Jorge. I met him freshman year of college in the rafters ofan old Victorian building on the University of Pennsylvania campus. He was ofUruguayan descent, but grew up in Arizona, and that night we talked ofeverything. Our personalities clicked like fire. Our wits and intellects mergedinto one. We talked for hours into the madrugada, the early, bewitched morning.He awakened something in me. He praised me for my art. That, l later learned, ismy Achilles heel. The men who validate my creativeness, my prolificness,something I never got from my parents.
I wasn’t attracted to him then, physically anyway. That’s alwaysbeen a challenge for him. He drinks like a fish. He smokes like a chimney. Asif he is one of those flames that burns out brightly then ceases quickly in theworld. Like his father, who also died young, and forced him to become the manof the house and take care of everyone, including his mother and siblings.
I regret, Jorge, waiting some 10 years later until you tookme out to dinner in New York to tell you that I loved you. I’m not even surewhat I meant by it, platonically or otherwise. But I wish I had not cared aboutwhat Sarah thought. I was always a little bit embarrassed by you. Yourclumsiness. Your greasiness. Your pimples. I wish now that I hadn’t been quiteso shallow or self-conscious. I wish I had let myself feel and truly love you,the way you deserve to be loved, and the way that you also couldn’t accept whenI told you I loved you last summer. Why don’t you ever reach out to me? Why didyou have to have your own complexes, and choose women that needed saving?
I regret everything. I always thought in my mind that wesomehow end up together. But then you went to be a whistleblower for Google andyou spent your time between Phoenix and New York. Maybe not all hope is lost.Maybe I can still bring you back to me somehow. I am sorry I am so independent.I don’t need saving, except, maybe, by being with you. I hope to find someoneelse now, I guess. Someone with your intellect, your curiosities, yourgenerosities, your kindness. Someone with your sense of responsibility andduty. Your laughter. Your smile. I won’t give up hope. You taught me so much.You showed me the beautiful parts of myself that for so long I had wanted to beacknowledged and witnessed. I showed you your beautiful parts too. And both ofus shrunk back in fear.
Why is that? Maybe we are both broken in the same ways. Iregret fantasizing about you when I pleasured myself. I regret telling you howI was really feeling. Don’t the damaged and the broken belong to night? Am Inot allowed to find you handsome? Caring? Bright? Wonderful? Maybe this is fuckedup, but I will keep a little window of my heart open for you, in case you everwant to change your mind and climb inside. No rush, but just keep in mind thatI’m 30 and I kind of want to have children. I am sure I’m romanticizing you.You are not that great. I am great, or so the vagosphere tries daily toconvince me that I am. Did you not also think that to you at some point? Youcalled me prolific. Did you not admire my greatness?
What a funny thing time does to people. Tears us apart.Transport us to different countries. Creates whole separate paths for us so farfrom the people we want new and loved. As for me, I always felt some need tomove myself very far away. Away from a home where I was never taught I could beenough, where I was never allowed to love all the way in. It’s not like mybrightness is dimming. Do you still see it?
