I Don't Want A Title

I am in London right now for Sam's bachelorette party tomorrow. What I just wrote completely devastated me. I know that it's really long, and I'm sorry, but I think that what I just wrote is really important.

Oh, and as a side note,

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Paul hasn’t heard from Sadie in a few days, and it is really worrying him. This would worry him at the best of times, since hardly a day has gone by since they met that they haven’t talked. But it is even more troubling for him, since he asked her to date exclusively, she told him that she had to think about it, and she hasn’t heard from him since. If you were to ask anyone, they would tell you that this is hardly promising.

When Sadie finally calls, his initial relief is quickly swept away by the sound of her voice. She sounded tired and sad, but mostly defeated. He may not know exactly what she is going to say, but he knows the bottom line: Sadie is going to say no. For whatever reason, she won’t commit to him the way that he committed to her months ago. Unrequited love stings, to be sure.

He remembers how he felt as he watched Monica burn the box of memories of their relationship as he moved away for college. It was sad to see such an incredibly cathartic and literal destruction of their love, but even more, he mourned the way that the nautical charm would be lost from her quarters. The nautical knob made from monkey’s fist knots was affixed to the lid of a pale blue box that contained the ticket stubs from the theatre that they went to on their first date (Coach Carter, the Channing Tatum classic), the mixed tape that Paul had made for her with songs that he felt defined their relationship (she questioned the inclusion of “There It Go! (The Whistle Song),” but she let it slide), a piece of toast that had an odd likeness to Paul (circa the time that D3: The Mighty Ducks was released) and hundreds of photographs of them together.

Paul and Monica had met on the first day of grade twelve in their advanced placement English class. Monica vehemently argued that Hamlet was truly mad in Shakespeare’s classic play of the same name (as if you would have confused it with any other Hamlet), and Paul immediately fell in love with her passion. In high school, he was definitely one of those insufferable future English major assholes who wore scarves, read l’Étranger by Albert Camus while stroking his pitiful teen ‘stache in such an obvious way so that everyone knew how deep he was, and he would have even smoked if his parents wouldn’t have gotten mad at him. Yes, he was that weird kid in your class. But when he found Monica, he stopped feeling so alone.

They fell madly in love the way that high school kids only can, in that “can’t breathe when I’m not with you, can’t sleep because you’re always on my mind, can I leave a message on your machine letting you know that you’re the bomb and you blew up on me?” kind of way. They had planned on staying together when he went to Boston College and she to Cornell in the fall, planning on taking those trains that poets seem to love whenever they could. But as he got closer to that day when he would move away and say goodbye to Providence for as long as he fucking could, he started having visions. Of course Paul isn’t psychic, but he has always had an uncanny ability to sense things before they come. In his mind, he knew exactly how the relationship would go: they would miss out on everything that can be so great about freshman year because they would be missing each other, until Thanksgiving, when they would inevitably break up. He knew that he would be the one to do it, and she would resent him for it for years for robbing her of everything in that year. He loved her, he really did, but he couldn’t bear the guilt that he could foresee that he would feel. But when he told her this, she was less than enthusiastic for his honestly and clairvoyant abilities. She burned their relationship down to the ground, and burned him from her memory. They hadn’t spoken since that day, and he had a strange feeling that she was still angry and would give him a piece of her mind, whilst hoping that he choked on it.

But since going to college, he had made a conscious effort to tone down the asshole. As anyone who has ever been a college freshman knows, once you get there, there are thousands of other d-bags who are even more convoluted and obtuse than you. People that write things such as “molecularity is what enables the potential interpermeation of bodies across and through their difference, such as occurs in the event of becoming-animal. Becoming-animal, like all becomings, is communicative and contagious, working according to a logic of infection, whereby human molecularity and animal molecularity collide in each others's zones of proximity. Like a cold virus, the particles of human and the particles of animal literally infect one another and mix together to form a new singularity, irreducible to either of the two parts.” You know, shit that makes no sense and contributes in no way to society. Paul knew right away that he just didn’t want to be like that, so he smartened up and stopped trying to be so pretentious.

Over time, Paul started to realize that he never truly loved Monica. When you love someone, you don’t let them go because there’s a chance that things will end. You stay with them because you have to, because you can’t bear the thought of them not being in your life. He was just too tortured to know this back then; agonizing love is just too fitting for a poet, he used to think. But Paul knows better, and he knows that it just isn’t what he wants.

He developed a sense of humour. He stopped taking himself so seriously. He stopped wearing those shitster scarves. And then, he met Sadie.

If you had asked him why he chose to sit beside Sadie at Au Bon Pain on that crisp and colourful fall day, he wouldn’t have known. But perhaps a part of him was drawn to her, drawn to her pain and her loneliness and the fact that he felt the exact same way sometimes. Perhaps he was just reading too much Sylvia Plath, though he isn’t quite sure. If he had to describe Sadie in one word, he knew what it was: shining. No, not in a “redrum” kind of way. She was bright and bouncy and colourful and everyone around her knew it. She knew it too, but at that moment she seemed to have forgotten it.

But Paul will always be an English major at heart, even years after he graduates and he takes on a job that will inevitably have nothing to do with his major. He is romantic, and not in that weird English department “reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature” bullshit that is completely counter to what everyone thinks of when they think of romance. Paul remembers the exact moment when he knew that he loved Sadie: when she cried as they watched Up together, when Mr. Fredrickson finds the message from his wife wishing that he would have his own adventure. Yeah, sure, everyone cries in that part that isn’t a sociopath or a robot. But for Paul, it was more than that: he knew that she was a mess since she cried in almost every movie, her passion for politics was more than most people could ever handle, and she was complicated beyond belief. He loved that. He loved how strong she was, how her face reddened slightly whenever a right-wing pundit’s name was mentioned, how she could feel other’s emotions in as real a way as they did, and how her fire burned so bright that it made him melt every time.

He has always been drawn to people who are wounded, from the time that he had an extremely old Fischer-Price doctor’s kit and would put plastic casts on people’s wrists and hammer their knees, checking for reflexes until they complained. He wanted to fix her, to be her hero, baby (but without the weird mole). He hated Brett with all of the silent loathing that he could muster for having made his work that much more difficult. He could always see it in her eyes the way that she missed him, but over time, it was less and less.

He thought that he had finally won her over. But after hearing her voice, he knows that he didn’t. He did everything that he could: he was patient, he was forgiving, and he was encouraging. None of it seemed to matter right now, and it was starting to have felt like a waste of time.

* * *

“Paul,” Sadie says as she touches his shoulder. For support, no doubt, but support for who? Sadie looks around his apartment, as if she knows that this is the last time that she will be there. She does it lovingly and carefully, with heavy tones of regret and longing.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Paul interjects.

“No, you couldn’t,” Sadie responds, sounding confused.

“Maybe I don’t know exactly what you’re about to say, but I know that you’re going to say that you can’t be with me. So, what reason will you use this time? That you need more time? That you’re a lesbian? That you got back together with Brett? That—” The look on Sadie’s face as she looks with shame to the ground says more than enough. “How?” he stammers, confused. “How could you possibly think that this is a good idea? After everything that he put you through?”

Rage is building up inside of him, and he sees himself as a volcano. He knows that he is going to erupt, but he is doing his best to minimize the number of casualties. Save yourselves, he wants to tell everyone around them. But he knows that he can’t be saved; he is a lost cause.

“His father died,” Sadie says quietly and slowly. She has to say everything slowly because tears are fighting to escape, but she doesn’t want to let them. She wants to be strong for once, and feel like she has made the right decision.

“Well from what I know about the man, it isn’t much of a loss.”

“It was his father, Paul,” Sadie is angry. “He may not have been a great guy, or even a good one, but he was his father. Show some respect.”

“I have no respect for him. He doesn’t deserve it. Maybe he would if he had ever done anything for you, instead of being a completely selfish bastard.”

Sadie had little to say in response. They both knew that it couldn’t have been more true.

“So, has he promised you something? Has he said that things will be different, that he will be different, and that everything will be perfect if you just take him back? “

“No,” Sadie says hesitatingly. She realizes how true his words are. “He hasn’t promised me anything.” She hates how those words sound as says them. She hates to sound so pathetic. Perhaps those promises were just unspoken, she thinks to herself. Why would he get back together with her if he didn’t think that things would be different?

“Well what did he do, then? Throw money at you?”

“That’s not fair. You know that I was never with him because of the money.”

“I’m having trouble figuring out why you ever were with him, Sadie. He doesn’t seem to have much to offer. And after you know all of that, after he treated you like he did, how could you even imagine going back to all of that? Is it fun? Do you get some masochistic pleasure from loving someone who will never love you?”

“I think that he does,” Sadie responds defensively.

“Oh, did he say that?”

“He does, in his own way.”

“In his own way,” Brett repeats, almost mocking her. “When it’s convenient for him? Without having to give up anything at all”

“This is my choice,” Sadie manages to say. Her face is now soaked with tears, and all that Paul wants to do is hug her and make her feel better again. But how do you hug someone who does this to you?

“Yeah, fine. Make your choice. But do you really think that it’s the right one? Do you really think that things will be different? Think of everything that was wrong in that year that you were together. Has he promised to change anything? Do you think that he even cares enough to change those things? Or is he just crawling back to the person who cares the most for him—foolishly, might I add—so that he can feel better that his Dad died?”

Sadie is silent for several moments; it’s no wonder, of course, since she has a lot to think about. She needs to think of a way to tell Paul this without hurting his feelings more than she needs to. She also needs a way to say what she has to say without sounding completely pathetic, like she knows that she already has. There is no way to say it, she concludes sadly. But she has to.

“I just love him. I hate him for everything that he did, yeah, but does that mean that I can’t love him too?”

Of course you can, Paul says to himself. He is experiencing those exact emotions.

“I wish that there were a way that I could do this where I don’t seem so wretched, because I really do care about you. You will never understand how you saved me,” Sadie wants to hold him one last time, and try to convey even one percent of how much he means to her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Paul says as he pulls away, knowing Sadie’s exact thoughts at that moment. “You chose him.”

“I didn’t really,” Sadie says sadly. “He chose me.” She adds in her mind, “And I went along with it.”

“I’m sorry,” is all that she has to say as she gets up. She doesn’t want to leave. She doesn’t want this to be her last memory of Paul, the man who healed her, and who showed her a different kind of love. A love that isn’t hungry from starvation, but a love that is always satisfied and knowing that there will always be more.

“I know,” Paul says. “But you are going to be so much sorrier when you realize what a mistake this is. I’m sorry for what you’re going to go through. Good luck. You’ll need it with that man.”

Sadie closes the door behind her, takes a few steps to the stairwell, and collapses. She has acted so weak in the past day that her body seems to have taken the cues. Her mind knows how right Paul is, but that has never mattered, has it? Love makes us do nonsensical and unwise things, it always has and always will.

She doesn’t know much, but she knows this for sure: this is never what she wanted.