Dating : Going to Venice

The words danced on his lips and flittered into the air. I wished I could catch them, eat them, roll it around my tongue like pink candy. His tongue rolled around mine, fingertips gripping me at a delicate point in my back where no one really touched but him. He took me into his chest and his great bony cavity was lifting, shrinking, lifting, asynchronous with mine. A few more whispers lit into the air though I knew they wouldn’t go far, and that I was their sole recipient. I wanted to catch the scene (is this why painters paint?), save the reproduction and burnish it in my mind, then I thought that this idea was perhaps removing me from being here with him so I closed my mouth and renewed our kiss, using the energy in the muscles of my mouth to demonstrate the futility of remembering something that’s only just unfolding.

He took me to the edge of the lake we so often frequented and I pointed out the dragonflies. It was never a singular moment that I loved; it was him, the way he spoke and moved and thought. How is it that you really get to know someone? Through each moment together you deduce a few more tidbits about them, and then determine what works and what you like and what you don’t. Yet I never saw him that way, never stopped to think about him. Thought seemed less than necessary; why think about kissing? There was something so bodily about him that to reduce him to an idea was a devastating loss.

He’s gone now, passed on to another place. I thought I saw him as I walked the streets of Manhattan, when someone in a long brown coat would turn, someone with fair hair and of a muscular build and pants that just bordered casual. And that moment when it isn’t him — it was intellectually acceptable, okay, because what would he be doing here without letting me know? It also wasn’t okay — yet how can we help but have that little twitter of hope that rises within? Its fate is to be dashed.

The first few boyfriends to follow him were messy, convoluted with my desire for them to be him. It’s something that can be sensed, like dogs know dogs’ urine. It was the only thing I kept from them but they sniffed it out without even knowing it, and though all was fine on every other level we parted ways, no hard feelings. It’s those very delicate feelings that you can’t explain — that tinge of dissatisfaction, the whiff of something unsettling — these are like mites that can erode mountains.

Now I’m with someone who loves me and treats me well. He says he understands and that he’s felt the same way at times. I did tell him for moralistic reasons. He holds me close just like I was held close before, I feel the asymmetry of his chest moving, into me, away from me; there’s nothing at all to complain about.

We’re going to Venice in a month, he told me as we made love and he peered into my eyes and said I love you, would you like to go with me? Of course I did. I’ve never been there.

Venice is the name of the lake. We’re going to the city.

He bought me sundresses and little silver earrings to go with them, and he said he would adore me in sandals and wedges, just like an Italian woman, as he put it. I suppose I can play the part.

I do love the way he dresses and arranges his hair. I love watching him comb it and spritz it, taking the fine-toothed blue object and dividing the shiny hairs just at the part, one hair over here, that hair over there. I love that he shines his shoes and tucks them away neatly on the shoe rack so that they’re perfectly perpendicular.

It’s funny, I never thought about my old love’s clothing or his styling habits. I don’t remember what he wore. I don’t remember his shoes or socks or anything. I remember stroking the soft field on his chest, I remember the landscape of his smile and the sheen of his voice.

My closets are full of these pieces that my boyfriend has given me. He loves to dress me up, loves how I look. It’s a sea of white and yellow and navy blue, our house is a pristine white and every furnishing too carefully considered.