard to get? No more vulnerability allowed. This leads me to wonder if a genuine relationship is even possible, or an even more frightening thought, has it ever even existed? The line between reality and illusion has become blurry.
I was about to walk away with my sister when the British boy cleared his throat. I turned hopefully and smiled.
He looked at me, and said, “Your shoe.”
“My shoe?”
“It’s untied.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
