Such are relationships in the pandemic. We’re thrown together when we’re not ready or else we don’t see each other for weeks, months, on end. It’s a false advance or wall, however you want to look at it. Either way, we’re not free to define our own trajectories. Either throw in your lot with the one you love or get used to FaceTime sex. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to spend my time jerking off, either alone or with her on the other end. I wanted her in my bed, in my house, in my heart.
So we tossed it in together. She kept her place. I mean, she’s not stupid.
She knew this thing could blow up at any minute. We bring ourselves into
relationships, fully or not, and our partner chooses to do so or not. We’re
still relatively new. Bringing ourselves wholly to this thing is going to take
some time.
But what is a couple to do under these circumstances? We don’t do well
apart. She’s not a phone person, I’m not a Zoomer or FaceTimer or whatever, and
neither one of us does email sufficiently to keep a relationship alive. So we
figured why not, let’s give this thing a try. Why not. Why not indeed.
“No,” I say, and brandish the vape pen. “Were you going to just hide this?”
She knows I’m not wild about her smoking pot. I try to control my
feelings. I mean, after all, she’s a grown-up, right? She’s in her 30s; she’s
old enough to figure out what she needs to do to be an adult.
I mean, she does. Right?
“I was going to tell you,” she says, her breasts drooping in her bra, “eventually.”
“Eventually as in when? Next September?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and her tone is nothing like an apology. “Can I
clean the puke up before you jump down my throat?”
Herein lies the nexus of a relationship: the point where you’re
grown-up enough to do whatever you want but connected enough that you can’t do
that at all. Hell, I recognize that. You think there are things I haven’t had
to put away in the name of keeping this thing going? But I was honest with her about
them. I leveled with her.
Didn’t I?
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