I Guess You Won’t Read This.

The past few months have been some of the saddest I’ve had, and the past few weeks more so. I have learned that I am an unreliable narrator of my own life, because every time I deign to allow a speck of hope that something will go right, it doesn’t. Every time I am certain something will go right, it absolutely blows up in my face. Or it disintegrates in my hands. Or the milk spills, and I sob about it.

I have spent way too much time crying as of late. I haven’t, actually, I have spent way too much time holding back tears. Living in limbo, waiting on text messages and letters of rejection. Waiting as ever for the other shoe to drop. My feet are on the floor, my shoes are scattered everywhere. It feels like the gravity is heavier here, where I stand.

I have perhaps given up on hope, but I haven’t given up on dreaming.
I guess you won’t read this. But maybe you will.

This is a love-ish letter to the Kid. To the Handsome Devil,
To the man of many names who has been stepping in and out of this blog since last fall.
Who has moved in and out of my life,
Who has moved on, or is trying to.

I would love to say we were only a thing for the winter months,
A pair of cold hearts seeking a warm body to cling to.
I would love to say we were in love. I would love to say we weren’t.
I would love it to be so simple.

Last week Wien was all spring and cherry blossoms and I spent the days
Lazing about in public parks, laying out on a blanket in the sun,
Reading smut, and praying to find a lover as good as you.

Today, it’s snowing again. So maybe I am still allowed to want you.
I still want you, whether or not I am allowed to.

My last post was somehow your last straw. You said you have to stop reading the blog.
After all this time and all these men, all these women, all this lust and god knows what,
I don’t know why the last post was too much?!

Every time a guy likes me you wish me good luck,
And it feels like a curse at this point. Take the last one back.
I don’t want it.

You said you unsubscribed and that you think you have feelings for me.
You think.
All this time and your maybe-kind-of-sort-of feelings show up now.

I don’t believe you.
Or I do believe you, and I can’t believe you.
Why now, of all times?

We were friends with benefits, and we were rooting for each other.
You got a girlfriend,
I continued on my mission to hopefully find love
and meanwhile, to bed every single man in Vienna.
You are no longer a single man.
I thought we were still friends, I thought, I don’t know.

I thought about you way too much the past few months,
I never wrote any of it here. Because you were my most loyal reader.
Because you have a girlfriend, who lives in Munich and
Doesn’t want an open relationship and
Doesn’t know when she can visit again.

But, I guess you won’t read this.
I don’t believe that, either.

I’ve had a lot of losses recently, a lot of failures.
I’ve been feeling like a loser,
Begging for a win.
But I have said to more than one friend, more than once,

“I know it’s ridiculous, but not being able to fuck him is making me miserable.
I think I could handle it all if I just got to see him.”

You are the late-night confession, the two martini complaint,
The double shot espresso exhale.
You’ve been the repeated mantra, drunk or sober
The dramatic sigh,
The well-written reprise.

You inspired some of my best lines.

I might not keep coming back to you,
But my thoughts do.
“I don’t know how to explain it,
I am not in love with him but,
my vagina is in love with him?”

Last week I went on a date, a hook-up.
I had some half-decent sex with
A well-endowed man,
I didn’t come,
But there was potential there.
To be blunt: he had a nice penis.
And it just made me miss you.

I left his place around 11, and walked along the canal,
Thinking about you,
I hung my head over railings and watched the Donau roll by,
The lights glimmer off tall office buildings,
All that romantic late-night nonsense
The crisp air left the city quiet,
Left my thoughts to scream out,
To echo against the graffitied cement

I sent my friend the following email:

Subject:
 I have said it before, and I will say it again, but tonight I am saying it while I walk home along the canal, after getting some and longing still as ever for something more.

Message:

…I really miss [your real name}

-A

I did not text you. I told you none of this. I tripped over cobblestones for two hours,
Flirted with a bartender,
Listened to music and pretended every song wasn’t about you.

We were never each other’s priority, always a backup plan.
When you told me you have (maybe) feelings for me all I could say was,
“No you don’t.”
I still stand by my statement.
You care for me as a maybe.
I am your dream back-up-girl,

“How’s my back-up wife doing?”
You’ll ask me.
Or we agree that, in five years,
If love and family planning hasn’t worked out,
We’ll make a baby together.

We care for each other, about each other.
I have called you to ugly cry during a few of the countless miseries of the past few months,
When sex with a guy got too rough and I had a panic attack,
When my ex was diagnosed with cancer,
When the world forces me to be vulnerable,
I crack and call you.

I have gotten very good at not calling you, even when I want to.

I always said I would know it was something more when you
Startied keeping gluten-free soy sauce for me at your apartment.
On Valentine’s day, I came over for sushi and whiskey and,
You had a bottle there for me.
But you had a girlfriend already.

I want you to be happy, to find love.
I don’t think you are happy with her.
I know my opinion is nothing but biased,
But,
I just don’t see it.

I’ll be good though, I’ll listen when you are bickering,
I’m willing to side with her in a fight, when she is right,
And you are wrong.
When I have to be your friend first and foremost,
And not your back-up wife.

I am willing to help you love her well,
If loving her is what you want to do.

You’re right, you should stop reading this blog.
We should stop haunting each other,
I can’t go around courting your ghost.
I have said multiple times in the past months that I would quit you,
I have done it, and it has never paid off, it’s never worked.
And for better or for worse
Or for you-have-a-girlfriend
We’ve quit each other now.

But the haunting continues.
On both sides,
It seems.

I guess I thought I was the only one.
I guess I never thought you could be the only one.