Litmus Test (Excerpt)
I: A Courtship of Several Years Condensed For Your Enjoyment
What do you do with a relationship that lasts longer than it lasts? It was waged like a war. Stage one: planning, strategy. Desire and self-hatred sublimating into newfound self-love. Stage two: action, tactics. Unprecedented odds, skirmishing, intel -- being the vulnerable party, feeling good about being the vulnerable party. Stage three: resolution, success. Emotional closeness, your mom knows about me?! physicality, allure.
Stage four: fallout, reconstruction. A victory most Pyrrhic.
I knew the moment I saw her I liked her -- that’s all. Liked. Love at First Sight is a myth, infatuation at first sight a sack-of-bricks, 1000 Newton reality that if you aren’t careful feels like god this must be love. But I didn’t believe in Love at First Sight, not even then, in the First Days in my Purgatorial freshman dorm, 2011.
I couldn’t justify that 1000 Newton crush until one semester later. All I knew in 2011 was that this greyhound-thin girl (rail doesn’t describe it) looked like a scene sophisticate -- dark eye makeup, brooding, tight jeans -- pop-punk for adults. I mean, I was in college. We were all adults. “She must like alt music” and “maybe she like books -- probably” ran through my mind in a frantic build up of this manic pixie I had never spoken to.
2012, I walk into a study of 1877 to the 2000s to find her sitting in the front row. In an act of courage unseen in frail, self-hating young Danny, I sit next to her. He sits next to her. We’re different people. Well, he throws his bag down next to her and flees to the bathroom for five minutes to avoid small talk that wouldn’t have happened.
What do you do with a relationship that lasts longer than it lasts? It was waged like a war. Stage one: planning, strategy. Desire and self-hatred sublimating into newfound self-love. Stage two: action, tactics. Unprecedented odds, skirmishing, intel -- being the vulnerable party, feeling good about being the vulnerable party. Stage three: resolution, success. Emotional closeness, your mom knows about me?! physicality, allure.
Stage four: fallout, reconstruction. A victory most Pyrrhic.
I knew the moment I saw her I liked her -- that’s all. Liked. Love at First Sight is a myth, infatuation at first sight a sack-of-bricks, 1000 Newton reality that if you aren’t careful feels like god this must be love. But I didn’t believe in Love at First Sight, not even then, in the First Days in my Purgatorial freshman dorm, 2011.
I couldn’t justify that 1000 Newton crush until one semester later. All I knew in 2011 was that this greyhound-thin girl (rail doesn’t describe it) looked like a scene sophisticate -- dark eye makeup, brooding, tight jeans -- pop-punk for adults. I mean, I was in college. We were all adults. “She must like alt music” and “maybe she like books -- probably” ran through my mind in a frantic build up of this manic pixie I had never spoken to.
2012, I walk into a study of 1877 to the 2000s to find her sitting in the front row. In an act of courage unseen in frail, self-hating young Danny, I sit next to her. He sits next to her. We’re different people. Well, he throws his bag down next to her and flees to the bathroom for five minutes to avoid small talk that wouldn’t have happened.