The Wonderful World of Dating: A Gap
As I leaned in I knew he was going to kiss me. I felt it coming. But instead of excitement, I felt apathy. I have been here so many times before, and let myself believe it was more than it was. This was a relationship of comfort and mutual indifference, not a relationship of passion and never-ending devotion – regardless of what I wanted it to be.
I was suddenly uncomfortable. As his lips brushed mine I felt his hand caressing my shoulder and moving down my back. I felt his fingers trace out every bit of cellulite and imperfection as they slowly crept down my spine, and I waited in anticipation, wondering when he would pull away in disgust. This had never happened with him before. I had never felt insecure about myself like this. The message, “You’re disgusting, you’re disgusting, YOU’RE DISGUSTING!” was playing over and over in my mind. Screaming at me surely.
I pulled away first, I couldn’t stop myself. I pulled away and looked at him, expecting to see repulsion, repugnance. He looked back at me with hurt, and I watched as the insecurity filled his eyes. “What?” he said, the indignation filling the void now present between our bodies. I didn’t know what to say, what could I say?
“I think I’m falling for you all over again!?! And yet I have to pretend like I don’t care, like I don’t need, like I don’t feel. When all I want to do is let you hold me all night long.” How would he react to that?
Instead I lied, “I got a case of the giggles, sorry.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, I don’t know, I just giggled.”
And I rashly pulled him back to me, pressing my lips desperately against his. No matter how firmly we clung to one another, how despairingly we tried to fuse, there was a gap that could not be filled. A gap that was already possibly full. Packed with uncertainty, diffidence, self-conscious ramblings that beat us before we could be beat.
And now that I have acknowledged this gap, I can’t ignore it. It is there, staring at me, teasing me with the possibility of falling in, and never climbing back out. So the question is, do I stare back and fight my fear of falling, or do I look for a safer passage?
The Wonderful World of Dating: a semi-caustic look at dating in today’s world, given from the heart of a chronically single girl, appears every Wednesday right here at iconoclastic
Technorati: relationships, dating, gap, desperate, kissing
Comments
doubt... the hero(ine) bane
REPLY: bane is the perfect word!
Posted by: el cid | April 11, 2007 07:48 AM