Epigraph

"Tomas came to this conclusion: making love to a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep."

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I met a boy. His name is Paul and I feel great affection for him, though I'm not sure if I love him or not. Tomas's model doesn't quite seem to work in this situation. Of course there's sex. And that's great. We even sleep together sometimes, and it's also great. I've never been a huge fan of sleeping alone. Naturally I agree with Tomas that at times sharing one's bed can feel like a violation, and that certainly one must be selective when dispensing invitations. But I'm not sure that the mere desire to share one's bed determines (or is determined by) love. If Tomas is right then I love Paul, but sometimes I feel like I only love him in the confines of my own private little world, a world which of course doesn't exist. This world is contained in a bedroom, and here I love Paul and all the laying and sleeping and talking and fucking and staring into each other's eyes. They all feel like one single continuous act and when we do these things I feel for a while like a coherent being, without fractures, without incongruities. In this bedroom world there are no borders between perception and emotion. But this world doesn't really exist because if it did it would be eternal and in reality it always ends.

You see, Paul isn't happy with just my little bedroom world. Paul wants to share the outside world with me but in that world I cannot possibly grant anyone a monopoly over my affections. He wants to be with me always and so I am only too eager to be rid of him. He wants to protect me but I don't want his protection. He wants us to share all of our problems but I don't want to bear the weight. How can that be love? My rather obvious conclusion is that the Paul that I love, like the world he inhabits with me, is unreal, nonexistent, a utopian construction of my consciousness designed to compensate for the alienation I feel in public life. The Paul I love is just a body that I fill with myself, or a negatively tuned mirror that reflects my needs as fulfillments. I love his body. I love his smile and his laugh. I love that he loves me enough to humor me as much as he does, to tolerate my abuse and hypocrisy, even. But I don't love him unselfishly, so I guess I don't really love him at all.

Seeing a Stranger

I had to run some errands today so I took the subway into town. On the way back, I was riding down the escalator when I caught a glimpse of this girl, riding up on the other side. First I glanced at her, and I noticed that she was pretty. But then there was something about her face that made me look again. She wasn't exceptionally pretty; I took note of her various imperfections, none particularly significant, but altogether making her objectively unexceptional looking. The thing was that she looked familiar somehow, although I couldn't place her. My first thought was that she must resemble some actress or other, although which one I couldn't decide. Then the more I stared at her, the more I noticed her look. She seemed to be looking off at nothing, noticing nothing, but her expression was certainly not vacant. Something about her eyes, which would not meet mine, pulled me in. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted her to clear things up, to explain herself, to help me figure out why her appearance had sent such a jolt through me on an otherwise uneventful commute. I would say, "You look like an actress," and she would say, "Oh, yeah. ____ ____, right? I get that a lot." Then we would smile and part ways. Or I would say, "Do I know you from somewhere?" to which she would reply with a quizzical look and say "I don't think so" or, "Oh, hey, Jo, yeah!" and a quick catch-up conversation would ensue, followed by empty promises to keep in touch. But I was going down, and she was on the other side of the escalator, going up, and anyway her eyes never met mine, so instead I just turned and stared at her as we drifted past each other.