Thank you, Woman, Now Leave
That’s what I, a dummy, have been told.
Everything in life dates. Everything in life is, at least, supposed to date. If it breathes, if it pulses, then it loves and it wants and it yearns. By definition and rough knowledge, everything on this planet Earth does that, minus rocks. However, I, a dummy, am not even sure of that. What I am sure of is that you are here, with me, with a purpose. You’ve come to learn how to date. In this pressing vacuum chamber of chocolate bears and ribbon flowers, listen kindly, and I’ll show you how. Are you ready? Your answer doesn’t matter.
The first step is don’t.
This is a trick answer. The question stands alone, but you’ll find yourself an accidental heart-breaker. You’ll be invited to waltzes when you have two left feet, you’ll get flowers and give perennials, and you’ll find yourself always saying, “You’re nice, but I don’t know you well enough.” Somedays, they’ll never follow up, and a pressure releases, and other times have taught you to say nothing at all. You’re thinking, “But isn’t that all nice?” The answer is yes, but the second you envision yourself in dress shoes and suit, it’s a full-body crunch. There’s wrong when a machine stutters, and then there’s wrong the way bones keep the body from collapsing. It’s unnatural.
The second step now is to flip shit, because by that logic, you’re unnatural.
On a phone call with your father, he tells you much you already know. He tells you about heartbreak, love, and women, only two you’re akin to. “Your stepbrother went back to her,” He exclaims, “And I don’t understand why.” You share a similar sentiment, but it’s similar the way wine and grapes are. He speaks from experience, and you think from logic-not-exactly. “Sometimes you need to burn your hand on the stove more than once,” As if you’ve ever used the stove in the first place, let alone a mincer or a mallet, but watching has to eventually make up for experience, and you have extensive experience in the sidelines. He tells you nonetheless, as his father told him, but kinder, “When you find love, remember; Thank you, woman, now leave.” A subconscious flick of “when” for “if” and you can see the sentiment. You think.
The third step comes no matter what you do. It is to blame.
When fruit shutters through the belts wrong, the first thing any machine does is crush it. You’ll think about all the relationships you’ve ever seen, and you’ll be able to count the number of successful ones on a finger and the ones you came from on none. Death and divorce have swung like Damocles and even that lack feels an urge to curl. Mothers, step and not, confide in their daughters-turned-sons-turned end of bloodlines-turned-therapists about infidelity. Fathers confide about misplaced blame. The kind auntie talks about fathers leaving sons and you haven’t even seen the uncle in a decade since the divorce. Eventually, you’ll have gotten very good at reading between everyone’s lines, and everyone adds a ring to the abacus.
But when you see subtext about your father’s fear of being alone and that’s why he flits and flirts, you’ll opt to crush the page because, oh god, what does that say about you?
You’re scared too, but to invite another paramour is to crush them too, and for all you lack, there is enough kindness to not entrap another so. Now, the third step unveils itself the way a hydraulic press groans out of the shadows, and the only person allowed on the table is you.
I haven’t figured out the fourth step yet.
It’s a growing weight, the way carrying a passing friend is. The shadow looms over you greater and greater every day, swallowing everyone you’ve ever known and crushing anyone you’ve ever cared about between its teeth. When you were younger, and dummier than the dummy now, you played keep-away with people in your social circle. The heart grows too heavy to keep playing those games though, even if loss weighs heavier. There is no escape as the bells toll because the thought of being anything but queer is suffocating, but you’ll find you long for when it was easier. Never once did you envision yourself with a partner, neither male, neither female, and in the fleeting moments you did, “partner” makes for a generous word. They were an abstract figure made to fill an abstract thing you still don’t understand. What you will come to understand is that you will die alone, and to die any other way is worse.
Maybe though, if you and I are lucky, there will come a day where friends are valued the same as partners, hands in unromantic hands. And maybe after, those friends will be there to greet us too. If not love, then let’s learn to try.
Thank you, dummy, see you soon
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