dirty laundry time!

with names changed to protect the innocent...

Let Him Go

"I don't know what's happening," Andrew said, frowning. The car we were riding in, an ancient Volvo that he'd borrowed from a friend to take me on a late-night country drive, was dragging itself to a halt. What were left of its dashboard lights dimmed in time to the music. So did the headlights. Eventually the car refused to go any further and we sat there, Andrew and I, in rural Indiana on a schoolnight at two o'clock in the morning.

When Andrew had asked me (via our college's primitive telnet system, our primary method of communication—it was easier, not being face-to-face) to go for an aimless drive in the country, I'd jumped at the chance. It seemed I always did, no matter what the invitation. He wasn't just offering to take me off campus, away from the dorm and its noise. He was offering me his time: a couple of hours, uninterrupted, me and him. This didn't happen often--there were always people around, my friends or his--so I looked at the clock (1:00 a.m.) and went outside to sit on the front steps, smoke a cigarette, and wait for him. Then it all ended in this: a broken alternator, a friendly passer-by with a cell phone, a tow truck. It was an absolutely stupid situation and I was exhausted the next day, but it was worth it, though Andrew and I never got where I'd hoped.

I was always just missing him. Just a little beyond my grasp, Andrew was always the one that got away, the one I wanted but for some reason could never have. In some ways, even years later, he still is. After all the people I've known in my life, all the dates and one-night-stands and relationships, I still find myself wondering "What if?" What if, say, I'd ever told him how I felt? (Did I? Maybe I did and he didn't want to hear it.) What if he'd been interested? What if I hadn't been dating so-and-so and he wasn't still dating his boyfriend? It's interesting when I think about the trajectory my life could've taken: I can almost see a sunny kitchen on a Saturday morning, him reading something or just sleepily staring at the table. It's an imaginary life that seems to run parallel to my own, the one where I'm single in New York City and he's married in Chicago.

It's not that I hope to ever have a relationship with him--that life isn't the one I chose. I write this because I've recently noticed a pattern in myself. I'm not one to pine away, not one for crushes. But rarely--more rarely than I'd like to admit--I meet someone who seems to awaken my senses. When I make eye contact with them or find them looking at me, I feel the blood rush to my face, blooming up and out with an emotion that would feel like sadness if it weren't so giddy. There have only been a few people in my life that I've ever felt this way around, people who remind me that I am, in fact, alive and should notice the things around me. People who make me forget that there was ever another version of me that I presented to others, because with them the only thing I am is myself.

I wonder, though, if these never-were relationships seem so perfect because they were never real. Andrew, for instance, was never available to me: we were always dating other people or not dating at all. Did I let myself fall for him so completely, open up so much, because it felt like there would never be a consequence? Because the relationship would always be a fantasy, something that could've happened but never did, was it more appealing to me? There was always the chance of something more, and never anything to turn stale or implode.

I saw Andrew again for the first time since college a few weeks ago. Neither of us were the people we were in college, but things were the same. Walking down the wet streets of Chelsea I felt the like I did when I was 20 years old: needing to at least put my arm around him, to somehow bring him closer to me, wanting to know what he felt like. Just like college, though, I didn't. When we parted ways--him on a PATH train to New Jersey and me on the N to Queens--we hugged close. I felt him against me, breathed him in, and let him go.