I like to think of it as a deleted scene from “Sex and the City.” Last month I went to a fundraiser for Smile Train for a women’s social club, and the hostess graced us with the icebreaker entitled, Talk About Your Current or Last Relationship, which was embarrassing enough, not only because of how the last one ended, but because of whom I was paired up with (my ex’s current). I declined to talk about my fiasco – against the rules, and shrugged it off, turning that into a scene that would be from BBC’s “Couplings” – that dark and British uncomfortable funny. The Current got upset – possibly also against the rules, and I thought I had gotten out of that situation unscathed, until drinks Downtown when some of these women attempted to pry the truth out of me.
Since I was going on two pieces of cheese, one slice of cake, one beer and no Real Food, the edited truth spilled from me about an almost romantic connection. A few months ago I bumped into a friend whom I had kissed when we first met (over a year ago). Turns out he’s unhappily married, and his son has a crush on me. He’s charming and handsome, a middle aged entrepreneur who’s always broke, he asked me to be with him in a more than friend way over Ethiopian dinner where I ate Gomen and he drank tea that I paid for. He’s in an open marriage, he said, and from the moment he laid eyes on me, he felt a connection and he wanted me all to himself. Flattered I was, but I had to tell him no, because he’s married; he shows no signs of divorcing her, his clear skinned teenaged son has a crush on me and he’s at the time of his life where he needs to start thinking about his own relationships. How would that effect him if he found out the girl he idolizes is sleeping with his married dad? That’s a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen, and in its 13th season it’s gone on for too long. This is what I blabbed to all of the ladies at the table. Word vomit, yes, but most recent, less painful word vomit.
They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be with him. You guys like each other, you think he’s hot; y’all have great chemistry – what’s wrong? One asked as she sipped her Pomegranate Martini. I told her those reasons, that because of those things, I know that in six months I’d drive him crazy and he’s make me miserable, because we’re incompatible with what we want out of a relationship. I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to be there for me with all that going on. To them, we’d still have six months. To me, it’d be a waste. Tapping their manicured nails against the table, they said the 20s are for youth and fun times that the hard lessons are in your 30s and hopefully you’ll settle down by 35. To them I had a lot of time to make mistakes. ‘Girl, don’t you know, the world is just a great big place to fuck up in at your age’ one wisely noted. I twirled my hair and sighed more to my empty Pale Ale than to them, “I thought the entire point of getting older was to learn how to avoid train wrecks. Not walk right into one.” They seemed astonished. One said, “Wow. You’re mature. I don’t know if I would’ve had that insight.”
Insight. Maturity. Conventional wisdom regards both highly, but yet I wonder if there is some way that insight and maturity can hinder someone from having experiences. Can maturity stopped someone from having a fun filled life? A quintessential Twentysomething experience?
These days I don’t know. I like to think of myself as mature, introspective and focused on my future, but the older I get, my vision of what my future and career will be like get blurry. I can’t quite predict my life plans as I was able to at 16, which seems odd. One would think that the older I get the closer I would be to reach my goals. At 16 I loved school. I hoped to receive my Masters in Fine Arts by the time I was 25. I’ll be turning 25 in seven months, and I don’t want to set foot inside a Master’s program. Yet.
The same goes for my romantic and social life. For a long time I hoped for the right friends, the right love, the right everything and I don’t know if I am closer to it. My friendships still end rapidly, but at the very least I now know why. I delved into my romantic past to see if it’s any extension from the relationships I had with my parents, and found some correlation. But I don’t know if I’ve gone in the opposite direction. My first and second love hurt. With my first love I was so desperate to fall in love, because I felt like I was young and that’s what people do when they’re young that I blinded myself to some important things. Like, that I was giving him emotional privileges that I should’ve reserved for a committed relationship and he just took advantage of that until his beautiful, artistically pained, cheating, fucked –up girlfriend returned. I also ignored some really important signs with my second love because I wanted it to work so badly. But I think the thing I was wrapped up in the most was the beautiful, exquisite pain I felt of loving someone who couldn’t at the moment love me back. Sure, it’s noble, and dramatic and romantic, but it isn’t any fun. I could go on repeating these experiences where I get in situations that I know aren’t right for me but I’d end up with the same result, and that’s not very mature.
It’s a waste of time. Very unromantic, but I do have a timeline in my head for when I’d like to settle down with my Life Partner and finish my education. The problem is that if I don’t get to work on my issues now, I may lose this committed future. All for what? For fun? Barhopping? Endless internet serial dating? Searching for the bigger better deal because my ideal relationship is out there? Or perhaps embracing my cynicism and engaging in one night stands, friends with benefits and hook-ups? If I don’t attempt to connect with someone in a serious relationship now, how in the world will I prepare myself to do this, for life?
Then again I wonder if I’ve veered to the opposite direction. I’ve been in hurt, by almost every major attachment I’ve tried to develop, and now, I look for signs in which I could be hurt instead of embracing each other as a new experience. At the beginning of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” narrator says at the Cristina is willing to risk the turmoil for love, but if she were to describe herself as gambling, she doesn’t know what she’s gambling away or what she’s gambling for. I feel the same way about love. It’s a risk. I know that, and I acknowledge that. But if you know what you’re risking, and what you hope to gain, can’t you save yourself a lot of drama. Like with Married Guy. Because of the reasons those ladies listed, yes, I could fall in love with him, but the love I feel may not be worth all the turmoil I’d be in over it. He’d move on to someone else and I’d feel like I’m wasting my time. So why not just pull the plug and save ourselves the trouble, the emotional distance, my potential crying fits and boxes of tissues?
I think about what it’s like to go off to the opposite side. Embrace my career. Lose all interest in a relationship. Use people and hurt them. Make them pay for the mistakes of others. And I can’t imagine that being fulfilling so I pass. Sure there was a time when I did engage in a series of one night stands, when I didn’t care about the circumstances surrounding being with someone because I just wanted to be with someone. I am sure more of those experiences await me at 24. There is still the restaurant, the party, the bar, the internet, the traveling, the Married Guy (who says he’ll be there if I change my mind which I won’t.), the Jerks, the Wrong Ones, the Dramatic Passion and Doubt, but I will pass. I dabbled in all of those for a period of time. A brief period of time. I got what I needed and no longer feel the need to re-create those experiences because it’s for a longer period of time and at my age That What’s People Do. Because I know that if I hit repeat on my mistakes, I may lose that future I desire. My capital on the social market will decline with age if I don’t take myself seriously. And if I don’t take myself seriously who will?
I marvel at those who can repeatedly make the same mistakes and travel through life with bliss. I wonder if my sense of maturity or need to learn from my mistakes as robbed me from experiences. Perhaps it has. Perhaps it has robbed me from experiences that I’ve already had, and no longer feel the need to repeat.
Let’s go into a time machine back to New Year’s Eve. This won’t take long. And I swear this isn’t nostaligia. That’s something else altogether.
