Listening to all the different versions of You Are My Sunshine—by Jimmie Davis, Johnny Cash, even Ray Charles—one line stood out to me: “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.” I found this line particularly haunting because it indicated that fault in the failure in the relationship rested, in large part, on the speaker’s shoulders. This inability to express emotional attachment sparked the following story. In my piece for this week, a self-obsessed young male refrains from expressing his appreciation for his partner because of perceived implications to his ego should he be the more invested partner. Insofar as the speaker is self-obsessed, and insofar as the song’s speaker yields no expository information about his lover beyond that she loves others, I felt leaving his lover largely undescribed worked best.
In writing, a distinct theme of possession emerged. This was not expressly intended, but is certainly a large part of the story that resulted—both in explicit mention and in the paragraph centered around how the verbs of love are often expressed with conjugations of the word “have.” This focus certainly meandered from the song a bit, but insofar as the ‘love is war’ metaphor consumes our discourse on love, I think it is appropriate.
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I didn’t remember who kissed whom the first time we kissed, but I knew it had to be just one of us. Every transitive verb has a subject and an object, and it never felt right that we could act intransitively. “We kissed” skirted around our relationship’s vernacular because the first person plural lugged with it obligation, and to be obliged rested askew, like an improperly screwed child-lock.
On walks to Walgreens for medicine and soap, I wanted to hold her hand, and wanted even more so on return trips, solo, for soap-dishes. But we knew that holding hands transcended interlocking fingers and kissing palms and held meaning as a symbol, something greater. It meant the death of what we’ve had, only maybe, in different terms, just a change. I could not risk giving in because giving in was not giving in but precisely this giving up. The first to feel for a hand cedes all power. The power to own and rebuff. The innate power in indifference to negate. The power to progress, blasé, as in the last moments before spinning out, before the instructor tightens his hands on the passenger-side wheel and the smell of burnt coffee settles in to the seating. Ibelieved in the slippery slope from grasping for a hand to being clingy, and that all relationships were built on comparatives, like more thirsty, more reluctant, less amused. When I laughed at her sarcasm, my unwillingness was superlative.
I made great motion to appear unmoved. In her hallway, I used my phone for a reflection and spent time dealing with antagonistic, combed hair, because to be couth was to care too much. I always trimmed my nails at my place before jogging over and never forgot to capture my breath before texting “Yo” to signal I’d arrived. We greeted each other with brusque hallway hugs. I allowed myself to let my fingers dig into her back.
Inside, I often did tell her I loved her, but she was asleep. Perhaps that “but” should be an “and.” After all, I could only say it when she was on her back, maybe snoring, basting in the fresh sun that slipped through the window bars, face submerged in a pillow past the ears so that she had no chance of hearing. During the day, I held adoration in my throat, like phlegm, and at night I let it out because she would not witness to accuse me of vandalism.
This, because love implied want and exclusivity and because exclusivity was an unspoken dirty word. To give oneself to another was archaic. Monogamy embittered contentment, birthing jealousy, and we did not desire a love-child. I said I had others, and said I had others commensurate to the others she said she’d had. I had incommensurate others to avoid lying. I avoided laying with the incommensurate others. In her bed, I ceased having sex with her, and she started to have me. To be possessed felt uncomfortable, to write at least.
But I got drunk and itched to level with her, inhibition sandpapered off like the finish on a table for repainting. In her hallway, an hour later, I knocked, thick, and waited. Beyond the door, sounded the tapped ruminations of meandering feet. The hallway smelled of maple car-freshener. I heard her approach the door, and I stiffened, grasping my right wrist to ground myself. Drunkenness waning, the alcohol waxed in my mind from a revelatory agent to a constructing one, and I began to reconvince myself that admitting was cemented to losing a power struggle, or to reconvince myself I cared. She opened her door and messed my hair with her hand. I gargled my words, reclaiming them before they could ever escape. She kissed me and had me take a breath mint with a glass of water.
Fully sobered, I screwed myself up, like a wrung towel, to avoid an outburst. I fake drunk texted compliments to gauge her, contorting insobriety into a façade under which I could cover in case she accused me of desiring too much. She did not respond. I got drunk to try again in earnest in person, and drunk again to try again, again and again. When face-to-face, I could never charm sincere words. She took longer to answer the door. She ran out of mints. She stayed in her pajamas.
Again, I was tired and tugged along her hallway, unannounced. Her fingers had grown still the past few times we were together, and I was there to revive them. My hair was combed. She did not hug me at the door, grabbing my hand instead and leading me to a couch.
“This,” she started, and I brimmed, “this” being a classificatory word necessarily indicating our relationship was now trespassing on the defined. She shoved a glass of water in my hand, and I poked my pointer finger towards hers. She steadied the glass in my hand and withdrew.
And then she continued. “This should end. I can no longer find anything like I did when we used to kiss.”
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