A Different Place

“Do you still love Alan?” Matt asked me. It’s a question that had been swimming around in his head for a while, I think. It had been there, moving in circles, trying to kick its way out from behind his eyes. After all, this was our fourth date and we hadn’t so much as made out. This just isn’t done in New York City. You either hop in bed on the first date or you assume that it’s not going to happen. Something seems so Victorian about getting to know each other before you start a sexual relationship that everyone here just expects sex on the first date. Matt and I had been on several dates; we’d held hands, even, but we hadn’t kissed on the lips. I’d avoided the deep, penetrating eye contact he kept trying to make. He had the studied eyes of an actor, always trying to convey something to you without words, thinking that he could hold you with his gaze.

And he’d clearly had enough. Determined to get to the bottom of things once and for all, determined to divine the reason that I’d avoided physical contact over the course of our two-week relationship, he went for what he knew was the jugular: Alan, the man I used to live with. Two years after breaking up, we still talk on the phone twice a week. He’s more like my brother than any man I’ve ever known. And here was Matt, a man I barely knew, a man who didn’t know anything about my history or my friends or family, cornering me about a past relationship.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I guess so.” As he stood up, obviously pissed off, I noticed for the first time how cold his room was, his little air conditioner working overtime against the heat wave we’d been having in New York. He looked back at me and said, on his way out of the room, “I think you need to figure that out before you try to start another relationship.” And like that, it was over. I either didn’t have what Matt needed or I wasn’t willing to give it. I left, thinking more about Alan than the man whose apartment I’d just been ushered out of.

What a question: Do I still love Alan? And the obvious answer, the one that pops out of my mouth before I can swallow it down, replace it with the one I’d like to say: Yes. I don’t think I ever stopped, in fact. Even after we said things to each other that we can ever take back, after he’d taken his bed and his cat and moved away, I still loved him. Do I wish, though, that we were still together, that he’d call me tomorrow and tell me that it was all a big mistake? Absolutely not.

The truth is that Alan and I seem to have done the impossible. We seem to have come through a breakup to find a relationship that’s stronger than lovers. We’ve found an ease with each other we never had when we were dating. This is the man, after all, that’s driven me to the hospital and seen me through deaths in the family. Like it or not, the two of us are wound into each others’ lives. So there’s my answer. Yes, I love Alan. I also love my mother, but I don’t want to date her, either.

Why, then, has the longest relationship I’ve had since him lasted a grand total of four months? Why, when I know that our being friends is the best thing for us, should he be the standard against which others are judged? Maybe it’s because I’m too impatiently awaiting the connection with another person that he and I share, maybe because I’m subconsciously seeking not just a new relationship, but his replacement.

The truth is, I suppose, that it’s a little bit of both. I won’t try to forget Alan or deny that still means so much to me. He’ll still be there, in my heart, and eventually someone else will join him. And I’ll move forward, carrying my love in a different place, but knowing that it’s there.