My modern love.

This morning I wrote a letter to my boyfriend because it was the noble thing to do. It reads as follows:

Dear Simon,

I can’t remember our first kiss. I’m sorry and frankly I’m pissed about it. I know you have walked me through it move by move (remember, in the car driving home from Whatum Lake where I said babe, tell me exactly what you said and exactly what I said and how was it?). I know it was Tuesday, we had finished salsa dancing at Calypso and you had complained when they played that 6-minute merengue. I know you walked me back to my car, and, for the first time, I didn’t hold my keys between my knuckles, so you weren’t wondering if I was about to stab you — which is good for a kiss. And then we talked by my car and then you kissed me. But I don’t remember that moment. I can’t call up the way my breath must have caught in my throat when I realized that you were leaning in. I can’t remember whether I was excited or nervous or still trying to talk. I don’t even feel like I was there. And how unfair! Considering I remember our first fight and how when you got up and said “I’m taking a shower,” I wondered if you actually were showering or if you were just sitting in the bathroom with your head in your hands and the water running.

This must say something terrible about me, so I think we should break up. You deserve someone who can remember these things. So I’m tying this memory gap around my ankle and listening to the voice that says “the plank!” instead of yours, which, warm and familiar like the crunch of hot buttered toast, will probably try and convince me our relationship isn’t doomed.

Sincerely, G.

I felt a lot better after it was done. I didn’t send it right then because I’m the type of person who avoids things like sending letters, bringing clothes to alterations, calling Delta to claim the $20 voucher they gave everyone on the flight for being delayed five hours into Chicago, because I have an elitist attitude towards the tedium of necessary errands. Regardless, writing this letter to Simon felt like the beginning of a very productive day. Of course, in all probability he wouldn’t accept this as a valid reason to terminate our relationship. In fact, I can see his expression when he finds, instead of my monthly mailing of his horoscope, a dirty joke and a bag of Haribo, what he will call an addition to the “paper-trail of my crazy.” These things, he says, are useful if I ever do something like kidnap his niece or kill all his houseplants and he has to bring me to court, but are of little use in the present. Previous examples include fatalistic notes written on last squares of toilet paper, a receipt that reveals I bought a wrap-sweater at Ace Hardware, or my legal pad of original insults titled “How to win.”

I remember the first time I saw him — he was wearing a suit and a dark purple dress shirt that was open at the collar bone. I remember thinking I could fist my hand in his curls, loving that his hair was long and slicked back, like a Disney prince or a Latin porn star. We were at a salsa club and he stared unapologetically at my footwork like it was both despicable and deeply important, and then asked everyone besides me to dance. At first his gaze made me nervous. But then, paired with what seemed like his pointed determination to keep his distance, it made me mad. Because I had watched him too and he was fantastic.

He had a way about him. Like he knew all the answers but had no interest in sharing any. I imagined that if I tried to draw words out of him with a direct question he might respond with a question of his own, because in my mind he was a cowboy who conversed on his own terms or not at all. I am a happy babbler, but I liked his taciturnity. And the more I pictured him proudly guarding his words as if they were in limited supply, the more I wanted him never to count his words with me. Which was silly, because I didn’t even know him so how could I have known if I’d like what he’d say?

At the beginning of January, I went back to University and I didn’t see him again until I came home for the summer. It was Cuban night at Club Tropical, and, from across the street I spied him laughing with the man at the door. When he looked up I know he saw me because I was wearing a dress the color of a fire-engine. But then he really saw me — with surprised recognition I felt burn down my chest like whisky. As I handed my money to the bouncer he was silent, and in my muddle of self-conscious desire, I interpreted his silence as disdain. Too much a coward to confirm my theory with another glance in his direction, I stepped with flaming cheeks through the door into steamy Mini-Havana. When he asked me out later that night I said yes with dangerously few questions. And then we danced.

We’ve been together two years now, though if the United States Postal Service doesn’t fail me, we could be done in 2–6 days. Which is a shame, really, because things have been progressing nicely.

For example, yesterday when I was at his apartment was the first time I brazenly peed directly into the toilet water instead of trying to achieve a dexterous silent-rebound off the bowl. He lives in a studio where the bathroom door might as well be made out of cereal boxes for all the noise it lets through. The anxiety this created has resulted in many forgone beers — preferring my tacos straight-up to the cold-sweats and rounds of Hail Mary’s that would accompany a trip to the bathroom. But last night when I finally realized that he would still want to see me naked after hearing me urinate, I laughed and stopped praying. Because that was the real fear wasn’t it? Sitting there, shamelessly blasé about the noise of my stream and thoroughly happy, I was my real, erotic self.

I like catching him doing little, objectively embarrassing things in private because it makes me feel like I love him through a reality unavailable to the rest of the world. I think this goes both ways, otherwise the fact that I snore in the winter when I’m always slightly congested or cry if I go more than four hours without protein would have been acknowledged by now. Ours is a level of comfort that hasn’t yet verged on the grotesque. It’s a proximity that celebrates the trust put in another that you’ll be accepted flawed, without desecrating our sacred, individual mystery.

I let these thoughts wash in and out of my mind, acknowledging their presence and then letting them go free unjudged as I stood at the kitchen counter peeling an orange that smelled like wood-cleaner and watching a group of tourists take each other’s pictures on the street below. I remembered how one afternoon when we were driving back dusty from a day of hiking in the dregs of August, he asked me if I wanted a milkshake as he swerved off the road to a tiny farm advertising fresh Oregon berry shakes, cherries that had been picked that day, and five-cent honey sticks. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted marionberry or boysenberry and he suggested we split both and I said no, because one will be better than the other, and then I will waste half a milkshake wishing it was the better one. Then we sat outside on a porch swing and watched a robin feed her babies and I remember thinking that if this was a movie I wouldn’t even like it because it was too perfect. I knew it wasn’t a movie because the shakes had the tell-tale icy crunch of being born in a family-speed blender. But through my straw they were cold and sweet; he was sweet and I tasted bliss. He said he could see my freckles and I made him laugh by scrunching my nose around pretending they were tickling me. Three-months of the year they let me be the girl-next-door and I was tremendously pleased he had noticed them and that I hadn’t worn my hat hiking.

I remember the first time I told him I loved him. He went completely still and looked down at me like I had promised he’d never again be carsick, and it scared me and I worried that I’d mess up and get lost on winding roads. And instead of responding he kissed me and held the back of my head with his whole palm so that I could look at him without straining my neck. Then he said — and I’ll never forget — “I love you.” And it was perfect because there was no “too.” It was a statement not a response. He owned it like I had owned mine and I felt brave.

I remember the way his face turned a kelpy shade of green when I told him after our first date that I was twenty and that I had gotten into the club with an ID that said I was from Grangeville, Idaho. He’s thirty-two now. I withheld his age partly because I struggle with containing the sarcasm that inevitably oozes green and lethal from between my lips as I watch people raise their eyebrows in what I’m sure are very creative diagnoses of our ten-year age gap. And partly because I forget this is unusual. But his age is one of my favorite things about him. We have learned how to love together; we don’t also need to learn how credit-cards work together. He teaches me why you shouldn’t put a scratch-and-sniff sticker over your check-engine light, and I remind him that sometimes that elusive thing he is craving is a wad of full-sugar bubblegum. He understands that sometimes I need space to fall back in love with him before our 7:30 dinner reservations. But doesn’t ask questions in those times I need him to overwhelm all my senses and eclipse the world.

One of the most profound things he has ever said to me was in an email. Recounting how a friend had recently expressed her approval of our relationship he said, “Of course, I know that while you are nice to everyone, you are sweet to me.” I think it was one of those lines I was supposed to smile at and gloss over — something so obvious to him that he hadn’t considered I had never grasped the distinction until I read it in his words. In that moment, staring at my computer screen, I realized that he loves me through the doubts and fears I hold so close I sometimes fail to recognize them. And through his reverential acceptance of every tenderness I offer — by treasuring that sweetness I reserve only for him — he tells me he won’t ever use the soft vulnerability I lay bare for him to smother me lifeless in the night.

And standing in my kitchen with vitamin-c stuck under my fingernails and my Dear John in front of me, I realize that this is the most in love I’ve ever felt. Now. Right this second. With this man. I love him more, now that I have him, than when I wanted him unrequitedly. I love him more, now, than when he loved me without a “too.” I love him more than I did when I saw him for the first time this Christmas after a three-month absence. And I can’t tell him I will love him forever — even in those moments I feel most susceptible to my humanity and almost beg for eternity — because I’m selfish. Not because I don’t love him enough, but because I’m young and have colossal dreams I haven’t learned how to safely factor others into. But even at twenty-two I realize the rare gift it is to feel loved, unconditionally and non-destructively, every time you are with a person. To have someone love you through the sound of your pee. To recognize a warmth in another’s skin that sends a shiver to your toes and turns all the other warm bodies into gargoyles. And it doesn’t mean anything that I can’t remember our first kiss because it was obviously good enough to bring us to now.

And so, without bothering to find fresh paper or wash my hands, I stickily pen my revelation onto a napkin:

Simon,

I have forgotten our first kiss, as you know. This used to be something that would keep me up at night (something you also know because I would often wake you up to commiserate with me). But now I’ve decided never to worry about it again. Because I remember our kiss this morning and I highly doubt our first was even half as good. Also, I didn’t like your horoscope this month so I’m giving you Aries instead.

I love you all the loves, G.

I decided to walk to the post-office right then because my hair looked too good to stay inside all day. In a self-indulgent move I mailed both letters because I know the first will make him laugh and secretly hope it might make him love me a little more. But also because if one midnight I let “forever” slip between the sheets and then go and break that porcelain promise, I hope such tangible proof of my insanity will serve as a tourniquet on his heart if it’s bleeding.