Violeta Noir

I haven’t written in the Margins since September 9.

This is not because nothing happened.

Quite the opposite.

Too many things happened, mostly involving men who appear to believe my life has an open door policy.

It does not.

There was Chiron.

For a moment, I actually liked him.

Enough that I noticed myself looking forward to his calls. Enough that the flowers and the letter and the attention did what those things are supposed to do.

Enough that I entertained the possibility.

That should probably be documented because the expiration date came quickly.

Before the second date ever happened, there were signs.

I went to see another man at a convention being held at a beautiful hotel in town.

We’ll call him The Tall Tale.

Tall. Mexican. Big curly hair. Slightly dopey in that way that makes you wonder how a grown man has navigated this much of adulthood unsupervised.

The Tall Tale had spent nearly a year trying to talk to me again after one date and two overnights.

A year.

Apparently three encounters were sufficient for a long term marketing campaign.

Eventually he found me on Snapchat and informed me that I had ghosted him.

There is something fascinating about being accused of disappearing by someone you did not realize still considered himself part of the plot.

But fine.

He invited me to an event he was DJing.

I went.

On my way into the event, the hotel manager stopped me.

Not security.

Not someone trying to direct traffic.

The hotel manager.

He told me I looked radiant and asked where I was going.

Then he smiled and said he hoped I had an amazing time.

Beautiful.

It was sweet.

Later, I came through the hotel again with The Tall Tale.

I say with generously.

Because despite the fact that this man had spent almost a year trying to get another opportunity to be around me, he wasn’t even walking beside me like a man accompanying a woman.

He was just also there.

The manager saw me.

Smiled.

Then looked at him.

There was a very brief change in his face.

Maybe two seconds.

I cannot tell you what the man was thinking.

I can tell you what his face looked like.

Then the professional smile returned.

I laughed about it later.

During all of this, I was messaging Chiron.

I told him what was happening.

And instead of simply listening, Chiron kept inserting himself.

What he would do.

How he would walk with me.

How he would behave differently.

Essentially:

Look at him.

Now look at me.

It irritated me.

I wasn’t asking for an alternate ending.

I was just telling the story.

There is something exhausting about telling a man another man has disappointed you and watching him immediately turn your disappointment into advertising space.

At the time, I didn’t know how much that would matter.

Then we had our second date.

And there he was.

Not the flowers.

Not the letter.

Not the carefully presented version.

Him.

Little criticisms.

Little corrections.

Comments about my timing.

My clothes.

My bra.

Things I chose after being told I could choose suddenly being presented as things he had graciously allowed me to decide.

Then came the sexual commentary.

The comparisons.

Women.

White women.

Things I had not asked to hear and did not find particularly interesting once I did.

By the end of the evening, the man who had spent days explaining how much better he would treat me than another man had managed to make me want to go home alone.

He wanted to come with me.

No.

Outside, the kissing became too much.

Too much tongue.

Hands where I wasn’t interested in having them.

A hand around my neck more than once.

I went home.

And I didn’t text him back that night.

Not because I had already decided exactly what I was going to do.

I simply did not have anything to say yet.

The next day, I told him I needed space to process the evening.

He said that was fair.

He gave me a week.

And I appreciated that.

Because even when something feels wrong, I don’t always need an immediate conclusion.

Sometimes I need enough quiet to hear myself think.

Possibility had met information.

I just wasn’t finished processing the information yet.

Meanwhile, The Tall Tale, the man who accused me of ghosting him, was supposed to meet me at a second place so we could actually talk.

He didn’t.

I blocked him.

There is something almost poetic about accusing a woman of disappearing and then demonstrating the technique yourself.

Elsewhere in the cemetery, old graves continue making noise.

Dionysus still sends the same dry ass text messages.

I still do not answer them.

At this point his persistence is more interesting than the content.

It is like receiving recurring notifications from an app I forgot to uninstall.

Pint Sized Mechanic has also sent a few messages.

No response.

Both continue watching my Snapchat stories.

Apparently silence has not interrupted programming.

Then Cabrito came back.

Cabrito is not new.

He was actually the rebound after Wounded Boy last year.

Things between us got hot and heavy quickly.

Then he left.

A couple weeks later, he came back.

I wasn’t having it.

After that, he spent almost a year chasing me.

Eventually, I said yes.

The arrangement was simple.

Overnights.

That was it.

And I was happy.

He entered my life again maybe a week or two before Wounded Boy came back.

When Wounded Boy returned, I even told him I was happy with Cabrito.

And I was.

Cabrito and I did not talk much.

He never seemed especially interested in knowing me.

That was fine.

I was not asking him to be.

We had found a lane that worked beautifully.

Then one night, in the middle of sex, he told me he loved me.

I looked at him.

Because excuse me?

We barely talked.

This man had never demonstrated any particularly deep curiosity about who I was.

Now he loved me?

I stared at him for a second.

Then came in his face.

I did not say it back.

About a week later, he wanted to take me on a date.

I blew him off.

Somewhere around there, he asked me to be his girlfriend.

I told him no.

We had never even dated.

Then, during his frustration about all of this, he yelled:

You didn’t even say I love you back.

And that was the moment I realized love had gotten in the way of a perfectly good thing.

Of course it had.

We had an arrangement that required almost no maintenance.

Nobody needed reassurance.

Nobody needed labels.

Nobody needed to discuss where this was going.

Then somebody introduced feelings.

So I did what I usually do when someone presents me with an emotional problem I do not have time to solve.

I squeezed the bridge of my nose between my eyes.

I sighed.

I thought, I don’t have time for this.

Except this time, I did it electronically.

I sent a GIF.

And now he has returned again.

I have said no.

He continues.

I blocked him everywhere except text.

He recently informed me that he loves when I reject him.

Well.

That explains several things.

Love has now ruined the arrangement twice and apparently rejection has become part of the foreplay.

Meanwhile, Wounded Boy remains.

Part time.

Very much still in the picture.

Not promoted.

Not erased.

Just appropriately scheduled.

Which seems to bother him occasionally because while his access to me is limited, everyone else’s access to looking at me apparently is not.

My Snapchat views have become ridiculous.

Ten thousand or more on a picture is no longer unusual.

I can post myself sitting at my desk in the middle of an ordinary workday and get multiple messages asking if I sell content.

I sell insurance.

Apparently the distinction is not visually obvious.

Wounded Boy does not find this particularly entertaining.

I do.

Mostly because there is something absurd about taking a completely normal office picture and discovering that several strangers have assigned an entirely different business model to your employment.

But his irritation has also made something else clearer.

I am still dating.

Technically.

There are men in my Snapchat DMs asking for dates.

Four asked for tonight alone.

There are more than five hundred matches sitting on the dating app I never bothered deleting.

Three men on Instagram have separately informed me that they are patient.

Patient for what, exactly, remains unclear.

Even an old lesbian friend who knew both me and my husband recently asked whether I had ever considered being gay.

We are both single.

I am beautiful.

Her argument was concise.

I respect the efficiency.

Apparently the applicant pool has expanded departments.

And yet.

I don’t really want to interview anybody.

That is the part I keep coming back to.

It isn’t lack of opportunity.

Opportunity is becoming almost comical.

The problem is that ninety percent of the men I meet are subpar almost immediately.

The remaining ten percent occasionally manage a decent first date before lowering the mask after the second.

Then I am left sitting across from someone thinking:

Oh.

There you are.

And I am supposed to keep doing this?

Get dressed.

Drive somewhere.

Make conversation.

Listen.

Observe.

Decode.

Wait for the inevitable moment when the strange little thing appears.

The correction.

The entitlement.

The sexual assumption.

The jealousy.

The passive aggression.

The competition with another man who was never entered into a competition.

All while several books at home contain men professionally designed by women to be interesting.

The economics are terrible.

Which brings me back to Wounded Boy.

The inconvenient truth is that even married, even complicated, even limited, he continues, in my experience, to outperform the available options.

He does the things these men announce they would do.

Then there is history on top of it.

Years of it.

He knows me.

He knows the house.

He knows my moods.

He knows the rhythm.

There is familiarity that cannot be manufactured over cocktails with a stranger explaining what kind of man he is.

And still.

I don’t want him enough to rearrange my life around him either.

That is what has made me wonder whether the question was ever really about finding a better man.

Maybe I don’t want the position filled.

At least not right now.

School has taken the front seat until December.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

There are assignments waiting.

Exams.

Calculus.

Accounting.

Economics.

Children.

Work.

A house.

Crochet projects growing by the skein.

Meals I actually enjoy making.

Books I want to read.

A life that is increasingly difficult to interrupt with mediocrity.

So part time Wounded Boy works.

Not because I suddenly decided part time love is enough for the rest of my life.

Because part time is approximately how much relationship I currently want.

He fits in the space.

That is different from giving him the whole room.

And maybe that is what has changed.

I used to think the question was whether a man could make me want him.

Now the question is whether having him would be better than whatever I was already going to do.

Would I rather go on this date?

Or read?

Would I rather entertain this conversation?

Or crochet?

Would I rather spend another evening discovering somebody’s red flags over appetizers?

Or stay home?

Attention is abundant.

Desire is not.

Men want dates.

Men want access.

Men want patience.

Men want to know who else is watching.

Even men who supposedly only want sex eventually become emotional when they discover that I genuinely meant casual.

They like nonchalance considerably less once they understand that it means they are not essential.

That sex did not purchase emotional ownership.

That enjoying someone does not mean I am trying to build a life around him.

And apparently women have now entered the chat too.

None of this feels lonely.

That may be the most important part.

I am not sitting alone wishing somebody would choose me.

I am sitting in the middle of an absurd amount of choosing and wondering whether I want to choose anybody.

Maybe eventually someone will make partnership feel more compelling than autonomy.

Maybe someone will make me want to clear space instead of finding somewhere to squeeze him into.

Maybe.

But school is calling.

My yarn is waiting.

And there is an aggressively supernatural romance novel somewhere containing a morally questionable man with wings who will almost certainly disappoint me less efficiently than a dating app.

For now?

I’d rather read smut.