I want you to be my wife he says and looks down at me. With the reflections of the city lights and stars illuminating his red, glassy eyes, he stares at me, pushing me--urging me--to understand. And then, he turns around and walks in the other direction. Leaving me standing in his wake, completely paralyzed in amazement and pleasure and happiness.
With thoughts sprinting around my head, I begin to move my legs toward the elevator. What just happened? His decision to leave me on the roof without awaiting my response confounds me. I feel slightly disjointed, like my head is disconnected from the rest of my body which continues to move with no real direction or plan. Why would he do that? Except, maybe… I squint my eyes as I try and decipher his actions. He must have wanted to give me time to think about my response? How was he expecting me to respond? Wait, did he take my surprise as a decline? I try to calm down, deep breath in and out, just like I was taught. Well, even if he did, it won’t matter by the end of tonight, I decide. I will just have to show him in some grand-romantic and utterly cheesy way that yes, of course yes, always, always, always, I will marry him.
So, although the clock is riding on ten, I think about all the things I need to do to get this wedding in action. It wasn’t that hard of a task considering I had been day dreaming about our wedding since our date. It was a good date, honestly the best one I’ve ever had. We are so meant to be that when he showed up thirty minutes late, I was understanding and knew it was because he was rushing from work. And, even when we sat there for the first ten minutes in silence, none of it was uncomfortable or awkward. It was as if we were having a virtual conversation the entire time. After our intense connection, I have taken care to learn everything about him, from his divorced parents to his kid-sister. But, most of all, I have learned that we are meant to be and he is all I can think about and I am elated that I cloud is conscious and unconscious too. We were instantly connected, we didn’t even need to go to any other dates after that one. You’re kidding yourself, Dr. Jane told me. You were not there, I responded.
Dr. Jane is part of my long, unrequited story that seems to have no perceptive end and I am therefore constantly stuck in the middle. The short version, although there never really is one, is that a few months ago I got into a fight with a man I thought I knew, a few prescribed pills, and a lofty motel room. After a few court orders and homes later, and I am required to see her twice a week and talk about my life as I sit atop her pedophilic red chair and she disagrees, in a deeply monotone voice, with most of the things I say. Actually, now that I start to think about it, Dr. Jane should know that she was completely wrong about my relationship with him. Dr. Jane? I say when she picks up the phone. I never gave you my cell number, how are you calling me here? That is beside the point, I say, Dr. Jane, he proposed! He said he wants me to be his wife! Who? You know, him, the one that I instantly connected to, you know who I am talking about Dr. Jane, I elucidate. You instantly connect to every—I hang up the phone. Dr. Jane really is a b**** sometimes, but I am not sure I can be all that picky with her. She has a bunch of family issues or whatever.
I stop at a corner market and pick up a bunch of wedding magazines. Perfect blond models with red lips beacon to me with their skeleton hands and whisper promises with wavy hair that lays daintily atop the floral white dresses. I pick up as many as I can because I need to start planning the wedding as soon as possible. Hey miss, are you going to be able to pay for all of those? A man limps from behind the cart and his hooded sweatshirt is dirty in the kind of way that warns don’t mess with me. I search for a twenty, but eventually just use the credit card. We are going to be married soon anyways, and that means joint bank-accounts. Oh, also throw in a few flowers. Um, yes the red roses.
I never thought that I would find someone. I didn’t think I was worthy of anyone, as I told Dr. Jane, at least no one like him, no one that gets me like he does. What about the last guy, she responded when I said this. Oh, no he didn’t matter. But, Dr. Jane I am telling you, he is like Mr. Darcy and I am Lizzy and somehow our faults are beginning to align in a balanced relationship. We balance out the extremes in each other. Didn’t you guys just meet? That is beside the point, I explained, we are connected. Just keep telling yourself that, she said and looked at me above her red glasses as they slid down the sharp bridge of her nose.
Next I decide to stop at the bridal shop. Closed. I take a cab to the next one. Closed. Excuse me, are there any shops that sell wedding dresses close by? That would still be open? There is a place a block down, I don’t think they close until 12. Except, mam, I am not sure that is necessarily the place I would want to go to if it was my big day, he responds in a strangled and high voice muffled by the barrier dividing the taxi. Oh, that’s fine. Let’s just go there.
The taxi driver pulls up to a crowded hippy store which would otherwise be characterized as closed, similarly to all of the other shops around it, except for the butterfly lights that fall and cascade all around the front. One Love, the sign reads, and as I walk in I am crippled by the smell of incents that promise to take my troubles away and assure ever-lasting happiness with my soul-one (not soul-mate, because according to the walls and slogans, love is more meaningful than just mating).
Hello, the sales lady with blond dreads, a nose ring and an emaciated body in a shawl of tattoos, because yes she quite literally wears her heart on her shoulder (along with other places). What can I help you with? I am looking for a wedding dress. At this hour? I have to show my fiancé that I love him, I tell her. Okay, she looks at me with a dubious smile, all of these are in our wedding dress collection, she says as she walks from behind the cash register to show me a clothing display. Each one is made from a variety of influences from different cultures, and means different things. See this one, she points to the red dress, its name is fire, and it promises a passionate marriage. You don’t have any white ones? I ask. No, we don’t abide by what society defines as normal wedding traditions here at One Love, instead we try and show people that they don’t need to fall into stereotypes and can instead express their love organically. Oh, also each of these dresses are vegan. Of course, the only wedding place open is run by delusional f***ing hippies I think to myself. Now I have to choose between multiple over-priced rags.
I guess I will get the red one, I say. She walks over to ring up the dress from the cash register. As I wait I notice the Black hole sun lyrics printed on top of a sunflower tee-shirt. How in the world do black holes relate to love, because I mean if anything they are just the absence of it. Before him, I fancied myself a black hole, a collapsed star, stuck in oblivion the middle of a galaxy, wreaking havoc on everything around me. It all seemed pretty poetic and metaphoric to me at the time. I told Dr. Jane this once, but she just told me that I wasn’t important enough to bend the light and gravity around me. That’s, true, I said. Valid point. Maybe instead I am trapped in the orbit of a black hole, and it is taking all of my light. Don’t think too much about it, she said. What am I supposed to do? Not think? Who would I be? You would be happy, she said. In reality, thoughts are much more of black holes then you are. Too bad you’re the only one living there, I said.
Next, I have to buy myself an engagement ring. I am completely overcome by how well he thought this out--of course he would want me to choose my own ring. He really just wants me to be happy. I figure none of the nice places will be open so I tell the taxi to stop at the cheap jewelry store a block away. Not that you can really call it a store; it is more like a slight hole in the walls of Manhattan governed by a stout, Middle Eastern woman with a heavy accent. Florescent light bulbs shine upon fake diamonds with make-your-finger-green metal, and I stand above them all to choose the classiest one. You like more looking like this? A few droplets of spit land on my shoulder as she asks me with a toothless smile. No, this is perfect, I’ll take it, I say as I put the ring on my thumb because it is too big for my ring finger.
Once I get back into the cab, I stare at my shaking hand with veins like green tree roots reaching out to find something to steady it. It is really telling of our society that something as inconsequential as a ring can define a person’s life and everything that is important to them. I told Dr. Jane this when I tried to convince her that he and I were going to get married. By that time, I knew everything about him, and I knew he would be perfect for me. Even though his work got in the way sometimes, and he was bad at professing his feelings over phone, text, email, really any way that I tried to get into contact with him. Dr. Jane told me I should look for someone else, someone who wasn’t still seeing other women. Look, she said, he is bringing them on dates right? No, those girls are just from work, I’m sure. Dr. Jane, you know he would never to that to me, I trust him completely. You guys have only met each other—Look Dr. Jane, I put my hand up to stop her, I know that those other women don’t matter. She looked at me, either way, you need stop obsessing over him and move on. She really does suck sometimes.
I decide to stop on the way over to his apartment and pick up chocolates. I figure this is one of my last chances to make a grand, romantic gesture, and I want it to be impressive. And, as I am standing in line to buy a box of chocolates which are on post-valentine’s day sale, I figure it out. Dr. Jane was wrong, we are both the black hole. He was the star and I was his core, and when he started to run out of energy, he collapsed onto me and we created a supernova, spurning a black hole created from both of our energies. I understood were I came from and where he did and how the both of us functioned in the universe: together, indestructible and powerful. Jesus, I sounded like one of those goddam hippies, but finally I understood the universe and those Taylor Swift songs. I was so excited for our black hole love to exonerate us from everything else and I would finally feel something other than emptiness, because I would be empty with someone else.
As I get back in to the cab, ready to profess my love for the love of my life, I thought back to our date. How his white smile captured me in a net woven with feelings of unity and wholeness. I would finally get to spend more time with him (as our time had been slightly limited after the first date). I wanted to get to know his body, with senses other than just my eyesight, if you know what I mean.
Finally, I get to his apartment and take the elevator to the fifth floor. I have waited so long to enter this building, and it looks just as good inside as it does from the outside. I walk over the brown crosses in the hallways with black crosses up and down the halls, because of course X marks the spot. I get used to the idea of walking these hallways for the next few years. Then we will, invariably, live in an old house on the edge of town in some small New England town, have a few perfect children with strategically old names such as Adeline and Theodore, and then grow old together in Florida. Perfect, right? Yes, but perfect isn’t reality, Dr. Jane said. Exactly, I told her.
I start knocking on the door, really I should have my own key by now. He methodically opens the door allowing me to take in his entire body in all of its shirt-less, blue-boxered glory. And as I stand in the hallway to his apartment, I explain to him how happy I am that I found him, that we can finally be together and that he felt the connection to. I tell him that together we created a black hole, empty, light-absorbing, and powerful. Don’t you see, I say. I love you. I thrust everything I have bought into his open arms, the ones ready to hold me for the rest of my life. He stands there in the doorway to his apartment, holding all the pieces of the universe in his hands, and says,
“No,” I see a slanted shape dash behind him, leaving a flesh and red lingerie colored trail behind her, “you misunderstood. I said I want you out of my life.”